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.[[120]]
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".[[121]] 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, 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....
Over the door and bolts is scattered dust.
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,
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.
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.