There is, perhaps, a mode of reconciling the dates of the Tammuz
festivals, at one of which Tammuz was honoured with a pyre, at the
other (in the person of his representative, the Sacæan mock-king) with
a gibbet. Dr. Jastrow places a Tammuz feast in the fourth month, which,
if the Babylonian year begins, as Mr. Frazer says it does, with the
month Nisan, means that the fourth month and a Tammuz feast occurred in
our June-July. But Dr. Jastrow also writes that in the sixth Babylonian
month, our August-September, 'there was celebrated a festival to
Tammuz.'[29]
Thus Tammuz might have his gibbet in June-July, and his pyre in
August-September. But alas! this will not do, for the pyre is of
June-July.[30] Nor can he have his gibbet in August-September, as I
had fondly hoped, for he is to be identified with the mock-king of the
Sacæa, and the month of his hanging is Tammuz, Lous, or June-July, if
Mr. Robertson Smith is right.[31] Thus I really fail to believe that
Tammuz could have both a burning and a hanging in June-July. I hoped
that Dr. Jastrow's two Tammuz feasts had solved the problem, but I
hoped in vain.