If an ewe gives birth to a lion, and it is covered all over with fatty flesh, the king will be without a rival. If an ewe gives birth to a lion but without a head[75], death of the ruler. If an ewe gives birth to a lion with the gorge torn off[76], destruction of the land, the mistress[77] will die. If an ewe gives birth to a lion with the gorge torn off and a mutilated tail[78], the land [will be destroyed (?)] From texts like these it would appear that the phrase of 'an ewe giving birth to a lion' had acquired a purely conventional force to describe a lamb whose head or general features suggested those of a lion. It may have come to be used indeed for a newly born lamb of unusually large proportions. Hence one could combine with the description of a lion-lamb such further specifications as that it also suggested human features, or looked like an ass or a dog, or that while it came under the category of a lion-lamb, it yet had some of the features of a normal lamb. At all events we must not credit the Babylonians or Assyrians with so absurd a belief as that an ewe could actually produce a lion. Such a supposition is at once disposed of when we come to other texts where we find entries of an ewe producing a whole series of animals--a jackal, dog, fox, panther, hyena, gazelle, etc. and where we must perforce assume resemblances between a young lamb and the animals in question and not any extravagant views of possible cross-breeding[79]. To clinch the matter, we have quite a number of passages in which the preposition 'like' is introduced[80] instead of the direct equation, showing that when the texts speak of an ewe giving birth to a lion, a jackal, a dog, etc., the priests had in mind merely a resemblance as the basis of such statements. The general idea associated with the lion in divination texts is that of power, success, increase and the like. The sign, therefore, of an ewe producing a lion is a favorable one; it is only through attendant circumstances that the character of the sign is transformed into an unfavorable or partly unfavorable omen. So in case the lion-lamb has a head suggestive of the variegated colors of the rainbow bird, the sign still points to power, but to a power exercised by the crown prince against the father. If some of the features suggest those of an ass or of a dog or of a pig, the ideas associated with these animals convert what would otherwise have been a favorable sign into an unfavorable one. The mouth of a wild cow or of a bull, thus interfering with the complete identification of the young lamb as a lion-lamb, similarly, brings about an unfavorable interpretation. Fatty flesh by a natural association points to increased prosperity, while mutilations of the head, tail or of any other part naturally carry with them unfavorable prognostications.