Well documented. Several independent sources across different periods.
Bata bꜣtꜣ
the god who kept his soul in a tree
The myth, retold
The story as it is told
A retelling, not a translation. What follows is the story as it is commonly told, drawn together from the better popular and scholarly accounts. It is not keyed to any single ancient text, and the ancient sources rarely agree with each other as neatly as a retelling has to. The attested record — with its sources, its gaps, and its disagreements — is below.
A man tells his brother: I am going to take my soul out of my body and put it in a flower.
If the tree is cut down, he says, I will drop dead. Find the flower, put it in a cup of cold water, and I will get up again.
That is written down in Egypt around 1200 BC, and it is the oldest version anyone has of an idea that later turns up all over the world.
The brothers
Two farmers. Anpu is the elder — he has a house, a wife, land. Bata is the younger, and lives with them almost as a son, doing the work with the cattle.
The names are the first thing to notice. Anpu is Anubis. And Bata, according to Breasted, is a god too — the pair of them were "gods of the town of Kasa, who had a place in the religion of Egypt at an enormously remote date," here "pictured in the naive imagination of the folk as two peasants."
So this is not a story about two farmhands who happen to share names with gods. It is two very old gods of one town, turning up in a folk tale doing farm work.
Breasted thinks Bata is older still — visible on a tablet from the reign of Menes, the first king. If that reading holds, he is about as old as writing in Egypt.
What happens
Anpu's wife propositions Bata. He refuses, and she tells her husband the opposite.
(If that sounds familiar it should. Breasted notes the same incident "later found place in the Hebrew tradition of Joseph in Egypt." The Potiphar's wife story is in an Egyptian papyrus a good while before it is in Genesis.)
Anpu waits behind the stable door with a knife. The cattle warn Bata — the cattle actually speak — and he runs. Anpu chases him, and Bata prays; the sun god drops a river full of crocodiles between them.
And then, from the far bank, Bata says something I did not expect:
Stand still until the dawn of day; and when Ra ariseth, I shall judge with thee before Him, and He discerneth between the good and the evil.
He does not shout, or curse, or run. He proposes they both wait until sunrise so the sun can hear the case.
That is the moral machinery of the Book of the Dead — weighing, discerning, judgement — brought down into a family argument between two men standing on opposite sides of a river at night.
The soul in the flower
Then Bata explains what he is going to do, and it is oddly procedural, like someone leaving instructions with a neighbour:
I shall draw out my soul, and I shall put it upon the top of the flowers of the acacia… if thou searchest for it seven years do not let thy heart be wearied. For thou wilt find it, and thou must put it in a cup of cold water, and expect that I shall live again.
This is what folklorists call the external soul — your life kept outside your body so that killing the body isn't enough. The famous version is Koschei the Deathless, whose death is in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a chest, buried under an oak.
Egypt got there first, by a very long way.
And it works precisely as advertised. Much later, men come with axes, "and they cut the flower upon which was the soul of Bata, and he fell dead suddenly."
The cup of beer
There is a second device attached, and it is the detail I like most.
How will Anpu know? Bata tells him: one day somebody will hand you a cup of beer, and it will be cloudy. That is the signal.
And it happens exactly so. Anpu comes in, washes his hands, and:
one gave him a cup of beer, and it became troubled; and one gave him another of wine, and the smell of it was evil.
He puts down the cup, picks up his staff and his sandals and his weapons, and walks out to go and find his brother's body.
A message that crosses any distance instantly, arrives without a messenger, and is delivered by a drink going off in your hand.
The wife who was built
There is a part of this I left out of the first version, and it is the strangest thing in the tale.
Bata is alone in the valley. The gods notice. Ra turns to Khnum — the potter god, the one who shapes bodies on a wheel — and says:
Behold, frame thou a woman for Bata, that he may not remain alive alone.
So she is made. To order. Because he is lonely.
And the text says of her: "She was more beautiful in her limbs than any woman who is in the whole land. The essence of every god was in her."
Then, immediately, before she has spoken or done anything at all:
The seven Hathors came to see her: they said with one mouth, "She will die a sharp death."
Seven goddesses turn up at her manufacture and pronounce her death, in unison, at the moment she is finished.
She does go on to betray him — twice, badly. But it is hard to read her as simply wicked when the text is this careful to tell you she was assembled and sentenced in the same scene.
And he tells her where his soul is
This is the part that gets me.
He warns her not to go near the water. And then, explaining why he cannot protect her:
my soul is placed on the head of the flower of the acacia; and if another find it, I must fight with him.
The text adds: "he opened unto her his heart in all its nature."
He tells the one person the fate-goddesses have just condemned exactly where his life is kept.
She tells the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh sends men with axes.
A small correction, because it matters
Breasted, who is otherwise excellent on this, calls the refuge "the Valley of the Cedar" — and reasons from it that the place must be on the Phoenician coast, "as there were no cedars in Egypt."
I went and read Griffith's translation of the papyrus. It says acacia. Two dozen times, and never cedar.
Which quietly dissolves the argument, because acacia grows perfectly well in Egypt. The valley need not be in Lebanon at all.
