JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES

VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 AUTUMN I962

TAMMUZ RECONSIDERED: SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS'

By O. R. G U R N E T

"Under the name of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead." In these words Sir James Frazer in 1906 propounded his1 famous thesis of the Dying God, which for half a century exercised such a powerful influence, particularly on British scholarship, as to become almost axiomatic. Frazer, following the long tradition which goes back at least to Origen in the second century A.r>., took the view that Adonis and Tammuz were the same deity; Tammuz was his real name, Adon or Adonis a mere title. However, very little Babylonian material was available to Frazer. That which he knew, especially the myth of the Descent of Ishtar, seemed to him to show that "every year Tammuz was believed to die.. .and that every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him 'to the land from which there is no returning'". But for Frazer "the tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better known to us from the descriptions of Greek writers than from the fragments of Babylonian literature or the brief reference of the prophet EzeMel, who saw the women of Jerusalem weeping for Tammuz at the north gate of the temple", and he proceeded without more ado to give his account of the myths and the ritual of the death and resurrection of Adonis, at Byblos, in Cyprus, and in Alexandria, as described by the later Greek authorities. Three years later, in 1909, appeared the first attempt to treat the Babylonian Tammuz in isolationH. Zimmem's work Der
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Based on a paper read to the Society for Old Testament Study in January
147 io-s

1961.

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babylonische Gott Tamu%. This factual and level-headed analysis of material, much of which the author had himself collected, is still an admirable summary of the evidence. Its results are reflected in the large-scale work Adonis und Esmun of Graf Baudissin, published in 1911. In Zimmem's view the Phoenician and Aramean Adonis cult incorporated to some extent Babylonian conceptions, but only in so far as they could be assimilated to already existing local ideas. For the myth of the death of Tammuz and the rituals and liturgies of lamentation Zimmem was able to collect ample evidence; but on the matter of his resurrection he expressed himself extremely cautiously. Baudissin held that Tammuz represented the spring growth that wilts in the heat of summer; but he went so far as to say that nothing certain is known of a festival of his resurrection. It was the late Professor Langdon who gave currency to the belief (first propounded by A. Jeremias) that the Tammuz cult in Babylonia was a mystery religion, with a popular appeal which brought it into conflict with the ofHsial religion of the temples. Langdon spoke with great authority, as a specialist in the Sumerian iiturgical texts. In the opening pages of Tammus^ andlshtar (1914) he announced his wholehearted adoption of the Frazerian position in a slightly modified form. "Tammuz is the name of the Babylonian god who corresponds to the Egyptian Osiris, the Phoenician and Greek Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, and other well-known types of the dying son of Mother Earth. The worship of Tammuz in Babylonia and in those adjacent lands to which it spread was a cult of sorrow, death and resurrection." He differs from Frazer only in so far as he regards Tammuz, Sumerian Dumu-zi, also as a title "Faithful Son": "The original name of the divine son appears to have been ab-u 'father of plants and vegetation'." For Langdon, not only was Tammuz the Dying God but any god who was found to have this characteristic must therefore be Tammuz. He writes: The original service had at least two ceremonies, on one hand the wailing and the descent to hell, and on the other the resurrection and marriage. But this original condition of human religion lies beyond our ken. When we meet with the historical records of man he had already separated the god of fertility into several deities. To one of these and to his consort he attributed the ceremony of marriage. This secondary god and his consort appear under various forms as the local bits and btlits of many cities. It is probable that the gods of the numerous cities of Babylonia and Assyria, whatever may have been their special 148

