After the "weeping for Tammuz"[1164] had continued for a definite time, the mourning terminated with the burial of an image of the god in the sacred precinct.

Next day Adonis was supposed to return to life; his image was disinterred and carried back to the temple with music and dances, and every circumstance of rejoicing.[1165] Wild orgies followed, and Aphaca became notorious for scenes to which it will be necessary to recur hereafter.

The Adonis myth is generally explained as representing either the perpetually recurrent decay and recovery of nature, or the declension of the Sun as he moves from the summer to the winter constellations, and his subsequent return and reappearance in all his strength.

But myths obtained a powerful hold on ancient imaginations, and the worshippers of Adonis probably in most cases forgot the symbolical character of his cult, and looked on him as a divine or heroic personage, who had actually gone through all the adventures ascribed to him in the legend.

Hence the peculiarly local character of his worship, of which we find traces only at Byblus and at Jerusalem.
Sydyk, "Justice," or, the "Just One,"[1166] whose name corresponds to the Hebrew Zadok or Zedek, appears in the Phoenician mythology especially as the father of Esmun and the Cabeiri.