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Updated: July 11, 2025
One is inclined also to suspect some, albeit remote, connection between Alala, the consort of Belili, and the Alallu bird who is spoken of in the Gilgamesh epic as having been deprived of her pinions by Ishtar. In the tale, Tammuz, the Alallu bird, a lion, and a horse are successively introduced as those once loved and then deceived by Ishtar.
In all these cases the mourning for the death is immediately followed by the rejoicing over the resurrection, and on this it is interesting to notice that the name of Easter has been traced to the virgin-mother of the slain Tammuz, Ishtar.
The great myth of the descent of Istar describes how she goes down to the kingdom of the shades to seek the waters that shall give life again to her bridegroom Tammuz.
In rage she advances to Allatu, threatens to smash the door and break the lock unless admitted. The story in this form must have ended in the restoration of Tammuz. The identification of Ishtar with the planet Venus introduced a new factor. The disappearance of the planet fitted in well with the original nature-myth.
It seems worth suggesting that the mock king who was annually killed at the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea on the sixteenth day of the month Lous may have represented Tammuz himself.
While it is only of comparatively recent date that information as to the exact character of the worship directed to Tammuz has been available and the material we at present possess is but fragmentary in character, the corresponding cult of the Phoenician-Greek divinity we know as Adonis has for some years been the subject of scholarly research.
We have already noted that, according to the traditions the records embody, the Sumerians looked back to a time when gods lived upon the earth with men, and we have seen such deities as Tammuz and Lugalbanda figuring as rulers of cities in the dynastic sequence. As in later periods, their names are there preceded by the determinative for divinity.
Result, the specific task of the Grail hero not a literary invention but an inheritance of Aryan tradition. Tammuz and Adonis General objects to be attained by these Nature Cults. Stimulation of Fertility, Animal and Vegetable. Principle of Life ultimately conceived of in anthropomorphic form. This process already advanced in Rig-Veda. Greek Mythology preserves intermediate stage.
A detail which has attracted the attention of scholars is the lack of any artistic representation of this ritual, a lack which is the more striking in view of the important position which these 'Wailings for Tammuz' occupy in the extant remains of Babylonian liturgies.
For some minutes they walked in silence, each perhaps recalling the many meetings upon that very terrace since the first time their lips met in love under the ivory moonlight of the month Tammuz, more than a year ago. At last Nehushta spoke. "Know you this new king?" she asked. "I saw him but for a few moments last year. He was a young prince, but he is not fair."
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