He also has Anpu searching for "three years"; the text says seven. And a "jar of water"; the text says a cup of cold water.
None of that changes the story. But the Phoenician geography was an inference built on a single word, and the word turns out to be a different tree — which is the sort of thing worth checking before repeating.
Overview
Bata is a very old god who survives mainly inside a story in which he is not obviously a god at all.
In the Tale of the Two Brothers he and Anubis are peasants — an elder brother with a farm and a wife, and a younger one who tends the cattle. Breasted's reading is that this is a demotion in the retelling rather than an origin: "the two gods who appear as the chief characters in the tale are pictured in the naive imagination of the folk as two peasants, whose names, Anubis and Bata, have disclosed them as gods of the town of Kasa, who had a place in the religion of Egypt at an enormously remote date" [breasted-1912].
He is also the owner of the most striking single idea in Egyptian folklore: he takes his soul out of his body and puts it in a flower.
Attestation history
First Dynasty. Breasted makes a specific claim and corrects Naville while making it: Naville had argued for Bata in the Pyramid Texts, but "seems to have overlooked the fact that Bata occurs as early as Menes's time. Indeed he is to be found on a tablet of Menes… the bird represented there perched on the building or sanctuary has before him a 't.' The bird is to be read 'bꜣ' which with the 't' gives us the reading Bata" [breasted-1912].
If that reading holds, Bata is attested at the very beginning of the dynastic record — which is what makes the peasant of the tale worth taking seriously as a god.
New Kingdom. The Papyrus D'Orbiney (British Museum), the sole witness to the Tale of the Two Brothers, translated by Griffith and archived here [petrie-1895b].
What the texts say
The soul in the flower. Bata tells his brother exactly what he intends to do, and the mechanism is set out like an instruction manual:
I shall draw out my soul, and I shall put it upon the top of the flowers of the acacia, and when the acacia is cut down, and it falls to the ground, and thou comest to seek for it, if thou searchest for it seven years do not let thy heart be wearied. For thou wilt find it, and thou must put it in a cup of cold water, and expect that I shall live again. [petrie-1895b]
This is the external soul — a life kept outside the body, in an object, so that the body cannot be permanently killed while the object survives. The folklorists' standard example is Koschei the Deathless; this is the oldest written version anyone has.
And it works exactly as specified. The Pharaoh's men "cut the flower upon which was the soul of Bata, and he fell dead suddenly" [petrie-1895b].
The life-token. Attached to it is a second device, just as neat:
thou shalt know… when one shall give to thee a cup of beer in thy hand, and it shall be troubled; stay not then [petrie-1895b]
When Bata dies, Anubis is at home: "one gave him a cup of beer, and it became troubled; and one gave him another of wine, and the smell of it was evil" [petrie-1895b]. He picks up his staff and sandals and goes.
A signal that travels instantly, over any distance, with no messenger. Egypt worked this out for a folk tale three thousand years ago.
Judgement at sunrise. Fleeing his brother across a river the god has filled with crocodiles, Bata calls back:
Stand still until the dawn of day; and when Ra ariseth, I shall judge with thee before Him, and He discerneth between the good and the evil. [petrie-1895b]
A wronged man proposing to wait for daybreak so the sun can arbitrate. That is the moral order of the Book of the Dead, transposed into a quarrel between brothers.
His wife is manufactured, and doomed on arrival. Reading further into the tale (2026-07-30) turns up a scene the entry had only in outline.
Bata is alone in the valley, and the gods intervene. Ra Harakhti instructs the potter-god: "Behold, frame thou a woman for Bata, that he may not remain alive alone." And Khnumu "made for him a mate to dwell with him. She was more beautiful in her limbs than any woman who is in the whole land. The essence of every god was in her" [petrie-1895b].
Then, immediately:
The seven Hathors came to see her: they said with one mouth, "She will die a sharp death." [petrie-1895b]
Three things at once. She is made to order by the god who shapes bodies on a wheel. She is composite — the essence of every god. And her fate is pronounced at the moment of her making, by a committee, in unison, before she has done anything.
Petrie's own note calls her a Lilith figure whose "only emotion" is ambition, and he is not wrong about the plot — she betrays Bata twice. But the text is careful to say she was assembled and sentenced in the same breath, which complicates any reading of her as simply wicked.
And Bata tells her the secret. Warning her not to go outside: "my soul is placed on the head of the flower of the acacia; and if another find it, I must fight with him. And he opened unto her his heart in all its nature" [petrie-1895b].
He explains where his life is kept, to the person the fate-goddesses have just condemned. She later tells the Pharaoh, who sends men with axes.
Potiphar's wife, a thousand years early. The quarrel starts when Anubis's wife propositions Bata, is refused, and accuses him to her husband. Breasted notes the onward path: "The incident later found place in the Hebrew tradition of Joseph in Egypt" [breasted-1912].
Correction to Breasted, 2026-07-30 — the tree is an acacia, not a cedar
Breasted calls the refuge "the Valley of the Cedar," and builds a geography on it: "a place which must have been on the Phoenician coast, as there were no cedars in Egypt" [breasted-1912].
