Myth of Ishtar and Tammuz

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LADYSILVERMOONGODDESS32
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Myth of Ishtar and Tammuz

Post by LADYSILVERMOONGODDESS32 » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:33 pm

AMONG the gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring fame than Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of Heaven--the beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to life again. He does not figure by his popular name in any of the city pantheons, but from the earliest times of which we have knowledge until the passing of Babylonian civilization, he played a prominent part in the religious life of the people

Tammuz, like Osiris of Egypt, was an agricultural deity, and as the Babylonian harvest was the gift of the rivers, it is probable that one of his several forms was Dumu-zi-abzu, "Tammuz of the Abyss". He was also



[paragraph continues] "the child", "the heroic lord", "the sentinel", "the healer", and the patriarch who reigned over the early Babylonians for a considerable period. "Tammuz of the Abyss" was one of the members of the family of Ea, god of the Deep, whose other sons, in addition to Merodach, were Nira, an obscure deity; Ki-gulla, "world destroyer", Burnunta-sa, "broad ear", and Bara and Baragulla, probably "revealers" or "oracles". In addition there was a daughter, Khi-dimme-azaga, "child of the renowned spirit". She may have been identical with Belit-sheri, who is referred to in the Sumerian hymns as the sister of Tammuz. This family group was probably formed by symbolizing the attributes of Ea and his spouse Damkina. Tammuz, in his character as a patriarch, may have been regarded as a hostage from the gods: the human form of Ea, who instructed mankind, like King Osiris, how to grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. As the youth who perished annually, he was the corn spirit. He is referred to in the Bible by his Babylonian name.

When Ezekiel detailed the various idolatrous practices of the Israelites, which included the worship of the sun and "every form of creeping things and abominable beasts"--a suggestion of the composite monsters of Babylonia--he was brought "to the door of the gate of the Lord's house, which was towards the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz". 1

The weeping ceremony was connected with agricultural rites. Corn deities were weeping deities, they shed fertilizing tears; and the sowers simulated the sorrow of divine mourners when they cast seed in the soil "to die", so that it might spring up as corn. This ancient custom, like many others, contributed to the poetic




imagery of the Bible. "They that sow in tears", David sang, "shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." 1 In Egypt the priestesses who acted the parts of Isis and Nepthys, mourned for the slain corn god Osiris.


Gods and men before the face of the gods are weeping for thee at the same time, when they behold me! . . .
All thy sister goddesses are at thy side and behind thy couch,
Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou are prostrate upon thy bed! . . .
Live before us, desiring to behold thee. 2

It was believed to be essential that human beings should share the universal sorrow caused by the death of a god. If they remained unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies. Worshippers of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible", writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a particle of divine life." 3 By observing their ritual, the worshippers won the sympathy and co-operation of deities, or exercised a magical control over nature.

The Babylonian myth of Tammuz, the dying god, bears a close resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis. It also links with the myth of Osiris. According to Professor Sayce, Tammuz is identical with "Daonus or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla", referred to by Berosus as the ruler of one of the mythical ages of Babylonia. We






have therefore to deal with Tammuz in his twofold character as a patriarch and a god of fertility.

The Adonis version of the myth may be summarized briefly. Ere the god was born, his mother, who was pursued by her angry sire, as the river goddesses of the folk tales are pursued by the well demons, transformed herself into a tree. Adonis sprang from the trunk of this tree, and Aphrodite, having placed the child in a chest, committed him to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who resembles the Babylonian Eresh-ki-gal. Persephone desired to retain the young god, and Aphrodite (Ishtar) appealed to Zeus (Anu), who decreed that Adonis should spend part of the year with one goddess and part of the year with the other.

