TAMMUZ. - The Mesopotamian god (Sumerian DUMU-ZI, Akkadian Tammūz) of vegetation, young and flourishing in spring after winter death (= descent into the underworld or death), dying when the summer sun parches the earth. The cult of T. was Sumerian (DUMU-ZI = “son”), dating before 3000 B.C. An annual festival of his was celebrated in the fourth month, called T. (June–July). Closely associated with the cult of T. was that of Ištar, the “queen of heaven” (Akkadian Ištarat šamê), the Assyrian Venus with whom the Phoenician Astarte was identified.
Perhaps connected with the legendary (for 28,880 years) king Dumuzid, famous hunter, successor of Lugalbanda the dragon-tamer, and predecessor of Gilgameš. Like Šamaš, T. bears the title “shepherd” (rē’û). T.’s sister is Geštin-anna (“vine of heaven”), also called Bēlit-šerî (Lady of the Steppe). By about 1000 B.C., T. had replaced the Canaanite deities, known from Ugaritic texts, Aliyan and Môt. The chief god of many Syro-Phoenicians was Adôn “lord” (= ba‘al), whence later came the Greco-Latinized Adonis (v. ADONES). The proper name that lay behind the title ‘Adôn was, it seems, T.; the Syro-Phoenician T. (Adonis of Byblos) was identified, at least in part, with the Egyptian Osiris, whose myth must have influenced from the 16th century B.C. the Paleo-Asiatic myth of T.; thus Isis is equated with Ištar or Astarte. Affined to T. is Telipinu of the Hittite pantheon, who dies in autumn and rises again in spring.
T. had been introduced among the Israelites, even in Jerusalem itself (Is. 17:10–11), through contacts with the Syro-Phoenicians and the Assyro-Babylonian conquerors. He was “the beloved of the Syrian women” (Dan. 11:37–38). Ezek. 8:14 stigmatizes in 590 B.C. the idolatrous “abomination” (lô’ēbhâh) of T.’s cult at the northern gate of the Temple: there sat the women weeping for T. While the Septuagint renders Ôqûmûv, St. Jerome translates Adonis and then explains the myth of T.-Adonis’ death and resurrection, celebrated by women with weeping followed by joy and song (PL 25, 82). Yet the celebration of T.’s resurrection, unknown to Ezek. 8:14, must be a later addition, not original. According to F. E. Brown, the pagan temple near the synagogue at Dura-Europos, built between A.D. 150 and 160 and modified between 175 and 182, was dedicated to Adonis-T.; no other temple of Adonis is known, either from monuments or texts. C. Autran repeats (1941) the fancies of H. Gunkel (1903), C. Vellay (1904), J. G. Frazer (1907), H. Gressmann (1908)—well refuted by W. Baudissin (1911)—that Jesus was a transposition of the Adonis-T. myth; they cite St. Jerome (PL 22, 581).