Chapter 7: Zakmuk, Sacæa, and Purim

It is necessary to get the death of the Sacæan victim into touch with Easter. The Sacæa, when he died, had been in June-July, in vol. ii., in Mr. Frazer’s first edition, before he evolved his theory. When the theory is evolved, in the second edition and third volume, the Sacæa prefer to occur in March-April, which gets the sufferings of the mock-king into touch with the Jewish Purim, and so within measurable distance of our Passion Week, though the June-July date of the first edition survives in the second volume of the new edition. The change of date of the Sacæa is arranged for by the plan, rejected by Meyer and Jastrow, of identifying the Persian Sacæa and the Jewish Purim with the ancient Babylonian Zagmuk or Zakmuk, a New Year festival of March-April.[1] To be sure, if that be the date, we seem bereft of our useful Tammuz, from whom, in ii. 254, it was conjectured that the victim mock-king derived his divinity, an old superstitious belief which ‘shed the halo of divinity’ on the victim of Calvary. For the Tammuz feast was certainly in June-September. However, perhaps there were three Tammuz feasts, resurrection and all, and Mr. Frazer’s last choice of a date, in March-April, has the immense advantage for his theory of getting us near Eastertide.

But did the Sacæa actually desert their old date, June-July? To prove that we must identify the Sacæa, a Persian, with Zakmuk, a Babylonian feast, which really fell in March or April. The old Babylonian feast, Zakmuk, is known to the learned through inscriptions. We have seen that M. Cumont and Herr Meissner inclined to regard Zakmuk as identical with the Sacæa, while the feast Zakmuk-Sacæa is supposed by Mr. Frazer to be the origin of the Jewish Purim. But the Sacæa fell in the Macedonian month Lous, as Athenæus tells us according to Berosus, a Babylonian priest, using the Macedonian Calendar. And Lous, as Mr. Robertson Smith proved, was our July.[2] Zakmuk, on the other hand, fell in our March-April, and Purim in our March, neither of which is July, when the Sacæa were held.

Now it is desirable for Mr. Frazer’s argument that the Sacæa should fall, not in July, as it did in ii. 254, but in or about Eastertide. Mr. Frazer therefore shifts the Sacæa from July to Eastertide in face of difficulties.

All we know concerning Zakmuk is[3] that this feast, originally a feast of Bau, says Dr. Jastrow, fell about the vernal equinox (near the beginning of the old Babylonian year); that, after a certain period, it was held in honour of the chief god of Babylon, named Merodach; that a council of gods was thought to meet in Merodach’s temple, under his presidency, and that they determined the fate of the year, ‘especially the fate of the king’s life.’ The festival existed as early as 3000 B.C., whereas the Sacæa, ‘so far as appears from our authorities, does not date from before the Persian conquest of Babylon’ (536 B.C.).[4] But in spite of dates it is desirable for Mr. Frazer’s purpose to identify the Persian Sacæa with the Babylonian Zakmuk. For, if he succeeds in this, then Sacæa must fall when Zakmuk fell, and nearly when Purim fell, at--or not so very far from--Eastertide. But[5] Sacæa was eagerly welcomed by Mr. Frazer as a July, not a spring, feast, whereas, in iii. 152, Sacæa is identified with Zakmuk, which did fall in spring. Again, we have not even a hint that any mock-king, or Tammuz man, or anybody, was slain at the Babylonian feast of Zakmuk, as a man was slain, says Dio, at the Sacæa. However, Mr. Frazer tries to show that Sacæa and Zakmuk may be the same feast. For Sacæa and Zakmuk are names that resemble Zakmuk and Zoganes.[6] We may reply that the word Sacæa also rather closely resembles the name of the tribe of Sacæ, from whom the Perso-Greeks derived the word Sacæa, while the Sacæa were held to commemorate a victory over the Sacæ. Again the word Sacæa, which was a drinking feast, resembles the word Sáki, Persian for a pourer forth of wine. I The word Sáki is Arabic, being the nomen agentis of the verb Saḳi “to water” (abreuver). This root is common to several Semitic languages--e.g. Hebrew and Æthiopic--and if we could prove the word Sacæa to be of native Babylonian origin, it might very probably come from the same root, ‘ Mr. Denison Ross informs me. In any case we cannot build on resemblances in the sound of words. That argument for the identification of Zakmuk and the Sacæa fails.

