[Illustration: 137.jpg Lion-headed genius.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small terra-cotta figure of the Assyrian period, and now in the Louvre. It was one of the figures buried under the threshold of one of the gates of the town at Khorsabad, to keep off baleful influences.
Some floated in the air and presided over the unhealthy winds. The South-West Wind, the most cruel of them all, stalked over the solitudes of Arabia, whence he suddenly issued during the most oppressive months of the year: he collected round him as he passed the malarial vapours given off by the marshes under the heat of the sun, and he spread them over the country, striking down in his violence not only man and beast, but destroying harvests, pasturage, and even trees.
[Illustration: 138.jpg THE SOUTH-WEST WIND]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze original now in the Louvre. The latter museum and the British Museum possess several other figures of the same demon.
The genii of fevers and madness crept in silently everywhere, insidious and traitorous as they were. The plague alternately slumbered or made furious onslaughts among crowded populations. Imps haunted the houses, goblins wandered about the water's edge, ghouls lay in wait for travellers in unfrequented places, and the dead quitting their tombs in the night stole stealthily among the living to satiate themselves with their blood. The material shapes attributed to these murderous beings were supposed to convey to the eye their perverse and ferocious characters. They were represented as composite creatures in whom the body of a man would be joined grotesquely to the limbs of animals in the most unexpected combinations. They worked in as best they could, birds' claws, fishes' scales, a bull's tail, several pairs of wings, the head of a lion, vulture, hyaena, or wolf; when they left the creature a human head, they made it as hideous and distorted as possible. The South-West Wind was distinguished from all the rest by the multiplicity of the incongruous elements of which his person was composed. His dog-like body was supported upon two legs terminating in eagle's claws; in addition to his arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspread wings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up and surrounded his head; he had a scorpion's tail, a human face with large goggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips, showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattened skull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was so hideous, that it even alarmed the god and put him to flight, when he was unexpectedly confronted with his own portrait. There was no lack of good genii to combat this deformed and vicious band. They too were represented as monsters, but monsters of a fine and noble bearing,--griffins, winged lions, lion-headed men, and more especially those splendid human-headed bulls, those "lamassi" crowned with mitres, whose gigantic statues kept watch before the palace and temple gates. Between these two races hostility was constantly displayed: restrained at one point, it broke out afresh at another, and the evil genii, invariably beaten, as invariably refused to accept their defeat. Man, less securely armed against them than were the gods, was ever meeting with them. "Up there, they are howling, here they lie in wait,--they are great worms let loose by heaven--powerful ones whose clamour rises above the city--who pour water in torrents from heaven, sons who have come out of the bosom of the earth.--They twine around the high rafters, the great rafters, like a crown;--they take their way from house to house,--for the door cannot stop them, nor bar the way, nor repulse them,--for they creep like a serpent under the door--they insinuate themselves like the air between the folding doors,--they separate the bride from the embraces of the bridegroom,--they snatch the child from between the knees of the man,--they entice the unwary from out of his fruitful house,--they are the threatening voice which pursues him from behind." Their malice extended even to animals: "They force the raven to fly away on the wing,--and they make the swallow to escape from its nest;--they cause the bull to flee, they cause the lamb to flee--they, the bad demons who lay snares."