It is suggested that the myth of Adonis was derived in post-Homeric times by the Greeks indirectly from Babylonia through the Western Semites, the Semitic title "Adon", meaning "lord", having been mistaken for a proper name. This theory, however, cannot be accepted without qualifications. It does not explain the existence of either the Phrygian myth of Attis, which was developed differently from the Tammuz myth, or the Celtic story of "Diarmid and the boar", which belongs to the archæological "Hunting Period". There are traces in Greek mythology of pre-Hellenic myths about dying harvest deities, like Hyakinthos and Erigone, for instance, who appear to have been mourned for. There is every possibility, therefore, that the Tammuz ritual may have been attached to a harvest god of the pre-Hellenic Greeks, who received at the same time the new name of Adonis. Osiris of Egypt resembles Tammuz, but his Mesopotamian origin has not been proved. It would appear probable that Tammuz, Attis, Osiris, and the deities represented by Adonis and Diarmid were all developed



from an archaic god of fertility and vegetation, the central figure of a myth which was not only as ancient as the knowledge and practice of agriculture, but had existence even in the "Hunting Period". Traces of the Tammuz-Osiris story in various forms are found all over the area occupied by the Mediterranean or Brown race from Sumeria to the British Isles. Apparently the original myth was connected with tree and water worship and the worship of animals. Adonis sprang from a tree; the body of Osiris was concealed in a tree which grew round the sea-drifted chest in which he was concealed. Diarmid concealed himself in a tree when pursued by Finn. The blood of Tammuz, Osiris, and Adonis reddened the swollen rivers which fertilized the soil. Various animals were associated with the harvest god, who appears to have been manifested from time to time in different forms, for his spirit pervaded all nature. In Egypt the soul of Osiris entered the Apis bull or the ram of Mendes.

Tammuz in the hymns is called "the pre-eminent steer of heaven", and a popular sacrifice was "a white kid of the god Tammuz", which, however, might be substituted by a sucking pig. Osiris had also associations with swine, and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, sacrificed a pig to him annually. When Set at full moon hunted the boar in the Delta marshes, he probably hunted the boar form of Osiris, whose human body had been recovered from the sacred tree by Isis. As the soul of Bata, the hero of the Egyptian folk tale, 1 migrated from the blossom to the bull, and the bull to the tree, so apparently did the soul of Osiris pass from incarnation to incarnation. Set, the demon slayer of the harvest god, had also a boar form; he was the black pig who devoured the waning moon and blinded the Eye of Ra.




In his character as a long-lived patriarch, Tammuz the King Daonus or Daos of Berosus, reigned in Babylonia for 36,000 years. When he died, he departed to Hades or the Abyss. Osiris, after reigning over the Egyptians, became Judge of the Dead.

Tammuz of the Sumerian hymns, however, is the Adonis-like god who lived on earth for a part of the year as the shepherd and agriculturist so dearly beloved by the goddess Ishtar. Then he died so that he might depart to the realm of Eresh-ki-gal (Persephone), queen of Hades. According to one account, his death was caused by the fickle Ishtar. When that goddess wooed Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, he upbraided her, saying:


On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,
Thou didst lay affliction every year.
                              King's Translation.

References in the Sumerian hymns suggest that there also existed a form of the legend which gave an account of the slaying of the young god by someone else than Ishtar. The slayer may have been a Set-like demon--perhaps Nin-shach, who appears to have symbolized the destroying influence of the sun. He was a war deity, and his name, Professor Pinches says, "is conjectured to mean 'lord of the wild boar'". There is no direct evidence, however, to connect Tammuz's slayer with the boar which killed Adonis. Ishtar's innocence is emphasized by the fact that she mourned for her youthful lover, crying:


Oh hero, my lord, ah me! I will say;
Food I eat not . . . water I drink not . . .
Because of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the radiant face, yea radiant,
Of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the dove-like voice, yea dove-like. 1




The Phrygian Attis met his death, according to one legend, by self-mutilation under a sacred tree. Another account sets forth, however, that he was slain by a boar. The Greek Adonis was similarly killed by a boar. This animal was a form of Ares (Mars), god of war and tempest, who also loved Aphrodite (Ishtar). The Celtic Diarmid, in his character as a love god, with lunar attributes, was slain by "the green boar", which appears to have been one of the animals of a ferocious Hag, an earth and air "mother" with various names. In one of the many Fingalian stories the animal is


. . . That venomous boar, and he so fierce,
That Grey Eyebrows had with her herd of swine. 1

[paragraph continues] Diarmid had eloped with the wife of Finn-mac-Coul (Fingal), who, like Ares, plotted to bring about his rival's death, and accordingly set the young hero to hunt the boar. As a thunder god Finn carried a hammer with which he smote his shield; the blows were heard in Lochlann (Scandinavia). Diarmid, like Tammuz, the "god of the tender voice and shining eyes", had much beauty. When he expired, Finn cried:


