Manetho

No likeness of Manetho exists. This is a bust of a Neokoros, a senior official in the cult of the Serapis from Roman Egypt, 230-240 CE, over three centuries after Manetho lived. The circlet with the seven-rayed sun disk in the hair identifies his position in the cult.Marble. Altes Museum, Berlin.

Manetho (/ˈmænɪθoʊ/; Koinē Greek: Μανέθων Manéthōn, gen.: Μανέθωνος, fl. 290–260 BCE) was an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom who lived in the early third century BCE, at the very beginning of the Hellenistic period. Little is certain about his life. He is known today as the author of a history of Egypt in Greek called Aegyptiaca, likely commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE). Manetho’s work has not survived; it is known primarily from later references in Josephus’s treatise Against Apion (c. 95 CE) and works by the Christian historians Julius Africanus (c.160–c.240), Eusebius (c. 260 – 339), and George Syncellus (d. 810).

The surviving text of the Aegyptiaca continues to be a crucial resource for understanding ancient Egyptian history more than two millennia since its composition. Until the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century CE, Manetho's work, surviving as fragments cited or quoted by later authors, was a primary source on those scripts. The text remains important in Egyptology.

Other literary works have been attributed to him.

Name

Scholars agree that "Manetho" is a Greek transcription of an Egyptian name, however there is no consensus on the original. Some speculate that it is a theophoric name invoking either the god Thoth or the goddess Neith, e.g. "Truth of Thoth", "Beloved of Neith", or similar. Another proposal is "I have seen the great god". Others propose an occupational name based on Egyptian Myinyu-heter ("Shepherd" or "Groom"). In Latin sources he is called Manethon, Manethos, Manethonus, and Manetos.

The earliest attestations of his name, all in Greek, come from three sources: an inscription found in Carthage; the Hibeh papyrus; and Josephus. The name that he called himself in Greek was likely Manethôn.

Historical context

Statue of a priest of Osiris, Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, 1st century CE. Le Grand Palais exhibition.

Manetho lived and worked at the very beginning of the new Hellenistic order in Egypt, when the Macedonian Greek Diadochi (successors) of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE) fought each other for control of the new empire, a struggle finally ending in partition. In Egypt, diadochos Ptolemy I Soter founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom in 305 BCE. Reigning for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemies were the final and longest-lived dynasty of ancient Egypt before Roman conquest in 30 BCE. They introduced the Hellenistic religion, a unique syncretism between Greek and Egyptian religions and cultures. Manetho wrote Aegyptiaca in order to preserve the history of his homeland for posterity and—as evidenced by his having written it in Greek—for its new foreign rulers.

Manetho originated in Sebennytos and was likely a priest of the solar deity Ra at Heliopolis. He was an authority on the cult of Serapis (a Hellenistic appropriation of Osiris and Apis).

Significance of Manetho's work

The Aegyptiaca (Αἰγυπτιακά, Aigyptiaka), (or "History of Egypt") was a chronological history divided into three volumes; it may have been written as a response to Herodotus' Histories. It is a foundational text for understanding the history of ancient Egypt, particularly its chronology. It provided a structure for understanding the very long history, and was for many centuries a primary source on the subject until the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century CE. The text remains significant in Egyptology.

Manetho coined the term "dynasty" (using the Greek word dynasteia); his conception was not based on bloodlines—as we understand the term "dynasty" today—but rather as groupings of monarchs punctuated by discontinuities, either geographical (e.g., moving the capital) or genealogical. After each discontinuity came a new dynasty.

Two English translations of the fragments of Manetho's Aegyptiaca have been published: one by William Gillan Waddell in 1940, and another by Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John Moore Wickersham in 2001.

The Aegyptiaca survives in two forms: in excerpts and in an epitome. The excerpts were preserved by Josephus; these include some likely altered by Jewish apologists seeking to align Jewish history with Egyptian tradition. While Manetho described the Jews as descended from lepers, Jewish apologists linked their own ancestry to the Hyksos, and recast the Exodus as a story of the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. This recasting appears in Josephus’ Contra Apionem.

