to be represented by their attendants, who
executed a deity's stern and vengeful decrees. In one of the
Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as "the spleen of the
gods"--the symbols of their wrathful emotions and vengeful desires.
Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease,
"the beloved sons of Bel", which issued from the Underworld to attack
mankind. Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and
destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the
land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and
destruction. Anu, the sky god, had "spawned" at creation the demons of
cold and rain and darkness. Even Ea and his consort, Damkina, were
served by groups of devils and giants, which preyed upon mankind in
bleak and desolate places when night fell. In the ocean home of Ea
were bred the "seven evil spirits" of tempest--the gaping dragon, the
leopard which preyed upon children, the great Beast, the terrible
serpent, &c.

In Indian mythology Indra was similarly followed by the stormy Maruts,
and fierce Rudra by the tempestuous Rudras. In Teutonic mythology Odin
is the "Wild Huntsman in the Raging Host". In Greek mythology the
ocean furies attend upon fickle Poseidon. Other examples of this kind
could be multiplied.

As we have seen (Chapter II) the earliest group of Babylonian deities
consisted probably of four pairs of gods and goddesses as in Egypt.
The first pair was Apsu-Rishtu and Tiamat, who personified the
primordial deep. Now the elder deities in most mythologies--the
"grandsires" and "grandmothers" and "fathers" and "mothers"--are ever
the most powerful and most vengeful. They appear to represent
primitive "layers" of savage thought. The Greek Cronos devours even
his own children, and, as the late Andrew Lang has shown, there are
many parallels to this myth among primitive peoples in various parts
of the world.

Lang regarded the Greek survival as an example of "the conservatism of
the religious instinct".[82] The grandmother of the Teutonic deity Tyr
was a fierce giantess with nine hundred heads; his father was an enemy
of the gods. In Scotland the hag-mother of winter and storm and
darkness is the enemy of growth and all life, and she raises storms to
stop the grass growing, to slay young animals, and prevent the union
of her son with his fair bride. Similarly the Babylonian chaos
spirits, Apsu and Tiamat, the father and mother of the god