"Kings who in their day played the role of Tammuz in the mystery of
this cult"; he considers that here we have to do with kings who, by a
symbolic act, escaped the final penalty of sacrifice as representative
of the Dying God.[11]

The full importance of the evidence above set forth will become more
clearly apparent as we proceed with our investigation; here I would
simply draw attention to the fact that we now possess definite proof
that, at a period of some 3000 years B.C., the idea of a Being upon
whose life and reproductive activities the very existence of Nature
and its corresponding energies was held to depend, yet who was himself
subject to the vicissitudes of declining powers and death, like an
ordinary mortal, had already assumed a fixed, and practically final,
form; further, that this form was specially crystallized in ritual
observances. In our study of the later manifestations of this cult we
shall find that this central idea is always, and unalterably, the
same, and is, moreover, frequently accompanied by a remarkable
correspondence of detail. The chain of evidence is already strong,
and we may justly claim that the links added by further research
strengthen, while they lengthen, that chain.


PART II. ADONIS

While it is only of comparatively recent date that information as to
the exact character of the worship directed to Tammuz has been
available and the material we at present possess is but fragmentary in
character, the corresponding cult of the Phoenician-Greek divinity we
know as Adonis has for some years been the subject of scholarly
research. Not only have the details of the ritual been examined and