No maiden will raise her eye
Since the mould has gone over thy visage fair . . .
Blue without rashness in thine eye!
Passion and beauty behind thy curls! . . .
Oh, yesternight it was green the hillock,
Red is it this day with Diarmid's blood. 2

Tammuz died with the dying vegetation, and Diarmid expired when the hills apparently were assuming their purple tints. 3 The month of Tammuz wailings was from






[paragraph continues] 20th June till 20th July, when the heat and dryness brought forth the demons of pestilence. The mourners chanted:


He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,
And the dead are numerous in the land . . .
Men are filled with sorrow: they stagger by day in gloom .
In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone.
Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.

The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of the god:


The holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields languish . . .
The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they slain? . . .
In his temple, in his inhabited domain,
The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more . . .
In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.

There is wailing for Tammuz "at the sacred cedar, where the mother bore thee", a reference which connects the god, like Adonis and Osiris, with tree worship:


The wailing is for the herbs: the first lament is, "they are not produced".
The wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced.
The wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks which bring forth no more.
The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones; for the perishing children; the dark-headed people create no more.

[paragraph continues] The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched meadows, the fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the



plains, the gardens, and the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has departed. The mourner cries:


How long shall the springing of verdure be restrained?
How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?

Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as "the bosom of the earth", and in the Assyrian version of the "Descent of Ishtar" he dwells in "the house of darkness" among the dead, "where dust is their nourishment and their food mud", and "the light is never seen"--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns, however, it is stated that Tammuz "upon the flood was cast out". The reference may be to the submarine "house of Ea", or the Blessed Island to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the nether "garden of Adonis".

The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz) 1:--


Damu his youth therein slumbers .
Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers he is cast away .
Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be satiated.

Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from Hades. Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as "child, Lord Gishzida", as well as "my hero Damu". In his lunar character the Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as "the child surpassingly beautiful"; the Osiris bull was also a child of the moon; "it was begotten", says Plutarch, "by a ray of generative light falling from the moon". When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were drenched




with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a wanton boy or handsome youth. Another god of fertility, the Irish Angus, who resembles Eros, is called "the ever young"; he slumbers like Tammuz and awakes in the Spring.

Apparently it was believed that the child god, Tammuz, returned from the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew into full manhood in a comparatively brief period, like Vyasa and other super-men of Indian mythology. A couplet from a Tammuz hymn says tersely:


In his infancy in a sunken boat he lay.
In his manhood in the submerged grain he lay. 1

The "boat" may be the "chest" in which Adonis was concealed by Aphrodite when she confided him to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who desired to retain the young god, but was compelled by Zeus to send him back to the goddess of love and vegetation. The fact that Ishtar descended to Hades in quest of Tammuz may perhaps explain the symbolic references in hymns to mother goddesses being in sunken boats also when their powers were in abeyance, as were those of the god for part of each year. It is possible, too, that the boat had a lunar and a solar significance. Khonsu, the Egyptian moon god, for instance, was associated with the Spring sun, being a deity of fertility and therefore a corn spirit; he was a form of Osiris, the Patriarch, who sojourned on earth to teach mankind how to grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. In the Egyptian legend Osiris received the corn seeds from Isis, which suggests that among Great-Mother-worshipping




peoples, it was believed that agricultural civilization had a female origin. The same myths may have been attached to corn gods and corn goddesses, associated with water, sun, moon, and stars.

That there existed in Babylonia at an extremely remote period an agricultural myth regarding a Patriarch of divine origin who was rescued from a boat in his childhood, is suggested by the legend which was attached to the memory, of the usurper King Sargon of Akkad. It runs as follows:

"I am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain. . . . When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift on the river. . . . The river floated me to Akki, the water drawer, who, in drawing water, drew me forth. Akki, the water drawer, educated me as his son, and made me his gardener. As a gardener, I was beloved by the goddess Ishtar."

