There could not surely be two Tammuz feasts in the month Tammuz? We are therefore confronted by the singular facts that Tammuz lay 'on a funeral pyre'[23] and also that, as the Sacæan victim, who, Mr. Frazer thinks it 'worth suggesting' personated Tammuz, he was at the same feast, the Sacæa, whipped and hanged.[24] Mr. Frazer goes on: 'If this conjecture is right, the view that the mock-king at the Sacæa was slain in the character of a god' (Tammuz) 'would be established.'
But it was established already, was it not on other grounds, to Mr. Frazer's satisfaction, in ii. 26? There the criminal victim died as a king, and as a god, for the king was a god, and so was his proxy. Now, on the other hand, if Mr. Frazer's latest conjecture is right, the victim dies as a real known god, Tammuz. We keep asking, Was the king also an incarnation of Tammuz? May I not be excused for surmising that we have here an hypothesis in the making, an hypothesis resting on two different theories? If Mr. Frazer holds that the king of Babylon was also Tammuz, as the mock-king was, here was the opportunity for saying so, and proving the fact from Babylonian texts.
Mr. Frazer here gives us a Tammuz feast in which Tammuz lies on a funeral pyre, and also a Tammuz feast in which the human representative of that deity is whipped and hanged, while 'the dead Tammuz was probably represented in effigy,' water was poured over him, and he came to life again. How? In the person of Mordecai? These are the results of ii. 123, 124, and of ii. 253, 254.
These things are, confessedly, conjectures. But one thing is quite certain: the Sacæa, wherein Tammuz either lay on a funeral pyre, and afterwards had water poured over him, 'probably in effigy,' or was hanged, was a festival of June-July. Variations of calendars, however, might make the Sacæa fall 'from midsummer to autumn or from June to September' (ii. 123, note of Mr. Robertson Smith). These dates are remote from Eastertide.
To this point Mr. Frazer[25] promises 'to return later.' He does so in the most disconcerting manner. For when he returns the Sacæa, which were in the month Tammuz, June-July,[26] startle us by being held in March or March-April.[27] May I not say that I seem to detect traces of an hypothesis in the making, and of discrepant theories? We have already been rather puzzled by the Tammuz on a funeral pyre, who has cold water poured over him, 'probably in effigy,' and also is honoured by being whipped and hanged in the person of a human representative, a mock-king, at the same festival. But perhaps there were two Tammuz feasts in the month of Tammuz? And possibly the victim was whipped and hanged at one of them, while his mortal remains were burned on the pyre at the other? 'It is quite possible,' says Mr. Frazer, when explaining why a victim of a sacrifice was hanged, not burned as is usual, 'that both forms of execution, or rather of sacrifice, may have been combined by hanging or crucifying the victim first and burning him afterwards;'[28] but he neglects the buxom opportunity of corroborating this conjecture, by referring to the Tammuz victim who had both a funeral pyre and a gibbet, in ii. 123, 124, 253, 254.
III. A POSSIBLE RECONCILIATION
There is, perhaps, a mode of reconciling the dates of the Tammuz festivals, at one of which Tammuz was honoured with a pyre, at the other (in the person of his representative, the Sacæan mock-king) with a gibbet. Dr. Jastrow places a Tammuz feast in the fourth month, which, if the Babylonian year begins, as Mr. Frazer says it does, with the month Nisan, means that the fourth month and a Tammuz feast occurred in our June-July. But Dr. Jastrow also writes that in the sixth Babylonian month, our August-September, 'there was celebrated a festival to Tammuz.'[29]
Thus Tammuz might have his gibbet in June-July, and his pyre in August-September. But alas! this will not do, for the pyre is of June-July.[30] Nor can he have his gibbet in August-September, as I had fondly hoped, for he is to be identified with the mock-king of the Sacæa, and the month of his hanging is Tammuz, Lous, or June-July, if Mr. Robertson Smith is right.[31] Thus I really fail to believe that Tammuz could have both a burning and a hanging in June-July. I hoped that Dr. Jastrow's two Tammuz feasts had solved the problem, but I hoped in vain.
IV. THE SACÆA SUDDENLY CHANGES ITS DATE
Meanwhile, even though we have allowed for two Tammuz feasts, are we also to admit a third Tammuz feast at the March festival of the Sacæa? For in vol. iii. 151-153, March has become the date of the Sacæa, rather to our surprise, for the date had been June-July.[32] Now three Tammuz feasts in six months seem one too many, if not two. Consequently the arguments which in ii. 123, 124, 253, 254, show the Sacæan victim, because he died in the month Tammuz, to represent the god Tammuz fail, perhaps, if the victim really died in March, at the Babylonian Zakmuk, or Zagmuku, a feast in honour, not of Tammuz, but of Bau (a goddess), and later of Marduk.[33] Neither Bau nor Marduk is Tammuz; nor does the victim seem likely to represent Tammuz, after his death is shifted from the Tammuz feasts of May-June or June-July, July-August, to March, when the feast was really in honour, not of Tammuz, but of Bau, or later, of Marduk.