Humbaba

Humbaba is a guard doing his job. Enlil set him over the Cedar Forest as its terror, and the heroes go there specifically to kill him and take the timber — the epic does not pretend otherwise, and Enlil is furious afterwards. In the Sumerian poem he wears seven auras of terror that Gilgamesh strips off one by one; in the Akkadian he appeals for his life and Enkidu talks Gilgamesh out of sparing him. His face survives in clay: Old Babylonian masks draw it as one unbroken coil, which the diviners read as entrails, so that a liver with that convolution in it was Humbaba showing up in the sacrifice.

Parentage

• Hanbi

Domains

• tutelary protection

Powers

• the auras of terror, which the guardian wears and can put off

Relations

• enemy: Enkidu
• sibling: Pazuzu

Sources

• Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet V; 'Gilgamesh and Huwawa'.
• Reference treatments of Humbaba as guardian of the Cedar Forest and of Pazuzu as his brother.