But all this depends on following Jensen, which we are not to do. Mr. Frazer seems to hold that though according to 'the view of Jensen, which some high authorities are disposed to accept, Haman is identical with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites,'[25] yet originally this was not really the case.
Let us suppose it to have been the case, and I can suggest an excellent solution. Fatigued by the task of producing sons who had to be sacrificed yearly as his substitutes, the king of early Babylon at one time annually sacrificed as his proxy an Elamite captive, who, to deride Elamite religion, was also the human representative of the Elamite god, Humman, and therefore was called Humman, or Haman. Just so the Aztecs sacrificed captives as representatives of their own gods.[26] But, as relations between Elam and Babylon grew more peaceful, Elamite captives were scarce. The king of Babylon then substituted for an Elamite war-prisoner a condemned criminal, who still represented the Elamite Humman, or Haman, but also, as in the original hypothesis, represented the king of Babylon. We must next conjecture that Humman himself was a god of vegetation; indeed, I can hardly suppose that any god whatever did not represent the principle of vegetable life. So Humman must not only die but have a resurrection, as vegetable gods often do.
Now, thanks to my hypothesis, all is clear, and every difficulty is removed. We once more see that the kings of Babylon were sacrificed regularly every year. Let us say that they were burned, as victims usually were. Indeed, Movers thought that 'at the Sacæa also the man who played the god for five days was originally burnt at the end of them.'[27] Mr. Frazer himself suggests that, in the progress of philanthropy, the man who used to be burned was merely scourged and hanged or crucified by way of 'a later mitigation of his sufferings.'[28] Or perhaps he was hanged first, and burned afterwards, as in our good old-fashioned punishment for treason, whereby many Jesuits were cut down alive, and many Jacobites, their bowels being burned before their living eyes.[29] But to burn a man only half hanged and still capable of feeling pain would not mitigate his sufferings.
My own theory pleases me better. When tired of being sacrificed yearly, the Babylonian king provided a substitute in a son, or other member of the royal family, with what sad and ruinous results to the dynasty I have already shown. Let us suppose that the princely substitutes were also really sacrificed by burning. But here the merit of my theory comes in, and, I hope, shines forth. Wearied of sacrificing princes of his house, the king substitutes Elamite prisoners of war. There is no objection to whipping and hanging them, except the frivolous objection that they at once cease to be sacrifices, and we can overcome that difficulty by supposing that they were hanged first, and burned afterwards, or 'wirryit at are stake' (like George Wishart in St. Andrews), and then burned. This makes it needless to regard whipping and hanging as a 'mitigation.'
The next step is, when Elamite wars cease, and Elamite captives are not procurable, to substitute a condemned criminal, who, he also, like the Elamite prisoners, is called Humman, and represents both the king of Babylon, and Humman, an Elamite god of vegetation, who, like Tammuz, has his resurrection. We thus get:
1. Babylonian king. Incarnates the god of vegetation. Is therefore sacrificed annually to keep the god provided with a succession of fresh and sturdy subjects to be incarnated in. The king is burned.
2. His sons or nephews are treated in the same way, for the same reasons, annually. The king escapes.
3. An Elamite war-prisoner becomes the king's substitute. He also represents the Elamite god of vegetation. In mockery of the Elamites and their god he is scourged and hanged. Observe the Aztec analogy, though to be sure the Aztec captive, representing an Aztec god, is merely sacrificed. But he represents a friendly god.
4. The substitute is next a condemned criminal. He also is whipped and hanged. Like the Elamite war-captive he represents the king of Babylon, and dies for him. He also dies as the Elamite god of vegetable life, and, as such, has a resurrection, in the shape of Mordecai, who represents the Babylonian supreme god, Marduk (not Tammuz or another), and is not hanged till next year, when he becomes Haman or Humman, represents the king of Babylon, represents the Elamite god of vegetation, and is whipped and hanged, after enjoying (as king) the caresses of the royal harem, and as Humman the embraces of a sacred harlot, Vashti, who personates Ishtar. After being hanged (and perhaps burned) he has a pseudo-resurrection in the Marduk of that year, the Humman of the next. And so on, both at the Sacæa and at Purim.
This hypothesis appears to be in many ways an advance on any one of Mr. Frazer's hypotheses. It allows us to keep up the Jewish Haman as personating Humman; which seems necessary, for how otherwise is Haman to be explained? We are, moreover, enabled to understand how a victim who represented a vanquished Elamite god, also, and at the same time, represented a victorious Babylonian king. Humman being, by my hypothesis, an Elamite kind of Tammuz, all our anxieties about the appearance of Marduk and Humman, where Tammuz had previously done duty, disappear. Purim, which had been a Tammuz feast (if we accept Jensen's solution) and also a feast where a man died for the king, and then a feast of triumph for the victory of the Babylonian gods, and 'a wholly secular merrymaking,' though, if Purim is a Jewish Tammuz feast, it had been, according to Ezekiel (who perhaps knew best), a religious rite of a false religion, now becomes all these things at once, though some may doubt how Purim could be, simultaneously, both religious and secular. But I would not abandon my theory merely because it involves a contradiction in terms. Add to all this that we can now have a Tammuz death and resurrection in June-July, and another in March-April, and all is translucent. At the summer festival we burn a dummy;[30] at the vernal feast we hang a man.[31]