GURNEY OLIVER JSSt 1962-Aut Tammuz Reconsidered

JOURNAL OF SEMITIC STUDIES

VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 AUTUMN I962

TAMMUZ RECONSIDERED: SOMERECENT DEVELOPMENTS'

By O. R. G U R N E T

"Under the name of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, thepeoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decayand revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personi-fied 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 exer-cised such a powerful influence, particularly on British scholar-ship, as to become almost axiomatic. Frazer, following the longtradition which goes back at least to Origen in the second centuryA.r>., took the view that Adonis and Tammuz were the samedeity; 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 ofIshtar, seemed to him to show that "every year Tammuz wasbelieved to die.. .and that every year his divine mistress journeyedin quest of him 'to the land from which there is no returning'".But for Frazer "the tragical story and the melancholy rites ofAdonis are better known to us from the descriptions of Greekwriters than from the fragments of Babylonian literature or thebrief reference of the prophet EzeMel, who saw the women ofJerusalem weeping for Tammuz at the north gate of the temple",and he proceeded without more ado to give his account of themyths and the ritual of the death and resurrection of Adonis, atByblos, in Cyprus, and in Alexandria, as described by the laterGreek authorities.

Three years later, in 1909, appeared the first attempt to treatthe Babylonian Tammuz in isolation—H. Zimmem's work Der

1 Based on a paper read to the Society for Old Testament Study in January1961.

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TAMMUZ RECONSIDERED: SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

babylonische Gott Tamu%. This factual and level-headed analysis ofmaterial, much of which the author had himself collected, is stillan admirable summary of the evidence. Its results are reflectedin the large-scale work Adonis und Esmun of Graf Baudissin,published in 1911. In Zimmem's view the Phoenician andAramean Adonis cult incorporated to some extent Babylonianconceptions, but only in so far as they could be assimilated toalready existing local ideas. For the myth of the death of Tam-muz and the rituals and liturgies of lamentation Zimmem wasable to collect ample evidence; but on the matter of his resur-rection he expressed himself extremely cautiously. Baudissin heldthat Tammuz represented the spring growth that wilts in the heatof summer; but he went so far as to say that nothing certain isknown of a festival of his resurrection.

It was the late Professor Langdon who gave currency to thebelief (first propounded by A. Jeremias) that the Tammuz cult inBabylonia was a mystery religion, with a popular appeal whichbrought it into conflict with the ofHsial religion of the temples.Langdon spoke with great authority, as a specialist in the Su-merian iiturgical texts. In the opening pages of Tammus^ andlshtar(1914) he announced his wholehearted adoption of the Frazerianposition in a slightly modified form. "Tammuz is the name ofthe Babylonian god who corresponds to the Egyptian Osiris, thePhoenician and Greek Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, and otherwell-known types of the dying son of Mother Earth. The worshipof Tammuz in Babylonia and in those adjacent lands to which itspread was a cult of sorrow, death and resurrection." He differsfrom Frazer only in so far as he regards Tammuz, SumerianDumu-zi, also as a title "Faithful Son": "The original name ofthe divine son appears to have been ab-u 'father of plants andvegetation'." For Langdon, not only was Tammuz the DyingGod but any god who was found to have this characteristic musttherefore be Tammuz. He writes:

The original service had at least two ceremonies, on one hand thewailing and the descent to hell, and on the other the resurrection andmarriage. But this original condition of human religion lies beyondour ken. When we meet with the historical records of man he hadalready separated the god of fertility into several deities. To one of theseand to his consort he attributed the ceremony of marriage. This secon-dary god and his consort appear under various forms as the local bitsand btlits of many cities. It is probable that the gods of the numerouscities of Babylonia and Assyria, whatever may have been their special

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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 ofKuthah, and Marduk of Babylon were "more concrete aspects"of the youthful Dying God.2 Similarly, Hommel had describedTammuz, Ninurta, Ninsubur, Papsukkal, Ningishzida, Nabu andMarduk all as "Erscheinungsformen" of the same deity. Thiswas a way of thinking against which Zimmem3 had protestedstrongly and which at best can only represent the point of viewof the late Babylonian theologians.

The idea of a mystery religion was suggested to Langdon bythe liturgical text in which a number of deceased kings of theIsin dynasty are identified with Dumuzi.

