Note 252.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.
Reading edition
No Hittite monument nor any Hittite text has as yet revealed to us any figure that we can identify with Tammuz. But certain indications incline us to believe that the idea of the death of the god was not unfamiliar to the Hittite religion or to some of the communities under Hittite influence. On the Boghaz-Keui relief we have noted the presence in the religious procession of those mysterious animals, calves, or bulls, wearing caps of peculiar Hittite fashion.252.1 Are not these “theanthropic animals” to be sacrificed as a communion-link between man and God? We know that the bull was worshipped as an incarnation of a Hittite deity; and therefore from the sacrifice of the bull might emerge the dogma that the deity ceremoniously died at certain periods. From the sanctity of the bull in ancient Hittite cult-centres may have descended the mystic communion rite of the Taurobolion or Tauropolion, which Cumont has shown good reason for supposing to have arisen in the worship of the Persian Anahita, and to have been adopted into the service of Kybele.253.1