24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered until now unfortunately gives the details. Only the remarkable fragment about the black pine of Eridhu, "marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest, into the heart whereof man hath not penetrated," (see p. 287) tantalizingly ends with these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi...." Scholars have found reason for conjecturing that this fragment was the beginning of a mythical narrative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have been represented as taking place in that dark and sacred forest of Eridhu,--probably through the agency of a wild beast sent against him by a jealous and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu was sent against Izdubar.[BI] One thing, however, is sure, that both in the earlier (Turanian) and in the later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea, there was a month set apart in honor and for the festival of Dumuzi. It was the month of June-July, beginning at the summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, and the sun to decline towards its lower winter point--a retrograde movement, ingeniously indicated by the Zodiacal sign of that month, the Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted during the six first days of the month, with processions and ceremonies bearing two distinct characters. The worshippers at first assembled in the guise of mourners, with lamentations and loud wailings, tearing of clothes and of hair, as though celebrating the young god's funeral, while on the sixth day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was commemorated with the noisiest, most extravagant demonstrations of rejoicing. This custom is alluded to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love-message, when he says to her: "Thou lovedst Dumuzi, _for whom they mourn year after year_," and was witnessed by the Jews when they were carried prisoners to Babylon as late as 600 B.C., as expressly mentioned by Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity:--"Then he brought me to the door of the Lord's house which was towards the north; _and behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz_." (Ezekiel, iii. 14.)