h
club, axe, or the two-bladed flaming sword which was usually employed to
signify the thunderbolt. As he destroyed everything in his blind
rage, the kings of Chaldaea were accustomed to invoke him against their
enemies, and to implore him to "hurl the hurricane upon the rebel
peoples and the insubordinate nations." When his wrath was appeased, and
he had returned to more gentle ways, his kindness knew no limits. From
having been the waterspout which overthrew the forests, he became the
gentle breeze which caresses and refreshes them: with his warm showers
he fertilizes the fields: he lightens the air and tempers the summer
heat.

[Illustration: 178.jpg RAMMAN ARMED WITH AN AXE.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The
original, a small stele of terra-cotta, is in the British
Museum. The date of this representation is uncertain. Ramman
stands upon the mountain which supports the heaven.

He causes the rivers to swell and overflow their banks; he pours out the
waters over the fields, he makes channels for them, he directs them to
every place where the need of water is felt.

But his fiery temperament is stirred up by the slightest provocation,
and then "his flaming sword scatters pestilence over the land: he
destroys the harvest, brings the ingathering to nothing, tears up trees,
and beats down and roots up the corn."

[Illustration: 179.jpg RAMMAN, THE GOD OF TEMPESTS AND THUNDER.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. Properly speaking, this
is a Susian deity brought by the soldiers of Assurbanipal
into Assyria, but it carries the usual insignia of Ramman.

In a word, the second triad formed a more homogeneous whole when Ishtar
still belonged to it, and it is entirely owing to the presence of this
goddess in it that we are able to understand its plan and purpose; it
was essentially astrological, and it was intended that none should be
enrolled in it but the manifest leaders of the constellations. Ramman,
on the contrary, had nothing to commend him for a position alongside the
moon and sun; he was not a celestial body, he had no definitely shaped
form, but resembled an aggregation of gods rather than a single deity.
By the addition of Ramman to the triad, the void occasioned by the
removal of Ishtar was filled up in a blundering way. We must, however,
admit that the theologians must have found it difficult to find any one
better fitted for the purpose: when Venus