Siblings in the Hands of an Angry God

Since the beginning, whether through the creation story of Adam and Eve or throughout mythology and actual history, sibling incest has retained a salient role in human storytelling. Genesis suggests that the first two humans were a brother and sister, and the relationship between them constituted the first sibling incest. Thus, the human race came about.Mediterranean history saw the ancient Egyptian and Greek royalty with brothers and sisters as husband and wife. Yet most of it is found in the mythologies of civilization. Wilson Moses has ferreted out and tells of myriad such tales. The foundation myths of Egypt and Mesopotamia resemble the story of Adam and Eve-the epic of a husband and wife (and brother and sister) contesting the will of a powerful oppressor (or parent).It may be surprising how commonly it is that the sister assumes a dominant and protective role of her male sibling. The pattern of female agency pops up irrepressibly throughout tale over the course of human history. Many believed that women were not supposed to seize control, and yet they stubbornly insisted on doing so.Here is a fresh perspective on Adam and Eve, Hansel and Gretel, Isis and Osiris, and even Grimms’ fairy tales, among others. The protagonists in nearly all these stories are female, and the stories contain the narrative elements of food deprivation, withholding knowledge, and resistance to an authority that either issues or represents a death threat. It’s us against the world. And it’s the sisters, not the brothers, who take charge.