DUMUZI

ORIGIN Mesopotamian (Sumerian and Babylonian-Akkadian) [Iraq]. Shepherd and vegetation god; underworld god.

KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP circa 3500 BC or earlier to circa 200 BC.

SYNONYMS Damn; Ama-usum-gal-ana; Tammuz (Hebrew).

CENTER(S) OF CULT none.

ART REFERENCES plaques; votive stelae; glyptics, etc.

LITERARY SOURCES cuneiform texts including the Inana’s Descent and the Death of Dumuzi.

Dumuzi, as popularly understood, is a male deity who in mythical times was the tutelary god of the city of Bad-tibira between Lagasˇ and Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. It is believed that there was also a goddess Dumuzi from Kinunir near Lagasˇ. The two became syncretized as the single male personality who occupies a special place in the Sumerian pantheon as the consort of the goddess INANA. He is the first “dying and rising” god to be historically recorded by name.

Dumuzi is particularly associated with the date palm. He is commanded by Inana (who is herself under a pledge to the goddess ERESˇKIGAL) to enter the underworld for a period of each year, which accounts for the seasonal demise of the green world to drought.

His worshipers were chiefly women but his cult was very widespread and as late as Biblical times there are references to women “weeping for Tammuz.” It may be argued that Dumuzi is the model on which later gods including ADONIS are modeled. In Syriac tradition he is the son of the mortal father Kautar (Aramaic: Kosˇar).

See also KOTAR.