Two brothers and a treacherous wife

The beginning of the story introduces us to the household of Anubis, his wife and his beautiful younger brother Bata. Bata works very hard for his brother on the land and he sleeps next to the cattle at night. One fateful day, the wife of Anubis tries to seduce her attractive brother-in-law. Bata is abhorred and rejects her, saying that she is like a mother to him. The wife of Anubis then tells her husband Anubis that Bata tried to have sex with her and beat her up when she refused.

Anubis is livid and tries to kill his brother Bata, who manages to escape. When the two brothers finally confront each other, standing on opposite sides of a river full of crocodiles, Bata tells his brother the truth and cuts off his own genitals to illustrate his point. Anubis believes him and later kills his deceitful wife. The story continues with many miraculous and unexpected twists and turns, but we will leave it here for now.

As you may have noticed, this story bears some resemblances to that of Joseph, in particular the part in which the wife of Anubis falsley accuses Bata of raping her after turning her down. Her behavior is reminiscent of Potiphar’s wife, who first tries to seduce Joseph, and when he does not respond to her advances, accuses him of assaulting her.

How do we explain that this motif ended up in two very different stories from very different time periods?

The wives of Potiphar and Anubis are not the only women who tried to seduce a (younger) man in vain and then accused them of rape to save their own skin. Another well-known example from Greek mythology is the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus, and many more could be added to this list. We are in fact dealing with a common and widely spread folkloristic motif.

In the monumental Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index), the standard catalogue of folktale types and motifs, it is listed as: K2111:

Potiphar’s wife. A woman makes vain overtures to a man and then accuses him of attempting to force her.

The index gives a list of stories in which this motif is found, including tales from India, Ireland and Iceland. This eloquently shows how literary motifs can travel through time and space, and are adjusted, adopted and modified to fit each particular context. Such stories are usually transmitted orally, which is why it is difficult to grasp the depth, length and breadth of their journey.