Chapter 29. The Myth of Adonis.
THE SPECTACLE of the great changes which annually pass over
the face of the earth has powerfully impressed the minds of men in
all ages, and stirred them to meditate on the causes of
transformations so vast and wonderful. Their curiosity has not been
purely disinterested; for even the savage cannot fail to perceive
how intimately his own life is bound up with the life of nature, and
how the same processes which freeze the stream and strip the
earth of vegetation menace him with extinction. At a certain stage
of development men seem to have imagined that the means of
averting the threatened calamity were in their own hands, and that
they could hasten or retard the flight of the seasons by magic art.
Accordingly they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make
the rain to fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of
the earth to grow. In course of time the slow advance of knowledge,
which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at
least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of
summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the
result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some
mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature.
They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of
vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the
waxing or waning strength of divine beings, of gods and
goddesses, who were born and died, who married and begot
children, on the pattern of human life. 1
Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or
rather supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now
attributed the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding
changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain
magical rites they could aid the god who was the principle of life, in
his struggle with the opposing principle of death. They imagined
that they could recruit his failing energies and even raise him from
the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose
were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural
processes which they wished to facilitate; for it is a familiar tenet of
magic that you can produce any desired effect by merely imitating
it. And as they now explained the fluctuations of growth and decay,
of reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage, the death, and the
rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious or rather magical
dramas turned in great measure on these themes. They set forth the
fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of one at least
of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection. Thus a religious
theory was blended with a magical practice. The combination is
familiar in history. Indeed, few religions have ever succeeded in
wholly extricating themselves from the old trammels of magic. The
inconsistency of acting on two opposite principles, however it may
vex the soul of the philosopher, rarely troubles the common man;
indeed he is seldom even aware of it. His affair is to act, not to
analyse the motives of his action. If mankind had always been
logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and
crime. 2
Of the changes which the seasons bring with them, the most
striking within the temperate zone are those which affect vegetation.
The influence of the seasons on animals, though great, is not
nearly so manifest. Hence it is natural that in the magical dramas
designed to dispel winter and bring back spring the emphasis
should be laid on vegetation, and that trees and plants should
figure in them more prominently than beasts and birds. Yet the two
sides of life, the vegetable and the animal, were not dissociated in
the minds of those who observed the ceremonies. Indeed they
commonly believed that the tie between the animal and the
vegetable world was even closer than it really is; hence they often
combined the dramatic representation of reviving plants with a real
or a dramatic union of the sexes for the purpose of furthering at the
same time and by the same act the multiplication of fruits, of
animals, and of men. To them the principle of life and fertility,
whether animal or vegetable, was one and indivisible. To live and
to cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the
primary wants of men in the past, and they will be the primary
wants of men in the future so long as the world lasts. Other things
may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but unless these
wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These
two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly
sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the
regulation of the seasons. 3
Nowhere, apparently, have these rites been more widely and
solemnly celebrated than in the lands which border the Eastern
Mediterranean. Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and
Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the
yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which
they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from
the dead. In name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in
substance they were the same. The supposed death and
resurrection of this oriental deity, a god of many names but of
essentially one nature, is now to be examined. We begin with
Tammuz or Adonis. 4
The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of
Babylonia and Syria, and the Greeks borrowed it from them as
early as the seventh century before Christ. The true name of the
deity was Tammuz: the appellation of Adonis is merely the Semitic
Adon, "lord," a title of honour by which his worshippers addressed
him. But the Greeks through a misunderstanding converted the title
of honour into a proper name. In the religious literature of Babylonia
Tammuz appears as the youthful spouse or lover of Ishtar, the great
mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of
nature. The references to their connexion with each other in myth
and ritual are both fragmentary and obscure, but we gather from
them that every year Tammuz was believed to die, passing away
from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world, and that
every year his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him "to the
land from which there is no returning, to the house of darkness,
where dust lies on door and bolt." During her absence the passion
of love ceased to operate: men and beasts alike forgot to reproduce
their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately
bound up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole
animal kingdom that without her presence they could not be
discharged. A messenger of the great god Ea was accordingly
despatched to rescue the goddess on whom so much depended.
The stern queen of the infernal regions, Allatu or Eresh-Kigal by
name, reluctantly allowed Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of
Life and to depart, in company probably with her lover Tammuz,
that the two might return together to the upper world, and that with
their return all nature might revive. 5
Laments for the departed Tammuz are contained in several
Babylonian hymns, which liken him to plants that quickly fade. He
is
"A tamarisk that in the garden has drunk no water,
Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom.
A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse,
A willow whose roots were torn up.
A herb that in the garden had drunk no water."
His death appears to have been annually mourned, to the shrill
music of flutes, by men and women about midsummer in the month
named after him, the month of Tammuz. The dirges were seemingly
chanted over an effigy of the dead god, which was washed with
pure water, anointed with oil, and clad in a red robe, while the
fumes of incense rose into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses
by their pungent fragrance and wake him from the sleep of death. In
one of these dirges, inscribed Lament of the Flutes for Tammuz, we
seem still to hear the voices of the singers chanting the sad refrain
and to catch, like far-away music, the wailing notes of the flutes:
"At his vanishing away she lifts up a lament,
`Oh my child!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament;
`My Damu!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament.
`My enchanter and priest!' at his vanishing away she lifts up a
lament,
At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious place,
In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a lament.
Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master, lifts she up a
lament,
Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord, lifts she up a lament.
Her lament is the lament for a herb that grows not in the bed,
Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the ear.
Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a possession,
A weary woman, a weary child, forspent.
Her lament is for a great river, where no willows grow,
Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow not.
Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow not.
Her lament is for a thickest of reeds, where no reeds grow.
Her lament is for woods, where tamarisks grow not.
Her lament is for a wilderness where no cypresses (?) grow.
Her lament is for the depth of a garden of trees, where honey and
wine grow not.
Her lament is for meadows, where no plants grow.
Her lament is for a palace, where length of life grows not." 6
The tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis are better
known to us from the descriptions of Greek writers than from the
fragments of Babylonian literature or the brief reference of the
prophet Ezekiel, who saw the women of Jerusalem weeping for
Tammuz at the north gate of the temple. Mirrored in the glass of
Greek mythology, the oriental deity appears as a comely youth
beloved by Aphrodite. In his infancy the goddess hid him in a
chest, which she gave in charge to Persephone, queen of the
nether world. But when Persephone opened the chest and beheld
the beauty of the babe, she refused to give him back to Aphrodite,
though the goddess of love went down herself to hell to ransom her
dear one from the power of the grave. The dispute between the two
goddesses of love and death was settled by Zeus, who decreed
that Adonis should abide with Persephone in the under world for
one part of the year, and with Aphrodite in the upper world for
another part. At last the fair youth was killed in hunting by a wild
boar, or by the jealous Ares, who turned himself into the likeness of
a boar in order to compass the death of his rival. Bitterly did
Aphrodite lament her loved and lost Adonis. In this form of the myth,
the contest between Aphrodite and Persephone for the possession
of Adonis clearly reflects the struggle between Ishtar and Allatu in
the land of the dead, while the decision of Zeus that Adonis is to
spend one part of the year under ground and another part above
ground is merely a Greek version of the annual disappearance and
reappearance of Tammuz. 7