Humbaba’s Head
From guardian of the forest to a symbol on jewelry pendants, Humbaba’s face twists as wildly as a belly’s intestines
Humbaba’s fame in the ancient world is known from widely distributed iconography, multiple versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and numerous omens in Mesopotamian divinatory texts. A parade example of monster culture, Humbaba has been understood by scholars to be an apotropaic symbol, a powerful agent to ward off evil. At the center of this discussion is Humbaba’s head.
An Old Babylonian, clay fired figurine of Humbaba’s monstrous face (BM116624), the cuneiform inscription on the back reads: “If the coils of the colon resemble the head of Huwawa, (this is) an omen of Sargon who ruled the land. If ...., the house of a man will expand. (Written by) the hand of Warad-Marduk, diviner, son of Kubburum, diviner.” [tīrānu used of coils of colon and whorls of hair]
Humbaba’s Head
Humbaba’s most famous appearance in the Epic of Gilgamesh sympathetically conveys him as a ecological guardian of a vibrant and brimming Cedar Forest. Here he stands at the border of human civilization guarding a sacred vitality — a magnificent forest and the sonorous, wild rumpus living in the trees. As its guardian, Humbaba is a monster to humans, divinely destined to be “the terror of the people,” (George; I:587). “If you penetrate his forest you are seized by the tremors” (II, 228–9). When finally Gilgamesh and Enkidu slit his throat, some versions of the Epic have them place Humbaba’s head in a bag and presumably carry it to Uruk where they carve an ornate door for the temple from Humbaba’s cedar trees.
It is tempting to draw conclusions from this story about the longue durée of Humbaba’s head. But as Sarah B. Graff has demonstrated, Humbaba is much more than just an apotropaic figure, particularly in earlier periods where he is associated with variety of cultural boundaries (Graff, 128f).
In truth, the role of Humbaba’s severed head in the Gilgamesh epic is far more ambiguous. …there is great emphasis placed on the head and the powers emanating from it while Humbaba is still alive. The description of his terrifying appearance includes the phrase “None can approach his head, which consumes the canebrake,” in Sumerian versions A and B. Similarly, the Akkadian versions describe him with a phrase emphasizing actions of the voice and breath, which originate from the head alone instead of the entire body: “Huwawa, his voice is the Deluge, his speech is fire and his breath is death.” However, most versions of the text do not specify what happened to Humbaba’s head after it is severed. In the Sumerian A version, the head is placed in a leather bag and presented to Enlil, who angrily chastises Gilgamesh for his actions against Humbaba. The Standard Babylonian Version (SBV) contains a fragmentary line that suggests Gilgamesh and Enkidu carry the head with them on their return, but as it is not mentioned further in the surviving text, this may give the head a misleading impression of importance. (Graff, 120).
In terms of critical bodies, Version A of the Epic describes an elaborate and fascinating body image for Humbaba. Cloaked with seven numinous auras (melammu) by Enlil, Humbaba’s shining yet deadly items of protection also function as weapons of affliction for his enemies, weapons that Gilgamesh cannot vanquish. So instead, Gilgamesh tricks him. Pretending to seek familial relations, Gilgamesh pleas, “Just hand over your terrors to me – I want to become your kinsman.” So Humbaba exchanges each of his seven auras for a gift of civilization (women, flour, sandals, stones) leaving him defenseless and exposed to Gilgamesh’s fatal attack. Enlil then distributes Humbaba’s seven auras, infusing them in various ecological places (fields, rivers, marshes, and forests) as well as in assorted other entities (palaces, lions, debt-slaves, and Nungal, the goddess of prisoners) (Version A, lines 193–199).
While Humbaba lost his head, Enlil’s transplantation of his auras to other natural and technological materials in the Epic of Gilgamesh parallels the spectral uses of his head in non-literary domains of culture and society. For whatever the fate of Humbaba’s head in the Epic of Gilgamesh, it repeatedly crops up like a decapitated specter from the third millennium to the third century BCE. Gilgamesh (or some other bearded hero) stands atop his vanquished head (OIM A9325 & Ornan, 419), his horned headdress and elaborate facial hair are focalized in wall reliefs (Walters), his severed head floats in the midst of divine combat scenes on cylinder seals (THE MET), his face manifests on newborn faces in the birth omens of the Šumma izbu series and on the faces of older men in the Alamdimmû compendium, and his head dangled from necks in the forms of pendants on the living and amulets on the dead (Penn).
IEL RESEARCH NOTES:
Morphoscopy omen — The majority of the compendium of omens based on physical observations of people’s distinctive features (Alamdimmû)229 derives from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh.230 One omen mentions a man with features like those of Humbaba: [DI]Š IGI dḫu-wa-wa GAR i 11 -šár-rù IGI.II u KI[R 4 If his face looks like Ḫuwawa, he will grow rich. (Commentary:) eyes and nose […]231 — (Graff, 101).
As an aside, it is significant that both Humbaba and Uta-napishti are associated with napishtu and are given everlasting life “like the gods” by Enlil.
