Manchester Memoirs, Vol. xlviii. (1904), No. ?i5. 19 



thereabouts. To all appearance the Babylonians kept 

 this same festival, and it is evidently the rushing down of 

 the overflowing waters which is referred to in the first 

 word of the nine-line refrain contained in these extracts. 

 The colour of the water in the Babylonian rivers, however, 

 in all probability did not lend itself to the explanation 

 that they were stained with the deity's blood, and the 

 appearance of the autumnal floods in western Asia may 

 merely have been regarded, originally, as a sign that 

 summer was over, and that Tammuz was returning to his 

 winter abode in the Underworld. Indeed, the name of 

 Tammuz being of Babylonian origin, the old opinion that 

 the legend concerning him originated in Syria would seem 

 to be without foundation — the ruddy waters of the Adonis 

 are to all appearance responsible for the transference of 

 Adonis's fatal encounter with the boar to the mountains 

 of Lebanon. 



The date of the rise of the myth of Tammuz is 

 doubtful, but as the name of the god is found on tablets 

 of the time of Lugal-anda and Uru-ka-gina, who ruled 

 about 3500 years B.C., it can hardly be of a later date than 

 4000 B.C., and may be much earlier. How popular it had 

 become by the beginning of the second millenium before 

 Christ the tablet belonging to the Manchester Museum 

 has shown us, and many variants of the legend may, even 

 at that early date,have come into existence. Unfortunately, 

 the Assyro-Babylonian tablets have, as yet, given but few 

 details of the myth, and even in the story of the descent 

 of Istar into Hades to seek the husband of her youth no 

 statement as to the manner of his death occurs. As he is 

 repeatedly called ' the shepherd,' and had a domain where 

 he pastured his flock. Prof. Sayce sees in Tammuz ' Daonus 

 or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla,' who, according to 

 Berosus, ruled in Babylonia for 10 sari, or 36,000 years, 



