Khumban

Humban ( elx, 𒀭𒃲𒈨𒌍, Humban, ''^dhu-um-ban'', also ''^dhu-ban'', Huban) was an Elamite god. He is already attested in the earliest sources preserving information about Elamite religion, but seemingly only grew in importance in the neo-Elamite period, in which many kings had theophoric names invoking him. He was connected with the concept of ''kitin'', or divine protection.

Due to his role in religion of the neo-Elamite person, he was also worshiped by the earliest Persian rulers from the Achaemenid dynasty, as indicated by the Persepolis Administrative Archives, where he is mentioned more often even than Ahura Mazda.

Character

It is likely that while in the west of Elam Inshushinak was regarded as the main god, further east the position of Humban was higher. At the same time, with the exception of texts from the Acheamenid period, Humban does not appear in sources from further east than Izeh in Khuzestan. According to Wouter Henkelman, such evidence indicates that what is referred to as "Elamite religion" in scholarship was most likely a "patchwork of local traditions."

Humban could be called ''rišar nappipir'', "greatest of the gods" or "great among the gods," though this epithet was also applied to Inshushinak. An inscription of Hanni of Ayapir calls him ''rišar nappirra'', "greatest god." Another of his epithets might have been ''elume'', possibly a loan from Akkadian ''elû'' ("high," "exalted"), but it is unclear if a passage in which it is attested should be interpreted as referring to the god as Humban the Exalted or if it instead denotes the location of his temple.

Humban's supremacy over other gods could be acknowledged in temples not dedicated to him, for example it is presumed that the Ayapir sanctuary from which the ''rišar nappirra'' epithet is known was most likely dedicated to the local god Tirutur, rather tha Humban.

Kitin

Humban was believed to bestow ''kitin'' upon rulers. The term is often translated as "divine protection," but its meaning was most likely more broad, and in individual sources it might designate concepts such as "god-given royal power," "divinely-enforced legal protection," "legal authority," "legal order" or even "divine emblem." Other gods were believed to bestow it too, for example Inshushinak, Tepti and Tirutur, but the ''kitin'' of Humban was regarded as the most important for the kings in the neo-Elamite period.

It is not clear when did Humban become a god associated with kingship, but it might have been a theological innovation of the neo-Elamite period. Similarly, the term ''kitin'' is largely limited to administrative texts in earlier periods, and only starts to appear in royal inscriptions in neo-Elamite times. In personal names, its use prior to this period is limited to sources from Malyan.

A single mention of ''kitin'' occurs in the so-called "Daivā Inscription" of Xerxes I, though only in the Elamite version, not the accompanying Akkadian and Persian ones.

Worship

Oldest attestation of Humban is the so-called Treaty of Naram-Sin, whose signatories were the Akkadian ruler in mention (reigned 2260-2223 BCE) and an unknown Elamite monarch, often assumed to be Khita of Awan, though definite evidence is lacking. Humban occupies the second place among the deities listed as witnesses, behind Pinikir. His name is written as ''^dhu-ba-an'' in this document. The other divine witnesses enumerated include deities of both Elamite (for example Simut and Hutran) and western (Ilaba, Ishara, Manzat, Ninkarrak, Ninurta) origin. The treaty has been used as evidence of Humban being a god originating in Awan, or already occupying an important position in the "Awanite" pantheon in the third millennium BCE, but Wouter Henkelman suggests that caution is necessary, as he is only mentioned once in this document, while Inshushinak, who on the account of being the tutelary god of Susa would not necessarily play a major role in Awan, is mentioned six times.

A text from Susa roughly contemporary with the Naram-Sin treaty mentions a day during which grain was offered to Humban, though it does not specify where did it take place. In the following Sukkalmah period, the only evidence of the worship of Humban are theophoric names in administrative texts, such as Kuk-Humban.

In the Middle Elamite period (second half of second millennium BCE), king Untash-Napirisha built a temple of Humban at Chogha Zanbil. Humban also appears in the inscription from a stele of king Shilhak-Inshushinak I, in which he occupies the fourth place among the gods listed, after Napirisha, Kiririsha and Inshushinak. The same king also rebuilt a "residence" (''murti'') of Humban.

The popularity of Humban seemingly increased in the neo-Elamite period, as indicated by the high number of theophoric names invoking him. At least thirteen neo-Elamite kings or claimants to the throne (roughly a half of Elamite rulers from this period) had such names. Examples include Humban-haltash III and Tepti-Humban-Inshushinak. For comparison, only two are attested from earlier times, namely Huba-simti from the Sargonic period and Humban-Numena, who reigned around 1350 BCE. Neo-Elamite rulers whose inscriptions mention Humban include Hanni of Ayapir, Tepti-Humban-Inshushinak, and possibly Atta-hamiti-Inshushinak. An inscription of Tepti-Humban-Inshushinak indicates that among the clergy of Humban in his times there was a high priestess.

