Humbaba, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

In the great cedar forest of the western mountains — the Lebanon range, or perhaps the Amanus, or some other place in those highlands which the Mesopotamians knew chiefly through trade and rumor — Enlil had set, as guardian of the holy timber, a being whose face was so terrible that men described it as a coiled mass of intestines, twisting and grimacing upon itself, with seven dreadful aspects. This was Humbaba — Sumerian Huwawa — and his roar was the rumble of distant storm, his breath the heat of burning wind.

He was killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, in one of their first joint exploits. The two friends had set out from Uruk on the long journey westward to the cedar forest, that they might bring back great timbers to enrich their city. They had crossed mountains and rivers; they had endured terrible dreams along the way, dreams sent (Gilgamesh interpreted) by Shamash to forewarn them of the giant. They came at last to the gate of the forest, where the great cedars stood in a green hush, and Humbaba came forth to meet them.

There was a battle whose details the Epic preserves only in fragments. Shamash sent the thirteen winds against Humbaba, holding him fast; Gilgamesh and Enkidu fell upon him; he begged for his life, offering them all the cedars of the forest and his own service as porter. Enkidu, fearing Humbaba's craft, urged Gilgamesh to kill him quickly; Gilgamesh struck the giant down. They felled the great cedars and floated them down the river to Uruk. But the killing was an offense against the gods who had set Humbaba in his place, and was numbered among the offenses for which Enkidu would later die.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Humbaba is principally known from the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Huwawa and from Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. His face, the texts say, was "like coiled entrails" — a horror so distinctive that small clay masks reproducing it survive in considerable number, fashioned as apotropaic objects and hung in domestic doorways. The masks are remarkable for the way they make ugliness itself protective: only a face so terrible could ward off other terrors. The Cedar Forest of the epic is variously located by modern scholars in Lebanon (the traditional view) or in the Amanus mountains of southeastern Anatolia (where actual cedar groves were closer at hand); the question is open. The killing of Humbaba is one of two killings (the other being the Bull of Heaven) for which Enkidu is later condemned to death — the gods, the texts indicate, do not forget such things even when men hope they will.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Slain byGilgameshHe was killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, in one of their first joint exploits.
Slain byEnkiduHe was killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu, in one of their first joint exploits.
Companion ofEnlilEnlil had set, as guardian of the holy timber, a being whose face was so terrible
Rival ofUtuShamash sent the thirteen winds against Humbaba, holding him fast

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for Akkad, Babylon and Assyria. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 3400–3000 BCE: Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
c. 2900–2350 BCE: Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
c. 2334–2154 BCE: The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
c. 2112–2004 BCE: Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
c. 2000–1600 BCE: Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
c. 1650–1200 BCE: Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
c. 1400–1190 BCE: The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
c. 1000–612 BCE: Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.