Note 242.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.
Reading edition
If a true sacrament is yet to be discovered in Babylonian religion, it will probably be found in some document of the Tammuz ritual. For it is probable that Tammuz was identified with the corn as with other parts of vegetation, and that the mourning for him was accompanied with abstinence from bread. His resurrection ended the fast, and if in their joy the worshippers ceremoniously broke bread, they may have supposed they were eating the body of their risen lord. But such a reconstruction of the old Tammuz ritual rests at present only on the indirect evidence of the later records of Attis-Adonis cult and of the Tammuz-worship among the heathen Syrians of Harran in the tenth century of our era.242.1