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.