To these they privately added those innumerable practices of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of the older lords of the soil, which we saw the colleges of learned priests compelled, as strangers and comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even sanction by giving them a place, though an inferior one, in their own nobler system (see p. 250). Thus it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did feebly illumine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the people at large dwelt in the outer darkness of hopeless polytheism and, worse still, of idolatry. For, in bowing before the altars of their temples and the images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove to express what the sacred writings taught, the unlearned worshippers did not stop to consider that these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriving their sacredness solely from the subjects they treated and the place they adorned, nor did they strive to keep their thoughts intent on the invisible Beings represented by the images. It was so much simpler, easier and more comfortable to address their adoration to what was visible and near, to the shapes that were so closely within reach of their senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offerings and prayers, that became so dearly familiar from long associations. The bulk of the Chaldean nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Accadian religion greatly fostered its idolatrous tendencies. The old belief in the talismanic virtues of all images (see p. 162) continued to assert itself, and was easily transferred to those representing the divinities of the later and more elaborate worship. Some portion of the divine substance or spirit was supposed somehow to pass into the material representation and reside therein. This is very clear from the way in which the inscriptions speak of the statues of gods, as though they were persons. Thus the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror Asshurbanipal tells how he brought back "the goddess Nana," (i.e., her statue) who at the time of the great Elamite invasion, "had gone and dwelt in Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now spoke to him the king, saying: "From the midst of Elam bring me out and cause me to enter into Bitanna"--her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which she had delighted in." Then again the Assyrian conquerors take especial pride in carrying off with them the statues of the gods of the nations they subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these words: "I carried away _their gods_," beyond a doubt with the idea that, in so doing, they put it out of their enemies' power to procure the assistance of their divine protectors.