Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer.

  • Frazer, James George, 1854-1941.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    kings of Jerusalem regularly played the part of Adonis, we need not wonder that in later times the women of Jerusalem used to weep for Tammuz, that is, for Adonis, at the gate of the temple.1 In doing so they may only have been con¬ tinuing a custom which had been observed in the same place by the Canaanites long before the Hebrews invaded the land. But if Semitic kings in general and the kings of The Baal Byblus in particular often assumed the style of Baal or Adonis, it follows that they may have mated with the Baaiath goddess, the Baaiath or Astarte of the city. Certainly we ofean°urL( hear of kings of Tyre and Sidon who were priests of Astarte.2 fertility. Now to the agricultural Semites the Baal or god of a land was the author of all its fertility ; he it was who produced the corn, the wine, the figs, the oil, and the flax, by means of his quickening waters, which in the arid parts of the Semitic world are oftener springs, streams, and underground flow than the rains of heaven.3 Further, “ the life-giving power of the god was not limited to vegetative nature, but to him also was ascribed the increase of animal life, the multiplication of flocks and herds, and, not least, of the human inhabitants of the land. For the increase of animate nature is obviously conditioned, in the last resort, by the fertility of the soil, and primitive races, which have not learned to differentiate the various kinds of life with precision, think of animate as well as vegetable life as rooted in the earth and sprung from it. The earth is the great mother of all things in most mythological philosophies, and the comparison of the life of mankind, or of a stock of men, with the life of a tree, which is so common in Semitic as in other primitive poetry, is not in its origin a mere figure. Thus where the growth of vegetation is ascribed to a particular divine power, the same power receives the iii. 3286. It is quite possible that names which once implied divinity were afterwards degraded by application to common men. 1 Ezekiel viii. 14. 2 Menander of Ephesus, quoted by Josephus, Contra Apionem, i. 18 (Frag- menta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Muller, iv. 446) ; G. A. Cooke, Text-book of North-Semitic Inscriptions, No. 4, p. 26. According to Justin, however, the priest of Hercules, that is, of Melcarth, at Tyre, was distinct from the king and second to him in dignity. See Justin, xviii. 4. 5. 3 Hosea ii. 5 sqq. ; W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Senates,2 pp. 95-107.