Chapter III: A Possible Reconciliation

There is, perhaps, a mode of reconciling the dates of the Tammuz festivals, at one of which Tammuz was honoured with a pyre, at the other (in the person of his representative, the Sacæan mock-king) with a gibbet. Dr. Jastrow places a Tammuz feast in the fourth month, which, if the Babylonian year begins, as Mr. Frazer says it does, with the month Nisan, means that the fourth month and a Tammuz feast occurred in our June-July. But Dr. Jastrow also writes that in the sixth Babylonian month, our August-September, 'there was celebrated a festival to Tammuz.'[29]

Thus Tammuz might have his gibbet in June-July, and his pyre in August-September. But alas! this will not do, for the pyre is of June-July.[30] Nor can he have his gibbet in August-September, as I had fondly hoped, for he is to be identified with the mock-king of the Sacæa, and the month of his hanging is Tammuz, Lous, or June-July, if Mr. Robertson Smith is right.[31] Thus I really fail to believe that Tammuz could have both a burning and a hanging in June-July. I hoped that Dr. Jastrow's two Tammuz feasts had solved the problem, but I hoped in vain.