This passage [he writes] evidently refers to kings who in their dayplayed the role of Tammuz in die mystery of this cult. They likeTammuz died for the life of their city When we read that departedshades of kings were identified with the dying god, we have to do withan ancient idea so adapted in practice that the king escaped actualsacrifice by some symbolic act. And it may be that we are to read moreinto this practice. As Tammuz overcame the sleep of death, so also byhis power these human kings escaped from that fatal slumber. It is notat all unlikely that such hopes of everlasting life were inspired by theworship of Tammuz.4

The prevailing view of Dumuzi-Tammuz as the centre of allseasonal observances in Babylonia, and as a god who had manyodier names, some of which may have been local, was sum-marized in the symposium Myth and Ritual in 1933. The mostnotable example of a manifestation of the Dying God in Baby-lonia was held to be the ritual of the death and resurrection ofMarduk himself, as enacted at the Babylonian festival of the NewYear, and described in a famous text from Assur in the BerlinMuseum, a full translation of which was included by Langdon inhis edition of the Epic of Creation (1923).

The doctrine of the Tammuz religion as a mystery-cult reachedits culmination in the work of Anton Moortgat, Tammus^: derUnsterblichkeitsglaube in der altorientalischen Bildkunst (1949). Moort-gat, an eminent exponent of ancient Near Eastern art, claimed tofind representations of Tammuz in a wide variety of Sumerianand Babylonian sculptures and developed a far-reaching theory

1 Op. at. p. 28. * Ibid. p. 30.> Zimmem, op. at. p. 19 n. * Langdon, op. tit. pp. 26-7.

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of the symbolism employed in these works, as signifying a hiddenmystery-cult involving a belief in the immortality of t ie soul.

Moortgat's book caused a strong reaction. F. R. Kraus, re-viewing it, totally rejected both his method and his results, asbeing incompatible with the literature, and based on a false con-ception of the nature and possibilities of art-criticism.1 It wasthis reaction, together with the highly successful work of S. N.Kramer in recovering and translating the Sumerian myths whichhad for long lain hidden in the vaults of the museums of Istanbuland Philadelphia, that have determined the trends of opinionabout Tammuz since the end of the war. The results may be seenin the paper presented by A. Falkenstein to the third RencontreAssyriologique, held at Leiden in 1952, at which the Tammuzcult was set as the theme of a special debate. It is entirely con-cerned with the origins of the cult. The centre of interest is nolonger what the deity Tammuz "represents"; indeed he is nolonger, in origin, even a deity. There is strong evidence thatDumuzi was originally a man, a king of Erech, who may havelived, like the other great characters of Sumerian legend, Gilga-mesh, Lugalbanda and Enmerkar, during the particular stage ofSumerian history known as the Early Dynastic Period. If, there-fore, the conceptions usually associated with the Tammuz cultcan be traced back to an earlier stage than this, it can no longerbe Dumuzi with whom they are concerned, but a predecessormust be sought. This, Falkenstein suggests, may well have beenthe king of Bad-tibira who appears as Dumuzi in the lists but mayin fact have been called Ama-usumgal. Thus the process, so fairfrom being one of the differentiation of an original Dying Godinto a number of local aspects of him, consisted actually in thedevelopment first of a legend, then of a myth, localized in aparticular city, and the subsequent theological identification ofthis demi-god with a number of deities of other localities whohad similar attributes.

The most recent development has been a renewal of interest inthe later stages of the cult, but on opposite lines from the ten-dency which culminated in the work of Moortgat. In 1953T. Jacobsen put forward a new theory about what Tammuz" represents " ; namely that Tammuz, who is always a shepherd inthe myths, "represents the life-giving powers in the milk. Whenthe 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. . 2 J.N.RS. xn, 165.

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19541 L. Vanden Berghe published a paper in which he maintainedthat not only had the fertility aspect of Dumuzi, the shepherd-god, been greatly overestimated, but that his resurrection fromthe Underworld, so long a cardinal tenet of the exponents of theTammuz myth, had actually no factual basis. Even more striking,at roughly the same time P. Lambrechts reached similar con-clusions about the Adonis and Attis cults ;2 according to him, thebelief in the resurrection of these deities was a comparatively latedevelopment borrowed, during the period of widespread syn-cretism under the Seleucids, from the religion of Osiris. Asregards Tammuz himself, Kramer has recently made the follow-ing emphatic pronouncement: " The prevalent view that Dumuziis resurrected every spring is quite without basis in fact. To judgefrom the available evidence.. .the Sumerians believed that onceDumuzi had died, he 'stayed dead' in the Nether World andnever 'rose' again."*

In examining the evidence, we may deal first with History,secondly with Myth, and lastly with Ritual, of which the liturgiesare obviously a part.

