Humbaba

Summary

Humbaba, called Huwawa in Sumerian, is the guardian of the Cedar Forest in the stories of Gilgamesh. Enlil set him to keep the forest and frighten people away from it, and the Akkadian epic describes him this way: his roar is the Flood, his mouth is fire, his breath is death; he hears any rustling in his forest a hundred leagues away, and whoever goes down into it is struck with paralysis.

Gilgamesh resolved to go to the forest to make himself a lasting name; Enkidu, who knew the road and its danger, warned him, and then they set out together. They stood at the edge of the forest looking at its entrance and at the Cedar Mountain, the dwelling of the gods, with its pleasant shade. Humbaba mocked Enkidu as "son of a fish" who does not know his own father, and threatened to feed Gilgamesh's flesh to the vultures. They fought until the ground split under their feet and Mount Hermon and Lebanon split, and Shamash raised thirteen winds against Humbaba that covered his face, so he could move neither forward nor back. Humbaba begged for his life and offered to be Gilgamesh's servant and cut him whatever trees he wished. Enkidu said: kill him before Enlil hears. Humbaba cursed them: may Enkidu not live longer than his friend. They killed him and cut the cedars, and Enkidu made from the tallest tree a door seventy-two cubits high for the Euphrates to carry down to Nippur; they set off on a raft, Gilgamesh holding Humbaba's head.

In the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and Huwawa the trick and the ending differ. Huwawa has seven terrifying auras, and Gilgamesh deceives him: swearing by his mother Ninsun and his father Lugalbanda that he wants to become his kinsman, he offers his two sisters as wife and concubine, then flour, cool water, shoes and precious stones of the mountains, and Huwawa hands over his auras one by one. When he has given the seventh, Gilgamesh punches him and ties him up like a captured bull. Huwawa weeps and calls on 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!" Gilgamesh takes pity on him, but Enkidu says a captured bird must not be let go home, and cuts his throat. They carry his head in a leather bag to Enlil, who is angry: he should have sat before you, eaten the bread you eat and drunk the water you drink. Then Enlil distributes Huwawa's seven auras: to the fields, the rivers, the reed-beds, the lions, the palace, the forests, and Nungal, goddess of prisoners.

The idea the story turns on is that the forest was protected, that killing its guardian opened it to the axe, and that this had a price. Enlil had appointed the guardian, and he was killed without Enlil's leave: in the Sumerian poem Enlil is angry, and in the Akkadian epic Enlil decrees Enkidu's death as punishment for killing Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven, as Humbaba had cursed before he died. The cedar became a door in the temple at Nippur: it was taken from the forest to build a house. In the Sumerian version the guardian's awe does not die but is spread through the world: in field, river, reed-bed, lion and palace.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. In the Babylonian essay's reading Ḫumbaba has two parts, Arabic ḥimā and bāb: "guardian of the gate", the fearsome warden. In Lisān al-ʿArab ḥamā is to forbid a place to people and guard it, and the ḥimā is land with herbage and water that its owner protects so that no one else may graze it. The bāb is the entrance, and the bawwāb its keeper. That is what the story makes him: the forest is Enlil's ḥimā, Humbaba is set over it to keep people out, the two heroes stand at its entrance, Humbaba tells them he should have killed them at the entrance of his forest, and they make a door from his cedars for Enlil's house. The ḫ of the name answers Arabic ḥ, because cuneiform writes the ḥ of western names with ḫ-signs.

Linguistic Root

Humbaba and "guardian of the gate"

The essay's reading rests on the late form Ḫumbaba: ḫum from ḥimā, baba from bāb. Ḫ answers ḥ because cuneiform has no separate signs for ḥ, and writes the ḥ and ʿayn of western names with ḫ-signs, as the Assyrian inscription writes Bīt-Ḫumrî for the house of ʿOmri king of Israel, whose name begins with ʿayn. The m and b remain as they are.

Lane: ḥamā al-shayʾ, he forbade the thing to people, guarded and defended it; ḥamā al-makān, he forbade the place to people in general; the ḥāmī is the defender of his companions; the ḥimā is the forbidden place. The bāb is the entrance and what closes it, and the bawwāb is the door-keeper.

The limit of the reading is that the m appears only in the late form. The old forms Ḫuwawa, Ḫubaba and Ḫubibi have no m, and Jan Keetman considers Ḫubebe the likeliest old reading, suggesting that the m of Ḫumbaba may come from the name of the Elamite god Humban.

Other readings in the essay

The essay also reads the name as hamma + bābā, the awesome great one, bābā being father or grandfather in Semitic, so that he is the awesome protecting father. H is farther from cuneiform ḫ than ḥ is. The essay compares Humbaba with the Greek watchdog Cerberus and with the winged bulls, the lamassu, that guard the gates of Assyrian palaces.

Historical Context

Huwawa's earliest stories are in two Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, then in Akkadian copies of the Old Babylonian period, then in Tablets II to V of the Standard Babylonian epic. The Sumerian dictionary records small figures of him in stone, gold and bronze, so his face was a known shape that was made and kept. In the Akkadian epic his forest lies at Mount Hermon and Lebanon.

Connections

Key Mythic Narratives

A second Sumerian version

In version B of Gilgamesh and Huwawa the story begins with death: Gilgamesh leans out over Uruk's wall, sees bodies in the river and knows that no one escapes the underworld, so he seeks a name before he dies. Utu gives him seven guides who know the routes as merchants do. They cut the cedars, Huwawa's aura reaches them like a spear, and the same trick follows with small and large shoes, until Huwawa gives his seventh aura and Gilgamesh punches and binds him; Huwawa weeps and says: "Warrior, you lied!" Gilgamesh and Huwawa, version B, 1–141.

The changing face

In Tablet V Gilgamesh tells Enkidu: "Humbaba's face keeps changing!" In the Sumerian poem his mouth is a dragon's maw, his face a lion's grimace, his chest a raging flood, and he never wipes the blood from his tongue.

Symbolic Reading

The Babylonian and Sumerian rereading essays read the Cedar Forest as Lebanon, the main source of timber in the Near East, and the killing of Humbaba as felling the forest for building. The Sumerian essay says the story warns that nature is a guardian, not an enemy, and that killing it has consequences, and reads Enkidu's death after it as civilised man's loss of his bond with nature. In the text itself the cedar is cut to become a temple door, Enlil is angry at the guardian's death, and Enkidu dies after his curse.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Enlil set two guardians on the mountains: Humbaba over the Cedar Forest, and Anzu, who tells Lugalbanda: "My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door." Lugalbanda honoured the Anzud's nest and received a good destiny; his son Gilgamesh deceived and killed Huwawa, won a name and paid for it. Heimdall hears grass growing, Humbaba hears a rustle a hundred leagues away, and both guard an entrance. The threshold guardians of the Near East are gathered in Janus and Near Eastern Threshold Guardians.