What parallels can be found between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer's Odyssey?

Although
there are strong parallels between the two works, parallels do not necessarily prove direct
influence. There is the possibility that both works incorporated materials from various shared
oral traditions or that the epic itself as a genre has certain necessary structural features and
themes, such as tales of travel, confrontation with mortality, and attempts to explain the
relationship between the divine and human. There has been a great deal of interesting
scholarship in the past few decades on the relationship between Greek and Near Eastern cultures,
especially by West, Burkert, Morris, and Penglase, but as we do not know the actual identity of
the authors of the Homeric epics (or even have any scholarly agreement about the ways in which
the epics were authored), and there are no clear and specific references to Babylonian texts in
the epic, we must be cautious about ascribing direct influence. 

The first
parallel between the two is that both are tales of rulers who suffer,...