In late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship of religion, Tammuz was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god, but the discovery of the full Sumerian text of Inanna's Descent in the mid-twentieth century appeared to disprove the previous scholarly assumption that the narrative ended with Dumuzid's resurrection and instead revealed that it ended with Dumuzid's death.

The Assyriologists Jeremy Black and Anthony Green describe the early history of Dumuzid's cult as "complex and bewildering".

[11] This month and the holiday associated with it was later transmitted from the Sumerians to Babylonians and other East Semitic peoples,[11] with its name transcribed into those languages as Tammuz.

[5] To ancient Mesopotamian peoples, the date palm represented stability,[5] because it was one of the few crops that could be harvested all year, even during the dry season.

[21] The sole exception to this rule is a single Assyrian inscription in which a man requests Tammuz that, when he descends to the Underworld, he should take with him a troublesome ghost who has been haunting him.

[26] According to the scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, towards the end of the third millennium BC, kings of Uruk may have established their legitimacy by taking on the role of Dumuzid as part of a "sacred marriage" ceremony.

[27] This ritual lasted for one night on the tenth day of the Akitu,[27][28] the Sumerian new year festival,[28] which was celebrated annually at the spring equinox.

[27][28] In the late twentieth century, the historicity of the sacred marriage ritual was treated by scholars as more-or-less an established fact,[29] but in recent years, largely due to the writings of Pirjo Lapinkivi, some scholars have rejected the notion of an actual sex ritual, instead seeing "sacred marriage" as a symbolic rather than a physical union.

[45][47] Finally, they come upon Dumuzid, who is lavishly clothed and resting beneath a tree, or sitting on Inanna's throne, entertained by slave-girls.

[59] The text of the poem Inanna and Bilulu (ETCSL 1.4.4), discovered at Nippur, is badly mutilated[60] and scholars have interpreted it in a number of different ways.

[60] Inanna stands on top of a stool[60] and transforms Bilulu into "the waterskin that men carry in the desert",[60][62][61] forcing her to pour the funerary libations for Dumuzid.

[64] A collection of lamentations for Dumuzid entitled In the Desert by the Early Grass describes Damu, the "dead anointed one", being dragged down to the Underworld by demons,[64] who blindfold him, tie him up, and forbid him from sleeping.

[73] Anton Moortgat has interpreted Dumuzid as the antithesis of Gilgamesh:[75] Gilgamesh refuses Ishtar's demand for him to become her lover, seeks immortality, and fails to find it;[75] Dumuzid, by contrast, accepts Ishtar's offer and, as a result of her love, is able to spend half the year in Heaven, even though he is condemned to the Underworld for the other half.

[75] In a chart of antediluvian generations in Babylonian and Biblical traditions, William Wolfgang Hallo associates Dumuzid with the composite half-man, half-fish counselor or culture hero (Apkallu) An-Enlilda,[why?]

[76] The cult of Ishtar and Tammuz may have been introduced to the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Manasseh[80] and the Old Testament contains numerous allusions to them.

[25] There is no external evidence to support this reading, however,[25] and it is much more probable that this epithet is merely a jibe at Antiochus's notorious cruelty towards all the women who fell in love with him.

[98] Then the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis,[99] tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief.

[d] The Church Father Jerome records in a letter dated to the year 395 AD that "Bethlehem... belonging now to us... was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, that is to say, Adonis, and in the cave where once the infant Christ cried, the lover of Venus was lamented.

[100] Joan E. Taylor has countered this contention by arguing that Jerome, as an educated man, could not have been so naïve as to mistake Christian mourning over the Massacre of the Innocents as a pagan ritual for Tammuz.

"[106] Ibn Wahshiyya also adds that Tammuz lived in Babylonia before the coming of the Chaldeans and belonged to an ancient Mesopotamian tribe called Ganbân.

[107] In the tenth century AD, the Arab traveler Al-Nadim wrote in his Kitab al-Fehrest that "All the Sabaeans of our time, those of Babylonia as well as those of Harran, lament and weep to this day over Tammuz at a festival which they, more particularly the women, hold in the month of the same name.

"[78] Drawing from a work on Syriac calendar feast days, Al-Nadim describes a Tâ'ûz festival that took place in the middle of the month of Tammuz.

[105] The same festival is mentioned in the eleventh century by Ibn Athir, who recounts that it still took place every year at the appointed time along the banks of the Tigris river.

[11] The late nineteenth-century Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer wrote extensively about Tammuz in his monumental study of comparative religion The Golden Bough (the first edition of which was published in 1890)[108][111] as well as in later works.

[109][108][113] Origen discusses Adonis, whom he associates with Tammuz, in his Selecta in Ezechielem ( “Comments on Ezekiel”), noting that "they say that for a long time certain rites of initiation are conducted: first, that they weep for him, since he has died; second, that they rejoice for him because he has risen from the dead (apo nekrôn anastanti).

"[e] Tammuz's categorization as a "dying-and-rising god" was based on the abbreviated Akkadian redaction of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld, which was missing the ending.

Biblical scholars Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd argued in 2007 that this text does not describe a triumph over death because Dumuzid must be replaced in the underworld by his sister, thus reinforcing the "inalterable power of the realm of the dead".

[116][117] The references to the cult of Tammuz preserved in the Bible and in Greco-Roman literature brought the story to the attention of western European writers.

[119] These have all been suggested as sources for Tammuz's most famous appearance in English literature as a demon in Book I of John Milton's Paradise Lost, lines 446–457:[118] THAMMUZ came next behind, Whose annual wound in LEBANON allur'd The SYRIAN Damsels to lament his fate In amorous dittyes all a Summers day, While smooth ADONIS from his native Rock Ran purple to the Sea, suppos'd with blood Of THAMMUZ yearly wounded: the Love-tale Infected SION'S daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch EZEKIEL saw, when by the Vision led His eye survey'd the dark Idolatries Of alienated JUDAH.

And then each pigeon spread its milky van, The bright car soared into the dawning sky And like a cloud the aerial caravan Passed over the Ægean silently, Till the faint air was troubled with the song From the wan mouths that call on bleeding Thammuz all night long