TAMMUZ
196
TAMMUZ
band went forth to seek her, Tomuzo slew him. And with rojiJird to Tomuzo also, there met liim in the des- ert a wild hoar and slew him. And his lather made for him a great lamentation and weeping in the month Tonuiz : and Belathi, his wile, she, too, made a lamen- tation and mourning over him. Anil this tradition waB handed down among the hcatlien peojjie during her lifetime and after her death, which same tradition the Jews received with the rest of the evil festivals of the people, and in that month Tomuz used to make for him a great feast. Tomuz also is the name of one of the months of the Syrians."
In the next century the legend assumes, for the first time, a different forin in the hands of a Kabbinical com- mentator. Kabbi Solomon Isaaki (Raahi) has the fol- lowing note on the passage in Ezekiel: "An image which the women made hot in the inside, and its ej-es were of lead, and they melted by reason of the heat of the burning, and it seemed as if it wept; and they (the women) said, He asketh for offerings. Tammuz is a word signifying burning, as rT^T";? rtTn I'l b^ (Dan. iii,19),and nnin^ ITtX NrWN (ver.22)." Instead of rendering "weeping for the Tammuz," he gives what appears to be the equivalent in French, "faisantes pleu- rer I'echauffe." It is clear, therefore, that Eashi re- gards Tammuz as an appellative derived from the Chal- dee root NTX, azd, "to make hot." It is equally clear that his etymology cannot be defended for an instant. In the r2th centur}' (1161) Solomon ben-Abraham Par- chon, in his Lexicon, compiled at Salerno from the works of Jehuda Chayug and Abulwalid Merwan ben-Gan- nach, has the following observations upon Tammuz : " It is the likeness of a reptile which they make upon the water, and the water is collected in it and flows through its holes, and it seems as if it wept. l?ut the month called Tammuz is Persian, and so are all our months; none of them is from the sacred tongue. Though they are written in the Scripture, they are Persian; but in the sacred tongue the first month, the second month," etc. At the close of this century we meet for the first time with an entirely new tradition repeated by R. Da- vid Kimchi, both in his Lexicon and in his Commen- tary, from the Moreh Nehuchim of Maimonides: "In the month Tammuz they made a feast of an idol, and the women came to gladden him ; and some say that by crafty means they caused the water to come into the eyes of the idol which is called Tammuz, and it wept, as if it asked them to worship it. And some in- terpret Tammuz ' the burned one,' as if from Dan. iii, 19 (see above), i. e. they wept over him because he was burned; for they used to burn their sons and their daughters in the tire, and the women used to weep over them. . . . But the Rab, the wise, the great, our Rabbi Moshe bar-Maimon, of blessed memory, has written that it is found written in one of the ancient idolatrous books that there was a man of the idolatrous prophets, and his name was Tammuz. And he called to a certain king and commanded him to serve the seven planets and the twelve signs. And that king put him to a vi- olent death ; and on the night of his death there were gathered together all the images from the ends of the earth to the Temple of Babel, to the golden image which was the image of the sun. Now this image was sus- pended between heaven and earth, and it fell down in the midst of the temple, and the images likewise (fell down) round about it, and it told them what had befall- en Tammuz the prophet. And the images all of them wept and lamented all the night; and, as it came to pass, in the morning all the images flew away to their own temples in the ends of the earth. And this was to them for an everlasting statute; at the beginning of the first day of the month Tammuz each year they la- mented and wept over Tammuz. And some interpret Tammuz as the name of an animal, for they used to worship an image which they had, and the Targum of
(the passage) Ci-iX TX f-i^ Vi'SSI (Isa. xxxiv, 14) is 'p^irnn '■'TI^D "TI""I"^'1. But in most copies 'pTT^n is written with two Yavs." The book of the ancient idolaters from which Maimonides quotes is the now celebrated work on the agriculture of the Naba- tha;ans, to which reference will be made hereafter. Bcn-Melech gives no help, and Abendana merely quotes the ex|)lanations given by Rashi and Kimchi.
3. Modern Opinions. — The tradition recorded bj* Je- rome, which identifies Tammuz witli Adonis, has been followed by most subsequent commentators; among oth- ers, by Yatablus, Castellio, Cornelius a Lapide, Osian- der, Caspar Sanctius, Lavater, Yillalpandus, Selden, Si- monis, Calmet, and, in later times, by J. D. Michaelis, Gesenius, Ben-Zeb, Rosenmiiller, Maurer, Ewald, II ii- vernick, Ilitzig, and Movers. Luther and others regard- ed Tammuz as a name of Bacchus. That Tammuz'was the Egyptian Osiris, and that his worship was intro- duced into Jerusalem from Egypt, was held by Calvin, Piscator, Junius, Leusden, and Pfeiffer. This view de- pends chieflj' upon a false etymology proposed by Kirch- er, which connects the word Tammuz with the Coptic tarmit, to hide, and so makes it signify the hidden or concealed one; and therefore Osiris, the Egyptian king slain by Typho, whose loss was commanded by Isis to be yearly lamented in Egypt. The women weeping for Tammuz are in this case, according to Junius, the priestesses of Isis. The Egyptian origin of the name Tammuz has also been defended by a reference to the god Amuz, mentioned by Plutarch and Herodotus, who is identical with Osiris. There is good reason, how- ever, to believe that Amuz is a mistake for Amun. That something corresponding to Tammuz is found in Egyptian proper names as they appear in Greek cannot be denied. Tapioc, an Egyptian, appears in Thucydi- des (viii,31) as a Persian officer, in Xenophon {Anab. i, 4, 2) as an admiral. The Egyiitian pilot who heard the mysterious voice bidding him proclaim "Great Pan is dead" was called Qai.iovc (Plutarch, JJe Deject. Oraf, 17). The names of the ilgyptian kings, f)ovi.ifiw<Tic, Tk^l.iwffig, and O/iiwrrtc, mentioned by Manetho (Jose- phus, Conf. Ap. i, 14, 15), have in turn been compared with Tammuz; but, unless some more certain evidence be brought forward than is found in these apparent re- semblances, there is little reason to conclude that the worship of Tammuz was of Egyptian origin.