'The Two Brothers'


Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of 'The Two Brothers,' Bitiou and
Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a
complex of half the Marchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens
with the formula of Potiphar's Wife. The falsely accused brother flies,
and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale
of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr.
Hartland's Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory
of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is
then borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt. He will insist on
marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en
plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss
Coxe's valuable Cinderella. {60} Pharaoh's wise men decide that the
owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter
of the Sun-god (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we
are dealing with a literary version of the Marchen, accommodated to royal
tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly
Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he
introduced?--while we _can_ say that the Sun-god is absent in South
African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out
here, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the
historical sense prevents us from dogmatising.

Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou,
cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his
concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He
changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis--a feature in the story which