The historicity of Dumuzi is based first on the King-lists andsecondly on the character of the name itsel£ Dumuzi is enteredin the King-lists twice: there is "Dumuzi the shepherd" king ofBad-tibira among the ante-diluvian patriarchs, and "Dumuzi thefisherman" king of Uruk in the first Dynasty of that city.Guterbock, discussing these lists in 1933, took the view thatthese entries were purely mythical, in the sense that "neither thescene of action nor the characters in the action belong to earthlyreality".4 Jacobsen, however, pointed out5 that myth cannotexplain the sequence of names in the lists, which is an essentialpart of them, and inferred that "these sections derive from listsof rulers just like the later parts of the dynasties in question".Langdon had, in fact, already taken this view and had drawn thesame conclusion.6 Dumu-î " true son " would be a personal nameof quite a normal type. The old idea that it was a divine tide

1 "Reflexions critiques sur la nature de Dumuzi-Tammuz", La NouvelleC/io, vi (19J4), 29*-3«- •

* "La resurrection d'Adonis", Mil. I. Uvy (195 j), and "Les fetes phry-giennes 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 wasDumu-ty-ahfu "faithful son of the Nether Sea", but Falkensteinhas shown that Dumu-zi-abzu is a quite distinct figure and agoddess. The humanity of Dumuzi is, moreover, confirmed bythe mythological passage in which he says to Inanna " I will leadyou to the house of my god". This is not the way in which a godwould speak. Falkenstein's analysis of the myths has also shownthat they can be assigned to two distinct groups deriving fromUruk and Bad-tibira respectively, so again confirming the entriesin the King-lists. Dumuzi's rather frequent title Ama-tdumgal\sactually attested as a personal name in very early tests, andFalkenstein has suggested that this may have been the true nameof the ancient king of Bad-tibira, who was later identified withDumuzi as a god.

The Mythology of Dumuzi has been recovered almost entirelyin recent years through the discoveries of Professor Kramer. InLangdon's time the only mythological poems referring to Tam-muz were the Akkadian version of the descent of Ishtar to theUnderworld, which seems to locate him in the nether regions,and the Akkadian myth of Adapa, where he appears in heaven asone of the gatekeepers of Anu. All else had to be extracted fromvague allusions in the liturgies, and by analogy from the mythof Adonis.

In contrast, we now have six Sumerian poems from which themyth 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 sug-gested by Falkenstein. "Dumuzi comes to Innin's house, milkand cream dripping from his hands and sides, and clamours foradmittance. After consultation with her mother, Tnnin bathes

1 On the reading Tnnin fox Kramer's Inanna, see Gelb in J.N.KS. XDC(1960), 72 ft

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and anoints herself, puts on her queenly robes, adorns herselfwith precious stones, and opens the door for her groom to be.They embrace and probably cohabit, and he then carries her offto the 'city of his god'" (Kramer, F.TS. p. 184).

Innin's descent to the Nether World begins abruptly in theSumetian version, just as it does in Akkadian. No motivationfor the journey is given, and it used to be assumed, by analogywith other nature myths, that her purpose was to release herlover from his imprisonment in Hades. It was the discovery ofthe last portion of this tale that caused the revolution in ourthinking about Tammuz. For Tnnin is forced to strike a bargainwith the queen of the Underworld: she may only be releasedfrom captivity down below on condition that she provide a sub-stitute to take her place. She returns to the upper regions ac-companied by an escort of seven ga/M-devils. The first threeindividuals they encounter are NinSubur, the handmaid of Innin,Sara, the god of Umma, and Lulal, the lord of the temple at Bad-tibira; but these prostrate themselves before her and are thussaved from the clutches of the demons. They then proceed toKullab (which is Uruk), and there they find none other thanDumuzi proudly sitting on his throne. Tnnin, enraged, "fastenedupon him the eye of death" and ordered the demons to carry himoff to the Nether World.

There follows a series of desperate attempts.by Dumuzi toescape from the demons. This part of the myth is contained in thepoem "Dumuzi's dream". He hides among the plants and in theditches, but to no avail. He then prays to the Sun-god Utu toturn him into a gazelle, so that he may "carry off his soul" tocertain friendly personages who, he hopes, will protect him. Butin each instance the demons catch up with hirr^ until they finallybind him, destroy bis stall and sheepfold and put him to death.

This is undeniably the end of the story. There is no trace in theSumerian mythology of a poem about Dumuzi's resurrection.The only deity who "rises" is Tnnin, and her release is strictly onconditions; no special stress is laid on its victorious character.

