| both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from them that every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him “to the land from which there is no returning, to the house of darkness, where dust lies on door and bolt.” During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged. A messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly despatched to rescue the goddess on whom so much depended. The stern queen of the infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by name, reluctantly allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to depart, in company probably with her lover Tammuz, that the two might return together to the upper world, and that with their return all nature might revive. |
Laments for the departed Tammuz are contained in several Babylonian hymns, which liken him to plants that quickly fade. He is
| | “A tamarisk that in the garden has drunk no water, | | | Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom. | | | A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse, | | | A willow whose roots were torn up. | | | A herb that in the garden had drunk no water.” |
His death appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill music of flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month named after him, the month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly chanted over an effigy of the dead god, which was washed with pure water, anointed with oil, and clad in a red robe, while the fumes of incense rose into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses by their pungent fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death. In one of these dirges, inscribed Lament of the Flutes for Tammuz, we seem still to hear the voices of the singers chanting the sad refrain and to catch, like far-away music, the wailing notes of the flutes:
| | “At his vanishing away she lifts up a lament, | | | ‘Oh my child!’ at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament; | | | ‘My Damu!’ at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament. | | | ‘My enchanter and priest!’ at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament, | | | At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious place, | | | In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a lament. | | | Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master, lifts she up a lament, | | | Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord, lifts she up a lament. | | | Her lament is the lament for a herb that grows not in the bed, | | | Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the ear. | | | Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a possession, | | | A weary woman, a weary child, forspent. | | | Her lament is for a great river, where no willows grow, | | | Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow not. | | | Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow not. | | | Her lament is for a thickest of reeds, where no reeds grow. |
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