Note 254.2 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

And these two personalities of the Sumerian and Phrygian religions evoked the same psychologic sentiment, sorrowful, romantic, and yearning. The hypothesis naturally suggests itself that the more Western people borrowed the cult from Mesopotamia, and that this had happened as early as B.C. 1500.254.2 All scholars are agreed at all events that the figure of Attis belongs to the older pre-Aryan stratum of the population of Phrygia; modern speculation is sometimes inclined to regard this as Hittite, and we know that the Hittites adopted some part of the Babylonian religion. But the name Attis itself is a stumbling-block to the hypothesis of borrowing from Mesopotamia. Believing Adonis to be a Western-Semitic form of Tammuz, we can explain the name as meaning merely “the Lord,” a natural appellative of the Sumerian god. But we cannot so explain “Attis.” It is non-Semitic, and must be regarded as belonging to an Anatolian language-group, nor can we yet discover its root-meaning.