reign of Esarhaddon mentioning the return of his statue. It has also been argued that Humbaba was derived from the Elamite god Humban, but according to Andrew R. George this proposal is not plausible in the light of available evidence, and the most recent attempt at justifying this connection, undertaken by John Hansman in the 1970s, rests on "unsafe historical conclusions". Humbaba and Gilgamesh Humbaba appears in multiple works of Mesopotamian literature focused on the hero Gilgamesh, in which he invariably acts as his adversary during a quest to obtain cedar wood from a distant forest. Bilgames and Huwawa A and B The oldest composition describing the confrontation between Gilgamesh and Humbaba has two versions, conventionally referred to as Bilgames and Ḫuwawa A and Bilgames and Ḫuwawa B. However, as it remains occasionally questioned whether the reading of the protagonist’s name with an initial b is correct, the use of the title Gilgamesh and Huwawa is also considered acceptable. Copies of version A are more common. Of all known Gilgamesh texts it was seemingly the most often copied one, with between 85 and 92 examples identified by 2010. Their broad distribution reflects the use of the text in scribal training. It belonged to the so-called "decad", a set of texts which formed the basis of scribal education in the early second millennium BCE. In the early poems, Humbaba is described as an intimidating "mountain man" of unknown origin, but there is no indication that his appearance was distinct from that of a human, and he is chiefly set apart from mortals by his supernatural powers. The source of his invulnerability are his seven “auras” or “terrors”, Sumerian ni2 or me2-lam. While a singular aura was a common attribute of deities, seven auras are for the most part exclusively attested in connection to Humbaba, though an exception, the tablet CBS 7972 (STVC 40) + N 3718, a fragment of a hymn dedicated to Nergal, has been identified and subsequently published by Jeremiah Peterson in 2008. The location of the forest where Humbaba lives is not precisely defined outside of a reference to “seven ranges” which need to be crossed to reach it, but it is commonly assumed that the heroes’ destination were the Iranian highlands. Similar formulaic phrases are used to refer to this area in myths about Lugalbanda and Enmerkar known to partially take place in this area. It has