THE MASK OF HUMBABA

Sometimes I pick up books I haven't read in years and I flip through them to see if I feel like reading them again. Tonight I picked up "Amulets and Talismans" by Sir Wallis Budge.

While flipping through the book I came to a page with a small piece of paper inserted. The paper had the sigil of Humwawa from the Simonomicon. The paper was placed over the illustration of THE MASK OF HUMBABA. I remember now how I had placed the paper (as a teenager) thinking I would do more research on the Demon Humwawa/Humbaba and find out more about this mask.

So, being bored, I did an image search for "British Museum mask Humbaba" and found quite a few images that appear to be of the same mask. There's not much info on the mask really, but now I know what the mask actually looks like.

In a previous post, I gave the true form of Humwawa's sigil from the Necronomicon. Here is that sigil again. Does it look like the Mask of Humbaba? Yep, except it has whiskers. Look at the eyes in Budge's bad sketch and look at the following sigil. You will find Budge's Amulets and Talismans in the bibliography and selected reading list for Simon's Necronomicon.

Mysteries of the Necronomicon: The Mystery of the Missing Whiskers

I was in a local Hastings browsing books the other day when I came across a copy of the Simon Necronomicon (hereafter called Simonomicon). I smiled and flipped through the book. I stopped at the sigil of Humwawa and said, "I was right, the sigil does have whiskers!"

I took the book to the cashier and paid for it with a handful of gold coins.

What made me do that?... A couple of years ago I was following Dan Harms' wordpress blog and there was talk of Humwawa (also Humbaba) having whiskers while the sigil in the Simonomicon resembles a mass of entrails. In Dan's blog he uses the following quote from Black and Green:

In art, Humbaba is typically portrayed as a human-bodied figure with lion’s claws for hands, a monstrous face, long hair and whiskers.

Dan emphasized "and whiskers" and I got a little confused as to why... in my memory the sigil of Humwawa has whiskers. In my comment to the blog post I asked "It has been years since I’ve had a copy of Simon’s Necronomicon, but are there not whiskers on the sigil of Humwawa?"

After that I did a google image search for the sigil and came up with a lot of sigils looking like this:
This kind of made me feel silly, but I'm comfortable with that feeling so I moved on knowing my memory was playing tricks on me.

But now I have a genuine copy of the Necronomicon. This copy is complete and perfect and with it's aid and the use of my Lexmark scanner I will now reveal for the very first time on the internet the true form of Humwawa's sigil! PREPARE YOURSELF!

As you can see, the sigil has entrails AND whiskers!

Now, I don't really care about the bickery nitpicking, but I would like to know where all the whiskers have gone! I know this is the internet and shaving is in vogue, but don't shave your sigils.

That's all I've got to say about that.