Tammuz/Dumuzi

"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."
     - Sir James George Frazer, The Illustrated Golden Bough

As the farmer, let him make the fields fertile
As the shepherd, let him make the sheepfolds multiply,
Under his reign let there be vegetation,
Under his reign let there be rich grain
     - "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi"

The cult of Dumuzi the Shepherd (Uruk, fourth millennium BC) "comprises both happy celebration of the marriage of the god with Inanna (who, originally, it seems, was the goddess of the communal storehouse) and bitter laments when he dies as the dry heat of summer yellows the pastures and lambing, calving, and milking come to an end.:
     - Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness

"The wild bull who has lain down, lives no more,
the wild bull who has lain down,
lives no more,
Dumuzi, the wild bull, who has lain down,
lives no more,
...the chief shepherd, lives no more,
the wild bull who has lain down, lives no more....

"On his couch you have made the jackals lie down,
in my husband's fold you have made the raven dwell,
his reed pipe - the wind will have to play it,
my husband's songs - the north wind will have to sing them"
     - "The Most Bitter Cry"

Dumuzi's death occurs "when the grain is cut at harvest and then brewed into beer which goes into storage underground: that is to say, into the netherworld....When Dumuzi of the beer disappears underground in the spring or early summer, his sister, the wine goddess [Geshtinanna] seeks him disconsolately until, by autumn, she herself descends into the earth and finds him there in the netherworld. The myth further explains how this difference in the time of living and growing above ground became permanent through divine fiat: Inanna determined as their fate that they were to alternate substituting for her in the netherworld."
A cult ritual "began with laments sung as a sacred cedar tree growing in the compound of the temple Eanna in Uruk. This sacred cedar not only marked the god's birthplace but was itself considered his mother, and probably the bend in the river where the god was met was nearby. The rite seems to have closed with a triumphant procession that followed the god downstream. the god appears to represent the sap lying dormant in the rushes and trees during the dry season but reviving, to the profound relief and joy of the orchardman, with the river's rise."
     - Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness

"In Mesopotamia the 'mountain' is the place where the mysterious potency of the earth, and hence of all natural life, is concentrated."
There is a rough terra-cotta relief found at Assur in a temple of the second millennium B.C. which shows a deity whose body grows out of the mountainside, while plants grow from his body and from his hands. "Deities like the main figure of this relief were worshipped in all Mesopotamian cities, although their names differed. Tammus is the best known of them. As personifications of natural life they were thought to be incapacitated during the Mesopotamian summer, which is a scourge destroying vegetation and utterly exhausting man and beast. The myths express this by saying that the god 'dies' or that he is kept captive in the 'mountain'. From the 'mountain' he comes forth at the New Year when nature revives...Thus the 'mountain' is essentially the mysterious sphere of activity of the superhuman powers. The Sumerians created the conditions under which communication with the gods became possible when they erected the artificial mountains for their temples."
     - Dr. Henri Frankfort, Birth of Civilization in the Near East

"The rectangular central shrine of the temple, known as a 'cella,' had a brick altar or offering table in front of a statue of the temple's deity. The cella was lined on its long ends by many rooms for priests and priestesses. These mud-brick buildings were decorated with cone geometrical mosaics, and the occasional fresco with human and animal figures. These temple complexes eventually evolved into towering ziggurats.
"The temple was staffed by priests, priestesses, musicians, singers, castrates and hierodules. Various public rituals, food sacrifices, and libations took place there on a daily basis. There were monthly feasts and annual, New Year celebrations. During the later, the king would be married to Inanna as the resurrected fertility god Dumuzi..."
     - Christopher Siren, "Sumerian Mythology FAQ" (Version 1.5html)

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