MYTHS OF TAMMUZ AND ISHTAR
Forms of Tammuz--The Weeping Ceremony--Tammuz the Patriarch and the
Dying God--Common Origin of Tammuz and other Deities from an Archaic
God--The Mediterranean Racial Myth--Animal Forms of Gods of
Fertility--Two Legends of the Death of Tammuz--Attis, Adonis, and
Diarmid Slain by a Boar--Laments for Tammuz--His Soul in Underworld
and the Deep--Myth of the Child God of Ocean--Sargon Myth
Version--The Germanic Scyld of the Sheaf--Tammuz Links with Frey,
Heimdal, Agni, &c.--Assyrian Legend of "Descent of Ishtar"--Sumerian
Version--The Sister Belit-sheri and the Mother Ishtar--The Egyptian
Isis and Nepthys--Goddesses as Mothers, Sisters, and Wives--Great
Mothers of Babylonia--Immortal Goddesses and Dying Gods--The Various
Indras--Celtic Goddess with Seven Periods of Youth--Lovers of
Germanic and Classic Goddesses--The Lovers of Ishtar--Racial
Significance of Goddess Cult--The Great Fathers and their
Worshippers--Process of Racial and Religious Fusion--Ishtar and
Tiamat--Mother Worship in Palestine--Women among Goddess
Worshippers.
Among the gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring
fame than Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of
Heaven--the beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to
life again. He does not figure by his popular name in any of the city
pantheons, but from the earliest times of which we have knowledge
until the passing of Babylonian civilization, he played a prominent
part in the religious life of the people.
Tammuz, like Osiris of Egypt, was an agricultural deity, and as the
Babylonian harvest was the gift of the rivers, it is probable that one
of his several forms was Dumu-zi-abzu, "Tammuz of the Abyss". He was
also "the child", "the heroic lord", "the sentinel", "the healer", and
the patriarch who reigned over the early Babylonians for a
considerable period. "Tammuz of the Abyss" was one of the members of
the family of Ea, god of the Deep, whose other sons, in addition to
Merodach, were Nira, an obscure deity; Ki-gulla, "world destroyer",
Burnunta-sa, "broad ear", and Bara and Baragulla, probably "revealers"
or "oracles". In addition there was a daughter, Khi-dimme-azaga,
"child of the renowned spirit". She may have been identical with
Belit-sheri, who is referred to in the Sumerian hymns as the sister of
Tammuz. This family group was probably formed by symbolizing the
attributes of Ea and his spouse Damkina. Tammuz, in his character as a
patriarch, may have been regarded as a hostage from the gods: the
human form of Ea, who instructed mankind, like King Osiris, how to
grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. As the youth who perished
annually, he was the corn spirit. He is referred to in the Bible by
his Babylonian name.
When Ezekiel detailed the various idolatrous practices of the
Israelites, which included the worship of the sun and "every form of
creeping things and abominable beasts"--a suggestion of the composite
monsters of Babylonia--he was brought "to the door of the gate of the
Lord's house, which was towards the north; and, behold, there sat
women weeping for Tammuz".[105]
The weeping ceremony was connected with agricultural rites. Corn
deities were weeping deities, they shed fertilizing tears; and the
sowers simulated the sorrow of divine mourners when they cast seed in
the soil "to die", so that it might spring up as corn. This ancient
custom, like many others, contributed to the poetic imagery of the
Bible. "They that sow in tears", David sang, "shall reap in joy. He
that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."[106] In
Egypt the priestesses who acted the parts of Isis and Nepthys, mourned
for the slain corn god Osiris.
Gods and men before the face of the gods are weeping for
thee at the same time, when they behold me!...
All thy sister goddesses are at thy side and behind thy couch,
Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou are prostrate upon
thy bed!...
Live before us, desiring to behold thee.[107]
It was believed to be essential that human beings should share the
universal sorrow caused by the death of a god. If they remained
unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies. Worshippers
of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural
phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual
ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible",
writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary
operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a
particle of divine life."[108] By observing their ritual, the
worshippers won the sympathy and co-operation of deities, or exercised
a magical control over nature.
The Babylonian myth of Tammuz, the dying god, bears a close
resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis. It also links with the myth
of Osiris. According to Professor Sayce, Tammuz is identical with
"Daonus or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla", referred to by Berosus
as the ruler of one of the mythical ages of Babylonia. We have
therefore to deal with Tammuz in his twofold character as a patriarch
and a god of fertility.
