and in a later age, when their real signification was lost, they were anthropomorphized into a sacred caste of priests. A similar process has, I believe, taken place with Tammūz, who was the sun, regarded as a God and hero, dying at the close of each year, and reviving with the new one. In Kuthāmi’s age the old deity was apparently misappreciated, and had suffered, in consequence, a reincarnation in Yanbūshādh, of whom a similar story was told, and who received similar worship, because he was in fact one with Tammūz.
The Phœnician Adonis was identical with Tammūz. S. Jerome in the Vulgate rendered the passage in Ezekiel (viii. 14), “He brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house, which was towards the north; and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammūz,” by ecce mulieres sedentes plangentes Adonidem; and in his commentary on the passage says, “Whom we have interpreted Adonis, both the Hebrew and Syriac