A number of Elamite topographical names invoked Humban, for example Til Humba, "hill of Humban," located near the western border of Elam, or the town Zila-Humban located in the Fahliyan area, possibly near Kurangun.

Achaemenid reception

In the Persepolis fortification archive, Humban appears more commonly than any other Elamite or Persian deity, with a total of twenty six mentions. For comparison, Auramazdā (Ahura Mazda) appears only ten times. The amount of grain which according to these documents was offered to Humban by the Achaemenid administration was more than thrice as big as that offered to Auramazdā. It has been argued that in this period, he should be regarded as not an Elamite god, but a Persian one.

Mary Boyce went as far as suggesting that the prominence of Humban in the neo-Elamite period influenced the position of Ahura Mazda in religion of the Persians, but Wouter Henkelman considers this proposal to be entirely speculative. It is nonetheless plausible that the concept of ''kitin'', associated with the neo-Elamite period with Humban, was later assigned to Ahura Mazda, as indicated by an inscription of Xerxes using this term. Ahura Mazda's role as a divine kingmaker was also likely modeled on Humban's.

Most of the nineteen priests (eight of them designated as ''šatin'') of Humban known from Achaemenid documents bear linguistically Iranian, rather than Elamit, names (for example Mardunuya and Yama), and the percentage of the latter type of names among them is similar to the ten percent attested among the general populace. Humban could receive offerings alongside gods of various backgrounds, including Ahura Mazda and Adad.

Most locations where Humban was worshiped in the Achemenid period were towns located close to the royal road network.

Mesopotamian reception

Humban is attested in four theophoric names from Nippur from the Kassite period, more than any deity of neither Mesopotamian nor Kassite origin with the exception of the Hurrian god Teshub, who is present in fifteen names, and Simut, present in nine names.

In the neo-Assyrian period, Humban was regarded as an equivalent of Enlil, as indicated by two commentaries on the incantation series Šurpu. This equation was most likely based on their shared role as sources of royal power in the respective cultures, as no evidence in favor or against attributing any other functions of Enlil (such as determination of fates or control over weather) to Humban is available. Based on the equation of Humban with Enlil and Anu with Jabru in such sources, Heidemarie Koch proposed that Jabru was regarded as the father of Humban. However, Jabru is not attested in any Elamite sources, but only in Mesopotamian ones, and sometimes was himself described as the Elamite counterpart of Enlil. For example, according to the god list ''An = Anum'', a god bearing the name Yabnu (''^dia-ab-na'') was the "Enlil of Elam." According to Wilfred G. Lambert, Yanbu should be understood as the same god as Jabru.

Humban also appears alongside Jabru and Napirisha in the text ''Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince''. Alexandre Lokotionov notes that this sequence of gods mirrors the reference to Humban in Šurpu, and that its inclusion possibly indicates that to the Assyrians the underworld "could have simply been a repository for the exotic and the unusual."

Ammankasibar, a god whose statue according to the annals of Ashurbanipal was taken to Assyria, has been identified with Humban by some researchers, but there is no plausible explanation for the element ''kasibar'' in his name.

Disproved theories

An early, now discredited, theory proposed by Georg Hüsing in 1916 aimed to connect Humban with biblical Haman, Greek mythical figure Memnon (based on Humban-Numena according to Hüsing), Egyptian god Ammon, and Japanese Hachiman.

While in past scholarship it has been assumed that Humban might have been the model for Humbaba, the guardian of the Cedar Forest in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', this theory is no longer considered plausible today according to Andrew R. George, who notes that it relied on "unsafe historical conclusions" Humbaba's name has no clear linguistic affiliation, and its writing varies between various locations and time periods, with the original form being Huwawa. Based on attestations from the Ur III period it was seemingly initially an ordinary personal name in Mesopotamia.

Another no longer accepted theory, in the past supported for example by Walther Hinz, considered Humban to be the same god as Napirisha, with the latter being a "taboo name" of the former. Similarly, Kiririsha was held to be a taboo name of Pinikir rather than a distinct deity. This view has been commonly criticized from the 1980s onward, with some doubts about the former case expressed as early as 1901, and it is no longer supported by experts today. Due to its prevalence in the past, some older publications overestimate the number of inscriptions referring to Humban by treating the logogram ^ANGAL or DINGIR.GAL, corresponding to Napirisha (Elamite: "great god;" the cuneiform signs of the logogram have the same meaning in Sumerian) as representing him instead.

References

Bibliography

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Further reading

* Henkelman, Wouter F.M. “Humban & Auramazdā: Royal Gods in a Persian Landscape”. In: ''Persian Religion in the Achaemenid Period'' / La Religion Perse à l’époque Achéménide. Edited by Wouter F. M. Henkelman and Céline Redard, 1st ed. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017. pp. 273–346. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvckq50d.11.

Elamite gods
Persian mythology