Pazuzu is one of the most striking figures of Mesopotamian demonology because he is a demon invoked for protection, an evil turned against a worse evil. King of the wind demons and son of the god Hanbi, he is the bringer of the searing, disease-laden west wind and of famine, a malevolent power in his own right. Yet precisely because he was dreaded, he was enlisted against the demoness Lamashtu, the killer of mothers and infants who was reckoned his enemy.
Amulets and small bronze heads bearing his grotesque image, a canine or leonine face with bulging eyes, a scaly body, taloned feet, a scorpion's tail, and wings, were hung in the home and worn by pregnant women to frighten Lamashtu away, on the logic that only a monster could repel a monster. He is thus an "apotropaic" demon, harnessed to guard the very people demons were feared to harm. (Twentieth-century popular culture, borrowing his fearsome image for The Exorcist, made him a symbol of pure malevolence, almost the reverse of his protective role in the ancient world.) Pazuzu illustrates the Mesopotamian intuition that the powers that threaten and the powers that guard were often one and the same, a matter of which way they were turned.