_ZAKMUK, SACÆA, AND PURIM_
It is necessary to get the death of the Sacæan victim into touch with
Easter. The Sacæa, when he died, had been in June-July, in vol. ii.,
in Mr. Frazer's first edition, before he evolved his theory. When the
theory is evolved, in the second edition and third volume, the Sacæa
prefer to occur in March-April, which gets the sufferings of the
mock-king into touch with the Jewish Purim, and so within measurable
distance of our Passion Week, though the June-July date of the first
edition survives in the second volume of the new edition. The change
of date of the Sacæa is arranged for by the plan, rejected by Meyer
and Jastrow, of identifying the Persian Sacæa and the Jewish Purim
with the ancient Babylonian Zagmuk or Zakmuk, a New Year festival of
March-April.[1] To be sure, if that be the date, we seem bereft of
our useful Tammuz, from whom, in ii. 254, it was conjectured that the
victim mock-king derived his divinity, an old superstitious belief
which 'shed the halo of divinity' on the victim of Calvary. For the
Tammuz feast was certainly in June-September. However, perhaps there
were three Tammuz feasts, resurrection and all, and Mr. Frazer's last
choice of a date, in March-April, has the immense advantage for his
theory of getting us near Eastertide.
But did the Sacæa actually desert their old date, June-July? To prove
that we must identify the Sacæa, a Persian, with Zakmuk, a Babylonian
feast, which really fell in March or April. The old Babylonian feast,
Zakmuk, is known to the learned through inscriptions. We have seen that
M. Cumont and Herr Meissner inclined to regard Zakmuk as identical with
the Sacæa, while the feast Zakmuk-Sacæa is supposed by Mr. Frazer to be
the origin of the Jewish Purim. But the Sacæa fell in the Macedonian
month Lous, as Athenæus tells us according to Berosus, a Babylonian
priest, using the Macedonian Calendar. And Lous, as Mr. Robertson
Smith proved, was our July.[2] Zakmuk, on the other hand, fell in our
March-April, and Purim in our March, neither of which is July, when the
Sacæa were held.
Now it is desirable for Mr. Frazer's argument that the Sacæa should
fall, not in July, as it did in ii. 254, but in or about Eastertide.
Mr. Frazer therefore shifts the Sacæa from July to Eastertide in face
of difficulties.
All we know concerning Zakmuk is[3] that this feast, originally a feast
of Bau, says Dr. Jastrow, fell about the vernal equinox (near the
beginning of the old Babylonian year); that, after a certain period, it
was held in honour of the chief god of Babylon, named Merodach; that
a council of gods was thought to meet in Merodach's temple, under his
presidency, and that they determined the fate of the year, 'especially
the fate of the king's life.' The festival existed as early as 3000
B.C., whereas the Sacæa, 'so far as appears from our authorities, does
not date from before the Persian conquest of Babylon' (536 B.C.).[4]
But in spite of dates it is desirable for Mr. Frazer's purpose to
identify the Persian Sacæa with the Babylonian Zakmuk. For, if he
succeeds in this, then Sacæa must fall when Zakmuk fell, and nearly
when Purim fell, at--or not so very far from--Eastertide. But[5] Sacæa
was eagerly welcomed by Mr. Frazer as a July, not a spring, feast,
whereas, in iii. 152, Sacæa is identified with Zakmuk, which did fall
in spring. Again, we have not even a hint that _any_ mock-king, or
Tammuz man, or anybody, was slain at the Babylonian feast of Zakmuk,
as a man was slain, says Dio, at the Sacæa. However, Mr. Frazer tries
to show that Sacæa and Zakmuk may be the same feast. For Sacæa and
Zakmuk are names that resemble Zakmuk and Zoganes.[6] We may reply that
the word Sacæa also rather closely resembles the name of the tribe of
Sacæ, from whom the Perso-Greeks derived the word Sacæa, while the
Sacæa were held to commemorate a victory over the Sacæ. Again the word
Sacæa, which was a drinking feast, resembles the word _Sáki_, Persian
for a pourer forth of wine. I The word _Sáki_ is Arabic, being the
_nomen agentis_ of the verb _Saḳi_ "to water" (_abreuver_). This root
is common to several Semitic languages--_e.g._ Hebrew and Æthiopic--and
if we could prove the word Sacæa to be of native Babylonian origin, it
might very probably come from the same root,' Mr. Denison Ross informs
me. In any case we cannot build on resemblances in the sound of words.
That argument for the identification of Zakmuk and the Sacæa fails.
Next Mr. Frazer contends that since, at Zakmuk, the gods determined
the fate of the king's life, it was a critical time for the king. Now
'the central feature of the Sacæa' appears to have been 'the hanging
of the mock-king for the saving of the real king's life.'[7] Here,
then, are two critical hours for the king: one at Zakmuk, when the
gods settle his fate; one at the Sacæa when his life is saved by the
execution of his proxy. Are not then these two critical periods one
period, and is not Sacæa another name for Zakmuk?[8] But Mr. Frazer
has also told us that the main feature of the Sacæa was the death of
a man who represented Tammuz, and was killed after doing sympathetic
magic with a sacred harlot.[9] Was there, then, in connection with this
Tammuz man, a third Tammuz feast in March-April, for there were two, in
June-September? Thus, even if we could admit that, because two periods
are critical, both are the same period, yet as the victim of the Sacæa
was a Tammuz man, slain to do good to the crops, we are unable to
concede that he also died 'in the king's stead,' and to save his life,
unless the king was Tammuz. Besides, no authority tells us that either,
or both, of this victim's deaths occurred at the Babylonian feast of
Zakmuk: it occurred at the Persian feast of the Sacæa, if at all.
Indeed, even if Mr. Frazer's two arguments for the identity of Zakmuk
and Sacæa were persuasive (and' how persuasive they are we have seen),
there would remain a difficulty. For Berosus says, as we saw, that
the Sacæa fell on Lous 16, which is July, whereas Zakmuk fell in
March-April.