that it is not the tragic death of Attis-Adonis which is of importance
for these cults, but their subsequent restoration to life, a feature
which cannot be postulated of any ordinary mortal.

And how are we to regard Tammuz, the prototype of all these deities?
Is there any possible ground for maintaining that he was ever a man?
Prove it we cannot, as the records of his cult go back thousands of
years before our era. Here, again, we have the same dominant feature;
it is not merely the untimely death which is lamented, but the
restoration to life which is celebrated.

Throughout the whole study the author fails to discriminate between
the activities of the living, and the dead, king. The Dead king may,
as I have said above, be regarded as the Benefactor, as the
Protector, of his people, but it is the Living king upon whom their
actual and continued prosperity depends. The detail that the ruling
sovereign is sometimes regarded as the re-incarnation of the original
founder of the race strengthens this point--the king never dies--Le
Roi est mort, Vive le Roi is very emphatically the motto of this
Faith. It is the insistence on Life, Life continuous, and
ever-renewing, which is the abiding characteristic of these cults, a
characteristic which differentiates them utterly and entirely from the
ancestral worship with which Sir W. Ridgeway would fain connect them.

Nor are the arguments based upon the memorial rites of definitely
historical heroes, of comparatively late date, such as Hussein and
Hossein, of any value here. It is precisely the death, and not the
resurrection, of the martyr which is of the essence of the Muharram.
No one contends that Hussein rose from the dead, but it is precisely
this point which is of primary importance in the Nature cults; and Sir