The Adonis version of the myth may be summarized briefly. Ere the god
was born, his mother, who was pursued by her angry sire, as the river
goddesses of the folk tales are pursued by the well demons,
transformed herself into a tree. Adonis sprang from the trunk of this
tree, and Aphrodite, having placed the child in a chest, committed him
to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who resembles the
Babylonian Eresh-ki-gal. Persephone desired to retain the young god,
and Aphrodite (Ishtar) appealed to Zeus (Anu), who decreed that Adonis
should spend part of the year with one goddess and part of the year
with the other.
It is suggested that the myth of Adonis was derived in post-Homeric
times by the Greeks indirectly from Babylonia through the Western
Semites, the Semitic title "Adon", meaning "lord", having been
mistaken for a proper name. This theory, however, cannot be accepted
without qualifications. It does not explain the existence of either
the Phrygian myth of Attis, which was developed differently from the
Tammuz myth, or the Celtic story of "Diarmid and the boar", which
belongs to the archaeological "Hunting Period". There are traces in
Greek mythology of pre-Hellenic myths about dying harvest deities,
like Hyakinthos and Erigone, for instance, who appear to have been
mourned for. There is every possibility, therefore, that the Tammuz
ritual may have been attached to a harvest god of the pre-Hellenic
Greeks, who received at the same time the new name of Adonis. Osiris
of Egypt resembles Tammuz, but his Mesopotamian origin has not been
proved. It would appear probable that Tammuz, Attis, Osiris, and the
deities represented by Adonis and Diarmid were all developed from an
archaic god of fertility and vegetation, the central figure of a myth
which was not only as ancient as the knowledge and practice of
agriculture, but had existence even in the "Hunting Period". Traces of
the Tammuz-Osiris story in various forms are found all over the area
occupied by the Mediterranean or Brown race from Sumeria to the
British Isles. Apparently the original myth was connected with tree
and water worship and the worship of animals. Adonis sprang from a
tree; the body of Osiris was concealed in a tree which grew round the
sea-drifted chest in which he was concealed. Diarmid concealed himself
in a tree when pursued by Finn. The blood of Tammuz, Osiris, and
Adonis reddened the swollen rivers which fertilized the soil. Various
animals were associated with the harvest god, who appears to have been
manifested from time to time in different forms, for his spirit
pervaded all nature. In Egypt the soul of Osiris entered the Apis bull
or the ram of Mendes.
Tammuz in the hymns is called "the pre-eminent steer of heaven", and a
popular sacrifice was "a white kid of the god Tammuz", which, however,
might be substituted by a sucking pig. Osiris had also associations
with swine, and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, sacrificed a
pig to him annually. When Set at full moon hunted the boar in the
Delta marshes, he probably hunted the boar form of Osiris, whose human
body had been recovered from the sacred tree by Isis. As the soul of
Bata, the hero of the Egyptian folk tale,[109] migrated from the
blossom to the bull, and the bull to the tree, so apparently did the
soul of Osiris pass from incarnation to incarnation. Set, the demon
slayer of the harvest god, had also a boar form; he was the black pig
who devoured the waning moon and blinded the Eye of Ra.
In his character as a long-lived patriarch, Tammuz, the King Daonus or
Daos of Berosus, reigned in Babylonia for 36,000 years. When he died,
he departed to Hades or the Abyss. Osiris, after reigning over the
Egyptians, became Judge of the Dead.
Tammuz of the Sumerian hymns, however, is the Adonis-like god who
lived on earth for a part of the year as the shepherd and
agriculturist so dearly beloved by the goddess Ishtar. Then he died so
that he might depart to the realm of Eresh-ki-gal (Persephone), queen
of Hades. According to one account, his death was caused by the fickle
Ishtar. When that goddess wooed Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, he
upbraided her, saying:
On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,
Thou didst lay affliction every year.
_King's Translation_.
References in the Sumerian hymns suggest that there also existed a
form of the legend which gave an account of the slaying of the young
god by someone else than Ishtar. The slayer may have been a Set-like
demon--perhaps Nin-shach, who appears to have symbolized the
destroying influence of the sun. He was a war deity, and his name,
Professor Pinches says, "is conjectured to mean 'lord of the wild
boar'". There is no direct evidence, however, to connect Tammuz's
slayer with the boar which killed Adonis. Ishtar's innocence is
emphasized by the fact that she mourned for her youthful lover,
crying:
Oh hero, my lord, ah me! I will say;
Food I eat not ... water I drink not ...
