QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 161 



bruising the head of the great serpent who, in the 

 Chaldean as in the Hebrew story, represents the 

 power of evil. Ishtar has been represented as the 

 bride of the god Tammuz, the Adonis l of the Greeks, 

 and whose worship was one of the idolatries that led 

 the women of Israel astray, ' weeping for Tammuz ' ; 2 

 but it now appears that, according to the oldest 

 doctrine, she is his mother, 3 and he was a ' keeper 

 of sheep/ dwelling in Eden, or Idinu, and murdered 

 by his brother Adar, who is also a god, and more 

 especially the god of war. In short, the story of 

 Ishtar, Tammuz, and Adar, the parent of so many 

 myths, is merely the familiar one of Cain and Abel. 

 Hence the belief that the murder of Tammuz was 

 connected with the Deluge, and henge the annual 

 lamentation of the women for Tammuz when the 

 spring inundations swelled and reddened the waters 

 of the streams a rite possibly even antediluvian, 

 and commemorative of the mourning of the first 

 mother for her slain son, to rescue whom it was 

 fabled that she even descended into Hades. 



Oppert regards the legend of Tammuz and Ishtar 

 as a solar myth, and supposes that the story of Cain 

 and Abel was based on it. But a family history of 

 crime and sorrow is a much more real and probable 

 thing as a basis for tradition than a solar myth, and 

 naturalists at least will be disposed to invert the 

 theory, and to believe that the simple Bible story was 



1 From the Semitic title ' Adonai,' my Lord. 



2 Ezekiel viii. 14. 3 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures. 



L 