Now in the Assyrian "Descent of Ishtar" the goddess's emer-gence from the Nether World is followed by an epilogue whichhas always presented great difficulties. The narrative breaks offabruptly and in place of the end of the story, as we now know itfrom the Sumerian original, the text has, first, four lines ofinstructions for the funeral rites of Tammuz, who has not beenmentioned before, then four lines of narrative about the goddess

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Belili, and finally the following four lines of direct speech withno clear indication of the identity of the speaker: "My onlybrother, do not harm me! On the day that Tammuz rises to me,the flute of lapis lazuli and the HAR instrument of cornelian willrise with him; with him also will rise male and female mourners.Let the dead rise and smell the incense." Translators who avoidthe allusion to Tammuz's rising by substituting "greets me" or"welcomes me"1 have not explained from what verb they pro-pose to derive the form el-la-an-ni which occurs three times and isdifficult to separate from li-lu-nim-ma used of the dead in the lastline. Here then, apparently, is a clear allusion to the rising ofTammuz from the underworld, accompanied by musicians andmourners and others, and enticed by the smell of incense. Butthe whole passage is obviously a late addition—perhaps specifi-cally Assyrian—which has displaced the original end of the poem.

The incident in the myth of Adapa in which the hero findsTammuz and Ningishzida standing at the "gate of Anu" andexplains to them that he is in mourning because they have dis-appeared from his country has also been a puzzle to scholars, fornowhere else is there any suggestion that Tammuz was to befound in heaven. In the legend of the kiskanu tree Tammuz andShamash are the guardians of the roots of the tree in Hades.Ningishzida is also normally a chthonic deity. The passage in themyth of Adapa has been taken by many as proof of the resur-rection of Tammuz. Langdon writes of his "ascension into thefar-away regions, where he vanished for ever from mortal eyes ",2

and Dhorme infers that the ascension to heaven of Tammuz andNingishzida is an interlude between their descent to Hades andtheir return to earth.3 Baudissin, on the other hand, pointed outthat this text seems to know nothing of the descent to Hades andinferred that it was based on a version of the myth in which thesegods disappeared from earth and went straight to heaven.4

Weidner explained the posting of the two gods at the Gate ofAnu as an astral myth: Tammuz was identified with the con-stellation Orion and Ningishzida with Hydra and these two con-stellations stand on either side of the Milky Way.* On this view

1 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.

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the Milky Way, which has not yet been certainly identified incuneiform literature,1 should be the main street of the heavenlyrealms. Whatever the true explanation, this semi-humorous folk-tale cannot be said to provide clear evidence of a belief in theresurrection of Tammuz from the world of the dead in the senserequired by the doctrine of the Year-god, who returned to thevisible world with the revival of vegetation in the spring. Asdoorkeeper of Anu he would have been as far removed from hisdevotees as he would have been in Hades.

We come now to the subject of ritual. The rites claimed forTammuz—as for Adonis—are (i) a festival of lamentation for thedeath of the god and his departure to the Underworld; (2) afestival of jubilation celebrating his resurrection; and (3) thesacred marriage, in which the part of Tammuz was played by theking. These rites should form a seasonal cycle; for it is the essenceof the Frazerian thesis, as we have seen, that "the yearly decayand revival of life" were celebrated by early man in these seasonalfestivals'and personified as a "Year-god". So it was already aserious departure from this thesis when the theory was pro-pounded and widely accepted that in Babylonia these rites wereconcentrated into a single great dramatic festival, the festival ofakitu, which was celebrated annually as a New Year festival atthe spring equinox.? This theory, which has found its way into somany authoritative accounts of Babylonian religion, was basedalmost entirely on the document from Assur, already mentioned,which had been interpreted by Langdon, following Zimmem, asa commentary on the dramatic representation of the death andresurrection of Marduk at the akitu festival at Babylon. It wastherefore a matter of far-reaching significance when in 1955W. von Soden showed that this text had been completely mis-understood: it is a propaganda work composed in Assyria in thetime of Sennacherib and has nothing to do either with the deathof Marduk or his resurrection or indeed with the New Yearfestival.3 Thus the concentration of the three elements of the

1 E. Unger in Welt des Orients, n, 454 ff. Cf. Landsberger and KinnierWilson in J.N.EJ. xx, 174.

2 S. Langdon, The Epic of Creation (Oxford, 1923), pp. 32-56; accepted byall writers on the subject, eg . S. A. Pallis, The Babylonian "atitu" Festival(1926) and the Antiquity of Iraq (1956), p. 693; C J. Gadd and S. H. Hooke inMytb and Ritual (1933); T. H. Gaster, Tbespis (1933), and others. Langdonand Pallis recognized that die concentration could only be secondary.

