Part 8 (1/2)
How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?
Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as ”the bosom of the earth”, and in the a.s.syrian version of the ”Descent of Ishtar” he dwells in ”the house of darkness” among the dead, ”where dust is their nourishment and their food mud”, and ”the light is never seen”--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns, however, it is stated that Tammuz ”upon the flood was cast out”. The reference may be to the submarine ”house of Ea”, or the Blessed Island to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the nether ”garden of Adonis”.
The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz)[114]:--
Damu his youth therein slumbers ...
Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers he is cast away ...
Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be satiated.
Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from Hades.
Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as ”child, Lord Gishzida”, as well as ”my hero Damu”. In his lunar character the Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as ”the child surpa.s.singly beautiful”; the Osiris bull was also a child of the moon; ”it was begotten”, says Plutarch, ”by a ray of generative light falling from the moon”. When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his wors.h.i.+ppers were drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with milk, as they were supposed to have ”renewed their youth” and become children. The ancient Greek G.o.d Eros (Cupid) was represented as a wanton boy or handsome youth. Another G.o.d of fertility, the Irish Angus, who resembles Eros, is called ”the ever young”; he slumbers like Tammuz and awakes in the Spring.
Apparently it was believed that the child G.o.d, Tammuz, returned from the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew into full manhood in a comparatively brief period, like Vyasa and other super-men of Indian mythology. A couplet from a Tammuz hymn says tersely:
In his infancy in a sunken boat he lay.
In his manhood in the submerged grain he lay.[115]
The ”boat” may be the ”chest” in which Adonis was concealed by Aphrodite when she confided him to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who desired to retain the young G.o.d, but was compelled by Zeus to send him back to the G.o.ddess of love and vegetation. The fact that Ishtar descended to Hades in quest of Tammuz may perhaps explain the symbolic references in hymns to mother G.o.ddesses being in sunken boats also when their powers were in abeyance, as were those of the G.o.d for part of each year. It is possible, too, that the boat had a lunar and a solar significance. Khonsu, the Egyptian moon G.o.d, for instance, was a.s.sociated with the Spring sun, being a deity of fertility and therefore a corn spirit; he was a form of Osiris, the Patriarch, who sojourned on earth to teach mankind how to grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. In the Egyptian legend Osiris received the corn seeds from Isis, which suggests that among Great-Mother-wors.h.i.+pping peoples, it was believed that agricultural civilization had a female origin.
The same myths may have been attached to corn G.o.ds and corn G.o.ddesses, a.s.sociated with water, sun, moon, and stars.
That there existed in Babylonia at an extremely remote period an agricultural myth regarding a Patriarch of divine origin who was rescued from a boat in his childhood, is suggested by the legend which was attached to the memory of the usurper King Sargon of Akkad. It runs as follows:
”I am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift on the river....
The river floated me to Akki, the water drawer, who, in drawing water, drew me forth. Akki, the water drawer, educated me as his son, and made me his gardener. As a gardener, I was beloved by the G.o.ddess Ishtar.”
It is unlikely that this story was invented by Sargon. Like the many variants of it found in other countries, it was probably founded on a form of the Tammuz-Adonis myth. Indeed, a new myth would not have suited Sargon's purpose so well as the adaptation of an old one, which was more likely to make popular appeal when connected with his name.
The references to the G.o.ddess Ishtar, and Sargon's early life as a gardener, suggest that the king desired to be remembered as an agricultural Patriarch, if not of divine, at any rate of semi-divine origin.
What appears to be an early form of the widespread Tammuz myth is the Teutonic legend regarding the mysterious child who came over the sea to inaugurate a new era of civilization and instruct the people how to grow corn and become great warriors. The Northern peoples, as archaeological evidence suggests, derived their knowledge of agriculture, and therefore their agricultural myths, from the Neolithic representatives of the Mediterranean race with whom they came into contact. There can be no doubt but that the Teutonic legend refers to the introduction of agriculture. The child is called ”Scef”
or ”Sceaf”, which signifies ”Sheaf”, or ”Scyld, the son of Sceaf”.
Scyld is the patriarch of the Scyldings, the Danes, a people of mixed origin. In the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_ poem, the reference is to ”Scyld”, but Ethelweard, William of Malmesbury, and others adhered to ”Sceaf” as the name of the Patriarch of the Western Saxons.
The legend runs that one day a boat was seen approaching the sh.o.r.e; it was not propelled by oars or sail. In it lay a child fast asleep, his head pillowed upon a sheaf of grain. He was surrounded by armour, treasure, and various implements, including the fire-borer. The child was reared by the people who found him, and he became a great instructor and warrior and ruled over the tribe as king. In _Beowulf_ Scyld is the father of the elder Beowulf, whose grandson Hrothgar built the famous Hall. The poem opens with a reference to the patriarch ”Scyld of the Sheaf”. When he died, his body, according to the request he had made, was laid in a s.h.i.+p which was set adrift:
Upon his breast lay many treasures which were to travel with him into the power of the flood. Certainly they (the mourners) furnished him with no less of gifts, of tribal treasures, than those had done who, in his early days, started him over the sea alone, child as he was. Moreover, they set besides a gold-embroidered standard high above his head, and let the flood bear him--gave him to the sea. Their soul was sad, their spirit sorrowful. Who received that load, men, chiefs of council, heroes under heaven, cannot for certain tell.[116]
Sceaf or Scyld is identical with Yngve, the patriarch of the Ynglings; with Frey, the harvest and boar G.o.d, son of Njord,[117] the sea G.o.d; and with Hermod, referred to as follows in the Eddic ”Lay of Hyndla”:
To some grants he wealth, to his children war fame, Word skill to many and wisdom to men, Fair winds to sea-farers, song craft to skalds, And might of manhood to many a warrior.
Tammuz is similarly ”the heroic lord of the land”, the ”wise one”, the ”lord of knowledge”, and ”the sovereign, lord of invocation”.
Heimdal, watchman of the Teutonic G.o.ds, also dwelt for a time among men as ”Rig”, and had human offspring, his son Thrall being the ancestor of the Thralls, his son Churl of churls, and Jarl of n.o.blemen.
Tammuz, like Heimdal, is also a guardian. He watches the flocks and herds, whom he apparently guards against the Gallu demons as Heimdal guards the world and the heavens against attacks by giants and monsters. The flocks of Tammuz, Professor Pinches suggests, ”recall the flocks of the Greek sun G.o.d Helios. These were the clouds illuminated by the sun, which were likened to sheep--indeed, one of the early Sumerian expressions for 'fleece' was 'sheep of the sky'.
The name of Tammuz in Sumerian is Dumu-zi, or in its rare fullest form, Dumuzida, meaning 'true or faithful son'. There is probably some legend attached to this which is at present unknown.”[118]
So the Sumerian hymn-chanters lamented:
Like an herdsman the sentinel place of sheep and cattle he (Tammuz) has forsaken...