ABSTRACT
The bull's power and appeal to the men of the ancient world, as much as today, derives from his nature as one of great archetypes, rising out of that deep collective unconscious which is shared by all humans. The bull was linked with another deeply seated archetypal form, of a much more equivocal character: the archetype known to analytical psychology as the puer aeternus. This chapter outlines The Epic of Gilgamesh, is remarkable for the way that the emotional relationship between the Epic's two protagonists is handled. The central episode of the Epic is the defaming of Inanna, the despatching of the Bull of Heaven to earth and its killing by the two friends. The significance of the homosexual element in the Epic for Gilgamesh's own process of individual development and discovery is crucial. In Greece there were many stories of the sexual involvements of the gods with young boys.