* W. von Soden, "Gibt es ein Zeugnis dafur, da£ die Babylonier an dieWiederaufetehung Marduks glaubten?", Z.A. NJF. xvn, 130-66.

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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 byevidence independent of the Berlin text is the Sacred Marriage.

The best evidence that the bieros gamoir formed part of the NewYear festival is the Sumerian hymn to Ishtar-Innin1 whichdescribes the marriage of King Iddin-Dagan of Isin to the god-dess and addresses him as Dumuzi; the time of the ceremony isexplicitly said to be the New Year (gag-mu). This text establishesthe fact that at least at Isin in early times the king performed theceremony in person and in doing so was identified, with theyoung lover of the goddess. Dr Sidney Smith has argued nonethe less that the ceremony was celebrated late in May, in themonth Ayaru.2 For the late period there is certainly some goodevidence for this; two Assyrian letters3 describe the ritual of themarriage of Nabu and TaSmetu at Calah, dating it explicitly fromthe 4th to the 17th of Ayaru; the marriage of Nabu in Ayaru isalso described in a hemerology.4 However, Dr Smith's deriva-tion of the very name of the month from the Semitic root hir " tochoose a bride", on the ground that the Nuzian month-namehiaru is to be regarded as a variant form of the name, is notconvincing in view of the existence of a A/y<zr<*-festival (EZENhi-ia-ra-aF) in Hittite, which would provide a more satisfactorycognate for the Nuzian word. Also the argument that the ac-count of the bridal of Ningirsu and Baba at Lagash in Gudea'sCylinder B associates the event with the time when the Tigriswas in spate appears to attach too precise a meaning to what needbe no more than poetical imagery. The same hemerology whichdescribes the marriage of Nabu in Ayaru in fact assigns that ofMarduk to Nisan, following the end of the akitu festival, thusconfirming for the late period the testimony of the Iddin-daganhymn. Possibly, then, the marriage of Nabu was exceptional inbeing celebrated in Ayaru; the usual month seems to have beenNisan. There exist a number of love-lyrics which seem to havebeen recited at these ceremonies.5

The well-known lamentations for Tammuz, for which there is1 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 themarriage with her at the beginning of every month.

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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 saidto have decreed annual lamentations for her lover Dumuzi. Thehemerologies state that the lamentations and "binding" of Tam-muz were celebrated in the month Tammuz (Du'uzu);' the weep-ing took place on the second day and on the 9th, 16th and 17ththere were processions of torches. On the last three days of themonth there was a ceremony called taklimtu in which the effigyof the dead god was laid out for burial.2 The season of theseceremonies corresponds to that of the well-known wailingsforTammuz celebrated in early Christian times by the Ssabeans atHarran and of those for Adonis in Athens, Byblos and Alexandria,and is therefore not in doubt. This is the time, in the words ofProfessor James, "when the scorched earth seemed to threaten areturn of the desolation believed to have stricken the earth whenIshtar wandered in barren fields and empty sheepfolds", and thedesolation 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 thecity in question, was explained, as we have seen, by earlierwriters by the theory that the local bels were in origin merelyaspects, "Erscheinungsformen", of a single god of fertility andthat in historical times the ceremony of marriage had been attri-buted to one of these secondary gods, while the original wailingfor Tammuz remained unaltered. This was always an assumption,made under the strong influence of the Frazerian thesis of theDying God. Ostensibly the god who dies is not the same as thegod who performs the marriage ceremony, except in the case ofthe king of Isin, whose identification with Dumuzi may be duemerely to the fact that he was playing the part of the husband ofthe goddess Innin.

The problematic element in the seasonal cycle of the "Year-god" is the alleged festival of resurrection. The evidence adducedfor such a celebration is as follows:

(1) The resurrection of Marduk as a "form of Tammuz" atthe New Year festival. This rested partly on the Berlin text,which has been shown to be irrelevant, and partly on the ex-pression ta-bi-e dEn-lil ildni iMarduk used by Nebuchadnezzar and

1 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.

