ne, and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, sacrificed a
pig to him annually. When Set at full moon hunted the boar in the
Delta marshes, he probably hunted the boar form of Osiris, whose human
body had been recovered from the sacred tree by Isis. As the soul of
Bata, the hero of the Egyptian folk tale,[109] migrated from the
blossom to the bull, and the bull to the tree, so apparently did the
soul of Osiris pass from incarnation to incarnation. Set, the demon
slayer of the harvest god, had also a boar form; he was the black pig
who devoured the waning moon and blinded the Eye of Ra.

In his character as a long-lived patriarch, Tammuz, the King Daonus or
Daos of Berosus, reigned in Babylonia for 36,000 years. When he died,
he departed to Hades or the Abyss. Osiris, after reigning over the
Egyptians, became Judge of the Dead.

Tammuz of the Sumerian hymns, however, is the Adonis-like god who
lived on earth for a part of the year as the shepherd and
agriculturist so dearly beloved by the goddess Ishtar. Then he died so
that he might depart to the realm of Eresh-ki-gal (Persephone), queen
of Hades. According to one account, his death was caused by the fickle
Ishtar. When that goddess wooed Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, he
upbraided her, saying:

On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,
Thou didst lay affliction every year.

_King's Translation_.

References in the Sumerian hymns suggest that there also existed a
form of the legend which gave an account of the slaying of the young
god by someone else than Ishtar. The slayer may have been a Set-like
demon--perhaps Nin-shach, who appears to have symbolized the
destroying influence of the sun. He was a war deity, and his name,
Professor Pinches says, "is conjectured to mean 'lord of the wild
boar'". There is no direct evidence, however, to connect Tammuz's
slayer with the boar which killed Adonis. Ishtar's innocence is
emphasized by the fact that she mourned for her youthful lover,
crying:

Oh hero, my lord, ah me! I will say;
Food I eat not ... water I drink not ...
Because of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the
radiant face, yea radiant,
Of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the dove-like
voice, yea dove-like.[110]

The Phrygian Attis met his death, according to one legend, by
self-mutilation under a sacred tree. Another account sets forth,
however, that he was slain by a boar. The Greek Adon