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attributes, acquired in later times, are at the beginning, each and all, shadows of this young god.1 Thus we find that Ningirsu and Ningishzida of Lagash, Nergal of Kuthah, and Marduk of Babylon were "more concrete aspects" of the youthful Dying God.2 Similarly, Hommel had described Tammuz, Ninurta, Ninsubur, Papsukkal, Ningishzida, Nabu and Marduk all as "Erscheinungsformen" of the same deity. This was a way of thinking against which Zimmem3 had protested strongly and which at best can only represent the point of view of the late Babylonian theologians. The idea of a mystery religion was suggested to Langdon by the liturgical text in which a number of deceased kings of the Isin dynasty are identified with Dumuzi. This passage [he writes] evidently refers to kings who in their day played the role of Tammuz in die mystery of this cult. They like Tammuz died for the life of their city When we read that departed shades of kings were identified with the dying god, we have to do with an ancient idea so adapted in practice that the king escaped actual sacrifice by some symbolic act. And it may be that we are to read more into this practice. As Tammuz overcame the sleep of death, so also by his power these human kings escaped from that fatal slumber. It is not at all unlikely that such hopes of everlasting life were inspired by the worship of Tammuz.4 The prevailing view of Dumuzi-Tammuz as the centre of all seasonal observances in Babylonia, and as a god who had many odier names, some of which may have been local, was summarized in the symposium Myth and Ritual in 1933. The most notable example of a manifestation of the Dying God in Babylonia was held to be the ritual of the death and resurrection of Marduk himself, as enacted at the Babylonian festival of the New Year, and described in a famous text from Assur in the Berlin Museum, a full translation of which was included by Langdon in his edition of the Epic of Creation (1923). The doctrine of the Tammuz religion as a mystery-cult reached its culmination in the work of Anton Moortgat, Tammus^: der
Unsterblichkeitsglaube in der altorientalischen Bildkunst (1949). Moort-

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gat, an eminent exponent of ancient Near Eastern art, claimed to find representations of Tammuz in a wide variety of Sumerian and Babylonian sculptures and developed a far-reaching theory Op. at. p. 28. > Zimmem, op. at. p. 19 n. 149
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* Ibid. p. 30. * Langdon, op. tit. pp. 26-7.

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of the symbolism employed in these works, as signifying a hidden mystery-cult involving a belief in the immortality of tie soul. Moortgat's book caused a strong reaction. F. R. Kraus, reviewing it, totally rejected both his method and his results, as being incompatible with the literature, and based on a false conception of the nature and possibilities of art-criticism.1 It was this reaction, together with the highly successful work of S. N. Kramer in recovering and translating the Sumerian myths which had for long lain hidden in the vaults of the museums of Istanbul and Philadelphia, that have determined the trends of opinion about Tammuz since the end of the war. The results may be seen in the paper presented by A. Falkenstein to the third Rencontre Assyriologique, held at Leiden in 1952, at which the Tammuz cult was set as the theme of a special debate. It is entirely concerned with the origins of the cult. The centre of interest is no longer what the deity Tammuz "represents"; indeed he is no longer, in origin, even a deity. There is strong evidence that Dumuzi was originally a man, a king of Erech, who may have lived, like the other great characters of Sumerian legend, Gilgamesh, Lugalbanda and Enmerkar, during the particular stage of Sumerian history known as the Early Dynastic Period. If, therefore, the conceptions usually associated with the Tammuz cult can be traced back to an earlier stage than this, it can no longer be Dumuzi with whom they are concerned, but a predecessor must be sought. This, Falkenstein suggests, may well have been the king of Bad-tibira who appears as Dumuzi in the lists but may in fact have been called Ama-usumgal. Thus the process, so fair from being one of the differentiation of an original Dying God into a number of local aspects of him, consisted actually in the development first of a legend, then of a myth, localized in a particular city, and the subsequent theological identification of this demi-god with a number of deities of other localities who had similar attributes. The most recent development has been a renewal of interest in the later stages of the cult, but on opposite lines from the tendency which culminated in the work of Moortgat. In 1953 T. Jacobsen put forward a new theory about what Tammuz " represents "; namely that Tammuz, who is always a shepherd in the myths, "represents the life-giving powers in the milk. When the short milking season in the spring comes to an end, and -with it the fresh milk, it means mat Dumuzi has died."2 In
W2..KM. m (1953), 36 ff. 150 .
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J.N.RS. xn, 165.

