re weeping deities, they shed fertilizing tears; and the
sowers simulated the sorrow of divine mourners when they cast seed in
the soil "to die", so that it might spring up as corn. This ancient
custom, like many others, contributed to the poetic imagery of the
Bible. "They that sow in tears", David sang, "shall reap in joy. He
that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless
come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."[106] In
Egypt the priestesses who acted the parts of Isis and Nepthys, mourned
for the slain corn god Osiris.

Gods and men before the face of the gods are weeping for
thee at the same time, when they behold me!...
All thy sister goddesses are at thy side and behind thy couch,
Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou are prostrate upon
thy bed!...
Live before us, desiring to behold thee.[107]

It was believed to be essential that human beings should share the
universal sorrow caused by the death of a god. If they remained
unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies. Worshippers
of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural
phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual
ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible",
writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary
operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a
particle of divine life."[108] By observing their ritual, the
worshippers won the sympathy and co-operation of deities, or exercised
a magical control over nature.

The Babylonian myth of Tammuz, the dying god, bears a close
resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis. It also links with the myth
of Osiris. According to Professor Sayce, Tammuz is identical with
"Daonus or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla", referred to by Berosus
as the ruler of one of the mythical ages of Babylonia. We have
therefore to deal with Tammuz in his twofold character as a patriarch
and a god of fertility.

The Adonis version of the myth may be summarized briefly. Ere the god
was born, his mother, who was pursued by her angry sire, as the river
goddesses of the folk tales are pursued by the well demons,
transformed herself into a tree. Adonis sprang from the trunk of this
tree, and Aphrodite, having placed the child in a chest, committed him
to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who resembles the
Babylonian Eresh-ki-gal. Persephone desir