The Tale of the Two Brothers

At a Glance

• Central figures: Anpu, the older brother, and Bata, the younger - two farmers whose household is destroyed by a false accusation; Ra-Horakhty, the sun god, who creates a wife for Bata from clay.
• Setting: Ancient Egypt; the story moves from the brothers’ farm to the Valley of the Cedar, the pharaoh’s court, and back.
• The turn: Anpu’s wife falsely accuses Bata of assault after he rejects her advances, turning Anpu against his brother and forcing Bata to flee.
• The outcome: Bata undergoes a series of deaths and rebirths - as a man, a bull, two Persea trees, and finally a prince who ascends the throne of Egypt, with Anpu at his side as advisor.
• The legacy: Bata’s transformations - heart hidden in cedar, blood becoming trees, splinter becoming a child - establish a portrait of the soul as something that cannot be permanently destroyed, only changed in form.

Anpu and Bata worked the same fields and slept under the same roof. Anpu was the elder, married, head of the household. Bata was the younger, unmarried, and he rose before dawn to yoke the oxen, drove them out to the fields, and brought them home at night. He loaded grain onto his own shoulders when no cart was near. He was stronger than any man in the district, and everyone who saw him knew it. The brothers lived together in something close to contentment.

That contentment did not last.

Anpu’s Wife and the Accusation

Anpu was in the fields when Bata came back to the house for seed. His brother’s wife was there alone. She watched him lift the heavy sacks as though they weighed nothing, and she made her proposition plainly.

Bata refused. He was appalled. He told her that Anpu had raised him as a father raises a son, and that he would say nothing of what had happened - but he would not do what she asked. He lifted the seed and went back to the fields.

She spent the rest of the day preparing. She rubbed her skin to make herself look beaten, darkened her eyes, and lay down to wait for Anpu. When her husband came home, she told him that his brother had come in from the fields and tried to force himself on her, and that when she resisted, he had struck her. She said this calmly, with the bruises she had made on herself as evidence.

Anpu did not ask questions. He took his knife, sharpened it, and went out to the fields to kill Bata.

The River of Crocodiles

Bata was bringing the cattle in when he saw his brother coming with the knife in his hand. The lead cow warned him first - the animals could see what Bata could not. He ran. Anpu ran after him.

Bata prayed as he ran, calling out to Ra-Horakhty, and the sun god heard him. Between the two brothers, the earth opened into a river teeming with crocodiles. Anpu could not cross. He stood on one bank; Bata stood on the other, and the water churned between them.

From the far side, Bata spoke. He laid out everything that had happened - exactly as it had been, with nothing added and nothing hidden. He swore his innocence on the names of the gods. Then he took his knife, cut off a piece of himself, and threw it into the river, where a fish took it down into the current. He told Anpu what he intended: he would go to the Valley of the Cedar and live there with his heart placed inside a cedar tree. If the tree was ever felled and the heart destroyed, Bata would die. But if Anpu came looking for him and found the heart and revived it with water, Bata would live again. He asked his brother to come when the time came.

Anpu went home. He found his wife there, killed her, and threw her to the dogs. Then he sat in mourning for his brother, who was already gone.

The Valley of the Cedar

Bata built a house in the valley, beneath the cedar that held his heart. He was alone, and the gods saw his loneliness. Ra-Horakhty took clay and shaped from it a woman of extraordinary beauty and gave her to Bata as his wife. She was not entirely mortal. The Seven Hathors came to look at her and declared that she would die a sharp death. Bata did not let this warning change anything. He loved her, and he warned her only to stay away from the sea, because the sea would take her from him.

One day she went close to the water anyway. The sea reached for her and she ran, but the sea took a lock of her hair. The current carried it downstream, along the Nile, all the way to the linens of the pharaoh’s launderers. The scent of it was extraordinary - it perfumed every cloth it touched. The pharaoh’s men followed the scent to its source, and they understood what the lock of hair meant: somewhere, a woman of impossible beauty was waiting to be found. The pharaoh sent his soldiers into the Valley of the Cedar. They brought her back with them.

She was installed in the palace. She told the pharaoh about the cedar tree in the valley, and about the heart inside it. She told him to have the tree cut down.

When the cedar fell, Bata fell with it. He dropped where he stood and did not get up.

Anpu’s Search and the Return

Far away in Egypt, Anpu was drinking beer when the cup soured in his hand. The Egyptians knew this sign: someone close to you has died. He remembered his brother’s instructions. He took sandals and a walking staff and went north, into the Valley of the Cedar.

He found the house. He found the felled cedar. Among the branches and the debris, he searched for the heart, and found it. He put it in a bowl of cold water and waited. Slowly, over the hours, something happened - the heart stirred, the water moved. Bata opened his eyes.

Bata drank the water with his heart in it. He stood up. The two brothers held each other, and then Bata told Anpu to go home. What came next was not finished.

The Bull and the Persea Trees

Bata transformed himself into a great bull - a bull without any blemish - and Anpu rode on his back to the pharaoh’s court, where he was given gold and silver as the man who had brought such a magnificent animal. He went home. The bull remained.

In the court, the bull made his way to where the woman lived. She knew him. She went to the pharaoh and asked to eat the liver of the bull, and the pharaoh, who refused her nothing, gave the order. The bull was slaughtered. But as the butchers worked, two drops of blood fell from Bata’s neck to the earth near the doorposts, and from those two drops, two great Persea trees grew up overnight - one on each side of the palace gate.

The whole court came to marvel at them. The pharaoh brought his wife to see. The trees spoke to her, and again she knew. She went to the pharaoh and asked for the Persea trees to be cut down so she could have the wood made into furniture. The pharaoh agreed. As the woodworkers cut, a splinter flew from the blade and entered the woman’s mouth. She swallowed it without knowing, and in time she conceived.

The Prince on the Throne

The child born from that splinter was Bata - his next form, his continuation. The pharaoh loved the boy and eventually named him crown prince. When the pharaoh died, Bata ascended to the throne of Egypt. He summoned Anpu, told him everything, told him the full story of what he was and what he had endured. Anpu wept.

Bata ruled Egypt. Anpu stood beside him.