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The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East

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The face of Humbaba (1)

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Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)

02 Religious and ideological symbols and iconographic motifs
05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore
04 Religious and philosophical literature and poetry
02 Religious and ideological symbols and iconographic motifs




 		Keywords
Humbaba
statues
Period
Neo-Assyrian Empire 		Channel
Iconographic tradition

Text
There is a curious object which is related to the examination of entrails, called the “Humbaba face”, a grotesque human visage that can be made entirely from lengths of intestine. It is familiar from finds made in Mesopotamia, but a characteristic example has also been unearthed at the acropolis of Gortyn, in a sanctuary where the presence of oriental craftsmen and seers in the eighth century is evident from the architecture as well as from the relics of foundation deposits. The Humbaba face is also imitated in some of the grotesque masks from the Ortheia sanctuary at Sparta, confirming the spread of paraphernalia of the eastern art of divination to the West.

Bibliography

Burkert 1992, 49Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Period. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1992.
Carter 1987, fig. 2Carter, Jane Burr. “The Masks of Ortheia.” American Journal of Archaeology 91 (1987) 355-383. [JSTOR (requires subscription)]

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Humbaba and Gorgon (1)

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001029.php

Illustrations (click an image to view the full-size version in a new window)

Fig. 1: Terracotta mask of the face of Humbaba. Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
Fig. 2: Terracotta mask from Sanctuary of Ortheia. Sparta Museum no. 1 (Photo taken from Carter 1987, fig. 2 ).

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