Note 105.1 — Chapter VI · The Deities as Nature-Powers.

This strange religious poetry which had been fermenting for thousands of years, was likely enough to transform past recognition the simple aboriginal fact. It is only the lesser deities, the “Sondergötter” of the Sumerian pantheon, whose nature-functions might remain clear and unchanged: for instance, such a corn-deity as we see on a cylinder, with corn-ears in his hand and corn-stalks springing from his shoulders.105.1 Even the simple form of Tammuz, the darling of the Sumerian people, has been somewhat blurred by the poetry of passion that for long ages was woven about him. As Zimmern has shown in a recent treatise,105.2 he was never the chief deity of any Babylonian or Assyrian state, but nevertheless one of great antiquity and power with the Sumerian people, and his cult and story were doubtless spreading westward in the second millennium. In spite of all accretions and the obscurity of his name, which is interpreted to mean “real son of the water-deep,”105.3 we can still recognise the form of the young god of vegetation who dies in the heat of the summer solstice and descends to the world below, leaving the earth barren till he returns. This idea is expressed by some of his names, “the Lord of the land’s fruitfulness, the Lord of the shepherd’s dwelling, the Lord of the cattle-stall, the God of grain,”105.4 and by many an allusion to his legend in the hymns, which are the most beautiful and pathetic in the old Sumerian psalmody: “in his manhood in the submerged grain he lay”; “how long still shall the verdure be imprisoned, how long shall the green things be held in bondage?”105.5 An interesting title found in some of the incantation liturgies is that of “the shepherd,” and like some other vegetation-powers he is at times regarded as the Healer. Though he was not admitted as the compeer of the high gods into the Babylonian or Assyrian pantheon, he may be said to have survived them all, and his name and myth became the inspiration of a great popular religion. No other of that vast fraternity of corn-spirits or vegetation-spirits into which Dr. Frazer has initiated us, has ever had such a career as Tammuz. In one of his hymns he is invoked as “Lord of the world of Death,” because for a time he descended into Hell.106.1 If this idea had been allowed to germinate and to develop its full potentiality, it might have changed the aspect of Babylonian eschatology. But, as we shall see, the ideas naturally attaching to vegetation, to the kindly and fair life of seeds and plants, were never in Babylonia properly harmonised with those that dominated belief concerning the lower world of the dead. The study of the Tammuz-rites I shall reserve for a later occasion.