Because of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the
radiant face, yea radiant,
Of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the dove-like
voice, yea dove-like.[110]
The Phrygian Attis met his death, according to one legend, by
self-mutilation under a sacred tree. Another account sets forth,
however, that he was slain by a boar. The Greek Adonis was similarly
killed by a boar. This animal was a form of Ares (Mars), god of war
and tempest, who also loved Aphrodite (Ishtar). The Celtic Diarmid, in
his character as a love god, with lunar attributes, was slain by "the
green boar", which appears to have been one of the animals of a
ferocious Hag, an earth and air "mother" with various names. In one of
the many Fingalian stories the animal is
... That venomous boar, and he so fierce,
That Grey Eyebrows had with her herd of swine.[111]
Diarmid had eloped with the wife of Finn-mac-Coul (Fingal), who, like
Ares, plotted to bring about his rival's death, and accordingly set
the young hero to hunt the boar. As a thunder god Finn carried a
hammer with which he smote his shield; the blows were heard in
Lochlann (Scandinavia). Diarmid, like Tammuz, the "god of the tender
voice and shining eyes", had much beauty. When he expired, Finn cried:
No maiden will raise her eye
Since the mould has gone over thy visage fair...
Blue without rashness in thine eye!
Passion and beauty behind thy curls!...
Oh, yesternight it was green the hillock,
Red is it this day with Diarmid's blood.[112]
Tammuz died with the dying vegetation, and Diarmid expired when the
hills apparently were assuming their purple tints.[113] The month of
Tammuz wailings was from 20th June till 20th July, when the heat and
dryness brought forth the demons of pestilence. The mourners chanted:
He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,
And the dead are numerous in the land....
Men are filled with sorrow: they stagger by day in gloom ...
In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone.
Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.
The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of the god:
The holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields
languish...
The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they
slain?...
In his temple, in his inhabited domain,
The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more...
In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.
There is wailing for Tammuz "at the sacred cedar, where the mother
bore thee", a reference which connects the god, like Adonis and
Osiris, with tree worship:
The wailing is for the herbs: the first lament is, "they are not
produced".
The wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced.
The wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks which bring
forth no more.
The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones; for the perishing
children; the dark-headed people create no more.
The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched meadows, the
fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the plains, the gardens, and
the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has
departed. The mourner cries:
How long shall the springing of verdure be restrained?
How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?
Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as
"the bosom of the earth", and in the Assyrian version of the "Descent
of Ishtar" he dwells in "the house of darkness" among the dead, "where
dust is their nourishment and their food mud", and "the light is never
seen"--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns,
however, it is stated that Tammuz "upon the flood was cast out". The
reference may be to the submarine "house of Ea", or the Blessed Island
to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the
nether "garden of Adonis".
The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz)[114]:--
Damu his youth therein slumbers ...
Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers
he is cast away ...
Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be
satiated.
Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from Hades.
Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as "child, Lord
Gishzida", as well as "my hero Damu". In his lunar character the
Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as "the child surpassingly
beautiful"; the Osiris bull was also a child of the moon; "it was
begotten", says Plutarch, "by a ray of generative light falling from
the moon". When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were
drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with
milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become
children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a
wanton boy or handsome youth. Another god of fertility, the Irish
Angus, who resembles Eros, is called "the ever young"; he slumbers
like Tammuz and awakes in the Spring.
Apparently it was believed that the child god, Tammuz, returned from
the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew into full manhood
in a comparatively brief period, like Vyasa and other super-men of
Indian mythology. A couplet from a Tammuz hymn says tersely:
In his infancy in a sunken boat he lay.
In his manhood in the submerged grain he lay.[115]
The "boat" may be the "chest" in which Adonis was concealed by
Aphrodite when she confided him to the care of Persephone, queen of
Hades, who desired to retain the young god, but was compelled by Zeus
to send him back to the goddess of love and vegetation. The fact that
Ishtar descended to Hades in quest of Tammuz may perhaps explain the
symbolic references in hymns to mother goddesses being in sunken boats
also when their powers were in abeyance, as were those of the god for
part of each year. It is possible, too, that the boat had a lunar and
a solar significance. Khonsu, the Egyptian moon god, for instance, was
associated with the Spring sun, being a deity of fertility and
therefore a corn spirit; he was a form of Osiris, the Patriarch, who
sojourned on earth to teach mankind how to grow corn and cultivate
fruit trees. In the Egyptian legend Osiris received the corn seeds
from Isis, which suggests that among Great-Mother-worshipping peoples,
it was believed that agricultural civilization had a female origin.
The same myths may have been attached to corn gods and corn goddesses,
associated with water, sun, moon, and stars.
That there existed in Babylonia at an extremely remote period an
agricultural myth regarding a Patriarch of divine origin who was
rescued from a boat in his childhood, is suggested by the legend which
was attached to the memory of the usurper King Sargon of Akkad. It
runs as follows:
"I am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a
vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited
the
mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare
me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped
the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift on the river....
