Cannabis and the Body of Tammuz: The VAT 9946 Evidence

Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi or Dumuzid, meaning roughly “the good/flawless young one”) was an ancient Mesopotamian deity, primarily a god of shepherds, fertility, and vegetation.

He embodied the life-giving forces of nature—especially the renewal of plants, healthy lambs, abundant milk, and the fertility of the land in spring. As a pastoral god he was often called “the Shepherd”; later traditions also linked him more strongly to agriculture and the power in grain or date palms.

His central myth involves a yearly cycle of death and return: he dies (or is sent to the underworld) in the hot, dry summer, causing nature to wither, and returns with the rains and new growth, restoring fertility. He was the consort of the goddess Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar); their sacred marriage was ritually celebrated to ensure the land’s productivity. Ritual mourning for his death was widespread, later noted even in the Hebrew Bible (Ezekiel 8). He is an early example of the “dying-and-rising” fertility god and influenced later figures such as Adonis.

The vegetation god Tammuz, personified the spring sun believed to die and descend to Hades each winter and with the aid of his mourning worshipers, annually made to return to life each spring, when his followers held a celebration and burned incense proclaiming “On the day which Tammuz rises up, when the flute of lapis lazuli and the ring of carnelian rise up with him, when male and female mourners rise up with him, may the dead also rise and inhale the incense” (Ringgren 1973).

In the ancient Near East, it is suggested that cannabis was known under the Akkadian name qunnabu. Dr Andrea Sinclair, states that “There is a Neo-Assyrian ritual text from Assur including qunnabu in a description of the materials making up the body of the god Tammuz (Berlin VAT 9946)” (Sinclair, 2024). The Neo-Assyrian literary/ritual text published as SAA 3 38 (Alasdair Livingstone, Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, State Archives of Assyria vol. 3, 1989; the tablet itself is the Berlin VAT 9946 from Assur).

The key line is:

[šim]qu-nu-bu zappašu

“[H]emp is his bristle” (or “cannabis/qunnabu is his bristle/hair”).

This appears in a description of the materials that constitute (or symbolize) the body of the god Tammuz/Dumuzi. In Mesopotamian ritual practice, the “body” of a deity (especially in the context of the taklimtu “display” or mourning rites for the dead Tammuz) could be represented by an assemblage of aromatic plants, foods, and other substances rather than a literal statue.

This practice is well attested across periods. In the Neo-Assyrian taklimtu rites a couch was prepared for the god, and his body was symbolized by vegetable matter, honey, and various foods; the same Assur text that equates qunnabu with Tammuz’s bristle further identifies roasted barley (ground and burned) as “his death.” Parallel traditions treat grain itself as the body of the god—women in later Harran accounts refrained from grinding or eating it during the mourning period for precisely this reason—while Sumerian and Babylonian liturgies liken the dead Dumuzi to withered plants in pots or gardens, the direct antecedents of the later “Gardens of Adonis.”

As I have detailed in the article ‘Qunnabu’, The Ancient Akkadian name of Cannabis, cannabis was part of Assyrian sacred rites, and was offered at a variety of temples and to deities, such as Tammuz’s traditional consort Ishtar.

As noted, references to Tammuz appear in Ezekiel 8, in Ezekiel 8:17 (following the vision of women weeping for Tammuz in verse 14 and the men bowing to the sun in verse 16), and this could be interpreted as indicating such ritual use:

“Then he said to me, ‘Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations that they commit here, that they should fill the land with violence and provoke me still further to anger? Behold, they put the branch to their nose.’” (ESV; similar wording in KJV, NASB, etc.)

The exact phrase is often rendered “put the branch/twig to their nose.” Its precise meaning is uncertain and debated. Some traditional Jewish commentators (notably Kimchi and others cited by Rashi/Jarchi) interpret the obscure phrase in Ezekiel 8:17 not as a literal branch or twig, but as referring to a foul smell—specifically the stench arising from the incense the people offered to their idols. In this reading, the act becomes something like “they put a stench to their [or My]nose,” turning what they considered a fragrant offering into an offensive odor before God.

A few other interpreters also note the possibility that the “branch” was an aromatic or flowering plant held to the nose for its pleasant scent as part of pagan ritual (sometimes linked more broadly to Tammuz/Adonis or sun-worship imagery). Adam Clarke (in his classic Bible commentary) is one of the clearest: he suggests the “branch” refers to aromatic/odoriferous branches that idolaters carried and from which they inhaled a pleasant scent as part of their ceremonies.

Daniel Whedon (Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments) also discusses this idea at length. He links the gesture to ancient rituals involving flowers or flowering branches held to the nose as a symbol of life and fertility. He notes artistic depictions of Astarte/Aphrodite or Tammuz-Adonis holding bouquets to the nose, Assyrian reliefs showing priests lifting sprays to the nose, and the observations of Max Ohnefalsch-Richter that smelling a flower or flowering branch was a solemn ceremonial act in certain ancient Near Eastern (including Cypriot) rituals.

A scribe of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal recorded in 650 BC: “We were dead dogs, but our lord the king gave us life by placing the herb of life beneath our noses” (Ringgren, 1973). Ashurbanipal is linked to cannabis through his great library, which preserved (and in some cases recopied) the Neo-Assyrian documents in which qunnabu is mentioned as an aromatic plant used in rituals and medicine.

Considering what we now know of ritual cannabis use in the Ancient World, in both Israel, and Assyria, etc, it seems worth consideration, that cannabis could be considered in this context of Ezekiel 8:17 in light of its direct reference as part of Tammuz’s body; its known ritual use in Assyria and Babylon, and the archaeological evidence from tel Arad, Jerusalem.