An early epitome—likely not by Manetho—summarized his dynastic lists with brief notes on major kings and events. Christian chronographers, notably Africanus and Eusebius, preserved this version to compare Biblical and "Oriental" chronologies. Africanus (c. 217–221 AD) retained more accuracy; Eusebius (to 326 AD) introduced changes. Around 800 AD, George Syncellus used these sources in his universal history Ekloge Chronographias, aiming to date the Incarnation to an Anno Mundi of 5500 (see "Byzantine calendar"). He drew on Africanus, Eusebius, and corrupted versions in the Old Chronicle and Book of Sothis.

Ptolemy Philadelphus in the Library of Alexandria by Vincenzo Camuccini (1813)

The Aegyptiaca

Contents

Volume 1 begins at Egyptians' mythological origin. It lists deities and demigods as kings of Egypt. Stories of Isis, Osiris, Set, or Horus might have been found here. Manetho does not transliterate names, but instead follows the conventional interpretatio graeca by identifying Ptah with Hephaistos; Isis with Demeter; Thoth with Hermes; Horus with Apollo; Set with Typhon; etc. in a telling display of early syncretism between Egyptian and Greek religions.

He then proceeds to Dynastic Egypt, from Dynasties One to Eleven, thus covering the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, and the early Middle Kingdom.

Volume 2 covers Dynasties Twelve–Nineteen, which includes the end of the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period (Fifteen–Seventeen—the Hyksos invasion), and then their expulsion and the establishment of the New Kingdom (Eighteen onward).

The Second Intermediate Period was of particular interest to Josephus, where he equated the Hyksos or "shepherd-kings" with the ancient Israelites who eventually made their way out of Egypt (Apion 1.82–92). He includes a brief etymological discussion of the term "Hyksos".

Volume 3 continues with Dynasty Twenty and concludes with Dynasty Thirty (or Thirty-one, see below). The Saite Renaissance occurs in Dynasty Twenty-six, while Dynasty Twenty-seven involves the Achaemenid interruption of Egyptian rule. Three more local dynasties are mentioned, although they must have overlapped with Persian rule. Dynasty Thirty-one consisted of three Persian rulers. The Thirty-second dynasty was the Ptolemies.

Sources and methodologies

It is impossible to identify the specific sources that Manetho used to compose his history. As an Egyptian high priest, he would have had access to records including hieroglyphic tablets, wall reliefs, inscriptions, and temple archives in the form of papyrii.​ He had read Herodotus in Greek and would have been well-versed in the other Greek sources available to him. It should be assumed that his sources included folk legends and non-historical traditions. Waddell named five well-known Egyptian artifacts as indicative of the kinds of monuments and records that Manetho may have consulted: the Palermo Stone​ (2338 BCE); the Abydos King List (ca. 1570-1069 BCE); the Karnak King List (ca. 1450 BCE); the Turin King List (1245 BCE); and the Saqqara Tablet (1189-1077 BCE).

Manetho used king lists as a structure for his history; there are surviving precedents to this methodology. In some cases, he attempted to synchronize Egyptian history with Greek (for example, equating King Memnon with Amenophis, and Armesis with Danaos). This suggests he was also familiar with the Greek Epic Cycle (for which the Ethiopian Memnon is slain by Achilles during the Trojan War) and the history of Argos (in Aeschylus's Suppliants). However, it has also been suggested that these were later interpolations, particularly when the epitome was being written, so these guesses are at best tentative.

Transmission and reception of the Aegyptiaca

What fragments of Aegyptiaca did survive became contested by different advocates of Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek histories in the following centuries. These contests took the form of polemics, with each author claiming his own civilization as the world's oldest.

