This essay explores the demon giant Huwawa as a matriarchal deity whose defeat in battle can be viewed as symbolic of the beginings of man-made environmental destruction. The slaying of Huwawa echoes the defeat of matriarchal goddesses in myth, such as the beheading of Medusa by Perseus or the slaying of Tiamat by Marduk, but Huwawa gives the familiar story a slightly different slant.
Huwawa is defeated in battle by the hero Gilgamesh in an early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) story recorded around 2100 B.C.E. He appears in a later much longer Mesopotamian (Akkadian) saga we call The Epic of Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh engages him in a slightly different context. The Akkadian name for Huwawa is Humbaba.
In Mesopotamia, images of the giant Huwawa/Humbaba were hung on walls or used in seals, probably as protective magic. Some were inscribed in with omens, as Huwawa was a deity of divination – especially extispicy, augury performed by examining the entrails of sacrificed lambs.
Huwawa is described in early texts as frighteningly tall in stature, with dragon teeth and a lion’s face. In art he is pictured with claws, big ears, and large testicles. More often, just his head is portrayed, with a full head of hair and a bushy beard. Huwawa has seven cloaks of protection that are like shields or auras.
Miriam Robbins Dexter views Huwawa/Humbaba as a partial source of the mythology surrounding the Greek goddess Medusa. She believes syncretization occurred as a result of Mesopotamian influence on Greek culture circa 800 B.C.E.
The distinguising feature of Huwawa, aside from his scary appearance, is his locale: he guards the Cedar Forest of the Goddess Irnini. We know little about Irnini except that she had a forest, where there were cedars. She is sometimes called a goddess of “victory” or “the underworld.” She is conjectured to be “the consort” of a snake god. Written references to her are fleeting and rare. She is considered a “minor” goddess who was eventually syncretized with the complex Akkadian goddess Ishtar.
The Cedar Forest, by contrast, is considered significant, due to its importance politically and economically. Wars were fought over access to the wood needed to build and sustain the large cities of Mesopotamia. Deforestation of lands to the north and northwest of the cities led to devastating changes in climate. Mesopotamians were aware of at least some of the implications of deforestation.
Gilgamesh, the hero who vanquishes Huwawa/Humbaba, was a real person, a king of the Mesopotamian (Sumerian) city of Uruk about 2700 B.C.E. The first written stories about him appeared about 500 years after his death, conicident with the evolution of narrative forms of writing. He was worshipped as an important ancestor after his death and his stories were probably part of an oral tradition. He was reputed to be two-thirds divine, only one-third mortal, the son of another semi-divine king and the goddess Ninsun, “The Wild Cow Lady.” Stories about Gilgamesh were eventually integrated into a single structure that had developed into a stable form by about 1200 B.C.E. This is the Epic of Gilgamesh usually studied in literature classes. The Epic credits Gilgamesh with directing the construction of a large wall around his city, a claim consistent with the timeline of archeological research. Most of the less fantastical elements of the Epic are plausible.
One theme of the Gilgamesh stories is the way civilization has changed the character of man. At the beginning of the Epic, King Gilgamesh is applying his superhuman powers in ways that are oppressive to his people. The details are vague, but it appears his sexual demands on women are excessive and his engagement in physical games with other young men is distracting. The important point to take is that Gilgamesh is utilizing his powers in ways his people consider tyrannical. He’s a bad king. The citizens of Uruk appeal to their gods for intercession, and, sympathetic with their pleas, the mother goddess Aruru fashions a mate for Gilgamesh to siphon off his attention. This mate is the primitive man Enkidu, created from clay like the rest of mankind and set loose in the wilderness.
Enkidu coexists peacfully with the animals, lapping water from streams and eating plants. He frightens a hunter from the hinterlands, however, because he is so wild looking. The hunter appeals to Gilgamesh for intercession. The king of Uruk dispatches a priestess to the countryside to seduce Enkidu, surmising that after exposure to the charms of women the strange man will join the rest of humanity.
The priestess tames Enkidu, and he lives contentedly in his new country home until he hears that there is another man, Gilgamesh, who is supposedly stronger than him. Enkidu travels to the city to challenge Gilgamesh to unarmed combat.
Though the two men are almost equal in strength, with Enkidu perhaps the stronger physically, Gilgamesh is trained in the arts of battle and Enkidu is not. Gilgamesh eventually wins the battle and embraces Enkudu as a worthy opponent. He relinquishes his demands on the young people of Uruk as his friendship with Enkidu captures his energy and attention. The two share comradery, competition, mutual admiration, sexual intimacy, and some very very bad decisions. The first of these bad decisions, leading down the crooked road to all the other bad decisions, is the decision to go after Huwawa.
In the Epic version of events, Gilgamesh is initially motivated to challenge Huwawa/Humbaba by the desire to commit some heroic act that will be remembered after his death and thus gain him a semblance of immortality. Enkidu requires some persuation to go along, since he remembers Huwawa from his days in the wild and knows him to be a formidable figure. Ninsun the Wild Cow Lady agrees to protect her son and his friend during the battle, while bewailing to the sun god, “Why did you afflict my son Gilgamesh with such a restless spirit?” Gilgamesh rationalizes this adventure by pointing out that the sun god Shamash “hates” Huwawa. Nowhere is it explained what is heroic about confronting one giant with two strong men protected by a goddess.
After five days’ journey the companions reach the mountain of the Cedar Forest, “the throne-base of Irnini.” At first Huwawa jeers at the two, particularly at Enkidu, whom he remembers from Enkidu’s wild past. But the sun god Shamash raises a tempest – thirteen winds – against Huwawa and the team from Uruk gains the advantage. Huwawa at this point pleads for his life, offering his service to the king. Huwawa poignantly reminds Enkidu that he knew the wild man in days past and never injured or threatened him. Gilgamesh appears to waver, but Enkidu urges him forward. As the curved blade is raised to slice off his head, Huwawa delivers his curse: May Enkidu never reach old age, and may he die before Gilgamesh.
After Huwawa is vanquished, the adventurers cut trees from the Cedar Forest and make a raft, escaping down the Euphrates with valuable timber. But of course they never really escape. The curse follows them, and they make choices that lead to Enkidu’s early demise, an ignoble death from a lingering sickness. Enkidu dies lamenting the door he made out of cedar stolen from the forest. He also shares with Gilgamesh a vision of the death realm, the world below: it is gloomy, dull, without joy.
Having glimpsed a picture of life beyond death from his friend, Gilgamesh is distraught with thoughts of his own death. Immortal fame from great deeds is no longer enough; Gilgamesh must receive immortality in the world above and avoid the death-realm of the goddess Erishkegal altogether. The rest of the Epic is about Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality. I won’t summarize it here, because it is not related to Huwawa. The end of the story harkens back to the curse, however. Gilgamesh is given a plant to eat that will conquer death, but before he can consume it, a snake appears and devours the eternal life-giving plant. The ending of the Epic supports the idea that Irnini is a snake goddess or somehow associated with snakes. The snake serves as her emissary in extracting revenge for the death of Huwawa and subsequent desecration of the forest.
Sources:
Black, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1992.
Dexter, Miriam Robbins, “Medusa: Ferocious and Beautiful, Petrifying and Healing: Through the Words of the Ancients,” in Re-visioning Medusa: From Monster to Divine Wisdom. Edited by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D., Trista Hendren, and Pat Daly. The Girl God Books, 2017.
Gardner, John and Joahn Maier. Gilgamesh: Translated From the Sin-Leqi-Unninni Version. New York: Vintage Books, 1985.
Tigay, Jeffrey H., The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Books, 2002.