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19541 L. Vanden Berghe published a paper in which he maintained that not only had the fertility aspect of Dumuzi, the shepherdgod, been greatly overestimated, but that his resurrection from the Underworld, so long a cardinal tenet of the exponents of the Tammuz myth, had actually no factual basis. Even more striking, at roughly the same time P. Lambrechts reached similar conclusions about the Adonis and Attis cults ; 2 according to him, the belief in the resurrection of these deities was a comparatively late development borrowed, during the period of widespread syncretism under the Seleucids, from the religion of Osiris. As regards Tammuz himself, Kramer has recently made the following emphatic pronouncement: " The prevalent view that Dumuzi is resurrected every spring is quite without basis in fact. To judge from the available evidence.. .the Sumerians believed that once Dumuzi had died, he 'stayed dead' in the Nether World and never 'rose' again."* In examining the evidence, we may deal first with History, secondly with Myth, and lastly with Ritual, of which the liturgies are obviously a part. The historicity of Dumuzi is based first on the King-lists and secondly on the character of the name itsel Dumuzi is entered in the King-lists twice: there is "Dumuzi the shepherd" king of Bad-tibira among the ante-diluvian patriarchs, and "Dumuzi the fisherman" king of Uruk in the first Dynasty of that city. Guterbock, discussing these lists in 1933, took the view that these entries were purely mythical, in the sense that "neither the scene of action nor the characters in the action belong to earthly reality".4 Jacobsen, however, pointed out5 that myth cannot explain the sequence of names in the lists, which is an essential part of them, and inferred that "these sections derive from lists of rulers just like the later parts of the dynasties in question". Langdon had, in fact, already taken this view and had drawn the same conclusion.6 Dumu-^i " true son " would be a personal name of quite a normal type. The old idea that it was a divine tide
"Reflexions critiques sur la nature de Dumuzi-Tammuz", La Nouvelle C/io, vi (19J4), 29*-3 * "La resurrection d'Adonis", Mil. I. Uvy (195 j), and "Les fetes phrygiennes de Cybele et d'Attis", Bull, de PInstitut bistorique beige de Rome, xxvn (19J2), 141 ff. * Studia Bibliea et Orientalia, m (1959), p. 198 n. 1. * Z.A. N.F. vi, 6. * T. Jacobsen, The Summon King-List (1939), p. 157. 6 Langdon, Semitic Mythology (1931), p. 341.
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rested on the assumption that the full form of the name was Dumu-ty-ahfu "faithful son of the Nether Sea", but Falkenstein has shown that Dumu-zi-abzu is a quite distinct figure and a goddess. The humanity of Dumuzi is, moreover, confirmed by the mythological passage in which he says to Inanna " I will lead you to the house of my god". This is not the way in which a god would speak. Falkenstein's analysis of the myths has also shown that they can be assigned to two distinct groups deriving from Uruk and Bad-tibira respectively, so again confirming the entries in the King-lists. Dumuzi's rather frequent title Ama-tdumgal\s actually attested as a personal name in very early tests, and Falkenstein has suggested that this may have been the true name of the ancient king of Bad-tibira, who was later identified with Dumuzi as a god. The Mythology of Dumuzi has been recovered almost entirely in recent years through the discoveries of Professor Kramer. In Langdon's time the only mythological poems referring to Tammuz were the Akkadian version of the descent of Ishtar to the Underworld, which seems to locate him in the nether regions, and the Akkadian myth of Adapa, where he appears in heaven as one of the gatekeepers of Anu. All else had to be extracted from vague allusions in the liturgies, and by analogy from the myth of Adonis. In contrast, we now have six Sumerian poems from which the myth of Dumuzi can be constructed in detail. These are: (i) The Descent of Tnnini (Sumerian version); see J.CS. v (2) Dumuzi and Enkimdu; see A.N.E.T. p. 41 and F[rom the] T\abkts of] S[umer], p. 165. (3) Enki and the World Order; see F.TJ. pp. 89 ff. (4) Tnnjn and Bilulu; see Jacobsen and Kramer, J.N.ES. xn 9) ) (5) Dumuzi's dream; see Iraq, xxn, 68, n. 24. (6) The wooing of Innin; see Z.A. N.F. xv, 325, and F.TS. p. 184. Dumuzi is a shepherd in charge of a sheepfold. The beginning of the myth must undoubtedly be the "wooing of Innin" as suggested by Falkenstein. "Dumuzi comes to Innin's house, milk and cream dripping from his hands and sides, and clamours for admittance. After consultation with her mother, Tnnin bathes
On the reading Tnnin fox Kramer's Inanna, see Gelb in J.N.KS. XDC (1960), 72 ft 152
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and anoints herself, puts on her queenly robes, adorns herself with precious stones, and opens the door for her groom to be. They embrace and probably cohabit, and he then carries her off to the 'city of his god'" (Kramer, F.TS. p. 184). Innin's descent to the Nether World begins abruptly in the Sumetian version, just as it does in Akkadian. No motivation for the journey is given, and it used to be assumed, by analogy with other nature myths, that her purpose was to release her lover from his imprisonment in Hades. It was the discovery of the last portion of this tale that caused the revolution in our thinking about Tammuz. For Tnnin is forced to strike a bargain with the queen of the Underworld: she may only be released from captivity down below on condition that she provide a substitute to take her place. She returns to the upper regions accompanied by an escort of seven ga/M-devils. The first three individuals they encounter are NinSubur, the handmaid of Innin, Sara, the god of Umma, and Lulal, the lord of the temple at Badtibira; but these prostrate themselves before her and are thus saved from the clutches of the demons. They then proceed to Kullab (which is Uruk), and there they find none other than Dumuzi proudly sitting on his throne. Tnnin, enraged, "fastened upon him the eye of death" and ordered the demons to carry him off to the Nether World. There follows a series of desperate attempts.by Dumuzi to escape from the demons. This part of the myth is contained in the poem "Dumuzi's dream". He hides among the plants and in the ditches, but to no avail. He then prays to the Sun-god Utu to turn him into a gazelle, so that he may "carry off his soul" to certain friendly personages who, he hopes, will protect him. But in each instance the demons catch up with hirr^ until they finally bind him, destroy bis stall and sheepfold and put him to death. This is undeniably the end of the story. There is no trace in the Sumerian mythology of a poem about Dumuzi's resurrection. The only deity who "rises" is Tnnin, and her release is strictly on conditions; no special stress is laid on its victorious character. Now in the Assyrian "Descent of Ishtar" the goddess's emergence from the Nether World is followed by an epilogue which has always presented great difficulties. The narrative breaks off abruptly and in place of the end of the story, as we now know it from the Sumerian original, the text has, first, four lines of instructions for the funeral rites of Tammuz, who has not been mentioned before, then four lines of narrative about the goddess 153

