I.] Again, in the case of certain grotesque statuettes found at Khorsabad, one of which has already been represented, where a human figure has the head of a lion with the ears of an ass, the most natural explanation seems to be that an evil genius is intended.

In another instance, where we see two monsters with heads like the statuette just mentioned, placed on human bodies, the legs of which terminate in eagles' claws--both of them armed with daggers and maces, and engaged in a struggle with one another--we seem to have a symbolical representation of the tendency of evil to turn upon itself, and reduce itself to feebleness by internal quarrel and disorder.

A considerable number of instances occur in which a human figure, with the head of a hawk or eagle, threatens a winged human-headed lion--the emblem of Nergal--with a strap or mace.

In these we may have a spirit of evil assailing a god, or possibly one god opposing another--the hawk-headed god or genius driving Nergal (i.e., War) beyond the Assyrian borders.
If we pass from the objects to the mode of worship in Assyria, we must notice at the outset the strongly idolatrous character of the religion.
Not only were images of the gods worshipped set up, as a matter of course, in every temple dedicated to their honor, but the gods were sometimes so identified with their images as to be multiplied in popular estimation when they had several famous temples, in each of which was a famous image.

Thus we hear of the Ishtar of Arbela, the Ishtar of Nineveh, and the Ishtar of Babylon, and find these goddesses invoked separately, as distinct divinities, by one and the same king in one and the same Inscription.