Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple. 435
Besides the festivals of the spring and autumn, there was yet
a third festival belonging to the agricultural year. This was the
feast of the summer solstice, which fell in the month of June. It
marked the drying up of the soil and the disappearance of the
crops and vegetation of the spring. In some of the early States of
Babylonia it was consecrated to a god Bil-'si;^378 in the calendar
of Assyria, Tammuz took the place of the older god. Tammuz
had perished by an untimely death, and it was fitting that the
death of the god should be celebrated when nature also seemed
to die. There was a time, however, when the festival of Tammuz
had been observed, at all events in some parts of Babylonia, in
October rather than in June. The same month that had witnessed
the feast of the New Year witnessed also that of Tammuz risen
again from the dead.
The three great feasts of the Babylonian agriculturist are found
again in Canaan. But it is noticeable that the third of them—the
feast of Weeks, as it was called by the Hebrews—was there the
correspondent of the spring festival in Babylonia. It was, in fact,
a repetition of the festival of spring. And the latter accordingly
becomes a prelude and anticipation of it. On the 16th of Nisan the
Levitical Law ordered a sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest to
be presented (Lev. xxiii. 10-14), and the unleavened bread eaten
at the festival itself symbolised the ingathering of the corn which [475]
was thus dedicated to God in the form of consecrated cakes.
The three great agricultural festivals were supplemented by(^378) The real reading of the god's name is unknown. He was identified with
Nin-ip (WAI.ii. 57. 68), the sun of the south (WAI.ii. 57. 51), and therefore
the midday sun—not the morning sun, as has recently been maintained. Nin-ip
was the messenger or“angel”of El-lil of Nippur, and consequently Bil-'si is
further identified with“the moon of Nippur”(WAI.57. 56), the angel of the
lord of the ghost-world being more properly the moon than the sun. When
Bel-Merodach of Babylon usurped the functions of El-lil, Bel-'si naturally
became Nebo,“the power of strength”(WAI.v. 43. 37), who stood in the same
relation to Merodach that Nin-ip did to El-lil. Bil-'si was also the seventh of
thetikpi-stars (WAI.ii. 49. 10-13, iii. 50-52).