Next Mr. Frazer contends that since, at Zakmuk, the gods determined the fate of the king’s life, it was a critical time for the king. Now ‘the central feature of the Sacæa’ appears to have been ‘the hanging of the mock-king for the saving of the real king’s life.’[7] Here, then, are two critical hours for the king: one at Zakmuk, when the gods settle his fate; one at the Sacæa when his life is saved by the execution of his proxy. Are not then these two critical periods one period, and is not Sacæa another name for Zakmuk?[8] But Mr. Frazer has also told us that the main feature of the Sacæa was the death of a man who represented Tammuz, and was killed after doing sympathetic magic with a sacred harlot.[9] Was there, then, in connection with this Tammuz man, a third Tammuz feast in March-April, for there were two, in June-September? Thus, even if we could admit that, because two periods are critical, both are the same period, yet as the victim of the Sacæa was a Tammuz man, slain to do good to the crops, we are unable to concede that he also died ‘in the king’s stead, ‘ and to save his life, unless the king was Tammuz. Besides, no authority tells us that either, or both, of this victim’s deaths occurred at the Babylonian feast of Zakmuk: it occurred at the Persian feast of the Sacæa, if at all.

Indeed, even if Mr. Frazer’s two arguments for the identity of Zakmuk and Sacæa were persuasive (and’ how persuasive they are we have seen), there would remain a difficulty. For Berosus says, as we saw, that the Sacæa fell on Lous 16, which is July, whereas Zakmuk fell in March-April.

I. HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY

This obstacle seems to be, and really is, insuperable. But Mr. Frazer, undaunted, writes: ‘The identification of the months of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; as to the month Lous in particular the evidence of ancient writers appears to be conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus’ (say 200 B.C.) ‘it would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals’ (namely Zakmuk and the Sacæa). Henceforth Mr. Frazer’s hypothesis seems to me to proceed on the fancy that Sacæa and Zakmuk are identical, which is impossible, since the Sacæa fall in July or September, and Zakmuk in March-April.

It is absolutely certain, historically, that Sacæa and Zakmuk cannot be identical. They were as remote in date as they well could be. For the conflicting evidence of ancient writers as to the date of the month of the Sacæa, namely the Macedonian month Lous Λῶος Mr. Frazer gives two references. The first is to Mr. Robertson Smith’s proof that Lous is July.[10] That does him no good. The second is to Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.’[11] In that work I read that the only doubt as to the month Lous is whether it fell in July or September. Smith’s ‘Dictionary’ is a book so common and accessible that I need not inflict on the reader the nature of the conflicting evidence. It is enough to say that the month of the Sacæa, Lous, was almost certainly July, but, if not July, was undeniably September. Now neither July nor September is Eastertide, or near it. So that the effort to make the Sacæa identical with Zakmuk, and therefore more or less coincident with Purim, and with our Easter, is an absolute failure. The Jews, then, could not (as in Mr. Frazer’s theory) borrow abroad a July or September mock-king, and attach him to a vernal festival, their Purim. Thus, as Zakmuk is several months remote from the Sacæa, it is not identical with the Sacæa. Mr. Frazer himself says: ‘If the Sacæa occurred in July and the Zakmuk in March, the theory of their identity could not be maintained.’[12] But he loses, rather than gains, if the Sacæa were in September, and that is the only possible alternative. The game is over; the mock-king of Babylon died, if at all, in July or September, at the Sacæa; not at Zagmuk or Zakmuk, in March-April. There is not a known hint that any mock-king died in Babylon about Eastertide, or earlier, at the feast of Zakmuk.