The river floated me to Akki, the water drawer, who, in drawing
water, drew me forth. Akki, the water drawer, educated me as
his son, and made me his gardener. As a gardener, I was beloved
by the goddess Ishtar."
It is unlikely that this story was invented by Sargon. Like the many
variants of it found in other countries, it was probably founded on a
form of the Tammuz-Adonis myth. Indeed, a new myth would not have
suited Sargon's purpose so well as the adaptation of an old one, which
was more likely to make popular appeal when connected with his name.
The references to the goddess Ishtar, and Sargon's early life as a
gardener, suggest that the king desired to be remembered as an
agricultural Patriarch, if not of divine, at any rate of semi-divine
origin.
What appears to be an early form of the widespread Tammuz myth is the
Teutonic legend regarding the mysterious child who came over the sea
to inaugurate a new era of civilization and instruct the people how to
grow corn and become great warriors. The Northern peoples, as
archaeological evidence suggests, derived their knowledge of
agriculture, and therefore their agricultural myths, from the
Neolithic representatives of the Mediterranean race with whom they
came into contact. There can be no doubt but that the Teutonic legend
refers to the introduction of agriculture. The child is called "Scef"
or "Sceaf", which signifies "Sheaf", or "Scyld, the son of Sceaf".
Scyld is the patriarch of the Scyldings, the Danes, a people of mixed
origin. In the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_ poem, the reference is to
"Scyld", but Ethelweard, William of Malmesbury, and others adhered to
"Sceaf" as the name of the Patriarch of the Western Saxons.
The legend runs that one day a boat was seen approaching the shore; it
was not propelled by oars or sail. In it lay a child fast asleep, his
head pillowed upon a sheaf of grain. He was surrounded by armour,
treasure, and various implements, including the fire-borer. The child
was reared by the people who found him, and he became a great
instructor and warrior and ruled over the tribe as king. In _Beowulf_
Scyld is the father of the elder Beowulf, whose grandson Hrothgar
built the famous Hall. The poem opens with a reference to the
patriarch "Scyld of the Sheaf". When he died, his body, according to
the request he had made, was laid in a ship which was set adrift:
Upon his breast lay many treasures which were to travel with him
into the power of the flood. Certainly they (the mourners)
furnished him with no less of gifts, of tribal treasures, than
those had done who, in his early days, started him over the sea
alone, child as he was. Moreover, they set besides a
gold-embroidered standard high above his head, and let the flood
bear him--gave him to the sea. Their soul was sad, their spirit
sorrowful. Who received that load, men, chiefs of council, heroes
under heaven, cannot for certain tell.[116]
Sceaf or Scyld is identical with Yngve, the patriarch of the Ynglings;
with Frey, the harvest and boar god, son of Njord,[117] the sea god;
and with Hermod, referred to as follows in the Eddic "Lay of Hyndla":
To some grants he wealth, to his children war fame,
Word skill to many and wisdom to men,
Fair winds to sea-farers, song craft to skalds,
And might of manhood to many a warrior.
Tammuz is similarly "the heroic lord of the land", the "wise one", the
"lord of knowledge", and "the sovereign, lord of invocation".
Heimdal, watchman of the Teutonic gods, also dwelt for a time among
men as "Rig", and had human offspring, his son Thrall being the
ancestor of the Thralls, his son Churl of churls, and Jarl of
noblemen.
Tammuz, like Heimdal, is also a guardian. He watches the flocks and
herds, whom he apparently guards against the Gallu demons as Heimdal
guards the world and the heavens against attacks by giants and
monsters. The flocks of Tammuz, Professor Pinches suggests, "recall
the flocks of the Greek sun god Helios. These were the clouds
illuminated by the sun, which were likened to sheep--indeed, one of
the early Sumerian expressions for 'fleece' was 'sheep of the sky'.
The name of Tammuz in Sumerian is Dumu-zi, or in its rare fullest
form, Dumuzida, meaning 'true or faithful son'. There is probably some
legend attached to this which is at present unknown."[118]
So the Sumerian hymn-chanters lamented:
Like an herdsman the sentinel place of sheep and cattle he
(Tammuz) has forsaken...
From his home, from his inhabited domain, the son, he of wisdom,
pre-eminent steer of heaven,
The hero unto the nether herding place has taken his way.[119]
Agni, the Aryo-Indian god, who, as the sky sentinel, has points of
resemblance to Heimdal, also links with Tammuz, especially in his
Mitra character:
Agni has been established among the tribes of men, the son of the
waters, Mitra acting in the right way. _Rigveda_, iii, 5, 3.
