Now when the days passed after this, the youth sat making a good day in his house. When the evening came he lay down on his bed; sleep seized upon his limbs; his wife filled a bowl of milk and placed it by his side. There came out a serpent from his hole, to bite the youth; behold, his wife was sitting by him; she lay not down. Thereupon the servants gave milk to the serpent; it drank and became drunk, and lay down, upside down; his wife cut it in pieces with her hatchet. They woke her husband ... she said to him, "Behold, thy god hath given one of thy dooms into thy hand; he shall give...." And he sacrificed to God, adoring him, and praising his mighty spirit from day to day. Now when the days were multiplied after these things, the youth went to walk in the pathway in his enclosure, for he went not outside alone; behold, his dog was behind him. His dog put his nose to the ground [to pursue some game], and he ran after him. He came to the sea, and entered the sea behind his dog. The crocodile came out, he took him to the place where the mighty man was.... The crocodile, he said to the youth, "I am thy doom, following after thee...." [Here the papyrus breaks off.] Translation of F. Ll. Griffith. THE STORY OF THE TWO BROTHERS ['The Story of the Two Brothers' is in places incoherent, but charms throughout by beautiful and natural touches. The copy in which it has been preserved to us is practically complete, but is full of errors of writing and of composition, whole sentences having crept in that are useless, or contradictory to the context. The style is however absolutely simple and narrative, and the language entirely free from archaisms. The papyrus, which bears the name of Seti II. as crown prince, dates from the XIXth Dynasty. The beginnings of many of the sentences and paragraphs are written in red: this is specially the case when a sentence commences with an indication of time, usually expressed in a fixed formula. In such cases the translation of the passage written in red is here printed in italics.] Once there were two brothers, of one mother and one father; Anpu was the name of the elder, and Bata was the name of the younger. Now, as for Anpu, he had a house and he had a wife. His younger brother was to him as it were a son; he it was who made for him his clothes, while he walked behind his oxen to the fields; he it was who did the plowing; he it was who harvested the corn; he it was who did for him all the work of the fields. Behold, his younger brother grew to be an excellent worker; there was not his equal in the whole land; behold, the strain of a god was in him.