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Enlil has appointed Humbaba to guard it and armed him in sevenfold terrors, terrible to all flesh is Humbaba. When he roars it is like the torrent of the storm, his breath is like fire, and his jaws are death itself. He guards the cedars so well that when the wild heifer stirs in the forest, though she is sixty leagues distant, he hears her.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. by N. K. Sandars, Penguin Classics, London, 1971 (1964), p.69.
PLACE: In the forest to the north or east of Uruk.
TIME: 3rd Millennium B.C.
CIRCUMSTANCE: The sound of the supernatural being Humbaba (who guards the cedar forest) is compared to a storm. His hearing is good enogh to detect a wild animal at 60 leagues in the forest!
My friend, I saw a third dream and this dream was altogether frightful. The heavens roared and the earth roared again, daylight failed and darkness fell, lightnings flashed, fire blazed out, the clouds lowered, they rained down death. Then the brightness departed, the fire went out, and all was turned to ashes fallen about us... When they had come down from the mountain Gilgamesh seized the axe in his hand: he felled the cedar. When Humbaba heard the noise far off he was enraged; he cried out, 'Who is this that has violated my woods and cut down my cedar?'
The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. by N. K. Sandars, Penguin Classics, London, 1971 (1964), p.77-78.
PLACE: In the forest to the north or east of Uruk.
TIME: 3rd Millennium B.C.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Description of a storm in a dream. - The guardian of the cedar forest, Humbaba, is enraged by the sound of a felled cedar.
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