accounted for. She was turned into a martyr, Alexandra; and just as Persephone was the wife of the ruthless monarch of the nether world, so was Alexandra represented as the queen of Diocletian or Datian, and accompanied George to the unseen world. Consequently in the land of light, George was with the widow; in that of gloom, with Alexandra: just as Osiris spent his year between Isis and Nepthys, and Adonis between Aphrodite and Persephone. According to the ancient Christian legend, the body of George travelled from the place of his martyrdom to that of his nativity; this resembles the journey of the body of Osiris, down the Nile, over the waves to Biblos, where Isis found him again.
The influence of Persian mythology is also perceptible in the legend. El Nedim says that Tammūz was brayed in a mill; this feature in his martyrdom is adopted from the Iranian tradition of Hom, the Indian Soma, or the divine drink of sacrifice, which was anthropomorphized, and the history of the composition of the liquor was transformed into the fable of the hero. The Hom was pounded in a mortar, and the juice was poured on the sacrificial flames, and thus carried up into heaven in fire; in the legend of the demigod, Hom was a martyr who was cruelly bruised and broken