Agni, who has been looked and longed for in Heaven, who has been
looked for on earth--he who has been looked for has entered all herbs.
_Rigveda_, i, 98.[120]
Tammuz, like the Egyptian lunar and solar god Khonsu, is "the healer",
and Agni "drives away all disease". Tammuz is the god "of sonorous
voice"; Agni "roars like a bull"; and Heimdal blows a horn when the
giants and demons threaten to attack the citadel of the gods. As the
spring sun god, Tammuz is "a youthful warrior", says Jastrow,
"triumphing over the storms of winter".[121] The storms, of course,
were symbolized as demons. Tammuz, "the heroic lord", was therefore a
demon slayer like Heimdal and Agni. Each of these gods appear to have
been developed in isolation from an archaic spring god of fertility
and corn whose attributes were symbolized. In Teutonic mythology, for
instance, Heimdal was the warrior form of the patriarch Scef, while
Frey was the deified agriculturist who came over the deep as a child.
In Saxo's mythical history of Denmark, Frey as Frode is taken prisoner
by a storm giant, Beli, "the howler", and is loved by his hag sister
in the Teutonic Hades, as Tammuz is loved by Eresh-ki-gal, spouse of
the storm god Nergal, in the Babylonian Hades. Frode returns to earth,
like Tammuz, in due season.
It is evident that there were various versions of the Tammuz myth in
Ancient Babylonia. In one the goddess Ishtar visited Hades to search
for the lover of her youth. A part of this form of the legend survives
in the famous Assyrian hymn known as "The Descent of Ishtar ". It was
first translated by the late Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum.
A box containing inscribed tablets had been sent from Assyria to
London, and Mr. Smith, with characteristic patience and skill,
arranged and deciphered them, giving to the world a fragment of
ancient literature infused with much sublimity and imaginative power.
Ishtar is depicted descending to dismal Hades, where the souls of the
dead exist in bird forms:
I spread like a bird my hands.
I descend, I descend to the house of darkness, the dwelling of the
god Irkalla:
To the house out of which there is no exit,
To the road from which there is no return:
To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,
The place where dust is their nourishment and their food mud.
Its chiefs also are like birds covered with feathers;
The light is never seen, in darkness they dwell....
Over the door and bolts is scattered dust.
When the goddess reaches the gate of Hades she cries to the porter:
Keeper of the waters, open thy gate,
Open thy gate that I may enter.
If thou openest not the gate that I may enter
I will strike the door, the bolts I will shatter,
I will strike the threshold and will pass through the doors;
I will raise up the dead to devour the living,
Above the living the dead shall exceed in numbers.
The porter answers that he must first consult the Queen of Hades, here
called Allatu, to whom he accordingly announces the arrival of the
Queen of Heaven. Allatu's heart is filled with anger, and makes
reference to those whom Ishtar caused to perish:
Let me weep over the strong who have left their wives,
Let me weep over the handmaidens who have lost the embraces of
their husbands,
Over the only son let me mourn, who ere his days are come is taken
away.
Then she issues abruptly the stern decree:
Go, keeper, open the gate to her,
Bewitch her according to the ancient rules;
that is, "Deal with her as you deal with others who come here".
As Ishtar enters through the various gates she is stripped of her
ornaments and clothing. At the first gate her crown was taken off, at
the second her ear-rings, at the third her necklace of precious
stones, at the fourth the ornaments of her breast, at the fifth her
gemmed waist-girdle,[122] at the sixth the bracelets of her hands and
feet, and at the seventh the covering robe of her body. Ishtar asks at
each gate why she is thus dealt with, and the porter answers, "Such is
the command of Allatu."
After descending for a prolonged period the Queen of Heaven at length
stands naked before the Queen of Hades. Ishtar is proud and arrogant,
and Allatu, desiring to punish her rival whom she cannot humble,
commands the plague demon, Namtar, to strike her with disease in all
parts of her body. The effect of Ishtar's fate was disastrous upon
earth: growth and fertility came to an end.
Meanwhile Pap-sukal, messenger of the gods, hastened to Shamash, the
sun deity, to relate what had occurred. The sun god immediately
consulted his lunar father, Sin, and Ea, god of the deep. Ea then
created a man lion, named Nadushu-namir, to rescue Ishtar, giving him
power to pass through the seven gates of Hades. When this being
delivered his message
Allatu ... struck her breast; she bit her thumb,
She turned again: a request she asked not.
In her anger she cursed the rescuer of the Queen of Heaven.