I confess that when I found Mr. Frazer declining to ‘allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals, ‘ till it was ‘ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus, ‘ I presumed that ‘the apparently conflicting evidence of ancient writers’ meant a difference of opinion as to whether Lous was a spring or a midsummer month. But I looked at Smith’s ‘Dictionary’ and found nothing of the sort! The difference of opinion, the conflict of evidence, is concerned (see Smith) with the question whether Lous was September (as it seems to have been in the time of Philip of Macedon) or whether it was July, as in the time of Plutarch. Neither opinion gives Lous the faintest chance of being a spring month. Therefore the vernal Zakmuk is not the Sacæa; therefore there is not the ghost of a reason for guessing that a mock-king was hanged at Zakmuk; therefore Zakmuk, in April, cannot lend a hanged mock-king to Purim, in March; therefore Purim, having no slain mock-king, cannot hand one on to Eastertide, which, moreover, does not occur at the same date as Purim, but some weeks later, as may happen. Therefore the mock-king, if he had been divine (which he was not), and if he had been sacrificed (which he was not), could not have lent his ‘halo of divinity’ to gild the Cross at Calvary. But that he did so is Mr. Frazer’s hypothesis--sometimes.

II. PERSIANS ARE NOT BABYLONIANS

The Sacæa, according to all our authorities, was a Persian, not a Babylonian, feast. We have not a tittle of evidence to show that the Babylonians, with whom Zakmuk was a feast of old standing, ever heard of the Sacæa before they were conquered by the Persians (B.C. 536). Mr. Frazer admits this: the Babylonian custom, ‘so far as appears from our authorities, does not date from before the Persian conquest; but probably it was much older.’[13] Why ‘probably’? On the strength of this ‘probably’ Mr. Frazer calls the doings at the Persian Sacæa ‘a Babylonian custom.’[14] It was a custom of the Persian conquerors of Babylon, if we can believe Dio Chrysostom; but we have no evidence that it was a Babylonian custom. Yet it ‘has just got to be’ a Babylonian custom that Mr. Frazer may attach it to a vernal Babylonian feast, Zakmuk, and so to Purim, and so to Eastertide.

III. ORIGIN OF PURIM

About the real origin of Purim, a purely secular jollification, preceded, after a certain date, by a fast, we know nothing. It is first mentioned in the Book of Esther, which is so secular that the name of God is never mentioned in it. Scholars have debated as to the date of Esther, which Mr. Frazer places in the fourth or third century B.C.; some, as Kuenen, place it later. Some think it historical, as Mr. Sayce does; others regard it as a romance, composed to supply an account of the origin of the feast of Purim, which we never hear of before the exile.

The account in Esther is well known. Xerxes quarrelled with his queen, Vashti, and, after a series of experiments in wives, selected Esther, cousin of an artful Jew named Mordecai. This man discovered, and through Esther reported, a conspiracy. He later behaved with insolence to Haman, the Vizier, who settled with Xerxes a kind of St. Bartholomew’s day for all the Jews. But Xerxes was accidentally reminded of the services done by Mordecai, and asked Haman how a grateful prince should reward an unnamed servant. Haman suggested the ride in royal splendour, which Mordecai enjoyed. Haman then erected a very tall gallows whereon to hang Mordecai. But Esther got news of the intended massacre, and, as Xerxes had promised to give her any gift she asked for, she demanded the death of Haman. So Haman was hanged, and the Jews were allowed to defend themselves. They massacred an enormous number of their enemies, and henceforth kept Purim, a feast of two days, on Adar (March) 14 and 15. ‘Wherefore they called these days Purim, after the name of Pur, ‘ and ‘pur, that is, the lot, was cast before Haman for a whole year from Nisan to Adar.’[15]

The word pur, ‘a lot, ‘ does not occur in Hebrew, says Mr. Frazer. However, the Assyrian puhra means an assembly, and there was an assembly of the gods at the feast of Zakmuk. Why the Jews went after an Assyrian word we may guess; but we also learn that ‘pur or bur seems to be’ (one wants to know if it really was) ‘an old Assyrian word for ‘stone, ‘ and a stone may be used for a lot, [16] as the Greek ψῆφος, a pebble, also means a vote. Thus either the Assyrian puhra or pur may have lent a name to the feast of Purim.