It is unlikely that this story was invented by Sargon. Like the many variants of it found in other countries, it was probably founded on a form of the Tammuz-Adonis myth. Indeed, a new myth would not have suited Sargon's purpose so well as the adaptation of an old one, which was more likely to make popular appeal when connected with his name. The references to the goddess Ishtar, and Sargon's early life as a gardener, suggest that the king desired to be remembered as an agricultural Patriarch, if not of divine, at any rate of semi-divine origin.

What appears to be an early form of the widespread Tammuz myth is the Teutonic legend regarding the mysterious child who came over the sea to inaugurate a new era of civilization and instruct the people how to



grow corn and become great warriors. The Northern peoples, as archæological evidence suggests, derived their knowledge of agriculture, and therefore their agricultural myths, from the Neolithic representatives of the Mediterranean race with whom they came into contact. There can be no doubt but that the Teutonic legend refers to the introduction of agriculture. The child is called "Scef" or "Sceaf", which signifies "Sheaf", or "Scyld, the son of Sceaf". Scyld is the patriarch of the Scyldings, the Danes, a people of mixed origin. In the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf poem, the reference is to "Scyld", but Ethelweard, William of Malmesbury, and others adhered to "Sceaf" as the name of the Patriarch of the Western Saxons.

The legend runs that one day a boat was seen approaching the shore; it was not propelled by oars or sail. In it lay a child fast asleep, his head pillowed upon a sheaf of grain. He was surrounded by armour, treasure, and various implements, including the fire-borer. The child was reared by the people who found him, and he became a great instructor and warrior and ruled over the tribe as king. In Beowulf Scyld is the father of the elder Beowulf, whose grandson Hrothgar built the famous Hall. The poem opens with a reference to the patriarch "Scyld of the Sheaf". When he died, his body, according to the request he had made, was laid in a ship which was set adrift:

Upon his breast lay many treasures which were to travel with him into the power of the flood. Certainly they (the mourners) furnished him with no less of gifts, of tribal treasures, than those had done who, in his early days, started him over the sea alone, child as he was. Moreover, they set besides a gold-embroidered standard high above his head, and let the flood bear him--gave him to the sea. Their soul was sad, their spirit sorrowful. Who



received that load, men, chiefs of council, heroes under heaven, cannot for certain tell. 1

Sceaf or Scyld is identical with Yngve, the patriarch of the Ynglings; with Frey, the harvest and boar god, son of Njord, 2 the sea god; and with Hermod, referred to as follows in the Eddic "Lay of Hyndla":


To some grants he wealth, to his children war fame,
Word skill to many and wisdom to men,
Fair winds to sea-farers, song craft to skalds,
And might of manhood to many a warrior.

Tammuz is similarly "the heroic lord of the land", the "wise one", the "lord of knowledge", and "the sovereign, lord of invocation".

Heimdal, watchman of the Teutonic gods, also dwelt for a time among men as "Rig", and had human offspring, his son Thrall being the ancestor of the Thralls, his son Churl of churls, and Jarl of noblemen.

Tammuz, like Heimdal, is also a guardian. He watches the flocks and herds, whom he apparently guards against the Gallu demons as Heimdal guards the world and the heavens against attacks by giants and monsters. The flocks of Tammuz, Professor Pinches suggests, "recall the flocks of the Greek sun god Helios. These were the clouds illuminated by the sun, which were likened to sheep--indeed, one of the early Sumerian expressions for 'fleece' was 'sheep of the sky'. The name of Tammuz in Sumerian is Dumu-zi, or in its rare fullest form, Dumu-zida, meaning 'true or faithful son'. There is probably some legend attached to this which is at present unknown." 3






So the Sumerian hymn-chanters lamented:


Like an herdsman the sentinel place of sheep and cattle he (Tammuz) has forsaken . . .
From his home, from his inhabited domain, the son, he of wisdom, pre-eminent steer of heaven,
The hero unto the nether herding place has taken his way. 1

Agni, the Aryo-Indian god, who, as the sky sentinel, has points of resemblance to Heimdal, also links with Tammuz, especially in his Mitra character:


Agni has been established among the tribes of men, the son of the waters, Mitra acting in the right way. Rigveda, iii, 5, 3.

