Tammuz was supposed to leave the land with the season when the spring growth was completed, to come back again in the following year. He is considered as dead, but his death is not an absolute one. He tells the mourners what to do as they gather about his bier. According to some allusions he seems also to be a lord, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, preparing the inner earth for putting forth a new stock of vegetation, as spring shall come. Hence, the hymn to Tammuz in this Thesis calls him “the generator of the lower world”. His association with his friend Gišzida substantiates more fully the idea of his resurrection. To give vitality to his work he still maintains his old personality of sun-god, and to him again is given a seat in heaven, as the Adapa legend shows: “On mounting up to heaven, At the gate of Anu Tammuz and Gišzida were stationed.”[37] The story of Tammuz seems to have taken deep and almost universal hold of the imagination and sympathy of mankind. The weeping for Tammuz is said to have been maintained by the Babylonians till a very late period. Similar stories to that of the Tammuz legend existed in about the same period of history among the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Egyptians, the most of these accounts having a common origin; if they have more than one origin, they seem nevertheless to blend in the main into one story. It is said that in the Phoenician town of Gebal by the Mediterranean on the road leading from the people of the east to those of the west, there is a yearly lamentation over the death of their sun-god, the beloved Aštoreth, who had been slain by a cruel hand, just as the spring verdure was cut down by the hot blasts of summer. The women, tearing their hair, disfiguring their faces and cutting their breasts, sent up a cry to heaven: “O my brother!” Across the sea by the way of Cyprus, the cry is said to have been carried to Greece where it found embodiment in the story of Adonis and Aphrodite. Possibly, however, the Greek story may be indigenous. Adonis lost his life while hunting, thrust through the thigh with the tusk of a wild boar. After death he was in great favour with Persephone who finally yielded to the entreaties of the inconsolable Aphrodite, and Adonis spent one half of the year with his celestial mistress and the other half with his infernal one. How much place the annual weeping for a departed one had among the Hebrews may be inferred to some extent by the mention made in the Scriptures of the service. Zechariah speaks of the well-known mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon, and Amos refers to the custom of mourning for an only son. Ezekiel says that the Lord brought him to Jehovah’s house “and behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz”. Jeremiah goes a step further and gives us the refrain which was used in the weeping: “Ah me! Ah my brother!” The parallel story in Egypt had for its hero the god Osiris who, representing goodness, upon