Griffith's translation of the papyrus says acacia — twenty-four times, and never cedar [petrie-1895b]. "I shall go to the valley of the acacia."
The distinction is not cosmetic, because Breasted's inference depends on it. Acacia grows perfectly well in Egypt, so an acacia valley carries no implication of the Levant at all and the Phoenician location loses its support.
Two further slips in the same paragraph: Breasted has Anubis searching "for three years… in the fourth year," where the text specifies seven years [petrie-1895b]; and he calls the reviving vessel a "jar of water" where the text says a cup of cold water.
Recorded because this is the sixth consecutive fetch to correct a live page, and the first to correct Breasted rather than Budge — and the first to overturn an inference rather than a translation.
The transformations, and what they are for. Bata does not stay dead. Read from the text (2026-07-30), the chain is:
bull → two persea trees → a splinter → a son → the king.
Revived by his brother, he becomes a great bull and goes to the palace, where his wife — now the Pharaoh's queen — recognises him and has him slaughtered. As the ox is carried on the people's shoulders, "he shook his neck, and he threw two drops of blood over against the two doors of his majesty… They grew as two great Persea trees" [petrie-1895b].
She has the trees felled. And:
But a chip flew up, and it entered into the mouth of the princess; she swallowed it, and after many days she bore a son. [petrie-1895b]
The boy is made royal son of Kush, then heir, and on the Pharaoh's death he becomes king. His first act:
And they brought also before him his wife, and he judged with her before him [petrie-1895b]
So he is reborn from the woman who killed him, three times over, and then tries her. Each attempt to destroy him is the mechanism of his return: kill the bull and you get the trees; cut the trees and you get the child.
It is the same logic as the acacia flower, run in reverse. His life cannot be ended by destroying the thing it is currently in, because it moves.
Cult and practice
Kasa, the seventeenth nome of Upper Egypt, shared with Anubis [breasted-1912]. Nothing archived describes a temple, festival or priesthood.
The pairing with Anubis is the durable fact: two gods of one town, remembered together for two thousand years, and finally written down as brothers on a farm.
See also the Seven Hathors — they condemn Bata's manufactured wife the instant Khnum finishes her.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[breasted-1912] | on the Tale of the Two Brothers | Anubis and Bata as **gods of Kasa** "at an enormously remote date," pictured as peasants |
[breasted-1912] | correcting Naville | **Bata on a tablet of Menes** — First Dynasty — read from a *bꜣ*-bird with a *t* |
[petrie-1895b] | Papyrus D'Orbiney, Griffith trans. | "I shall draw out my soul, and I shall put it upon the top of the flowers of the **acacia**… if thou searchest for it **seven years**" |
[petrie-1895b] | same | the **life-token**: the cup of beer that becomes troubled, the wine whose smell is evil |
[petrie-1895b] | same | "when Ra ariseth, I shall judge with thee before Him, and He discerneth between the good and the evil" |
[petrie-1895b] | same | the false accusation; Anubis slays his wife and casts her to the dogs |
[petrie-1895b] | Papyrus D'Orbiney | **Ra Harakhti orders Khnumu to "frame thou a woman for Bata"**; "the essence of every god was in her" |
[petrie-1895b] | same | the **seven Hathors** pronounce at her making, "with one mouth": "She will die a sharp death" |
[petrie-1895b] | same | Bata tells her where his soul is — "he opened unto her his heart in all its nature" |
[breasted-1912] | same passage | the motif's later appearance "in the Hebrew tradition of Joseph in Egypt" |
Sources
[petrie-1895b]— Petrie (ed.), Egyptian Tales, Second Series, Griffith's translation of Papyrus D'Orbiney. Public domain, archived 2026-07-30. The primary witness.[breasted-1912]— Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought. Public domain, archived. Excellent on the god behind the tale; wrong on the tree, the years, and the vessel — see the correction box.
Open questions
- Verify the Menes tablet reading. A First Dynasty attestation is the strongest claim here and it rests on Breasted's interpretation of a bird sign plus a t. Get the object publication.
- Settle whether Naville was right that Bata appears in the Pyramid Texts; Breasted brushes it aside while making a different case.
- Establish the bull. The census calls him a bull-god of the 17th nome, and the tale has him become a bull, but nothing archived states the bull form as cult iconography.
- Check whether the acacia/cedar confusion is Breasted's alone or a wider habit in the older literature — the Byblos connection is attractive enough that others may have made it.
- Trace the external-soul motif in other Egyptian material. If it recurs it is Egyptian; if it appears only here it may be an import.
- ~~Read the rest of the tale~~ — closed 2026-07-30. The making of the wife, the Hathors' verdict, and the full bull → persea → splinter → king chain are now sourced from
[petrie-1895b]. - ~~The Seven Hathors have no page~~ — closed 2026-07-30: the Seven Hathors.
- Ask whether the transformation chain is a resurrection doctrine or a folk device. Osiris also dies and returns; Bata returns four times, each time through the agency of his killer. Whether that is theologically load-bearing or just a good story is not settled here.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ●full — Multiple attestations across periods.
"Bata", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded full, retrieved 2026-08-10.