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Belili, and finally the following four lines of direct speech with no clear indication of the identity of the speaker: "My only brother, do not harm me! On the day that Tammuz rises to me, the flute of lapis lazuli and the HAR instrument of cornelian will rise with him; with him also will rise male and female mourners. Let the dead rise and smell the incense." Translators who avoid the allusion to Tammuz's rising by substituting "greets me" or "welcomes me" 1 have not explained from what verb they propose to derive the form el-la-an-ni which occurs three times and is difficult to separate from li-lu-nim-ma used of the dead in the last line. Here then, apparently, is a clear allusion to the rising of Tammuz from the underworld, accompanied by musicians and mourners and others, and enticed by the smell of incense. But the whole passage is obviously a late additionperhaps specifically Assyrianwhich has displaced the original end of the poem. The incident in the myth of Adapa in which the hero finds Tammuz and Ningishzida standing at the "gate of Anu" and explains to them that he is in mourning because they have disappeared from his country has also been a puzzle to scholars, for nowhere else is there any suggestion that Tammuz was to be found in heaven. In the legend of the kiskanu tree Tammuz and Shamash are the guardians of the roots of the tree in Hades. Ningishzida is also normally a chthonic deity. The passage in the myth of Adapa has been taken by many as proof of the resurrection of Tammuz. Langdon writes of his "ascension into the far-away regions, where he vanished for ever from mortal eyes ", 2 and Dhorme infers that the ascension to heaven of Tammuz and Ningishzida is an interlude between their descent to Hades and their return to earth.3 Baudissin, on the other hand, pointed out that this text seems to know nothing of the descent to Hades and inferred that it was based on a version of the myth in which these gods disappeared from earth and went straight to heaven.4 Weidner explained the posting of the two gods at the Gate of Anu as an astral myth: Tammuz was identified with the constellation Orion and Ningishzida with Hydra and these two constellations stand on either side of the Milky Way.* On this view
A. Heidel, The Gilgamesb Epic and Old Testament Parallels (1949), p. 128; E. Speiser in A.N.E.T. p. 109. 2 Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 33. 3 Les religions de Babylonie et d'Assyrie (1945), p. 20. Adonis und Esmun, pp. 101-2. 5 Weidner, Handbucb dor babylonischen Astronomie (1915), p. 94. 154
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the Milky Way, which has not yet been certainly identified in cuneiform literature,1 should be the main street of the heavenly realms. Whatever the true explanation, this semi-humorous folktale cannot be said to provide clear evidence of a belief in the resurrection of Tammuz from the world of the dead in the sense required by the doctrine of the Year-god, who returned to the visible world with the revival of vegetation in the spring. As doorkeeper of Anu he would have been as far removed from his devotees as he would have been in Hades. We come now to the subject of ritual. The rites claimed for Tammuzas for Adonisare (i) a festival of lamentation for the death of the god and his departure to the Underworld; (2) a festival of jubilation celebrating his resurrection; and (3) the sacred marriage, in which the part of Tammuz was played by the king. These rites should form a seasonal cycle; for it is the essence of the Frazerian thesis, as we have seen, that "the yearly decay and revival of life" were celebrated by early man in these seasonal festivals'and personified as a "Year-god". So it was already a serious departure from this thesis when the theory was propounded and widely accepted that in Babylonia these rites were concentrated into a single great dramatic festival, the festival of akitu, which was celebrated annually as a New Year festival at the spring equinox.? This theory, which has found its way into so many authoritative accounts of Babylonian religion, was based almost entirely on the document from Assur, already mentioned, which had been interpreted by Langdon, following Zimmem, as a commentary on the dramatic representation of the death and resurrection of Marduk at the akitu festival at Babylon. It was therefore a matter of far-reaching significance when in 1955 W. von Soden showed that this text had been completely misunderstood: it is a propaganda work composed in Assyria in the time of Sennacherib and has nothing to do either with the death of Marduk or his resurrection or indeed with the New Year festival.3 Thus the concentration of the three elements of the