Agni, who has been looked and longed for in Heaven, who has been looked for on earth--he who has been looked for has entered all herbs. Rigveda, i, 98. 2


Tammuz, like the Egyptian lunar and solar god Khonsu, is "the healer", and Agni "drives away all disease". Tammuz is the god "of sonorous voice"; Agni "roars like a bull"; and Heimdal blows a horn when the giants and demons threaten to attack the citadel of the gods. As the spring sun god, Tammuz is "a youthful warrior", says Jastrow, "triumphing over the storms of winter". 3 The storms, of course, were symbolized as demons. Tammuz, "the heroic lord", was therefore a demon slayer like Heimdal and Agni. Each of these gods appear to have been developed in isolation from an archaic spring god of fertility and corn whose attributes were symbolized. In Teutonic mythology, for instance, Heimdal was the warrior form of the patriarch Scef, while Frey was the deified agriculturist who came over the deep as a child. In Saxo's mythical history of Denmark,






[paragraph continues] Frey as Frode is taken prisoner by a storm giant, Beli, "the howler", and is loved by his hag sister in the Teutonic Hades, as Tammuz is loved by Eresh-ki-gal, spouse of the storm god Nergal, in the Babylonian Hades. Frode returns to earth, like Tammuz, in due season.

It is evident that there were various versions of the Tammuz myth in Ancient Babylonia. In one the goddess Ishtar visited Hades to search for the lover of her youth. A part of this form of the legend survives in the famous Assyrian hymn known as "The Descent of Ishtar". It was first translated by the late Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum. A box containing inscribed tablets had been sent from Assyria to London, and Mr. Smith, with characteristic patience and skill, arranged and deciphered them, giving to the world a fragment of ancient literature infused with much sublimity and imaginative power. Ishtar is depicted descending to dismal Hades, where the souls of the dead exist in bird forms:


I spread like a bird my hands.
I descend, I descend to the house of darkness, the dwelling of the god Irkalla:
To the house out of which there is no exit,
To the road from which there is no return:
To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,
The place where dust is their nourishment and their food mud.
Its chiefs also are like birds covered with feathers;
The light is never seen, in darkness they dwell. . . .

[paragraph continues] When the goddess reaches the gate of Hades she cries to the porter:


Keeper of the waters, open thy gate,
Open thy gate that I may enter.
If thou openest not the gate that I may enter
I will strike the door, the bolts I will shatter, p. 96
I will strike the threshold and will pass through the doors;
I will raise up the dead to devour the living,
Above the living the dead shall exceed in numbers.

[paragraph continues] The porter answers that he must first consult the Queen of Hades, here called Allatu, to whom he accordingly announces the arrival of the Queen of Heaven. Allatu's heart is filled with anger, and makes reference to those whom Ishtar caused to perish:


Let me weep over the strong who have left their wives,
Let me weep over the handmaidens who have lost the embraces of their husbands,
Over the only son let me mourn, who ere his days are come is taken away.

[paragraph continues] Then she issues abruptly the stern decree:


Go, keeper, open the gate to her,
Bewitch her according to the ancient rules;

that is, "Deal with her as you deal with others who come here".

As Ishtar enters through the various gates she is stripped of her ornaments and clothing. At the first gate her crown was taken off, at the second her ear-rings, at the third her necklace of precious stones, at the fourth the ornaments of her breast, at the fifth her gemmed waist-girdle, 1 at the sixth the bracelets of her hands and feet, and at the seventh the covering robe of her body. Ishtar asks at each gate why she is thus dealt with, and the porter answers, "Such is the command of Allatu."

After descending for a prolonged period the Queen of Heaven at length stands naked before the Queen of Hades. Ishtar is proud and arrogant, and Allatu, desiring to punish her rival whom she cannot humble,






Click to enlarge






p. 97

commands the plague demon, Namtar, to strike her with disease in all parts of her body. The effect of Ishtar's fate was disastrous upon earth: growth and fertility came to an end.

Meanwhile Pap-sukal, messenger of the gods, hastened to Shamash, the sun deity, to relate what had occurred. The sun god immediately consulted his lunar father, Sin, and Ea, god of the deep. Ea then created a man lion, named Nadushu-namir, to rescue Ishtar, giving him power to pass through the seven gates of Hades. When this being delivered his message


Allatu . . . struck her breast; she bit her thumb,
She turned again: a request she asked not.