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Neriglissar to describe the New Year festival.1 This was longthought to mean "the resurrection of Marduk, the Enlil of thegods", but has been shown by Pallis to denote only the god's"rising from his seat" in order to take part in the procession tothe akitu house.2

(2) The Sumerian name of the 6th month at Nippur (August/September), kin dInniny interpreted as "mission of Ishtar", withreference to the descent of die goddess to the Nether World insearch of her lover. However, our new knowledge of theSumerian version of this myth has shown that the rather naturalassumption that the purpose of this "mission" was the releaseof 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" ofNinazu (the local god).3 If this "festival" was one of resur-rection, one could justly infer that the e%en dDumusî in the Lagashand Umma calendars was of a similar kind. The rituals associatedwith these festivals are unknown, and the interpretation restssolely on the name, which is vague enough. It would, moreover,imply that a festival celebrating the revival of nature was heldat different seasons in different cities, which would be difficult toaccept; for the e%en dNinasû atUrwas the jth month after harvest,the e\en dDum/e(t at Lagash the 7th, and the e%en dDumtr(t atUmma the n th .

(4) The statement in a late text that the god Nergal wasthought to have descended to the lower world on the 18th ofTammuz and to have risen on the 28th of Kislev;* that Nergalemerged from the underworld in Kislev is also stated in diehemerology.5 Langdon introduced his own interpretation intothese passages by simply substituting the name Tammuz forNergal.6 But Nergal was not a fertility god, and the allusion mustrather be to the victory of the sun after the winter solstice, aspointed out by Landsberger.7 Here we have perhaps the bestevidence for a seasonal resurrection (at midwinter); but there isno reason for associating it with Tammuz, nor is there anyexplicit reference to a festival celebrating the event.

1 Passages cited in Langdon, Die neubabylomscben Konigsinscbriften, p . 368.* Pallis, The Babylonian "akitu" Festival, pp. 202 ff.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.

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. (5) Allusions in the liturgies. About these it must be said firstthat since all the liturgies in question are lamentations, they canonly have been recited as an accompaniment to a resurrection ifthe resurrection followed immediately after the lamentations, aspart of the same ceremony. This would not be the same thing asa festival of jubilation over the revival of nature, forming part ofa seasonal cycle; scholars have none the less been prepared toaccept such a view on account of the apparently similar sequenceof rites in the cult of Adonis at Byblos. However, these Sumeriansongs are among the most difficult of all texts to translate, andmost of the alleged allusions to a "rising" are quite unreliable.Thus Langdon cites the passage: "When to the bosom of themother, to the bosom of thy beloved thou risest; when to thymother, the queen of heaven, thou risest";1 but the same passageis translated by Witzel, apparently with equal justification: " Thouwho art snatched from the bosom of thy mother", etc.2 Anotherpassage 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 liturgyof lamentation ending in a paean of joy, on which all translatorsare 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 explicitreference to Tammuz.

What then remains of the Frazerian thesis of a Dying God inits application to Babylonia? Two seasonal festivals are wellattested: lamentations for Tammuz at midsummer, and the mar-riage of the local god at the spring equinox. There is no evidencethat the same god was celebrated in both rites. Tammuz himselfwas a shepherd, condemned to reside in the Underworld by theangry goddess whose lover he had been. Whether he symbonzedfor the Babylonians the spring growth that wilts in the heat ofsummer (Baudissin and others), or the life-giving powers of themilk (Jacobsen) is difficult to say; a third alternative, that he wasregarded as a com spirit who was slain in the threshing of thegrain would also suit the time of year and is supported by thewell-known rites of Ta'uz at Harran in the tenth century A.D.,

1 Langdon, Tammuândhbtar (1914), p. 31.1 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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which are most likely to have had their origin in Babylonianpractices.1 In any case, some symbolism of nature was certainlypresent in this festival. The sacred marriage was a fertility rite,celebrated at the time of natural revival in the spring;2 but sincethe "bridegroom" was not normally regarded as Tammuz, thereis no need to assume that he was obliged to rise from the dead tocelebrate it. If the late addition to the Assyrian myth of theDescent of Ishtar refers to such a resurrection, this may be a lateaccretion to Babylonian religion due to West Semitic influence.The only reference to a resurrection has been found in relationto the god Nergal, who was said to emerge from the Underworldat midwinter; but this appears to belong to a dififerent order ofsymbolism, and there is no evidence that it played any importantpart in the religious calendar.

* Frazer, Admit, Attis, Osiris (1907), pp. 188 ff. Langdon, SemiticMytbolog, p. 337.

* For full details see E. Douglas van Buten in Orimtalia, n.s. xm (1944),1-72.

POSTSCRIPT

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

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Documents

GURNEY OLIVER JSSt 1962-Aut Tammuz Reconsidered