May I imprison thee in the great prison,
May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food,
May the drains of the city be thy drink,
May the darkness of the dungeon be thy dwelling,
May the stake be thy seat,
May hunger and thirst strike thy offspring.
She was compelled, however, to obey the high gods, and addressed
Namtar, saying:
Unto Ishtar give the waters of life and bring her before me.
Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the various
gates, and at each she received her robe and the ornaments which were
taken from her on entering. Namtar says:
Since thou hast not paid a ransom for thy deliverance to her
(Allatu), so to her again turn back,
For Tammuz the husband of thy youth.
The glistening waters (of life) pour over him...
In splendid clothing dress him, with a ring of crystal adorn him.
Ishtar mourns for "the wound of Tammuz", smiting her breast, and she
did not ask for "the precious eye-stones, her amulets", which were
apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar's wail:
O my only brother (Tammuz) thou dost not lament for me.
In the day that Tammuz adorned me, with a ring of crystal,
With a bracelet of emeralds, together with himself, he adorned
me,[123]
With himself he adorned me; may men mourners and women
mourners
On a bier place him, and assemble the wake.[124]
A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It sets
forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be glad and to
resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was unable to return.
His spouse unto her abode he sent back.
She then instituted the wailing ceremony:
The amorous Queen of Heaven sits as one in darkness.[125]
Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears to
contain the narrative on which the Assyrian version was founded. The
goddess who descends to Hades, however, is not Ishtar, but the
"sister", Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by various demons--the
"gallu-demon", the "slayer", &c.--and holds a conversation with Tammuz
which, however, is "unintelligible and badly broken". Apparently,
however, he promises to return to earth.
... I will go up, as for me I will depart with thee ...
... I will return, unto my mother let us go back.
Probably two goddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian
sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother. Ishtar
is referred to as "my mother". Isis figures alternately in the
Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of Osiris. She
cries, "Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart fluttereth for thy
love", ... "I am thy wife, made as thou art, the elder sister, soul of
her brother".... "Come thou to us as a babe".... "Lo, thou art as the
Bull of the two goddesses--come thou, child growing in peace, our
lord!"... "Lo! the Bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and
Nepthys".... "Come thou to the two widowed goddesses".... "Oh child,
lord, first maker of the body".... "Father Osiris."[126]
As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do Isis and Nepthys weep
for Osiris.
Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou art prostrate upon thy
bed!
Gods and men ... are weeping for thee at the same time, when
they behold me (Isis).
Lo! I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven.
Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow.... "The cow
weepeth for thee with her voice."[127]
There is another phase, however, to the character of the mother
goddess which explains the references to the desertion and slaying of
Tammuz by Ishtar. "She is", says Jastrow, "the goddess of the human
instinct, or passion which accompanies human love. Gilgamesh ...
reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her passion after a
brief period of union." At Ishtar's temple "public maidens accepted
temporary partners, assigned to them by Ishtar".[128] The worship of
all mother goddesses in ancient times was accompanied by revolting
unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory terms in various
passages in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the
worship of Ashtoreth, who was identical with Ishtar and the Egyptian
Hathor.
Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other female
deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name, indeed, which is
Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtaráte, a designation for goddesses
in general. But although she was referred to as the daughter of the
sky, Anu, or the daughter of the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still
retained traces of her ancient character. Originally she was a great
mother goddess, who was worshipped by those who believed that life and
the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in
the theory of male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish
goddess, a creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and
the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included
Mama, or Mami, or Ama, "mother", Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zerpanituᵐ.
These were all "Preservers" and healers. At the same time they were
"Destroyers", like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or
Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became
wives of strongly individualized gods, or by child gods, their sons,
who might be regarded as "brothers" or "husbands of their mothers", to
use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly Great Father deities had
vaguely defined wives. The "Semitic" Baal, "the lord", was accompanied
by a female reflection of himself--Beltu, "the lady". Shamash, the sun
god, had for wife the shadowy Aa.
