Bronze statuette of the neo-Assyrian period (X-VI centuries B.C.), representing the demon Pazuzu, master of the northern winds that blow from the mountains. The figure has wings, arms and legs provided with claws, the face has animal-like features, jaws with grinding teeth and protruding tongue, while the thin body is skin and bone. Though we have no evidence of the relationship of this figure with the world of the dead, it belongs to the large category of the evil beings, widely diffused in the Mesopotamian world. The demons in ancient Mesopotamia were a kind of hostile spirits, of minor dignity and power than the gods. They were sometimes regarded as descendants of Tiamat, the monster which was killed and dismembered by Marduk in order to create the world; in other case they were made by the great god An. The primordial gods, ruled by An, were subterranean divinities of fertility, known as the anunnaki, who in a later period became the judges and guardians of the dead in the Underworld. The etimmu were ghosts of those who had died unsatisfied and roamed on the earth. Other malevolent spirits were responsible of illnesses and misfortunes, epidemics and diseases brought by the wind (like Pazuzu himself). Mesopotamian demonology shall exercise an enormous influence on the ideas relative to demons and the Devil in Hebrew and Christian thought (Dalley 1989). The object is in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pazuzu_MNB467_mp3h9179.jpg]