In astrology Tammuz was identified with Aries ; in the magic rituals he is symbolized by a white kid, and he is also connected with the ram, which led to this astral identification. Under the title Sibzianna, "faithful shepherd of heaven," he was identified with Orion. During the period of deified king worship in the Dungi period of Ur, and in the time of the Isin dynasty, the deified kings habitually identified themselves with Tammuz and were worshipped as husbands of the mother goddess. For this reason it has been argued that the cult arose in prehistoric times, when a king was put to death as a sacrifice to the earth mother in order to secure the good will of the deity of vegetation. There is, however, no evidence for this in the earlier texts, and so far as Sumerian religion is concerned, the theory must be dismissed as unproved. He was held to be a god of healing, bestower of health, and one who, like all other deities, had power over the demons.
It is obvious that a cult which is based upon the death and resurrection of a propitiating god, and upon the love of a divine mother who wails for her son, has direct connection with the facts and the theological views based upon them, which gave birth to Christianity. But the form of the cult which apparently
most directly affected the origins of Christianity is that in which Marduk of Babylon was identified with Tammuz. At the Nisan or new year festival at Babylon, Bel (Marduk) was said to have been imprisoned in the lower world, and a priestess weeps at his sepulchre. A malefactor was slain with Bel and they descend together to the land of darkness. Beltis, his wife, descends to hell to seek him, and Bel's garments are given Ishtar (mother of Tammuz). Bel was laid in a sepulchre, from which he soon comes forth. This Marduk transformation of the national Tam muz cult is only another effort of the priesthood of the capital to enlarge the worship and importance of the local cult. It ob tained nowhere else in Babylonia and Assyria, and may be re garded as a true interpretation of what transpired regularly in the Tammuz cult itself. That the cult had direct influence upon the origins of Christianity cannot be denied, and the Greek cult of Adonis owes its essential content to the Sumerian Tammuz.