As has been shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the
mother of the child god of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky
goddess Nut, "the mother" of Osiris, is stated to have "built up life
from her own body".[129] Sri or Lakshmi, the Indian goddess, who
became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother goddess Saraswati, a tribal
deity, became the wife of Brahma, was, according to a Purana
commentator, "the mother of the world ... eternal and
undecaying".[130]
The gods, on the other hand, might die annually: the goddesses alone
were immortal. Indra was supposed to perish of old age, but his wife,
Indrani, remained ever young. There were fourteen Indras in every "day
of Brahma", a reference apparently to the ancient conception of Indra
among the Great-Mother-worshipping sections of the Aryo-Indians.[131]
In the _Mahabharata_ the god Shiva, as Mahadeva, commands Indra on
"one of the peaks of Himavat", where they met, to lift up a stone and
join the Indras who had been before him. "And Indra on removing that
stone beheld a cave on the breast of that king of mountains in which
were four others resembling himself." Indra exclaimed in his grief,
"Shall I be even like these?" These five Indras, like the "Seven
Sleepers", awaited the time when they would be called forth. They were
ultimately reborn as the five Pandava warriors.[132]
The ferocious, black-faced Scottish mother goddess, Cailleach Bheur,
who appears to be identical with Mala Lith, "Grey Eyebrows" of
Fingalian story, and the English "Black Annis", figures in Irish song
and legend as "The Old Woman of Beare". This "old woman" (Cailleach)
"had", says Professor Kuno Meyer, "seven periods of youth one after
another, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old
age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races".
When old age at length came upon her she sang her "swan song", from
which the following lines are extracted:
Ebb tide to me as of the sea!
Old age causes me reproach ...
It is riches
Ye love, it is not men:
In the time when _we_ lived
It was men we loved ...
My arms when they are seen
Are bony and thin:
Once they would fondle,
They would be round glorious kings ...
I must take my garment even in the sun:
The time is at hand that shall renew me.[133]
Freyja, the Germanic mother goddess, whose car was drawn by cats, had
similarly many lovers. In the Icelandic poem "Lokasenna", Loki taunts
her, saying:
Silence, Freyja! Full well I know thee,
And faultless art thou not found;
Of the gods and elves who here are gathered
Each one hast thou made thy mate.
Idun, the keeper of the apples of immortal youth, which prevent the
gods growing old, is similarly addressed:
Silence, Idun! I swear, of all women
Thou the most wanton art;
Who couldst fling those fair-washed arms of thine
About thy brother's slayer.
Frigg, wife of Odin, is satirized as well:
Silence, Frigg! Earth's spouse for a husband,
And hast ever yearned after men![134]
The goddesses of classic mythology had similar reputations. Aphrodite
(Venus) had many divine and mortal lovers. She links closely with
Astarte and Ashtoreth (Ishtar), and reference has already been made to
her relations with Adonis (Tammuz). These love deities were all as
cruel as they were wayward. When Ishtar wooed the Babylonian hero,
Gilgamesh, he spurned her advances, as has been indicated, saying:
On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,
Thou didst lay affliction every year.
Thou didst love the brilliant Allalu bird
But thou didst smite him and break his wing;
He stands in the woods and cries "O my wing".
He likewise charged her with deceiving the lion and the horse, making
reference to obscure myths:
Thou didst also love a shepherd of the flock,
Who continually poured out for thee the libation,
And daily slaughtered kids for thee;
But thou didst smite him and didst change him into a leopard,
So that his own sheep boy hunted him,
And his own hounds tore him to pieces.[135]
These goddesses were ever prone to afflict human beings who might
offend them or of whom they wearied. Demeter (Ceres) changed
Ascalaphus into an owl and Stellio into a lizard. Rhea (Ops) resembled
The tow'red Cybele,
Mother of a hundred gods,
the wanton who loved Attis (Adonis). Artemis (Diana) slew her lover
Orion, changed Actaeon into a stag, which was torn to pieces by his
own dogs, and caused numerous deaths by sending a boar to ravage the
fields of Oeneus, king of Calydon. Human sacrifices were frequently
offered to the bloodthirsty "mothers". The most famous victim of
Artemis was the daughter of Agamemnon, "divinely tall and most
divinely fair".[136] Agamemnon had slain a sacred stag, and the
goddess punished him by sending a calm when the war fleet was about to
sail for Troy, with the result that his daughter had to be sacrificed.
Artemis thus sold breezes like the northern wind hags and witches.
It used to be customary to account for the similarities manifested by
the various mother goddesses by assuming that there was constant
cultural contact between separate nationalities, and, as a result, a
not inconsiderable amount of "religious borrowing". Greece was
supposed to have received its great goddesses from the western
Semites, who had come under the spell of Babylonian religion.
