He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,
    And the dead are numerous in the land.... 
    Men are filled with sorrow:  they stagger by day in gloom ... 
    In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone. 
    Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.

The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of the god: 

    The holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields
        languish... 
    The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they
    slain?... 
    In his temple, in his inhabited domain,
    The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more... 
    In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.

There is wailing for Tammuz “at the sacred cedar, where the mother bore thee”, a reference which connects the god, like Adonis and Osiris, with tree worship: 

    The wailing is for the herbs:  the first lament is, “they are not
        produced”. 
    The wailing is for the grain, ears are not 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