Giants/A named giant
Humbaba, recast
Hobabish
The monster of the cedar forest, written as Ḥobabiš among the Watchers’ sons. In the epic he is killed by Gilgamesh. Here they are kin, and both are on the docket.
Also named Ḥobabiš, Humbaba, Huwawa.
- Office
- The cedar guardian
- Father
- Unnamed Watcher
- Tradition
- Qumran
- Cited
- 4Q203; 4Q530
Humbaba (Huwawa) is the guardian Enlil set over the cedar forest, slain in the epic so that Gilgamesh might make a name. The Book of Giants writes him Ḥobabiš and sets him in the same list as glgmš. The pair is not accidental. Someone in third-century BCE Judea knew the epic well enough to import both names as giants.
Almost nothing of his own speech survives. A Manichaean episode in which a giant robs another of a wife may belong to this figure, or to the general violence of the camp. What matters is the recasting: the forest guardian is no longer a boundary-monster outside the city. He is inside the family. The flood does not distinguish the hero from the monster he killed.