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May 9, 2015

The World Tree of Eridu

“But the primitive home of Tammuz had been in that “garden” of Edin, or Eden, which Babylonian tradition placed in the immediate vicinity of Eridu. The fragment of an old bilingual hymn has been preserved, which begins in the following way :

1. “(In) Eridu a stalk grew over-shadowing; in a holy place did it become green;

2. its root ([sur]sum) was of white crystal which stretched towards the deep;

3. (before) Ea was its course in Eridu, teeming with fertility;

4. its seat was the (central) place of the earth;

5. its foliage was the couch of Zikum (the primeval) mother.

6. Into the heart of its holy house which spread its shade like a forest hath no man entered.

7. (There is the home) of the mighty mother who passes across the sky.

8. (In) the midst of it was Tammuz.

10. (There is the shrine) of the two (gods).”

The description reminds us of the famous Ygg-drasil of Norse mythology, the world-tree whose roots descend into the world of death, while its branches rise into Asgard, the heaven of the gods.

The Babylonian poet evidently imagined his tree also to be a world-tree, whose roots stretched downwards into the abysmal deep, where Ea presided, nourishing the earth with the springs and streams that forced their way upwards from it to the surface of the ground.

Its seat was the earth itself, which stood midway between the deep below and Zikum, the primordial heavens, above, who rested as it were upon the overshadowing branches of the mighty “stem.” Within it, it would seem, was the holy house of Dav-kina, “the great mother,” and of Tammuz her son, a temple too sacred and far hidden in the recesses of the earth for mortal man to enter.

It is perhaps a reminiscence of this mystic temple that we find in the curious work on Nabathean Agriculture, composed in the fourth or fifth century by a Mandaite of Chaldea, where we are told of the temple of the sun in Babylon, in which the images of the gods from all the countries of the world gathered themselves together to weep for Tammuz.

What the tree or “stalk” was which sprang up like the bean-stalk of our old nursery tale, is indicated in the magical text to which the fragment about it has been appended. In this, Ea describes to Merodach the means whereby he is to cure a man who is possessed of the seven evil spirits.

He is first to go to “the cedar-tree, the tree that shatters the power of the incubus, upon whose core the name of Ea is recorded,” and then, with the help of “a good masal” or phylactery which is placed on the sick man’s head as he lies in bed at night, to invoke the aid of the Fire-god to expel the demons.

It is the cedar, therefore, which played the same part in Babylonian magic as the rowan ash of northern Europe, and which was believed to be under the special protection of Ea; and the parallel, therefore, between the ash Ygg-drasil of Norse mythology and the world-tree of the poet of Eridu becomes even closer than before.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 237-40.

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May 9, 2015

Tammuz, Attys, Hadad, Adonis, Gingras, & Artemis, Istar, Aphrodite, Semiramis, Gingira

“Greek mythology itself knew the name of Tammuz as well as that of Adonis. Theias or Thoas was not only the Lemnian husband of Myrina and the king of the Tauric Khersonese who immolated strangers on the altars of Artemis, he was also king of Assyria and father of Adonis and his sister Myrrha or Smyrna.

In the Kyprian myth the name of Theias is transformed into Kinyras; but, like Theias, he is the father of Adonis by his daughter Myrrha. Myrrha is the invention of a popular etymology; the true form of the name was Smyrna or Myrina, a name famous in the legendary annals of Asia Minor.

Myrina or Smyrna, it was said, was an Amazonian queen, and her name is connected with the four cities of the western coast–Smyrna, Kymê, Myrina and Ephesos–whose foundation was ascribed to Amazonian heroines.

But the Amazons were really the warrior priestesses of the great Asiatic goddess, whom the Greeks called the Artemis of Ephesos, and who was in origin the Istar of Babylonia modified a little by Hittite influence.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Ménant's Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17323/17323-h/17323-h.htm#linkBimage-0018

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Ménant’s Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17323/17323-h/17323-h.htm#linkBimage-0018

It was she who, in the Asianic cult of Attys or Hadad, took the place of Istar and Aphroditê; for just as Attys himself was Tammuz, so the goddess with whom he was associated was Istar. At Hierapolis, which succeeded to the religious fame and beliefs of the ancient Hittite city of Carchemish, the name under which the goddess went seems to have been Semiramis, and it is possible that Semiramis and Smyrna are but varying forms of the same word.

However this may be, in the Kyprian Kinyras who takes the place of Theias we have a play upon the Phoenician kinnór, or “either,” which is said to have been used in the worship of Adonis. But its real origin seems to be indicated by the name of Gingras which Adonis himself bore. Here it is difficult not to recognize the old Accadian equivalent of Istar, Gingira or Gingiri, “the creatress.”

The fact that Tammuz was the son of Ea points unmistakably to the source both of his name and of his worship. He must have been the primitive Sun-god of Eridu, standing in the same relation to Ea, the god of Eridu, that Adar stood to Mul-lil, the god of Nipur.

"Cylinder seal impression which may portray Dumuzi retained in the underworld, flanked by snakes." (cf. illustration and text on p. 71. Henrietta McCall. Mesopotamian Myths. London. British Museum Publications in cooperation with the University of Texas Press, Austin. 1990, 1993) http://www.bibleorigins.net/CherubimOrigins.html

“Cylinder seal impression which may portray Dumuzi retained in the underworld, flanked by snakes.” (cf. illustration and text on p. 71. Henrietta McCall. Mesopotamian Myths. London. British Museum Publications in cooperation with the University of Texas Press, Austin. 1990, 1993)
http://www.bibleorigins.net/CherubimOrigins.html

It is even possible that the boar whose tusk proved fatal to Adonis may originally have been Adar himself. Adar, as we have seen, was called the “lord of the swine” in the Accadian period, and the Semitic abhorrence of the animal may have used it to symbolise the ancient rivalry between the Sun-god of Nipur and the Sun-god of Eridu.

Those who would see in the Cain and Abel of Scripture the representatives of elemental deities, and who follow Dr. Oppert in explaining the name of Abel by the Babylonian ablu, “the son,” slightly transformed by a popular etymology, may be inclined to make them the Adar and Tammuz of Chaldean faith.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 235-6.

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