TAMMŪZ. – Mesopotamian god (Sumerian DUMU-ZI, Akkadian Tamūzu) of vegetation, young and blossoming again in spring after the winter death (= descent into the underworld or death), dying when the summer sun dries out the earth. The cult of T. was Sumerian (DUMU-ZI = “son”), predating 5000 B.C. Its annual festival 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 Išarat šamē) mentioned in Jer. 7:18, the Assyrian Venus with whom the Phoenician Astarte was identified.
Perhaps he is connected with the legendary King Dumu-zi (who reigned for 28,880 years), a famous hunter, successor of Lugalbanda, tamer of dragons, and predecessor of Gilgameš. Like Šamaš, T. receives the title of “shepherd” (rē'ō). T.’s sister is Geštin-anna (“vine of heaven”), called Bēlit-gēri (“Lady of the countryside”). Around 1000 B.C., T. replaced the Canaanite deities, known from the Ugaritic texts, Alijan and Mōt. The principal god of many Syrians and Phoenicians was 'Adōn, “lord” (= ba'al), whence the Greco-Latin Adonis later derived (v. ADONE). The proper name concealed beneath the title 'Adōn was apparently 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 sixteenth century B.C.) the ancient Asiatic myth of T.; thus Isis came to be identified with Ištar or Astarte. Related 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 ff.), through contacts with the Syro-Phoenicians and through the Assyro-Babylonian conquerors. He was “the beloved of the Syrian women” (Dan. 11:37 ff.). Ez. 8:14 stigmatizes, in 590 B.C., the idolatrous “abomination” (tō'ēbhāh) of the cult of T. at the northern gate of the Temple: there sat the women who were mourning T. Whereas the Septuagint transliterates the name as Θαμυιούς, St. Jerome translates it as Adonis and then explains the myth of the death and resurrection of T.-Adonis, celebrated by the women with lamentations followed by rejoicing and songs (PL 25, 82). But the celebration of T.’s resurrection, unknown to Ez. 8:14, must be a later addition and 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 from texts. C. Autran repeats (1941) what H. Gunkel (1903), C. Vellay (1904), W. Frazer (1907), and H. Gressmann (1908) had imagined, and what W. Baudissin (1911) effectively refuted: that Jesus was a transposition of the myth of Adonis-T.; they cite St. Jerome (PL 22, 581)
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