1893.] Legends of the Sumiro-Accadians of Chaldea. 109 
mourning for the death of Dumuzi, however it occurred ; 
the mourners wept and wailed, and tore their hair for the 
first six days, and at the close of the sixth day the wildest 
and most extravagant rejoicing marked his resurrection and 
restoration to Tshtar. Six hundred years B. C., Ezekiel, in 
captivity at Babylon, speaks of the “ women weeping for Tam- 
muz,” (Dumuzi). We have, fortunately, the tablet, nearly 
complete, which relates Tshtar’s descent to “the land whence 
there is no return, towards the dwelling that has an entrance 
but no exit, towards the hall from which the light of day is 
shut out, where the shades of the dead dwell in the dark.” 
Tshtar haughtily orders the warder to open the gate, “ If thou 
_openest not, I will demolish the threshold. . . . I will 
let loose the dead to return to earth. . . . I will make the 
risen dead more monstrous than the living.” The gatekeeper 
humbly answers the angry goddess: “ Be appeased, O Lady, 
let me go and report thy name to Allat, the Queen.” And 
Tshtar declares that she comes only to “weep over the heroes 
who have lost their wives; over the wives who have been 
taken from their husbands’ arms. I wish to weep over the 
Only Son, (a name of Dumuzi,) who has been taken away be- 
fore his time.” Allat, full of evil delight that a hated rival 
has come within her power, orders the keeper to open the 
seven-fold gates for Tshtar, with the stipulation that at every 
gate she should strip off some of her attire. The warder of 
Arallu takes from the goddess her earrings, her necklace, her 
jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms, and the bangles at 
her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment, and with 
these her divine power departed, and she stood powerless 
before the spiteful Queen of the Dead. Allat orders her chief 
minister, Namtar, the Pestilence, to lead Tshtar away, and to 
afflict her with sixty dire diseases, in the deepest darkness of 
the abyss. Meanwhile, as when Demeter mourned incon- 
solably for her lost Persephone, all went ill in the upper world. 
Life and love had gone out of it; there were no marriages 
and no births, and the gods held council as to the release of 
Tshtar. The beneficent Ea conceived a plan. He created a 
phantom, Uddusunamir. “Go,” he said, “ to the Land whence 
