Humbaba

In Akkadian mythology Humbaba (Assyrian spelling) or Huwawa (Babylonian) was a monstrous giant of immemorial age raised by Utu, the Sun. ["Utu, I never knew a mother who bore me, nor a father who brought me up! I was born in the mountains— you brought me up!" ( [http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1815.htm Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version A] ), or "The mother who bore me was a cave in the mountains. The father who engendered me was a cave in the hills. Utu left me to live all alone in the mountains!"" ( [http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr18151.htm Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version B] )] Humbaba/Huwawa was also the guardian of the Cedar Forest where the gods lived.

Depictions

His face is that of a lion. "When he looks at someone, it is the look of death." [Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version A] "Humbaba's roar is a flood, his mouth is fire and his breath is death! He can hear a hundred leagues away any (rustling?) in his forest! Who would go down into his forest!" [Epic of Gilgamesh", Tablet II.] In various examples, his face is scribed in a single coiling line like that of the coiled entrails of men and beasts, from which omens might be read. [Stephanie Dalley, "Myths From Mesopotamia", (Oxford University Press) 1989; S. Smith, "The face of Humbaba", "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society" 26 (1926:440-42).] This has led to the name "Guardian of the Fortress of Intestines."Fact|date=July 2008 He is the brother of Pazuzu and Enki and son of Hanbi.

Demise

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, after they become friends following their initial fight, Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out on an adventure to the Cedar Forest beyond the seventh mountain range, to slay Huwawa (Humbaba): "Enkidu," Gilgamesh vows, "since a man cannot pass beyond the final end of life, I want to set off into the mountains, to establish my renown there." [Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version A] Gilgamesh tricks the monster into giving away his seven "radiances" by offering his sisters as wife and concubine. When Humbaba's guard is down, Gilgamesh punches him and captures the monster. Defeated, Humbaba appeals to a receptive Gilgamesh for mercy, but Enkidu convinces Gilgamesh to slay Humbaba. In a last effort, Humbaba tries to escape but is decapitated by Enkidu, or in some versions by both heroes together; his head is put in a leather sack, which is brought to Enlil, the god who set Humbaba as the forest's guardian. Enlil becomes enraged upon learning this and redistributes Humbaba's seven splendors (or in some tablets "auras"). "He gave Huwawa's first aura to the fields. He gave his second aura to the rivers. He gave his third aura to the reed-beds. He gave his fourth aura to the lions. He gave his fifth aura to the palace (one text has "debt slaves"). He gave his sixth aura to the forests (one text has "the hills"). He gave his seventh aura to Nungal" [Nungal, the goddess of prisoners.] . It is interesting to note that no vengeance was laid upon the heroes, though Enlil says "He should have eaten the bread that you eat, and should have drunk the water that you drink! He should have been honoured".

As each gift was given by Gilgameš, he received from Huwawa a "terror" (= "radiance") in exchange, from Huwawa. The 7 gifts successively given by Gilgameš were [ [http://www.piney.com/GilgaHuw.html] (lines 140-150)] : (1) his sister Ma-tur, (2) the mountains, (3) eca-flour, (4) big shoes, (5) tiny shoes, (6) semi-pretious stones, and (7) a bundle of tree-branches.

While Gilgamesh thus distracts and tricks this spirit of the cedar forest, the fifty unmarried young men he has brought on the adventure are felling cedar timber, stripping it of its branches and laying it "in many piles on the hillside", ready to be taken away. Thus the adventure reveals itself in the context of a timber raid, bringing cedar wood to timberless Mesopotamia.

As his death approaches, and Gilgamesh is oppressed with his own mortality, the gods remind him of his great feats: "...having fetched cedar, the unique tree, from its mountains, having killed Humbaba in the forest..." [ [http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1813.htm The death of Gilgamesh" Segment F from Me-Turan] ]

The iconography of the apotropaic severed head of Humbaba, with staring eyes, flowing beard and wild hair, is well documented from the First Babylonian Dynasty, continuing into Neo-Assyrian art and dying away during the Achaemenid rule. The decapitated head of the monstrous Humbaba found a Greek parallel in the myth of Perseus [Noted at an early date by Clark Hopkins, "Assyrian elements in the Perseus-Gorgon story", "American Journal of Archaeology" 38 (1934:341-ff).] and the similarly employed head of Medusa, which Perseus placed in his leather sack. [Judith McKenzie, A.T. Reyes and A. Schmidt-Colinet, "Faces in the rock at Petra and Medain Saleh", "Palestine Exploration Quarterly" 130 (1998) 37, 39 with references. Not all decapitation scenes are identifiable as Gilgamesh and Humbaba: in 1928 C. Opfer claimed to find only one (Opfer, "Der Tod des Humbaba", 'Altorientalische Forschungen" 5"' (1928:207ff).] Archaic Greek depictions of the gorgoneion render it bearded, an anomaly in the female Gorgon. Judith McKenzie detected Humbaba heads in a Nabatean tomb frieze at Petra. [Judith S. McKenzie, "Keys from Egypt and the East: Observations on Nabataean Culture in the Light of Recent Discoveries" "Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research", No. 324, Nabataean Petra (Novrmber 2001:97-112) especially p 107f. ]

Notes