Читать книгу The Ancient Mythology: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman Myths - Lewis Spence - Страница 60

The poem, which in its existing form consists of 137 lines in cuneiform characters, appears to be incomplete. We are not told therein what was the purpose of the goddess in journeying to the 'House of No-return,' but we gather from various legends and from the concluding portion of the poem itself that she went thither in search of her bridegroom Tammuz, the sun-god of Eridu. The importance of the myth of Ishtar and Tammuz lies partly in the fact that, travelling westwards to Greece by way of Phœnicia, it furnished a groundwork for classic myths of the Adonis-Attis type, which still provide mythologists with matter for endless speculation. The mythological significance of the poem and the persons it mentions will be dealt with later; the theories concerning the primitive status of Tammuz and Ishtar are numerous and distinct, more than one of them being sufficiently plausible to call for a careful scrutiny. Consideration of the myth may therefore be deferred till we have glanced at the Babylonian story itself and some of its principal variants and analogues.