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While the Gilgamesh fragments have frequently been collated and translated across the twentieth-century, the careful and graceful version of Stephen Mitchell, 2004, is what I now consider the best: it has a wonderfully fulsome introduction as well as detailed explanatory endnotes (note also the Norton Critical Edition, ed. Foster, and Maier, ed., Gilgamesh: A Reader).
The myth complex had tremendous influence upon other literature of antiquity—at least in most Mesopotamian cultures—and later, as in the Homeric treatment of the love-relationship of Acheleus and Patroklos (anglicized as Achilles and Patroclus).
To plumb the dynamics of Gilgamesh and Enkidu’s relationships and the socio-historico-religious contexts, we would need to spend some time discussing the roles of the Mesopotamian pantheons, and the important status of the supreme goddess Ishtar, of whom we hear repeatedly in the ancient Near Eastern materials, and the others in the divine council of the deities who yearly declare human fate: it is possible, for instance that Ishtar desired Enkidu to serve as a male prostitute such as were found in her temples—thus infuriating Gilgamesh.
We can trace a psychological arc from narcissistic self-aggrandizement, to friendship with a truly-beloved other, to grief at Enkidu’s death. And of course there is a pilgrimage to the underworld to gain a healing medicine; then losing that, returning humbled, yet able to celebrate his civic achievements. Gilgamesh the brutal overlord has made the transition into being a noble governor.
Mitchell is one of the first interpreters I have studied (and I must have ten or twelve versions) who does not shirk the male-male relationship components of the Enkidu and Gilgamesh story. There was a later chapter (Tablet #12) that is usually rejected by straight scholarship that makes explicit references to male-male love-making (M 218, fnn 23+), which will not shock contemporaries aware of similar references in later classical Greek practices. The New York Review of Books (September 2009) has an illustrated review noting how homosexual practices are fully documented in Greek art, as in one beautifully executed silver cup that features two examples of male penetration (the Warren Cup, now published overtly after the cup itself was denied entry into the United States as being obscene). In Mitchell’s phrasing, “Like David and Jonathan, each loved the other as his own soul” (25)—although with the Greeks, intercourse with women as well was certainly not ruled out.
It is interesting that sexuality is (as opposed to the situation in Genesis) primordially positive, not negative. Shamhat brings Enkidu to heterosexual fulfillment as perhaps Enkidu and Gilgamesh find similar fulfillment in a male-male relationship—this is not a Puritan-patriarchal story by any means! Probably the term homosocial is the best term to use, for two reasons: the term homosexual was first developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for something long a part of the Western world. And then there is the homophobic censure of Western culture, indeed often sex-phobic, that almost certainly would have eliminated any explicit references over the thousands of years these materials were transmitted. I could show you many passages where explicit references such as that the Temple Priestess “opened her legs” to Enkidu could only earlier be translated into Latin lines among the English: of course from the perspective of conservative academics it was considered that those ancient folks couldn’t have treated sexuality as part and parcel of religiosity! Oh no.
While one might suggest that initially Gilgamesh’s quest was primarily for immortality for Enkidu, or for himself, I think it becomes very clear as Gilgamesh returns from the underworld recognizing that his search to restore Enkidu is fruitless. So Gilgamesh learns how to deal with the limitations of human life-span and to recognize limitations on his own reign/person.
During the long, arduous journey back to Uruk, he begins to realize that civilization, especially urban, is itself a sort of immortality. The myth begins and ends with the civitas/communitas, and is in many ways the account of the hero who takes responsibility for that communal weal.
There is a lot to do with concern with civilization in the myth: already Shamhat tamed and “civilized” Enkidu. But in one of the rich ironies of the myth, we see that it is Enkidu who brings Gilgamesh into a new recognition of his much-needed social responsibility. He moves away from his narcissistic individualism into acceptance of kingship as responsible sponsorship of his people/city/land —symbolized as this responsibility is in the great Wall and The City. In this case, the initial emphasis upon the bombastic rough strength of Gilgamesh, grasping whatever he desired, begins to change toward the essential role of the Western hero, that is to say, bringing back from his adventures and trials something of great value to all his people (a boon)—in many such myths, this hero becomes a judge and lawgiver: a pillar of the community, no longer an oppressor of it.