produced.
The wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks which bring
forth no more.
The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones; for the perishing
children; the dark-headed people create no more.

The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched meadows, the
fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the plains, the gardens, and
the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has
departed. The mourner cries:

How long shall the springing of verdure be restrained?
How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?

Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as
"the bosom of the earth", and in the Assyrian version of the "Descent
of Ishtar" he dwells in "the house of darkness" among the dead, "where
dust is their nourishment and their food mud", and "the light is never
seen"--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns,
however, it is stated that Tammuz "upon the flood was cast out". The
reference may be to the submarine "house of Ea", or the Blessed Island
to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the
nether "garden of Adonis".

The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz)[114]:--

Damu his youth therein slumbers ...
Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers
he is cast away ...
Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be
satiated.

Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from Hades.
Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as "child, Lord
Gishzida", as well as "my hero Damu". In his lunar character the
Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as "the child surpassingly
beautiful"; the Osiris bull was also a child of the moon; "it was
begotten", says Plutarch, "by a ray of generative light falling from
the moon". When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were
drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with
milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become
children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a
wanton boy or handsome youth. Another god of fertility, the Irish
Angus, who resembles Eros, is called "the ever young"; he slumbers
like Tammuz and awakes in the Spring.

Apparently it was believed that the child god, Tammuz, returned from
the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew into full manhood
in a comparatively brief p