Adonis

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ADONIS

ADONIS is a divine name coined in Greek from the northwest Semitic exclamation ʾadōnī, "my lord," probably shortened from the dirge hōy ʾadōnī, "Woe, my lord," which is echoed in Greek by aiai, Adonin.

Origins

The Greek tradition connects Adonis with Byblos. Hence his worship must be of Byblian origin. It is unknown whether the male deity thus invoked or mourned in the first millennium bce was initially a city god or heroic eponym, a Baal of Byblos, or a god of the countryside, as suggested by his assimilation with Tammuz and Dionysos in the Middle East, and by his characterization as a vegetation deity in later Greco-Roman tradition. The latter view is supported by Lucian's notice that Byblian women performed their mourning ritual for Adonis "through the whole countryside," and by a similar detail in the description of the Adonis festival at Seville circa 287 ce, as reported in the Martyrology of Saints Justa and Rufina. The center of Adonis's worship was at Aphaca in Mount Lebanon, a single day's journey from Byblos. At the site of the famous spring, the main source of the Adonis River or Nahr Ibrahim, stood a temple, where the cult of Adonis was maintained until the time of Emperor Constantine the Great, who ordered the destruction of the shrine. Although it was partially rebuilt by Julian the Apostate, little survives of the ancient buildings, except some Roman ruins.

Adonis's Semitic name or epithet naʿmān, "the beautiful" or "the lovely one," was preserved by Isaiah 17:10 and by Greek authors, especially when comparing the anemone to Adonis. Naʿmān or Naaman is a West Semitic proper name, attested from the second millennium bce onward, and the epithet occurs frequently in literary texts from Ugarit. It implies that Adonis was conceived as a youth of remarkable beauty. Instead, he lacks any feature that would characterize him as a deity of the netherworld, except his secondary assimilation to Osiris, the king of the dead, in the Alexandrian ritual.

Myths

Several mythical stories are related to Adonis. According to the myth that Apollodorus cites from Panyassis of Halicarnassus, active in the early fifth century bce, Adonis was the son of the Assyrian/Syrian king Theias by his daughter Smyrna, who by deceiving him as to her identity, conceived Adonis by him. When Theias discovered the truth he would have slain his daughter, but the gods in pity changed her into a myrrh tree. As the myrrh tree grows only in southern Arabia and in Somaliland, it is unlikely that it belongs to the original story. Smyrna must be a Graecized form of šarmīna, the evergreen cypress, which perfectly fits the Adonis myth. After ten months, according to Apollodorus, the tree burst, letting Adonis come forth. This epiphany characterizes him as a vegetation god. It is similar to the birth of Malakbēl as represented on an altar from Rome, one side of which shows the young god emerging from a cypress. This kind of epiphany is well known in the Middle East and it also occurs in Assyria. The Adonis myth uses the same theme as the story of Judah and Tamar, "the Date Palm," in Genesis 38. By deceiving her father-in-law as to her identity, Tamar conceived two sons by him. When Judah discovered the truth he would have slain his daughter-in-law, but Tamar made her justification by applying to the custom and duty of levirate marriage. Panyassis's fable may reflect another institution—the sacred marriage celebrated by the king with a priestess, possibly a king's daughter. Since Theias is apparently the same legendary character as Toi or Tai (Tʿy), king of Hamat (Syria), who entered the Bible in 2 Samuel 8:9–10, the myth could be as old as the ninth century bce, when the worship of Pahalatis, possibly the Mistress (Bʿlt) of Byblos, is attested at Hamat.

Adonis's agrarian nature of dying and rising god, like the Sumerian god Dumuzi and the Assyrian Tammuz, is implied also by Panyassis's complementary account of the seasonal split in Adonis's life between Aphrodite and Persephone, the queen of the netherworld. When Adonis was born, Aphrodite put the infant in a chest. This feature of the account parallels the case of Dionysos venerated at Delphi in a fan, but also recalls the stories of Sargon of Akkad and of Moses in Exodus 2:1–10. However, Aphrodite handed the child in the chest to the care of Persephone, who afterward refused to give him up. Zeus, an appeal being made to him, decided that Adonis should spend a third of the year with Persephone and a third with Aphrodite, and the remaining third at his own disposal.

Aphrodite is obviously Astarte, the mythic queen of Byblos according to Plutarch, but she is also Balthi, the great goddess or Mistress of Byblos, according to the Syriac homily of Pseudo-Meliton. As for Persephone, she probably corresponds to Sheʾol, a chthonic goddess whose name in Hebrew designates the netherworld. Zeus's verdict is a variant of a folktale, upon which Solomon's arbitration in 1 Kings 3:16–28 is also based. The antiquity of this particular myth of Adonis is confirmed by scenes engraved on Etruscan bronze mirrors from the fifth to third centuries bce, showing Zeus's arbitration, the sadness of Turan (the Etruscan Venus), and her happiness when her lover Atunis rejoins her. Love scenes of Venus and Adonis also appear on mosaics, in particular at Lixus, the ancient Phoenician settlement on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. An interesting variant of these myths is represented on a Roman cameo: Adonis sleeps naked at the foot of a tree, guarded by his dog; two cupids try to wake him up, while Aphrodite waits amorously for his "awaking."

An important element in appreciating Adonis's agrarian connection is the story of the killing of Adonis by a "boar out of the wood," an animal known for ravaging the vines, as Psalms 80:9–14 complains. The story related to Adonis seems to be of Semitic origin as well, since Jerome's allusion to the killing of Adonis "in the month of June" must be based on Aramaic hăzīr, which in Syriac means both "boar" and "June." But its original protagonist may have been Attis, slain by a boar according to Pausanias. Adonis fighting the boar is represented as a hunter on a mosaic from Carranque near Toledo, dated to the fourth century ce.