E. Unger in Welt des Orients, n, 454 ff. Cf. Landsberger and Kinnier Wilson in J.N.EJ. xx, 174. 2 S. Langdon, The Epic of Creation (Oxford, 1923), pp. 32-56; accepted by all writers on the subject, e g . S. A. Pallis, The Babylonian "atitu" Festival (1926) and the Antiquity ofIraq (1956), p. 693; C J. Gadd and S. H. Hooke in Mytb and Ritual (1933); T. H. Gaster, Tbespis (1933), and others. Langdon and Pallis recognized that die concentration could only be secondary. * W. von Soden, "Gibt es ein Zeugnis dafur, da die Babylonier an die Wiederaufetehung Marduks glaubten?", Z.A. NJF. xvn, 130-66. IJ5
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Tammuz cycle into a single spring festival is seen to be illusory; the only one of the three which is connected with this festival by evidence independent of the Berlin text is the Sacred Marriage. The best evidence that the bieros gamoir formed part of the New Year festival is the Sumerian hymn to Ishtar-Innin1 which describes the marriage of King Iddin-Dagan of Isin to the goddess and addresses him as Dumuzi; the time of the ceremony is explicitly said to be the New Year (gag-mu). This text establishes the fact that at least at Isin in early times the king performed the ceremony in person and in doing so was identified, with the young lover of the goddess. Dr Sidney Smith has argued none the less that the ceremony was celebrated late in May, in the month Ayaru.2 For the late period there is certainly some good evidence for this; two Assyrian letters3 describe the ritual of the marriage of Nabu and TaSmetu at Calah, dating it explicitly from the 4th to the 17th of Ayaru; the marriage of Nabu in Ayaru is also described in a hemerology.4 However, Dr Smith's derivation of the very name of the month from the Semitic root hir " to choose a bride", on the ground that the Nuzian month-name hiaru is to be regarded as a variant form of the name, is not convincing in view of the existence of a A/y<zr<*-festival (EZEN hi-ia-ra-aF) in Hittite, which would provide a more satisfactory cognate for the Nuzian word. Also the argument that the account of the bridal of Ningirsu and Baba at Lagash in Gudea's Cylinder B associates the event with the time when the Tigris was in spate appears to attach too precise a meaning to what need be no more than poetical imagery. The same hemerology which describes the marriage of Nabu in Ayaru in fact assigns that of Marduk to Nisan, following the end of the akitu festival, thus confirming for the late period the testimony of the Iddin-dagan hymn. Possibly, then, the marriage of Nabu was exceptional in being celebrated in Ayaru; the usual month seems to have been Nisan. There exist a number of love-lyrics which seem to have been recited at these ceremonies.5 The well-known lamentations for Tammuz, for which there is
Chiera, Sumerian Religious Texts, no. 1; K.A. xuv, 51-71; Falkenstein and von Soden, Sum. u. akk. Hymnen u. Gebete, no. 18. 1 In Myti, Ritual and Kingship, ed. S. H. Hooke (Oxford, 1958), pp. 41 ff. 3 Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, nos. 66 and 366. 4 Reisner, S3.H. no. vni (p. 145), ii, 12 ff. (Langdon, Menologes, p. 112). s The hymn to Tnnii^ C.T. xxxvi, 33 ff., translated by Falkenstein in Z.A, N.F. xiv, 105-7, seems to imply that Dumuzi came to celebrate the marriage with her at the beginning of every month. 156
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massive evidence, took place in the month named after the god, at midsummer. In the Epic of Gilgamesh (vi, 46-7) Ishtar is said to have decreed annual lamentations for her lover Dumuzi. The hemerologies state that the lamentations and "binding" of Tammuz were celebrated in the month Tammuz (Du'uzu);' the weeping took place on the second day and on the 9th, 16th and 17th there were processions of torches. On the last three days of the month there was a ceremony called taklimtu in which the effigy of the dead god was laid out for burial.2 The season of these ceremonies corresponds to that of the well-known wailingsfor Tammuz celebrated in early Christian times by the Ssabeans