Here the story is again lost, Columns V. and VI. being absent. It would seem that Hea-bani is here telling his friend how he must die and descend into the house of Hades. Mr. Smith, however, thought that in the third column some one is speaking to Istar, trying to persuade her not to descend to Hades, while in the fourth column the goddess, who is suffering all the pangs of jealousy and hate, revels in the dark details of the description of the lower regions, and declares her determination to go there.

If this view is correct, this part of the legend would be connected with the beautiful story of the Descent of Istar into Hades which describes how the goddess descended into the lower world in search of her husband Tammuz, the Sun-god, who had been slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. Tammuz became Adonis, the Phœnician adonai “lord,” among the Greeks, to whom the story of Aphroditê and Adonis had been carried by the Phœnicians. The story is one which meets us in the mythologies of many races and nations throughout the world, and has grown in each case out of the winter-sleep of the sun and his resurrection in the spring. Its last echo in our own European folklore may be heard in the tale of the Sleeping Beauty. A calendar found among the banking records of the Egibi firm in Babylonia notes on the 15th day of the month Tammuz or June “an eclipse of the Moon,” apparently in reference to the descent of the Moon-goddess Istar into Hades. The legend survives in a changed form in the Talmud (Yoma 69b, Sanhedrim 60a). Here it is said that after the Captivity the elders of the nation, headed by Ezra and Nehemiah, besought God that the demon of lust might be delivered into their hands. In spite of a prophetic voice which warned them of the consequences of their request, it was persisted in, and the demon was given up to them and imprisoned. But before three days were over, the whole course of the world was thrown into disorder. No eggs even were to be had, and the Jewish elders were obliged to confess their mistake and release the demon from his fetters.

The descent of Istar into Hades from K 162.

Column II.

This remarkable text shows Istar fulfilling her threat and descending to Hades, but it does not appear that she had as yet accomplished her vengeance against Izdubar.

At the opening of the sixth tablet we have the final scene of the contest with Khumbaba. Izdubar, after slaying Khumbaba, takes the crown from the head of the monarch and places it on his own head, thus signifying that he assumed the empire. There were, as we are informed in several places, kings, lords, and princes, merely local rulers, but these generally submitted to the greatest power; and just as they had bowed to Khumbaba, so they were ready now to submit to Izdubar. The kingdom promised to Izdubar when he started to encounter Khumbaba now became his by right of superior force, and he entered the halls of the palace of Erech and feasted with his heroes.

We are thus brought to a curious part of the story, the romance of Izdubar and Istar. One of the strange and dark features of the Babylonian religion was the Istar or Venus worship, which was an adoration of the reproductive power of nature, accompanied by ceremonies which were a reproach to the country. The city of Erech, originally a seat of the worship of Anu, was now one of the foremost cities in this Istar worship. Tammuz, the young and beautiful Sun-god, the dead bridegroom of Istar, seems to be also spoken of as the brother of her handmaid Kharimat. This explains, as M. Lenormant has pointed out, the passage in Jeremiah xxii. 18, which preserves a portion of the wailing cry uttered by the worshippers of Tammuz or Adonis when celebrating his untimely death. This should be rendered: “Ah me, my brother, and ah me, my sister! Ah me, Adonis, and ah me, his lady!” Reference is made to the worship of Tammuz, which was carried on within the Temple itself at Jerusalem, in Ezek. viii. 14, Amos viii. 10, (where we should translate “as at the mourning for the only son” Tammuz), and Zech. xii. 10, 11. Tammuz is the Semitic form of the Accadian Dumuzi which signified in that language “the only son.”