At Nippur it was the ghosts and vampires, who had their habitation beneath the ground, that were objects of terror to the men who lived upon it. At Eridu the demons were rather the raging winds and storm-clouds which lashed the waters of Ea into fury, and seemed for a time to transform his kingdom into a chaos of lawless destruction. The fisherman perished in his bark, while the salt waves inundated the land and ravaged the fields of the husbandman. It was here, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, that the story of the great flood was perhaps first thrown into literary form, and that conception of the universe grew up which found its last expression in the legend of the struggle between Merodach and the forces of anarchy. At any rate it was here that the spirits of evil were pictured as the seven evil demons in whom the tempest was, as it were, incarnated— “Seven are they, seven are they, in the hollow of the deep seven are they! Gleams (?) of the sky are those seven. In the hollow of the deep, in a palace, they grew up. Male they are not, female they are not. Destructive whirlwinds are they. Wife they have not, child they beget not; compassion and mercy they do not know. Prayer and supplication hear they not. Horses bred in the mountains are they. Unto Ea are they hostile. The throne-bearers of the gods are they. To work mischief in the street they settle in the highway. Evil are they, evil are they! Seven are they, seven are they, seven twice again are they!” The seven evil spirits played an important part in the demonology of ancient Eridu, and echoes of it survive in the later literature. They were even transmuted into a god, and unified in his person under the name of “the divine seven”;(317) while the last month of the year, the stormy Adar, was dedicated to them. But in earlier days it needed all the wisdom of Ea to counteract their wicked devices. The fire-god himself was sent to drive them from their victims, and to disclose their nature and origin— “In the mountain of the sunset, it is said, “those seven were born;” in the mountain of the sunrise those seven grew up; in the hollows of the earth they have their dwelling; on the high-places of the earth their names are proclaimed. As for them, in heaven and earth they have no dwelling, hidden is their name. Among the sentient gods they are not known. Their name in heaven and earth exists not. Those seven from the mountain of the sunset gallop forth, those seven in the mountain of the sunrise are bound to rest. In the hollows of the earth they set the foot; on the high-places of the earth they lift the neck. They by nought are known; in heaven and earth there is no knowledge of them.”