At the summer solstice, the season when the wild boar had ripped open the divine hunter, and the summer had already done damage to the spring, the priests were accustomed to prepare a painted wooden image of a corpse made ready for burial, which they hid in what were called the gardens of Adonis—­terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown.  These were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away.  For several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified with knives, went about over hill and dale in search of their idol, giving utterance to cries of despair, and to endless appeals:  “Ah, Lord!  Ah, Lord! what is become of thy beauty.”  Once having found the image, they brought it to the feet of the goddess, washed it while displaying its wound, anointed it with sweet-smelling unguents, wrapped it in a linen and woollen shroud, placed it on a catafalque, and, after expressing around the bier their feelings of desolation, according to the rites observed at fanerais, placed it solemnly in the tomb.*

     * Theocritus has described in his fifth Idyll the laying out
     and burial of Adonis as it was practised at Alexandria in
     Egypt in the IIIrd century before our era.

The close and dreary summer passes away.  With the first days of September the autumnal rains begin to fall upon the hills, and washing away the ochreous earth lying upon the slopes, descend in muddy torrents into the hollows of the valleys.  The Adonis river begins to swell with the ruddy waters, which, on reaching the sea, do not readily blend with it.  The wind from the offing drives the river water back upon the coast, and forces it to cling for a long time to the shore, where it forms a kind of crimson fringe.* This was the blood of the hero, and the sight of this precious stream stirred up anew the devotion of the people, who donned once more their weeds of mourning until the priests were able to announce to them that, by virtue of their supplications, Adonis was brought back from the shades into new life.  Shouts of joy immediately broke forth, and the people who had lately sympathized with the mourning goddess in her tears and cries of sorrow, now joined with her in expressions of mad and amorous delight.  Wives and virgins—­all the women who had refused during the week of mourning to make a sacrifice of their hair—­were obliged to atone for this fault by putting themselves at the disposal of the strangers whom the festival had brought together, the reward of their service becoming the property of the sacred treasury.**

     * The same phenomenon occurs in spring.  Maundrell saw it on
     March 17, and Renan in the first days of February.