I am no friend to etymological conjecture, especially when two Assyrian words put in rival claims to be, each of them, the origin of a Jewish word. Mr. Frazer does not, I think, allude to the other guess, connecting Purim with the Persian feast, Phurdigan (Phurim? or Purim).[17] We find Purdaghân, Purdiyan, and so forth. This Persian feast was a drinking bout and time of jollity, so that Hyde very naturally compares it to Purim and to the old Persian Sacæa, or Sakea, or Sakia, which means ‘drinking together, ‘ or ‘drinking healths.’[18] If Sakia means a convivial feast in Persian, it fits very well the Persian Sacæa, which were a time of jollity. The learned may settle their etymological guesses among themselves, but we are not obliged, for want of another conjecture, to fly to old Assyrian for Purim: still less do we agree that Mr. Frazer has made out a fairly probable case for holding that ‘the Jewish feast (Purim) is derived from the Babylonian new year festival of Zakmuk.’[19]

No ease at all, I venture to think, is made out. Mr. Frazer’s Assyrian etymologies are met by competing etymologies. Moreover, we know next to nothing of the Babylonian Zakmuk, but we do know that the Persian Sacæa, Sakea, or Sakia was, like Purim, a period of hard drinking and wild licence: which does not resemble a solemn religious festival of the supreme god, Marduk, or a period of wailing for Tammuz. There is another coincidence, unnoted, I think, by Mr. Frazer, but already noted by us. Herodotus, our oldest Greek source for the Persians, tells us that their chief feast was called Magophonia, and celebrated the massacre of the hostile Magi.[20] Strabo tells us that the Sacæa were supposed to commemorate a massacre of intoxicated Sacæ. Purim is held to celebrate a massacre of the foes of the Jews. Can these three feasts for a massacre coincide by accident? It is not easy to see how this tradition attached itself to the slaying of a criminal, either as king’s proxy or as representative of Tammuz.

IV. IS PURIM PRE-EXILIAN OR POST-EXILIAN?

In any case Purim has not been successfully connected with Zakmuk. Mr. Frazer, however, says that ‘an examination of that’ (the Jewish) ‘tradition, and of the manner of celebrating the feast, renders it probable that Purim is nothing but a more or less disguised form of the Babylonian feast of the Sacæa or Zakmuk.’[21] We have seen that stern dates do not allow us to identify Sacæa with Zakmuk. The month Lous is firm as the Macedonian phalanx, and will not masquerade as March-April, when Zakmuk was held. Setting that aside, ‘there are good grounds for believing that Purim was unknown to the Jews until after the exile, ‘ and yet ‘that they learned to observe it during their captivity in the Bast.’[22] But their captivity in the East was the exile, so how did they know nothing of Purim at the very time when they also learned to celebrate that festival’? However, it is reckoned ‘fairly probable’ that the Jews borrowed Purim either ‘directly from the Babylonians or indirectly through the Persian conquerors of Babylon;’ the only question is from which?[23]

The Jews probably borrowed Purim in or after the exile. But they also kept Purim before the exile, at least Mr. Frazer thinks that ‘the best solution.’ It is Jensen’s solution, stated, however, only ‘in letters to correspondents.’[24]

It really seems hardly consistent that Mr. Frazer should both think Purim probably a feast borrowed in or after the exile, and also appear to approve a theory which regards the feast as familiar to the Jews before the exile. Yet that is what he has apparently succeeded in doing.

He prefers Jensen’s solution, which is this: A fast was held before the feast of Purim.[25] Why?

‘The best solution appears to be that of Jensen, that the fasting and mourning were originally for the supposed annual death of a Semitic god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis, whose resurrection on the following day occasioned that outburst of joy and gladness which is characteristic of Purim.’[26] Yes; but the Jews had that institution before the exile. In the first days of his own captivity Ezekiel was carried, in the flesh, or out of the flesh, to the temple at Jerusalem. ‘Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was towards the north, and, behold, there sat women wailing for Tammuz.’[27]