TAMMUZ, I

(Tamʹmuz).

A deity identified in Babylonian texts as the youthful consort or lover of the fertility goddess Ishtar. Annually the Babylonians bewailed the death of Tammuz, and this feature of his worship was practiced by apostate Hebrew women. (Ezek. 8:14) It has been suggested that Tammuz was the actual name of Adonis, and that the Greeks, who, it is thought, adopted his worship from the Semites of Syria and Babylonia, converted the title “Adonis” (lord) into a proper name. Tammuz or Adonis is generally identified with other gods who were believed to die and come back to life annually, such as the Egyptian Osiris and the Phrygian Attis. The cross was Tammuz’ symbol.

Alexander Hislop, in his book The Two Babylons, pages 21 to 23, identifies Tammuz with Nimrod, “a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah” (Gen. 10:9), saying: “In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. viii. 14) under the name of Tammuz, but he is commonly known among classical writers under the name of Bacchus, that is, ‘The Lamented one.’ To the ordinary reader the name of Bacchus suggests nothing more than revelry and drunkenness, but it is now well known, that amid all the abominations that attended his orgies, their grand design was professedly ‘the purification of souls,’ and that from the guilt and defilement of sin. This lamented one, exhibited and adored as a little child in his mother’s arms, seems, in point of fact, to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name, Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified ‘The Son.’ . . . Now, this Ninus, or ‘Son,’ borne in the arms of the Babylonian Madonna, is so described as very clearly to identify him with Nimrod. ‘Ninus, king of the Assyrians,’ says Trogus Pompeius, epitomised by Justin, ‘first of all changed the contented moderation of the ancient manners, incited by a new passion, the desire of conquest. He was the first who carried on war against his neighbours, and he conquered all nations from Assyria to Lybia, as they were yet unacquainted with the arts of war.’ This account points directly to Nimrod, and can apply to no other.”—See ADONIS.