SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE TWO BROTHERS (ANPU AND BATA)

"The Two Brothers (Anpu and Bata)"  (Writen around 1400 B.C.; from the workshop of the scribe Anena, who flourished in the reigns of Rameses II, Menephtah, and Setni II, and is part of the so-called Madame d'Orbiney papyrus; translated by William /Flinders Petrie in Egyptian Tales, Volume 2 (1895); reprinted in Great Short Stories of the World, edited by Barrett H. Clark & Maxim Lieber, 1925)

The Clark and Lieber anthology is a massive doorstop of a book with 177 short stories covering five thousand years and thirty-five different literatures, coming in at 1972 pages of tiny print.  "The Two Brothers" is the first sory in the book and is one of two representing Ancient Egypt.  The anthology is not -- as the publisher hints on the back jacket copy -- an attempt to trace the development of the short story as an art form -- that would be a thankless and meaningless task.  Rather, Mssrs. Clark and Lieber present a wide variety of the form with entertaining and sometmes representative stories.  "[S]ince the beginning of civilization as we know it, there has been no break in the tradition of story-telling:  the story is a fundamental need in the heart of man, and the demand for the satisfaction of that need is quite as persistent and insatiable to-day as it was before man discovered how to make stone weapons."  It is in honor of that need that Patti Abbott's merry crew of meme-sters have been contributing to Short Story Wednesday.

The theme of "The Two Brothers," as per Clark and Lieber, "has been used numberless times, [and] is easily recognizable as that of the story of Potiphar's wife. It has been used in "The History of Prince Amziad and Prince Aisad" in The Arabian Nights, and later by Dante in The Divine Comedy.

"As in all great art, we are here impressed by the modernity of the author's viewpoint, which is only another way of saying that he understood his characters and was an accomplished artist."

The original story had no title, but the translator named it "Anpu and Bata."

There were two brothers, Anpu, the eldest, and Bata, the younger.  Bata loved and revered his brother as a father and worked hard to make his life easier:  he made his clothes, plowed his fields, harvested his corn, baked his bread, drove his cattle out to the field...in short, Bata was a hard and diligent worker for his brother because the spirit of god was within him.  One day whenthe waters has receded and it was time for planting, Anpu told Bata to go to the house and ask Anpu's wife to give him corn from the storage bin for planting.  When Bata arrived at the house, his brother's wife was busy arranging her hair and told him to get the corn himself.  This he did, and when he was about to leave, the woman attempted to seduce him.  He repelled her advances, but said he would not breath a word of it to his brother.  The nhe left to help his brother with the planting.  But Anpu's wife feard that Bata might revel her attempt as seduction.  She marked her self with a parcel of fat to give her the appearance of being beaten and, when Anpu returned home, told him that Bata had tried to seduce her.  Furious,Anpu grabbed a knife and hid behind the door to slay Bata when he entered the house.

Bata had made friends with his brother's cattle because he always brought them to the choicest grasses when he led them out to pasture.  So as he headed home behind the cattle, the first one warned him that Anpu was waiting behind the door with a knife to slay him.  The next cow in line gave the same warning.  Bata ran when Anpu emerged from behind the door with the knife.  As Bata fled, he prayed to Ra Harakhti to save him by dividing evil from good.  Ra heard the prayer and caused a wide water full of crocodiles to form between the two.  While Anpu fumed, Bata called across the river that he would not return; instead, he would go to the valley of the acacia to live and would see Anpu no more.  Protesting his innocence, Bata cut off a piece of flesh and threw it into the water, where fish ate it.  Bata also vowed to draw out his soul and place it on the flowers that grow on the top of the acacia, and when the acacia is cut down, Bata would die.  And though Anpu would search the ground for seven years he would not find Bata's soul and when and if he did, Anpu should place his brother's soul in a cup of cold water.  And Bata left his brother behind and went to the valley of the acaia and there he prospered.  Anpu, realizing that his brother was innocent, went home and slew his wife and cast her to the dogs, then he sat in mourning for his brother.

Now the gods saw Bata and knew that he was a goodly person and Ra Harakhti asked Khnumo to form a female for him.  The woman was the most beutiful in the land, and the essence of every god was in her.  Bata was happy with his new wife.  But ne day as she walked by the acacias, the sea saw her and tried to grab her. as she fled from th sea, a lock from her hair became imbeded in the acacia, and the sea grabbed the lock of hair.  The sea carrie the lock to Egypt and dropped in the Pharoah's line n that wa being washed.  A servant retreived the hair and found it smelled exceedingly sweet, and brought it to the Pharoah.  His wise men told the Pharoah that it belonged to the daughter of Ra Harakhti, and that it must have been intended as  gift to the Pharoah, upon which the Pharoah ordered the woman found.  This was done and Bata's wife told the Pharoah that he msy cut diwn the acacia trees to rid them of Bata.  The trees were cut, Bata then died, and his soul fell from the trees to the ground, lost.

Things get more compicted from here on out.  Anpu eventually finds his brother's soul and causes him to come back to life, although as a bull.  Bata's widow wheedles the Pharoah into killing the Bull (Bata) and to let her eat the liver.  When the bull (Bata) is lain, two drops of blood are spilled on some doors and they grow into great Persea trees.  Of course the trees are really Bata.  So the wife convinces theParoah to cut down the trees and make a large table from them.  When this is donw, a sliver flies up from one of the trees and entered the mouth of the princess, impregnating her.  A child is born and is raised lovingly by the Pharoah to be the royal son of Kush.   Eventually the Pharoah dies and the cboy (rally Bata) becomes ruler.  He tells the great nobles of the land all that had befallen him, and brings his wife before him for judgement.  Then he brought Anpu to Egypt and made him a prince of the land.  Bata ruled wisely for thirty yers before his eventual death.

There is a lot to unpack here, from the capriciousness of the gods and the magical happenings throughout the story to the callous characterization of the two women in the tale.  (It should be noted that there is a theory -- one which I in part subscribe to -- that a society or a civilization can be best understood by how it treats women; the women in this tale happen to be petty, selfish, and unloyal.)   Myth also allows one to come to grips with an often unfair world -- at least if the gods can be changable, there might be hope for a good outcome for some.  Virtue -- whatever its standard -- will be eventually rewarded.  In essence, this story is not much different from one which might be told today.  And there is no doubt in my mind that the story's logic and reasoning was perfectly understandable to its original audience.

All in all, an interesting tale, and a good example of why Story (capital S) is an essential part of the human experience and has been for well over 5000 years