Another version of the slaying of Adonis is preserved by Pseudo-Meliton, who calls him Tammuz. Since Balthi was in love with him, Hephaestus, her jealous husband, "slew Tammuz in Mount Lebanon, while he was clearing the land" (šnīra burza ). Adonis was then buried at Aphaca, where Balthi also died.

Cult

The cult of Adonis was especially popular with women. Annual festivals, called Adonia, were held at Byblos and also, at least from the seventh century bce onward, in Cyprus and at different places in Greece. Its earliest record is a fragment of a poem by Sappho, who was native to Lesbos in the Aegean. Her poem was apparently written in the form of a dialogue between a woman, possibly representing Aphrodite, and a chorus of young female attendants. It refers to "the lovely Adonis," using a Greek translation of Adonis's Semitic name or epithet naʿmān, and invites the young maidens to mourn for him by beating their breasts and rending their tunics. The Semitic features of the ritual are confirmed by Aristophanes' references to the Adonia being celebrated in Athens on the roof of a building by women shrieking "Woe, woe, Adonis!" and beating their breasts.

A very elaborate Alexandrian festival is described by Theocritus in the third century bce. The rites consisted of a magnificent wedding pageant for Adonis and Aphrodite. The next day women carried Adonis's image to the seashore amid lamentations and expressed the hope of witnessing his return the following year. The Egyptian cult of Osiris most likely had a bearing on the Ptolemaic ritual and its influence could have reached Byblos, since the well-known legend of Isis finding the body of Osiris murdered by Seth localizes the mythical event at Byblos. A special feature of the festival was the "Adonis gardens," first recorded by Plato and alluded to in Isaiah 17:10–11. These were small pots of seeds forced to grow artificially, which rapidly faded. Egyptian origin is possible. They were similar, in fact, to the so-called beds of Osiris showing Osiris's shape; these were planted with corn seeds, the sprouting of which signified the god's resurrection.

There was perhaps considerable variation in the content of the Adonis festival and much of the original intent of the rites appears to have been forgotten. Originally, rites and mystery-plays reenacted dying and revival, disappearance and return. The mourning of Adonis is well documented in written sources, but his revival, return, or rebirth is not attested directly before Lucianus's De dea Syria, Origen, and Jerome. However, the "recovering of Adonis" by Venus, often depicted in Rome according to Plautus's comedy Menaechmi 143–145 (dated tentatively from 194 bce), Adonis's marvelous birth from the evergreen cypress, and the division of his life between Aphrodite and Persephone all have the idea of revival, rebirth, or awakening in common and are concerned with vegetation. According to De dea Syria, sacred prostitution was included in the ritual at Byblos, a sacred marriage with Aphrodite took place in the Alexandrian ritual, and the cells of the temple of Adonis at Dura-Europos may have served the same purpose. Its mythical aim was probably the "rebirth" of Adonis.

According to De dea Syria, Adonis's revival was celebrated on the third day of the festival. The "third day" seems to have been a predestined moment for the revival, since the "finding of Osiris" by Isis took place on the third day according to Plutarch, the revival of the nation takes place on the third day according to Hosea 6:2, and Jesus' resurrection is dated to "the third day" in 1 Corinthians 15:4. At any rate, the triduum has a larger application in cult and historiography.

It is difficult to answer the question whether Adonis was initially a god of vegetation in general, a vine god, a tree spirit, as is suggested by his birth from a tree, or a grain spirit. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in the second half of the fourth century ce, the Adonis festival was "symbolic of the reaping of ripe fruits of the field." Origen stated one century earlier that Adonis is "the symbol of the fruits of the earth, mourned when they are sown, but causing joy when they rise." According to Jerome, the "slaying of Adonis is shown by seeds dying in the earth, and his resurrection by the crops in which dead seeds are reborn." These explanations favor the conception of Adonis as a grain spirit, the more so because a sentence from Pseudo-Meliton, usually emended and mistranslated, shows him laboring in the field. In this context Adonis's appearance as a hunter in one of the myths might signify that he was protecting the fields against wild boars.

Bibliography

A comprehensive study of Adonis is provided by Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East (Stockholm, 2001), in particular pp. 113–154, 175–179, and 209–212, with former literature. See also G. Piccaluga, "Adonis, i cacciatori falliti e l'avvento dell'agricoltura," in Il mito greco: Atti del convegno internazionale, edited by Bruno Gentili and Giuseppe Paioni (Rome, 1977), pp. 33–48; Sergio Ribichini, Adonis: Aspetti "Orientali" di un mito greco (Rome, 1981); and Edward Lipiński, Dieux et déesses de l'univers phénicien et punique (Louvain, Belgium, 1995), pp. 90–108. For Adonis in Greek literature and arts, see Wahib Atallah, Adonis dans la littérature et l'art grecs (Paris, 1966). For the "Adonis gardens," see the monograph by Gerhard J. Baudy, Adonisgärten: Studien zur antiken Samensymbolik (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), and, with prudence, Marcel Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, translated by Janet Lloyd (Atlanic Highlands, N.J., 1977). The iconography is presented by B. Servais-Soyez, "Adonis," in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich and Munich, 1981–1997), vol. 1/1, pp. 222–229, and vol. 1/2, pp. 160–170.