Humbaba

two enormous horns from the thing that came down out of the sky on the bedroom wall over the bed and they are there through everything that happens for the rest of tonight they are there while a man is dying in the next room they are there through the six days and seven nights nobody in the poem ever mentions them again and they poured out oil for the god of the city and then they held a celebration in the palace and everybody drank and afterwards the young men lay down to sleep on the couches of the night and Enkidu laid down and Enkidu had a dream Chapter 7 The Council He dreamed the gods were sitting together, Anu and Enlil and Ea, and the sun god, in a room, in conference, and they were talking about the two of them.

Because they have killed the bull of heaven, said Anu, and because they have killed Humbaba, one of them must die.

Let it be the one who stripped the mountain of its cedar.

and I should say, who is in that room, because there are four of them, and each one is there for a reason.

And Enlil said, Let Enkidu die, Gilgamesh shall not die.

And the son God spoke up for him.

He said, Was it not at my word that they killed the bull in Humbaba? I told them to go.

Should Enkidu now die innocent? And Enlil turned on him and said, You talk to them like one of their companions.

I have seen where he goes.

Umbaba's roar is the flood.

His mouth is fire.

His breath is death.

Why shouldn't I roam the wilds like a lion? I mourn for Enkidu, the galloping mule, the mountain donkey, the leopard of the plains.

Shoulder to shoulder we scaled the peaks, seized and slaughtered the bull of heaven, destroyed Humbaba of the cedar forest, and slayed lions in the mountain passes.

My friend, who I loved, my brother in hardship, my constant companion through struggles and sickness, who met the end that all men must face.

I wept for six days and seven nights, refused to hand over his body for burial, till a maggot came crawling out of his nose.

I find brown noise, the kind of the slow, deep rumble to be a lot more soothing.

You have deep rumbles in Gilgamesh as well.

The Humbaba comes with a deep rumble, doesn't he? It's absolutely that sense of threat.

Yeah, it's the kind of sub-bass, I think of it, in the jungle that makes absolutely everything tremble.

And then later the name, uh, Hobabish is mentioned.

Hobabish, most scholars identify him with, as the Mesopotamian, uh, Humbaba-

Mm

... from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

2.

Gilgamesh and Huwawa are alternatively called Gilgamesh and the Realm of the Living.

Huwawa, Humbaba, was a creature that protected the pine forest.

His visage resembled twisted intestines, and he emitted lethal rays.

The Sumerian narrative appears to be situated in the Zagros Mountains along the Elamite frontier, southwest Iran, east of Mesopotamia, although the Akkadian accounts explicitly state that the setting was Lebanon to the west of Mesopotamia.

I was there with Odysseus Struggling with monsters, meeting Circe on the sea, always with a longing for home in his heart.

I was there in the forest with King Gilgamesh and the wild man Enkidu as they faced Humbaba.

I was there on the beach with Proteus, the old man of the sea.

I stood by as Baba Yaga cackled and sang in the depths of the forest, as that little girl picked the white flower and fell down into darkness.

This is a sacred place, sacred to the gods.

You know they have placed the guardian Humbaba here to protect this forest.

We should not trouble this sacred forest with our small desires.

And Gilgamesh said, Enkidu, you are strong.

And they both dreamed that he cared for them, that he, like a great bull, like a great fire, like a great wind, watched over them.

And Enkidu remembered what Gilgamesh had said, how he'd gone into the desert and spoken to Shamash, and Shamash had promised to help them.

in their adventure, in their journey, in their quest to kill Humbaba, the guardian of the forest.

When they awoke, the birds were singing their first cries.

The legend, if I interpret it rightly, states that Elam shall be altogether given to Samas-Natsir, and the same prince is further described as building Nippur and Dur-Ilu, as king of Babylon, and as conqueror both of a certain Baldakha and of Kumbasatir, the king of the cedar forest.

It will be remembered that in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Kumbaba is also stated to have been the lord of the cedar forest.

But of new discoveries and facts there is a constant supply, and it is impossible for the historian to keep pace with them.

Even while the sheets of his work are passing through the press, the excavator, the explorer, and the decipherer are adding to our previous stores of knowledge.

It was rare, expensive, fragrant, fit for temples, palaces, ships, doors and the houses of gods.

The Cedar Forest was wealth at the edge of the known world, and it was guarded by Humbaba, or Huwawa in some older Sumerian versions of the story.

His name changes slightly across languages and tablets, but his role remains the same.

He is the terrifying guardian of the forest, appointed by the great god Enlil himself.

The descriptions of Humbaba are deliberately unsettling.

His face is compared to the strange coils and ripples of animal entrails.

His roar is like a flood.

His breath is death.

Help me in this quest.

so that Enkidu and I may kill Humbaba, the guardian of the forest, and cut down the sacred trees.

So Shamash spoke to the wide sky.

So Gilgamesh spoke to Shamash and to the wide sky.

He took thirteen winds, a thorn wind, and an ice wind, and a wind of fire, and a wind of acid, and of broken glass, a scouring wind, a desert wind, an ice wind, a wind of darkness, and of poison.

All of these winds he stored them away in caves in the high mountains.

to be used only when they were needed by Gilgamesh in his fight against Humbaba, the sacred guardian of the forest.

And again, Shamash spoke.