inations. It is possible,
therefore, that the tale as we have it was originally two separate
stories.

The main theme of the story has occupied a great deal of attention. Its
analogy to the Biblical narrative of Joseph and Potiphar's wife comes at
once into the reader's mind. But there is just as close a similarity
in the Greek tales, where the hero is killed or his life endangered
for having scorned the guilty love of a woman, as in the stories of
Hippolytus, Peleus, Bellerophon, and the son of Glaucus, not to
mention the extraordinary adventure of Amgiad and Assad, sons of Prince
Kamaralzaman, in the _Thousand and One Nights_.

The religions of Greece and Western Asia likewise contain myths that can
be compared almost point for point with the tale of the two brothers.
In Phrygia, for example, Atyo scorns the love of the goddess Cybele,
as does Bata the love of Anpu's wife. Like Bata, again, he mutilates
himself, and is transformed into a pine instead of a persea tree.
Are we, therefore, to seek for the common origin of all the myths and
romance in the tragedy of Anpu and Bata that was current, we know not
how long, before the days of King Seti?

Of one thing we may be sure: of this particular type the Egyptian tale
is by far the oldest that we possess, and, if we may not look to the
valley of the Nile as the original home of the popular tale, we may
justly regard it as the locality where it was earliest naturalised and
assumed a true literary form.

Analogies to the second part of the tale are even more numerous and
curious. They are to be found everywhere, in France, Italy, Germany,
Hungary, in Russia and all Slavonic countries, Roumania, Peloponnesia,
in Asia Minor, Abyssinia, and even India.

Of late years an ever-increasing accumulation of the literature of every
age of Egyptian history has either been brought to light or for
the first time studied from a wider point of view than was formerly
possible. In making a few typical selections from the mass of this
new material, none perhaps are more worthy of note than some of the
love-songs which have been translated into German from Egyptian in
"Die Liebespoesie der Alten AEgypten," by W. Max Muller. This is a very
careful edition of the love-songs on the recto (or upper surface) of the
Harris Papyrus 500, and of similar lyrics from Turin, Gizeh, and Paris.
The introduction contains an account of Egyptian notions of love and
marriage, gathered from hieroglyphic