Tale of Two Brothers

Bata served his elder brother Anubis like a son. Bata had prodigious strength and the power to understand

animals. One day as they were plowing, Anubis sent Bata back to the house for more seed.

The wife was smitten with mighty Bata and tried to seduce him, only to be rejected:

"You are like a mother to me and your husband like a father...".

Virtuous to a fault, he promised not to tell her shame.

But she faked a beating (swallowing rancid fat to induce vomiting) and when Anubis returned she told him

that Bata had raped her.

So Anubis waits in ambush in the stable. But the lead cow warns Bata and he flees.

Re-Harakhti intervenes and draws a river full of crocodiles between Bata and his pursuer.

From the far side of the river Bata protests his innocence. And to prove his claim he calls Re to witness and

castrates himself (penis and all) casting the genitals into the river.

Anubis is thus convinced of his innocence.

Thereupon Bata weakens and seems to depart this life, journeying to the Valley of the Pine (?),

telling his brother that he must come to resurrect him when a sign appears. When Anubis finds that beer

ferments in his cup, he will know that Bata has perished and he must go to save him.

For Bata will take out his heart and lodge it in the pine flower (?) at the top of the tree.

When the sign comes to him, Anubis must go and find the heart and restore it to life in a basin of water.

Anubis returns home, kills his wife and gives her carcase to the dogs.

Bata in the Valley of the Pine is blessed by the Ennead. On order of Re, Khnum fashions for Bata a

wife of supreme beauty, "the ichor of every god is in her."

But it is not a happy match, for "she sat in the house while he spent the days hunting desert game."

He warned her not to go outside, "lest the sea snatch you. I cannot rescue you ...

because I am a woman like you...?"

Nonetheless she ventures out, the tide surges around her and captures a tress of her...