Archaeological evidence, however, tends to disprove this theory. "The
most recent researches into Mesopotamian history", writes Dr. Farnell,
"establish with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct
political contact possible between the powers in the valley of the
Euphrates and the western shores of the Aegean in the second
millennium B.C. In fact, between the nascent Hellas and the great
world of Mesopotamia there were powerful and possibly independent
strata of cultures interposing."[137]
The real connection appears to be the racial one. Among the
Mediterranean Neolithic tribes of Sumeria, Arabia, and Europe, the
goddess cult appears to have been influential. Mother worship was the
predominant characteristic of their religious systems, so that the
Greek goddesses were probably of pre-Hellenic origin, the Celtic of
Iberian, the Egyptian of proto-Egyptian, and the Babylonian of
Sumerian. The northern hillmen, on the other hand, who may be
identified with the "Aryans" of the philologists, were father
worshippers. The Vedic Aryo-Indians worshipped father gods,[138] as
did also the Germanic peoples and certain tribes in the "Hittite
confederacy". Earth spirits were males, like the Teutonic elves, the
Aryo-Indian Ribhus, and the Burkans, "masters", of the present-day
Buriats, a Mongolian people. When the father-worshipping peoples
invaded the dominions of the mother-worshipping peoples, they
introduced their strongly individualized gods, but they did not
displace the mother goddesses. "The Aryan Hellenes", says Dr. Farnell,
"were able to plant their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of
Athens, but not to overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central
shrine and in the aboriginal soul of the Athenian people."[139] As in
Egypt, the beliefs of the father worshippers, represented by the
self-created Ptah, were fused with the beliefs of the mother
worshippers, who adored Isis, Mut, Neith, and others. In Babylonia
this process of racial and religious fusion was well advanced before
the dawn of history. Ea, who had already assumed manifold forms, may
have originally been the son or child lover of Damkina, "Lady of the
Deep", as was Tammuz of Ishtar. As the fish, Ea was the offspring of
the mother river.
The mother worshippers recognized male as well as female deities, but
regarded the great goddess as the First Cause. Although the primeval
spirits were grouped in four pairs in Egypt, and apparently in
Babylonia also, the female in the first pair was more strongly
individualized than the male. The Egyptian Nu is vaguer than his
consort Nut, and the Babylonian Apsu than his consort Tiamat. Indeed,
in the narrative of the Creation Tablets of Babylon, which will
receive full treatment in a later chapter, Tiamat, the great mother,
is the controlling spirit. She is more powerful and ferocious than
Apsu, and lives longer. After Apsu's death she elevates one of her
brood, named Kingu, to be her consort, a fact which suggests that in
the Ishtar-Tammuz myth survives the influence of exceedingly ancient
modes of thought. Like Tiamat, Ishtar is also a great battle heroine,
and in this capacity she was addressed as "the lady of majestic rank
exalted over all gods". This was no idle flattery on the part of
worshippers, but a memory of her ancient supremacy.
Reference has been made to the introduction of Tammuz worship into
Jerusalem. Ishtar, as Queen of Heaven, was also adored by the
backsliding Israelites as a deity of battle and harvest. When Jeremiah
censured the people for burning incense and serving gods "whom they
knew not", he said, "neither they, ye, nor your fathers", they made
answer: "Since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and
to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and
have been consumed by the sword and the famine". The women took a
leading part in these practices, but refused to accept all the blame,
saying, "When we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out
drink offerings unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink
offerings unto her without our men?"[140] That the husbands, and the
children even, assisted at the ceremony is made evident in another
reference to goddess worship: "The children gather wood, and the
fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes
to the queen of heaven".[141]
Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz, offered
cakes to the mother goddess, &c., because "in all religious bodies ...
women represent the conservative element; among them religious customs
continue in practice after they have been abandoned by men".[142] The
evidence of Jeremiah, however, shows that the men certainly
co-operated at the archaic ceremonials. In lighting the fires with the
"vital spark", they apparently acted in imitation of the god of
fertility. The women, on the other hand, represented the reproductive
harvest goddess in providing the food supply. In recognition of her
gift, they rewarded the goddess by offering her the cakes prepared
from the newly ground wheat and barley--the "first fruits of the
harvest". As the corn god came as a child, the children began the
ceremony by gathering the wood for the sacred fire. When the women
mourned for Tammuz, they did so evidently because the death of the god
was lamented by the goddess Ishtar. It would appear, therefore, that
the suggestion regarding the "conservative element" should really
apply to the immemorial practices of folk religion. These differed
from the refined ceremonies of the official cult in Babylonia, where
there were suitable temples and organized bands of priests and
priestesses. But the official cult received no recognition in
Palestine; the cakes intended for a goddess were not offered up in the
temple of Abraham's God, but "in the streets of Jerusalem" and those
of other cities.[143]
The obvious deduction seems to be that in ancient times women
everywhere played a prominent part in the ceremonial folk worship of
the Great Mother goddess, while the men took the lesser part of the
god whom she had brought into being and afterwards received as
"husband of his mother". This may account for the high social status
of women among goddess worshippers, like the representatives of the
Mediterranean race, whose early religion was not confined to temples,
but closely associated with the acts of everyday life.