The theory, if Haman is Humman, and is also the victim, has now put on an aspect which I can almost accept. If Haman stands for Humman, and if Humman is a vanquished god of the hostile Elamites, then we solve that hard problem, namely why the human representative of a king or friendly god was whipped and hanged, and mocked at the Sacæa. The victim, I shall show, _did_ represent the rightful king, but also personated the vanquished deity of a race long inimical but now subdued. So his harsh treatment was, if vulgar, not unnatural. But all this depends on following Jensen, which we are not to do. Mr. Frazer seems to hold that though according to 'the view of Jensen, which some high authorities are disposed to accept, Haman is identical with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites,'[25] yet _originally_ this was not really the case. Let us suppose it to have been the case, and I can suggest an excellent solution. Fatigued by the task of producing sons who had to be sacrificed yearly as his substitutes, the king of early Babylon at one time annually sacrificed as his proxy an Elamite captive, who, to deride Elamite religion, was also the human representative of the Elamite god, Humman, and therefore was called Humman, or Haman. Just so the Aztecs sacrificed captives as representatives of their own gods.[26] But, as relations between Elam and Babylon grew more peaceful, Elamite captives were scarce. The king of Babylon then substituted for an Elamite war-prisoner a condemned criminal, who still represented the Elamite Humman, or Haman, but also, as in the original hypothesis, represented the king of Babylon. We must next conjecture that Humman himself was a god of vegetation; indeed, I can hardly suppose that any god whatever did not represent the principle of vegetable life. So Humman must not only die but have a resurrection, as vegetable gods often do. Now, thanks to my hypothesis, all is clear, and every difficulty is removed. We once more see that the kings of Babylon were sacrificed regularly every year. Let us say that they were burned, as victims usually were. Indeed, Movers thought that 'at the Sacæa also the man who played the god for five days was originally burnt at the end of them.'[27] Mr. Frazer himself suggests that, in the progress of philanthropy, the man who used to be burned was merely scourged and hanged or crucified by way of 'a later mitigation of his sufferings.'[28] Or perhaps he was hanged first, and burned afterwards, as in our good old-fashioned punishment for treason, whereby many Jesuits were cut down alive, and many Jacobites, their bowels being burned before their living eyes.[29] But to burn a man only half hanged and still capable of feeling pain would not mitigate his sufferings.