Note 14.1 — Chapter I · Inaugural Lecture.

If now we were to look across the Mediterranean, and could survey the religious monuments of Persia, Assyria and Babylonia, Phoenicia, and the Hittite people, we should find a general acceptance of the anthropomorphic idea. The high personal deities are represented mainly in human form, but the art is not able to interpret the polytheistic beliefs with skilfully differentiated types. In Chaldaic and Assyrian art one type of countenance is used for various divinities, and this such as might inspire awe rather than affection. And the anthropomorphism is unstable. Often animal traits appear in parts of the divine figure. Nergal has a lion’s head; even the warrior Marduk is invoked in the mystic incantations as “Black Bull of the Deep, Lion of the dark house.”14.1 In fact, over a large part of anterior Asia, anthropomorphism and theriomorphism exist side by side in religious concept and religious art. We may say the same of Egypt, but here theriomorphism is the dominating factor.