Ugallu and Lulal – British Museum, Bloomsbury, London, England

This Assyrian alabaster panel from the palace at Nineveh, 645-635 BCE depicts a pair of protective spirits. Despite appearances, these figures are not fighting one other but rather are protecting against any evil that might approach from either direction.

This kind of spirit was known as an "ugallu" – a protective lion.According to Wikipedia, Ugallu was a lion-headed storm-demon which has the feet of a bird and appears on protective amulets and apotropaic yellow clay or tamarisk figurines. Although the figurines and amulets date from the first millennium BCE, Ugallu had its origins in the early second millennium. He was one of the class of ud-demons (day-demons), personifying moments of divine intervention in human life. The iconography changed over time, with his human feet morphing into an eagle’s talons and his attire into a short skirt.

According to the first tablet of the Epic of Creation, Enûma Eliš, Ugallu was one of the eleven mythical monsters created by Tiamat in her cosmic conflict with the younger gods led by Marduk. The tale describes how Marduk captured and bound these creatures, and rehabilitated them as part of his work of reconstructing the world from the corpses of his vanquished adversaries.

This transformed them into protective charms which would be used to adorn the doors of palaces, for example that of Ashurbanipal’s southwest palace at Nineveh, temples, such as the Esagil of the Marduk temple as described in the Agum-Kakrime Inscription, and private dwellings (the bedrooms of the vulnerable) to ward off evil and disease. Ugallu first appears figuratively in the Old Babylonian period as a porter of the underworld, a servant of Nergal. In later times he is represented on amulets as frequently paired with the Sumerian demon Lulal, who was in many respects fairly similar in appearance. He is portrayed clasping a dagger in one hand and a mace in the other.