at Harran and of those for Adonis in Athens, Byblos and Alexandria, and is therefore not in doubt. This is the time, in the words of Professor James, "when the scorched earth seemed to threaten a return of the desolation believed to have stricken the earth when Ishtar wandered in barren fields and empty sheepfolds", and the desolation is a favourite theme of the liturgies. The fact that the wailing is always and only for Tammuz, whereas the god in the hieros gamos is usually the local god of the city in question, was explained, as we have seen, by earlier writers by the theory that the local bels were in origin merely aspects, "Erscheinungsformen", of a single god of fertility and that in historical times the ceremony of marriage had been attributed to one of these secondary gods, while the original wailing for Tammuz remained unaltered. This was always an assumption, made under the strong influence of the Frazerian thesis of the Dying God. Ostensibly the god who dies is not the same as the god who performs the marriage ceremony, except in the case of the king of Isin, whose identification with Dumuzi may be due merely to the fact that he was playing the part of the husband of the goddess Innin. The problematic element in the seasonal cycle of the "Yeargod" is the alleged festival of resurrection. The evidence adduced for such a celebration is as follows: (1) The resurrection of Marduk as a "form of Tammuz" at the New Year festival. This rested partly on the Berlin text, which has been shown to be irrelevant, and partly on the expression ta-bi-e dEn-lil ildni iMarduk used by Nebuchadnezzar and
Reisner, ibid, iii, 12-15; K-A.V. ccxvm, 38ff.; K.A.R. CLXxvm, vi, 10. 2 Harper, op. fit. nos. 35 and 1097 (Ebeling, Tod und Lebett, p. 60); cf.
R. Labat, Le caract&re religeux de la royauti assyro-babyloniemu, p. 122. 157
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Neriglissar to describe the New Year festival.1 This was long thought to mean "the resurrection of Marduk, the Enlil of the gods", but has been shown by Pallis to denote only the god's "rising from his seat" in order to take part in the procession to the akitu house.2 (2) The Sumerian name of the 6th month at Nippur (August/ September), kin dInniny interpreted as "mission of Ishtar", with reference to the descent of die goddess to the Nether World in search of her lover. However, our new knowledge of the Sumerian version of this myth has shown that the rather natural assumption that the purpose of this "mission" was the release of the god from the nether regions was a fallacy. (3) The Sumerian names of the jth and 6th months at Ur, ki.sig dNin.a.%uy interpreted as "funeral feast" and "festival" of Ninazu (the local god).3 If this "festival" was one of resurrection, one could justly infer that the e%en dDumus^i in the Lagash and Umma calendars was of a similar kind. The rituals associated with these festivals are unknown, and the interpretation rests solely on the name, which is vague enough. It would, moreover, imply that a festival celebrating the revival of nature was held at different seasons in different cities, which would be difficult to accept; for the e%en dNinas^u atUrwas the jth month after harvest, the e\en dDum/e(t at Lagash the 7th, and the e%en dDumtr(t at Umma the n t h . (4) The statement in a late text that the god Nergal was thought to have descended to the lower world on the 18th of Tammuz and to have risen on the 28th of Kislev;* that Nergal emerged from the underworld in Kislev is also stated in die hemerology.5 Langdon introduced his own interpretation into these passages by simply substituting the name Tammuz for Nergal.6 But Nergal was not a fertility god, and the allusion must rather be to the victory of the sun after the winter solstice, as pointed out by Landsberger.7 Here we have perhaps the best evidence for a seasonal resurrection (at midwinter); but there is no reason for associating it with Tammuz, nor is there any explicit reference to a festival celebrating the event.
Passages cited in Langdon, Die neubabylomscben Konigsinscbriften, p . 368. * Pallis, The Babylonian "akitu" Festival, pp. 202 ff.
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3 Landsberger, Der hdtische Kaleiukr (1915), pp. j - 6 . * Z.A. vi, 244, PP- 5*-4* K.A.V. ccxvm, iii, 8; Weidner, Han&ucb der bob. AttronomU, p. 86. . ' Langdon, Babylonian Menologies (1935), p. 121. 1 J.N.EJ. vra (1949), 274. 158

