Let us now trace the stages of Mr. Frazer's theory that the Sacæan
victim is both god and king.
1. First in order of statement comes the description of the Sacæa,
combined from Athenæus, who mentions no victim, and Dio Chrysostom,
who does. We learn (from Mr. Frazer, not from Dio)[16] that the victim
'dies in the king's stead.' But 'we must not forget that the king is
slain in his character of a god, his death and resurrection, as the
only means of perpetuating the divine life unimpaired, being deemed
necessary for the salvation of his people and the world.'
That is Mr. Frazer's theory: we have seen no proof of it, we have
remarked that sacrificed victims are not hanged; that kings are not
scourged; that there is no evidence beyond conjecture for an earlier
Babylonian process of burning; while conjecture also explains whipping
and hanging as a 'mitigation,' or alleges that possibly the victim was
hanged first and burned afterwards.
Here the king is certainly not,[17] on the face of it, a god of
vegetation: if anything, he is more like the Chitome in Congo, who
was a 'pontiff.' His credulous people believed that the world would
end if the Chitome died a natural death, 'so when he seemed likely to
die' he was clubbed or strangled. He was sacrificed to no god whom he
incarnated.[18] He was not clubbed once a year (like the Babylonian
king of Mr. Frazer's theory); he was given a rude euthanasia 'when
he seemed likely to die.' Does science ask us to believe that each
Babylonian king had the cosmic _rapport_ of a Congo savage pontiff, and
was sacrificed after a year's reign, because a savage pontiff in Congo
is put to death, not annually, but 'when he seems likely to die'?
Here, whatever science may expect us to believe, we are told by
Mr. Frazer that the king in Babylon was annually sacrificed, as a
god, indeed, but not explicitly as a god of vegetation, who has a
resurrection.
2. A Babylonian god of vegetation, and a known god, appears in ii. 123,
124. This god is Tammuz. We hear that 'water was thrown over him at a
great mourning ceremony, at which men and women stood round the funeral
pyre of Tammuz lamenting.... _The dead Tammuz was probably represented
in effigy_, water was poured over him, and he came to life again.' Mr.
Frazer does not here plead for a human victim. The festival 'doubtless
took place in the month Tammuz (June-July),' or in different places, at
different times, from midsummer to autumn, or from June to September,
as the late Mr. Robertson Smith calculated. Tammuz, so Mr. Sayce is
cited, 'is originally the spring vegetation, which dies in his month,
Tammuz or Du'ûzu' (June-July).
Here, then, we have a death and resurrection of Tammuz. It occurs in
June-July, or June-September, and Tammuz is undoubtedly the god of
spring vegetation. But Mr. Frazer does not here tell us that the king
of Babylon is also Tammuz. Tammuz is not whipped and hanged at the
Tammuz feast in July. His dead body is 'probably' a dummy.
In vol. ii. 253 Mr. Frazer returns to the victim, the mock-king, of
the Sacæa. But he says nothing here about the real king of Babylon.
He wishes to show how and why the victim is divine. Now, in ii. 26,
we were told that the victim is divine because he 'represents a dying
god.' 'For we must not forget that the king dies in his character of a
god.'...
Was Mr. Frazer satisfied with this explanation given in ii. 26?
Apparently not; for[19] he gives a new explanation and a different
one. 'It seems worth suggesting that the mock-king who was annually
killed at the Babylonian festival of the Sacæa on the sixteenth day of
the month Lous may have represented Tammuz himself.' Here the Tammuz
dummy or effigy of ii. 123, 124, is, perhaps, discarded. Still, if a
real live Tammuz was burned on a funeral pyre[20] his ashes might well
be represented by a dummy. It has not yet occurred to Mr. Frazer, as
it does later, to have the re-arisen god personated by a living human
counterpart (Mordecai in a later page) of the dead Tammuz (Haman). The
festival of the Sacæa is now a Tammuz festival, a religious feast,
and, indeed, is identical with that of ii. 123, 124, for it occurs in
the month Lous. Now Lous, says Mr. Robertson Smith, 'answered to the
lunar month Tammuz,'[21] and the month of Tammuz[22] was June-July, or
June-September.
There could not surely be _two_ Tammuz feasts in the month Tammuz? We
are therefore confronted by the singular facts that Tammuz lay 'on a
funeral pyre'[23] and also that, as the Sacæan victim, who, Mr. Frazer
thinks it 'worth suggesting' personated Tammuz, he was at the same
feast, the Sacæa, whipped and hanged.[24] Mr. Frazer goes on: 'If this
conjecture is right, the view that the mock-king at the Sacæa was slain
in the character of a god' (Tammuz) 'would be established.'
But it was established already, was it not on other grounds, to Mr.
Frazer's satisfaction, in ii. 26? There the criminal victim died as a
king, and as a god, for the king was a god, and so was his proxy. Now,
on the other hand, if Mr. Frazer's latest conjecture is right, the
victim dies as a real known god, Tammuz. We keep asking, Was the king
also an incarnation of Tammuz? May I not be excused for surmising that
we have here an hypothesis in the making, an hypothesis resting on two
different theories? If Mr. Frazer holds that the king of Babylon was
also Tammuz, as the mock-king was, here was the opportunity for saying
so, and proving the fact from Babylonian texts.
Mr. Frazer here gives us a Tammuz feast in which Tammuz lies on a
funeral pyre, and also a Tammuz feast in which the human representative
of that deity is whipped and hanged, while 'the dead Tammuz was
probably represented in effigy,' water was poured over him, and he came
to life again. How? In the person of Mordecai? These are the results of
ii. 123, 124, and of ii. 253, 254.
These things are, confessedly, conjectures. But one thing is quite
certain: the Sacæa, wherein Tammuz either lay on a funeral pyre, and
afterwards had water poured over him, 'probably in effigy,' or was
hanged, was a festival of June-July. Variations of calendars, however,
might make the Sacæa fall 'from midsummer to autumn or from June to
September' (ii. 123, note of Mr. Robertson Smith). These dates are
remote from Eastertide.
To this point Mr. Frazer[25] promises 'to return later.' He does so in
the most disconcerting manner. For when he returns the Sacæa, which
were in the month Tammuz, June-July,[26] startle us by being held in
March or March-April.[27] May I not say that I seem to detect traces
of an hypothesis in the making, and of discrepant theories? We have
already been rather puzzled by the Tammuz on a funeral pyre, who has
cold water poured over him, 'probably in effigy,' and also is honoured
by being whipped and hanged in the person of a human representative,
a mock-king, at the same festival. But perhaps there were two Tammuz
feasts in the month of Tammuz? And possibly the victim was whipped
and hanged at one of them, while his mortal remains were burned on
the pyre at the other? 'It is quite possible,' says Mr. Frazer, when
explaining why a victim of a sacrifice was hanged, not burned as is
usual, 'that both forms of execution, or rather of sacrifice, may have
been combined by hanging or crucifying the victim first and burning him
afterwards;'[28] but he neglects the buxom opportunity of corroborating
this conjecture, by referring to the Tammuz victim who had both a
funeral pyre and a gibbet, in ii. 123, 124, 253, 254.