ORIGIN: Mesopotamian (Babylonian-Akkadian)
TYPE: Shepherd and Vegetation god; Underworld God
KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP: Circa 3500 BCE or earlier to circa 200 BCE
SYNONYMS: Damn; Ama-Usum-Gal-ana; Tammuz (Hebrew).
ART REFERENCES: Plaques, votive stelae, glyptics etc.
LITERARY SOURCES: Cuneiform texts including the "Inana's Descent and the Death of Dumuzi".
ABODE: Heaven (for half the year), Kur (for the other half).
PARENTS: Enki and Duttur
SIBLINGS: Geshtinanna (Sister), Amashilama (Sister)
CONSORT: Inanna
EQUIVALENTS:
INFORMATION: Dumuzi, as popularly understood, is a male deity who in mythical times was the tutelary god of the city of Bad-tibira between Lagas and Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. It is believed that there was also a goddess Dumuzi from Kinunir near Lagas. The two became syncretized as the single male personality who occupies a special place in the Sumerian pantheon as the consort of the goddess Inanna. He is the first "dying and rising" god to be historically recorded by name.
Dumuzi is particularly associated with the date palm. He is commanded by Inana (who is herself under a pledge to the goddess Ereskigal) to enter the underworld for a period of each year, which accounts for the seasonal demise of the green world to drought.
His worshipers were chiefly women but his cult was very widespread and as late as Biblical times there are references to women "weeping for Tammuz". It may be argued that Dumuzi is the model on which later gods including Adonis are modeled. In Syriac tradition he is the son of the mortal father Kautar (Aramaic: Kosar). See also Kotar.