TAMMUZ RECONSIDERED: SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

. (5) Allusions in the liturgies. About these it must be said first that since all the liturgies in question are lamentations, they can only have been recited as an accompaniment to a resurrection if the resurrection followed immediately after the lamentations, as part of the same ceremony. This would not be the same thing as a festival of jubilation over the revival of nature, forming part of a seasonal cycle; scholars have none the less been prepared to accept such a view on account of the apparently similar sequence of rites in the cult of Adonis at Byblos. However, these Sumerian songs are among the most difficult of all texts to translate, and most of the alleged allusions to a "rising" are quite unreliable. Thus Langdon cites the passage: "When to the bosom of the mother, to the bosom of thy beloved thou risest; when to thy mother, the queen of heaven, thou risest";1 but the same passage is translated by Witzel, apparently with equal justification: " Thou who art snatched from the bosom of thy mother", etc.2 Another passage quoted by Langdon as "he that from the flood is risen" is translated by Witzel "what came from the faithful heart". 3 Similarly, the Sumerian ha.vj is rendered by Langdon "Arise!", but by Witzel "we will destroy".4 The best example of a liturgy of lamentation ending in a paean of joy, on which all translators are agreed, is provided by the tablet in the Manchester Museum;5 yet here the reason for the joy is not stated and there is no explicit reference to Tammuz. What then remains of the Frazerian thesis of a Dying God in its application to Babylonia? Two seasonal festivals are well attested: lamentations for Tammuz at midsummer, and the marriage of the local god at the spring equinox. There is no evidence that the same god was celebrated in both rites. Tammuz himself was a shepherd, condemned to reside in the Underworld by the angry goddess whose lover he had been. Whether he symbonzed for the Babylonians the spring growth that wilts in the heat of summer (Baudissin and others), or the life-giving powers of the milk (Jacobsen) is difficult to say; a third alternative, that he was regarded as a com spirit who was slain in the threshing of the grain would also suit the time of year and is supported by the well-known rites of Ta'uz at Harran in the tenth century A.D.,
1 Langdon, Tammu^andhbtar (1914), p. 31. Witzel, Tammu^-Uturgen md verwtmdtts (193)), p. 238. 3 Langdon, op. at. p. 32; Witzel, op. at. p. 403. 4 Langdon, ibid. p. 22; Witzel, ibid. p. 94. s Babykniaea, iv, 233; C Frank, Kultlieder, no. 11; Witzel, p. 106.
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TAMMUZ RECONSIDERED: SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

which are most likely to have had their origin in Babylonian practices.1 In any case, some symbolism of nature was certainly present in this festival. The sacred marriage was a fertility rite, celebrated at the time of natural revival in the spring;2 but since the "bridegroom" was not normally regarded as Tammuz, there is no need to assume that he was obliged to rise from the dead to celebrate it. If the late addition to the Assyrian myth of the Descent of Ishtar refers to such a resurrection, this may be a late accretion to Babylonian religion due to West Semitic influence. The only reference to a resurrection has been found in relation to the god Nergal, who was said to emerge from the Underworld at midwinter; but this appears to belong to a dififerent order of symbolism, and there is no evidence that it played any important part in the religious calendar.
* Frazer, Admit, Attis, Osiris (1907), pp. 188 ff. Langdon, Semitic Mytbolog, p. 337. * For full details see E. Douglas van Buten in Orimtalia, n.s. x m (1944), 1-72. POSTSCRIPT

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A fuller exposition of Professor Jacobsen's views on the natural phenomena personified in thefigureof Tammuz is now published in History of Re/igonst 1, i8o,fF. (Chicago 1962).

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