The earliest attestation to Manetho is that of Contra Apionem ("Against Apion") by Flavius Josephus, nearly four centuries after Aegyptiaca was composed. Even here, it is clear that Josephus did not have the originals, and constructed a polemic against Manetho without them. Avaris and Osarseph are both mentioned twice (1.78, 86–87; 238, 250). Apion 1.95–97 is merely a list of kings with no narratives until 1.98, while running across two of Manetho's dynasties without mention (dynasties eighteen and nineteen).

Contemporaneously or perhaps after Josephus wrote, an epitome of Manetho's work must have been circulated. This would have involved preserving the outlines of his dynasties and a few details deemed significant. For the first ruler of the first dynasty, Menes, we learn that "he was snatched and killed by a hippopotamus". The extent to which the epitome preserved Manetho's original writing is unclear, so caution must be exercised. Nevertheless, the epitome was preserved by Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius of Caesarea. Because Africanus predates Eusebius, his version is usually considered more reliable, but there is no assurance that this is the case. Eusebius in turn was preserved by Jerome in his Latin translation, an Armenian translation, and by George Syncellus. Syncellus recognized the similarities between Eusebius and Africanus, so he placed them side by side in his work, Ecloga Chronographica.

Africanus, Syncellus, and the Latin and Armenian translations of Eusebius are what remains of the epitome of Manetho. Other significant fragments include Malalas's Chronographia and the Excerpta Latina Barbari, a poor translation of a Greek chronology.

In 1845, German classicist August Böckh published his treatise Manetho und die Hundssternperiode, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Pharaonen "Manetho and the Dog Star Period, A Contribution to the History of the Pharaohs". It remains untranslated into English.

There are modern scholars who claim that Aegyptiaca is a source of early antisemitic ideas because of its account of Exodus, an account repeated by later ancient authors such as Posidonius, Lysimachus of Alexandria, Chaeremon of Alexandria, Apion, and Tacitus. Other scholars disagree with this interpretation.

Manetho and Berossos

Most of the ancient witnesses group Manetho together with Berossos, and treat the pair as similar in intent, and it is not a coincidence that those who preserved the bulk of their writing are largely the same (Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus). Certainly, both wrote about the same time, and both adopted the historiographical approach of the Greek writers Herodotus and Hesiod, who preceded them. While the subjects of their history are different, the form is similar, using chronological royal genealogies as the structure for the narratives. Both extend their histories far into the mythic past, to give the deities rule over the earliest ancestral histories.

In his Chronography, Syncellus goes so far as to insinuate that the two copied each other:

If one carefully examines the underlying chronological lists of events, one will have full confidence that the design of both is false, as both Berossos and Manetho, as I have said before, want to glorify each his own nation, Berossos the Chaldean, Manetho the Egyptian. One can only stand in amazement that they were not ashamed to place the beginning of their incredible story in each in one and the same year.

While this does seem an incredible coincidence, the reliability of the report is unclear. The reasoning for presuming they started their histories in the same year involved some considerable contortions. Berossos dated the period before the Flood to 120 saroi (3,600 year periods), giving an estimate of 432,000 years before the Flood. This was unacceptable to later Christian commentators, so it was presumed he meant solar days. 432,000 divided by 365 days gives a rough figure of 1,183+1⁄2 years before the Flood. For Manetho, even more numeric contortions ensued. With no flood mentioned, they presumed that Manetho's first era describing the deities represented the ante-diluvian age. Secondly, they took the spurious Book of Sothis for a chronological count. Six dynasties of deities totalled 11,985 years, while the nine dynasties with demigods came to 858 years. Again, this was too long for the Biblical account, so two different units of conversion were used. The 11,985 years were considered to be months of 29+1⁄2 days each (a conversion used in antiquity, for example by Diodorus Siculus), which comes out to 969 years. The latter period, however, was divided into seasons, or quarters of a year, and reduces to 214+1⁄2 years (another conversion attested to by Diodorus). The sum of these comes out to 1,183+1⁄2 years, equal to that of Berossos. Syncellus rejected both Manetho's and Berossos' incredible time-spans, as well as the efforts of other commentators to harmonise their numbers with the Bible. Ironically as we see, he also blamed them for the synchronicity concocted by later writers.