[paragraph continues] In her anger she cursed the rescuer of the Queen of Heaven.


May I imprison thee in the great prison,
May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food,
May the drains of the city be thy drink,
May the darkness of the dungeon be thy dwelling,
May the stake be thy seat,
May hunger and thirst strike thy offspring.

She was compelled, however, to obey the high gods, and addressed Namtar, saying:


Unto Ishtar give the waters of life and bring her before me.

[paragraph continues] Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the various gates, and at each she received her robe and the ornaments which were taken from her on entering. Namtar says:


Since thou hast not paid a ransom for thy deliverance to her (Allatu), so to her again turn back,
For Tammuz the husband of thy youth.
The glistening waters (of life) pour over him .
In splendid clothing dress him, with a ring of crystal adorn him.

p. 98

Ishtar mourns for "the wound of Tammuz", smiting her breast, and she did not ask for "the precious eye-stones, her amulets", which were apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar's wail:


O my only brother (Tammuz) thou dost not lament for me.
In the day that Tammuz adorned me, with a ring of crystal,
With a bracelet of emeralds, together with himself, he adorned me, 1
With himself he adorned me; may men mourners and women mourners
On a bier place him, and assemble the wake. 2

A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It sets forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be glad and to resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was unable to return.


His spouse unto her abode he sent back.

[paragraph continues] She then instituted the wailing ceremony:


The amorous Queen of Heaven sits as one in darkness. 3

Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears to contain the narrative on which the Assyrian version was founded. The goddess who descends to Hades, however, is not Ishtar, but the "sister", Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by various demons--the "gallu-demon", the "slayer", &c.--and holds a conversation with Tammuz which, however, is "unintelligible and badly broken". Apparently, however, he promises to return to earth.


. . . I will go up, as for me I will depart with thee . . .
. . . I will return, unto my mother let us go back.




p. 99

Probably two goddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother. Ishtar is referred to as "my mother". Isis figures alternately in the Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of Osiris. She cries, "Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart fluttereth for thy love", . . . "I am thy wife, made as thou art, the elder sister, soul of her brother". . . . "Come thou to us as a babe". . . . "Lo, thou art as the Bull of the two goddesses--come thou, child growing in peace, our lord!" . . "Lo! the Bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys". . . . "Come thou to the two widowed goddesses". . . . "Oh child, lord, first maker of the body". . . . "Father Osiris." 1

As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do

Isis and Nepthys weep for Osiris.


Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou art prostrate upon thy bed!
Gods and men . . . are weeping for thee at the same time, when they behold me (Isis).
Lo! I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven.

[paragraph continues] Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow. . . . "The cow weepeth for thee with her voice." 2

There is another phase, however, to the character of the mother goddess which explains the references to the desertion and slaying of Tammuz by Ishtar. "She is", says Jastrow, "the goddess of the human instinct, or passion which accompanies human love. Gilgamesh . . . reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her passion after a brief period of union." At Ishtar's temple "public maidens accepted temporary partners, assigned to them by



p. 100

[paragraph continues] Ishtar". 1 The worship of all mother goddesses in ancient times was accompanied by revolting unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory terms in various passages in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the worship of Ashtoreth, who was identical with Ishtar and the Egyptian Hathor.

Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other female deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name, indeed, which is Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtaráte, a designation for goddesses in general. But although she was referred to as the daughter of the sky, Anu, or the daughter of the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still retained traces of her ancient character. Originally she was a great mother goddess, who was worshipped by those who believed that life and the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in the theory of male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish goddess, a creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included Mama, or Mami, or Ama, "mother", Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zer-panitum. These were all "Preservers" and healers. At the same time they were "Destroyers", like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became wives of strongly individualized gods, or by child gods, their sons, who might be regarded as "brothers" or "husbands of their mothers", to use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly Great Father deities had vaguely defined wives. The "Semitic" Baal, "the lord", was accompanied by a female reflection of himself--Beltu, "the lady". Shamash, the sun god, had for wife the shadowy Aa.













p. 101

As has been shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the mother of the child god of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky goddess Nut, "the mother" of

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