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secured her release from " the land of No-Return," and presumably also that of her lover.

Outside of Babylonian literature and Ezek. viii. 14, the references to Tammuz under that name are few, but fortunately significant. Thus the Syrian lexicographer Bar Bahlul reports that Tammuz, a shepherd and hunter, was beloved by Balthi (Bald), whom he carried off and whose hush. Tammuz band he slew, but was in turn killed by

. fell in love with Tamuz, son of Guthar, king of the Phenicians, and . . . came and dwelt in Gebal (Byblu9; Gee PIIENICIA, PIIENICIANa, L, § 7).

. Also, before Tamuz, she had fallen in love with Arcs, and committed adultery with him; and Hephaistos, her husband, caught her, and his jealousy was roused against her, and he came and killed Tamuz in Mt. Lebanon as he was hunting wild boars; * and from that time Balthi remained in Gebal. And she died in the city of Aphiki (Aphaka, see below, § 7) where Tamuz was buried." The data here are sufficient to establish the connection between the Babylonian Tammuz, the beloved of Ishtar, and Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite. Similarly, the statement that Balthi was the consort of Hephaestus and had a liaison with Ares, identifies her with Aphrodite, while the fact that she loved Tammuz identifies her with Ishtar, giving the equation Balthi=Ishtar-Aphrodite-Venus. It is to be noted, however, that the scene of action is no longer Babylonia, but the Lebanon and Phenicia, particularly Byblus or Gebal and Aphaka.

Strabo (XVL, i. 18) and Lucian (De dea Syria, §§ 6 sqq.) report that at Byblus there was a great sanctuary of Aphrodite where the worship of Adonis was conducted, and the former declares that the city was sacred to him and to Kinyras

and Nahr him, which had its mouth a short disIbrahim. tance south of the city, in early times bore the name of Adonis (Lucian, ut sup., viii.; E. Reran, Mission de Phenicie, pp. 282 sqq., Paris, 1864), and the discoloration of its waters at the time of the freshets was attributed to the blood of the deity. For suitability to the rites which were associated with the Aphrodite and Adonis cults, as well as for romance and beauty, the glen of the river is remarkable (Robinson, Researches, iii. 603-609). At the head of the glen in the mountains is Afka, the ancient Aphaka, where was a grove of Astarte and a temple (to " Venus ") at the spot

* The connection of Adonis with hunting is so constant as hardly to need citation; but cf. Apollodorous of Athena, Peri thean, III., xiii. 4, IX., lxiv. 401; Propertius, III., xiii. 53b4; Ovid, Metamorphoses, x. 535 sqq.

where Adonis and Aphrodite are said to have met, where also he was said to be buried (Melito, ut sup., ANF, viii. 752; Eusebius, " Life of Constantine,' iii. '55, Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2 ser., i. 534-535; Sozomen, Hist. eccl., ii. 5, Eng. transl., NPNF, 2 ser., ii. 262). At Ghineh, one point of the glen, there is a recess or tablet carved in the rock on which is the figure of a hunter (identified as Adonis) with a spear awaiting the onset of a bear (not of a boar); and a little distance away is a female figure in a posture of mourning, identified by many as the sorrowing Aphrodite (cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia, L, xxi. 5; Renan, Mission,, ut sup., plates xxxiv., xxxviii.; a reproduction from a photograph is in A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Iriehte des alter Orients, p. 90, Leipsic, 1904). Other sculptures are known along the glen, as at Mashnaka. To put the matter briefly, Byblus and the course of the Nahr Ibrahim to Aphaka formed the locus of a cult whose objects were Adonis and Aphrodite, and are proved (see below, § 10) to have been the center for diffusion of that cult in a considerable part of the Mediterranean basin.

The continuation of the combined cult of Tammuz and Ishtar in Greek surroundings depends upon the answer to the question whether the worship of the deities at Byblus and along the 8. Tammuz Nahr Ibrahim is the same (under and Adonis. changed names as transmitted through non-Semitic sources) as that in Babylonia. It must be premised that (1) no clear indications exist of a path by which such a cult passed from the lower Euphrates to the Mediterraneantraces of Syrian Adonis worship are post-Christian and may well have spread from Byblus eastward; (2) the usual indications in names of places and persons compounded of the divine name Tammuz are altogether lacking in Phenician environment. That Tammuz and the Adonis of Byblus were regarded as the same is asserted in numerous sources. This is the testimony of Origen (commentary on Ezekiel at viii. 14) based on apparently early tradition, of Jerome (Epist., Iviii. 3, in NPNF, 2 ser., vi. 120, and in his commentary on Ezekiel at the passage cited), of Cyril of Alexandria (commentary on Isa. xviii. 1, in MPG, xcii. 329), of Aristides (Apol., Eng. transl. in ANF, ix. 272), and of Macrobius (Saturnalia, L, xxi. 1), who asserts the Assyrian origin of the Adonis cult and makes clear the relation of Ishtar and Aphrodite-Venus by mentioning the descent to the lower world for the purpose of rescuing Adonis from " Persephone." Lucian does useful service in connecting the Adonis of Byblus, not indeed by direct identification, but by his account of the celebrations in the great temple of " Aphrodite "-celebrations which included flagellation, mourning, sacred prostitution, shaving of the head, and offerings to one who was regarded as dead. The express identification already cited is confirmed by several facts: in both environments the god occupies a subordinate (in the Phenician a passive) position; the assumed death of the god is in both regions the occasion of formal mourning, chiefly by women, and this is the principal characteristic of the rites; and in both there is seen in the significance of the deity some reference to death and