Legacy

Manetho wrote at the request of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II to give an account of the history of Egypt to the Greeks from a native perspective. When it was written, it would have proven to be the authoritative account of the history of Egypt, superior to Herodotus in every way. The completeness and systematic nature in which he collected his sources was unprecedented.

Syncellus similarly recognised its importance when recording Eusebius and Africanus, and even provided a separate witness from the Book of Sothis. Unfortunately, this material is likely to have been a forgery or hoax of unknown date. Every king in Sothis after Menes is irreconcilable with the versions of Africanus and Eusebius.

Finally, in modern times, Manetho's legacy is still apparent in the way Egyptologists divide the dynasties of the Egyptian kings. The French explorer and Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion reportedly held a copy of Manetho's lists in one hand as he attempted to decipher the hieroglyphs he encountered. Most modern scholarship that mentions the names of the kings will render both the modern transcription and Manetho's version, and in some cases Manetho's names are even preferred to more authentic ones. Today, his division of dynasties is used universally, and this has permeated the study of nearly all royal genealogies by the conceptualization of succession in terms of dynasties or houses.

See also

• Berossus
• Flavius Josephus
• Hierombalus
• History of Ancient Egypt
• List of lists of ancient kings
• Ptolemaic dynasty

References

• Cory, I.P. Ancient Fragments, Containing What Remains Of The Writings Of Sanchoniatho, Berossus, Abydenus, Megasthenes, And Manetho. London: William Pickering, 1828.
• Flannery, Edward. The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism. N.p.: Paulist Press, 1985.
• Herodotus. The Histories, trans. Godley, A.D. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1921.
• Moyer, Ian S. Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge University Press, 2011. ISBN 9781139496551, 1139496557
• Nirenberg, David. Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York City: W.W. Norton, 2012. ISBN 9780393239430
• Rutherford, Ian. Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300. Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-19-965612-7
• Synkellos, Geōrgios. Adler, William. Tuffin, Paul. The Chronography of George Synkellos: a Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0199241902
• Verbrugghe, Gerald. Wickersham, John Moore. Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. United States: University of Michigan Press, 2001. ISBN 9780472086870, 0472086871
• Waddell, William Gillan, ed. Manetho. The Loeb Classical Library 350, ser. ed. George P. Goold. London and Cambridge: William Heinemann ltd. and Harvard University Press. 1940.

Further reading

• Barclay, John M.G. 2011. Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10: Against Apion. N.p.: Brill: ISBN 9789004117914.
• Candelora, Danielle. "The Second Intermediate Period." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 20 Mar. 2024; Accessed 9 Apr. 2025. https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1201.
• Dillery, John. “The First Egyptian Narrative History: Manetho and Greek Historiography.” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 127 (1999): 93–116. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20190475. PDF
• Leahy, A., ed. 1990. Libya and Egypt: c1300–750 BC. London: SOAS Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies and the Society for Libyan Studies.
• Redford, Donald Bruce. 1986a. "The Name Manetho." In Egyptological Studies in Honor of Richard A. Parker Presented on the Occasion of His 78th Birthday, December 10, 1983, edited by Leonard H. Lesko, 118–121. Hannover and London: University Press of New England. ISBN 0-87451-321-9.
• ———. Pharaonic king-lists, annals, and day-books: a contribution to the study of the Egyptian sense of history. Mississauga: Benben, 1986. ISBN 0920168078, 978-0920168073
• Thompson, Dorothy J. Memphis Under the Ptolemies: Second Edition. NED-New edition, 2. Princeton University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780691140339. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1n9dknx. Accessed April 8, 2025.

External links

• The Fragments of Manetho online (transcribed from the 1940 Waddell Loeb Classical Library edition)
• Manetho, with an English translation by W.G. Waddell on the Internet Archive
• Manetho und die Hundssternperiode, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Pharaonen ("Manetho and the Dog Star Period, A Contribution to the History of the Pharaohs") (1845) on the Internet Archive
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt online (subscription required)