Clay mask of the demon Huwawa

From Sippar, southern Iraq, about 1800-1600 BC

For use in divination

One method for predicting the future in ancient Mesopotamia was the study of the shape and colour of the internal organs of a sacrificed animal. Experts compiled records of these signs or omens together with the events they were believed to predict. A cuneiform inscription on the back of this clay mask suggests that the intestines might be found in the shape of Huwawa's face in this mask. Huwawa (also called Humbaba in some texts) was a monster who appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. He was guardian of the Cedar Forest (probably referring to the Lebanon in the late version of the tale) but was defeated by Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

The mask is formed of coiled intestines represented by one continuous line. Such an omen would mean 'revolution'. The divination expert who made the mask is named in the inscription as Warad-Marduk. It was found at Sippar, the cult centre for the sun-god Shamash, who was responsible for omens.

A god of nature, Humbaba's forests stretched many leagues. Not necessarily an evil deity, he was described in The Epic of Gilgamesh as being able to roar above the elements, breathe fire and having the visage of death. Early representations suggest that his features were inspired by the convoluted tract of the human intestine.    In The Epic of Gllgamesh the King of Uruk, Gllgamesh, befriended Enkldu, a wild man. Although Enkidu and many others tried to dissuade Gilgamesh from setting out to do combat with Humbaba, Enkidu gave in and accompanied him on the journey. The two companions pushed open the gates which guarded Humbaba's forest. Enkidu ominously felt the strength leave him as he touched them. He and Gllgamesh summoned Humbaba by felling some of his cedars and, with the aid of the gods, Humbaba was defeated. Gllgamesh wished to spare his life, but Enkidu urged his destruction. Gllgamesh slew Humbaba, angering Enlil, god of all Elements.

Later, Gilgamesh killed the Bull of Heaven sent by lshtar to punish him for spurning her. In revenge, and for destroying Humbaba, the gods decided that Enkldu should die.

The location of Humbaba’s fabulous forest of cedars is not exactly known. It was probable the Babylonians lacked wood for building materials and kings like Gllgamesh, who was famous for his building feats, would have needed to search long distances away for it.

In tropical zones and sometimes well beyond them, humans link to the animal world is most commonly made with the most powerful predators of the jungle: the lion and its close relations. Details iconographic similarities among these figures that revolve around transformations of the image of the lion, and he constructs a possibile hisory of these leonine apotropaic figures in Greece, North Africa, and SA and SEA, taking note of Kirtimukha (a witch-like visage is the giant, monstrous face that guards the entrance of the 11th hermitage cave, feminine from the style of jewelry in her oversized ears, the witch’s head has usurped Kirtimukha’s place as protector and it is Rangda’s familiar, bugged-out eyes, flared nostrils, and unruly hair that are featured in the icon along with an enormous, fanged maw that is extended to form the entryway itself), Narasimha, the Barong Ket and Rangda herself, as well as Humbaba of the ancient Babylon, and a host of figures from archaic Greece. Additional to the list a sizable bestiary of fantastic figures that can be linked to the Kirtimukha tradition and its Buddhist variants: the shi-shi of Japan, the Snow Lion of Nepal and Tibet, and the lions and dragons of China and Korea, as well as such far-flung icons as the Jaguar figures of

Meso-America and the monstrous, fanged and pop-eyed xwexwe and swaihwe masks that show their distended tongues in the Pacific Northwest.

Most intriguing are gorgons and gorgoneion of archaic Greece who appear around the 7th

century BC on Syracusan reliefs, as apotropaic figures on Athenian warriors’ shields, and as leonine masks in Tyrens. Medusa, of course, is the most famous gorgon, and her mask-like severed and snake-wreathed head could turn those who looked upon her to stone. Some of the gorgons pictured on archaic vases and reliefs are smooth-faced and hag-like, in the manner of Medusa, while others are bearded, with definite leonine features, and still others seem a hybrid of lion and witch, with brows that show definite traces of the ancillary tufts of hair typical of the lioness. If he is right in his admittedly conjectural history, the model for these icons with glaring eyes, flared nostrils, gnashing fangs, wild hair, and thrust-out tongues came to Greece from India via the Phoenician sea trade (or from India or Indus Civilizations, then Mesopotamia, then Near East, then Greece) It might be remembered in this regard that Durga, in particular, has the lion as her vehicle and constant companion; as noted below, she also shares stories, iconographic details, and ritual functions with the man-lion, Narasimha.

Rangda and her many cousins around the world share these oddly proportioned features. If these demonic and demon-like figures have an “archetypal” appeal, then that appeal may lie not so much in the genetic transmission of universal and cultural archetypes, but in an intuitive projection of the somatosensory structures themselves, as revealed to us through our constant, hierarchized monitoring of our own bodies as they move and encounter the world beyond the self. Rangda and her many relatives, then, may be first and foremost images of raw sensation (subject to culturally constructed values and associations).

Baliness and Orissan connection

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