The identitication of Tammuz with an idolatrous prophet, which has already been given in a quotation from Maimonides, who himself quotes from the Agri- culfnre of the Nuhathceans, has been recently revived by Prof. Chwolson, of St. Petersburg ( Ueher Tammuz, etc. [St. Petersb. I860]). An Arab writer of the 10th cen- tury, En-Nedim, in his book called Fihrist el-'Ulum, says (quoting from Abii Sa'id Wahb ben-Ibrahim) that in the middle of the month Tammuz a feast is held in honor of the god Tii'fiz. The women bewailed him be- cause his lord slew him and ground his bones in a mill, and scattered them to the winds. In consequence of this the women ate nothing, during the feast, that had been ground in a mill (Chwolson, Lie iSsahier; etc., ii, 27). Prof. Chwolson regards Tu'fiz as a corruption of Tammuz; but the most important passage, in his eyes, is from the old Babylonian book called the Af/ricullure of the Nahath(eans, to which he attributes a fabulous antiquity. It was written, he maintains, by one Qfit- 'ami, towards the end of the 14th century B.C., and was translated into Arabic by a descendant of the ancient Chaldieans, whose name was Ibn-Washiyyah. As Prof. Chwolson's theory has been strongly attacked, and as the chief materials upon which it is founded are not yet before the public, it would be equally premature to take him as an authority, or to pronounce positively against his hypothesis, though, judging from present evidence, we are inclined to be more than sceptical as to its truth. Qut'iimi then, in that dim antiquity from which he speaks to us, tells the same story of the
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prophet Tammiiz as has already been siven in the quo- tation from Kimchi. It was read in the temples after prayers to an audience who wept and wailed ; and so great was the magic influence of the tale that Qut'ami himself, though incredulous of its truth, was unable to restrain his tears. A jiart, he thought, might be true, but it referreil to au event so far removed by time from the age in which he lived that he was compelled to be sceptical on many points. His translator, Ibn-Washiy- yah, adds that Tammuz belonged neither to the Chal- dagans nor to the Canaanites, nor to the Hebrews nor to the Assyrians, but to the ancient people of Janbfin. This last, Chwolson conjectures, may be the Shemitic name given to the gigantic Cushite aborigines of Chal- dasa, whom the Shemitic Nabathajans found when they first came into the country, and from whom they atlopt- ed certain elements of their worship. Thus Tammuz, or Tammiizi, belongs to a religious epoch in Babylonia which preceded the Shemitic ( id. Ueberreste d. allba- byl. Lit. p. 19). Ibn-Washiyyah says, moreover, that all the Sabians of his time, both those of Babylonia and of Harran, wept and wailed for Tammuz in the month which was named after him, but that none of them pre- served anv tradition of the origin of the worship. This fact alone appears to militate strongly against the truth of Ibn-Washiyyah's story as to the manner in which he discovered the works he professed to translate. It has been due to Prof. Chwolson's reputation to give in brief the substance of his explanation of Tammuz; but it must be confessed that he throws little light upon the obscurity of the suliject.
It seems perfectly clear from what has been said that the name Tammuz affords no clue to the identification of the deity whotn it designated. The slight hint given by the prophet of the nature of the worship and wor- shippers of Tammuz has been sufficient to connect them with the yearly mourning for Adonis by the Syrian damsels. Beyond this we can attach no special weight to the explanation of Jerome. It is a conjecture, and nothing more, and does not appear to represent any tra- dition. All that can be said, therefore, is that it is not impossible that Tammuz may be a name of Adonis, the sun-god, but that there is nothing to prove it. It is true, however, that the name of Adonis does occur in Phceni- cian inscriptions C^TlN, see Gesenius, il/o««»i. P/io;);. ii, 400), and the coincidences of the ancient notices above and the mode of worship detailed below with the lan- guage of Ezekiel afford the most plausible interpreta- tion hitherto offered.
4. Ceremonies of the Cultiis. — There was a temple at Amathus, in Cyprus, shared by Adonis and Aphrodite (Pausan. ix, 41, 2) ; and the worship of Adonis is said to have come from Cyprus to Athens in the time of the Persian war (Apollodor. iii, 14, 4; Pausan. ii, 20, 5; Ovid, Metam. K.l'Ib, Philostr. .4/;o//. vii, 32; Plutarch, ^4 /cj6. c. 18; Athen. xv, 672; Aristoph. Pax, 420). But the town of Byblos, in Phcenicia, was the headquarters of the Adonis-worship ( Hamaker, Miscell. Phaenic. p. 125). The feast in his honor was celebrated each year in the temple of Aphrodite (said to have been founded by Ki- nyras, the reputed father of Adonis) on the Lebanon (Lucian, De l)ea Syra, § 6) with rites partly sorrowfid, partly joyful. The emperor Julian was present at Antioch when the same festival was held (Airim.Marc. xxii, 9, 13). It lasted seven days (xx, 1), the period of mourning among the Jews (Ecclus. xxii, 12; Gen. 1, 10; 1 Sam. xxxi, 13; Judith xvi, 24), the Egyptians (Heliodor. ..£7^. vii, 11), and the Syrians (Lucian, De Dea Syra, § 52), and began with the disappearance (a0ai'«(Tjutif) of Adonis. Then followed the search (^/y- Ti]csi<;) made by the w-omen after him. His body was represented by a wooden image placed in the so-called "gardens of Adonis" ( kci'oviCoQ ki'ittoi), which were earthenware vessels filled with mould, and planted with wheat, barley, lettuce, and feiniel. They were exposed by the women to the heat of the sun at the house-doors