The originalEgyptian version of Manetho's name is lost, but some speculate it means "Truth ofThoth", "Gift of Thoth", "Beloved of Thoth", "Beloved ofNeith", or "Lover of Neith".[4] Less accepted proposals areMyinyu-heter ("Horseherd" or "Groom") andMa'ani-Djehuti ("I have seen Thoth").[5]
In theGreek language, the earliest possible attestation of Manetho are inscriptions of an uncertain date found in theSerapeum in Carthage, on a marble bust[6]. In the 1st century AD,Jewish historianFlavius Josephus wrote his name as ΜανέθωνManethōn . HisLatinised name is conventionallyManetho.[7] Other Greek renderings includeManethōs,Manethō,Manethos,Manēthōs,Manēthōn, andManethōth; inLatin it is was written asManethon,Manethos,Manethonus, andManetos.[citation needed]
That Manetho links himself directly to Ptolemy II is depicted inPtolemy Philadelphus in the Library of Alexandria byVincenzo Camuccini (1813)
If the "Manetho" mentioned in theHibehPapyri (c. 241/240 BC), is the same as the author of theAegyptiaca, then also he may have worked during the reign ofPtolemy III Euergetes (246–222 BC)l[5], albeit at an advanced age. Josephus and later authors assumed Manetho 'shistoricity; his existence is a contested issue today.
The Manetho of the Hibeh Papyri has no title and this letter deals with affairs in Upper Egypt not Lower Egypt, where our Manetho is thought to have functioned as a chief priest. Manetho is described as a native Egyptian, and Egyptian would have been his mother tongue. Although the topics he supposedly wrote about dealt with Egyptian matters, he is said to have written exclusively in the Greek language for a Greek-speaking audience. Other literary works attributed to him includeAgainstHerodotus,The Sacred Book,On Antiquity and Religion,On Festivals,On the Preparation ofKyphi, and theDigest of Physics. The treatiseBook of Sothis has also been attributed to Manetho.[8] These works are not attested during the Ptolemaic period when Manetho of Sebennytus is said to have lived and are only mentioned in another source in the first century AD, leaving a gap of 200–300 years between the composition of theAegyptiaca and its first attestation. The gap is even larger for the other works attributed to Manetho such asThe Sacred Book that is mentioned for the very first time byEusebius in the fourth century AD.[citation needed]
Manetho of Sebennytus was probably a priest of thesun-godRa atHeliopolis[9] (according toGeorge Syncellus, he was the chief priest). He was considered by Plutarch to be an authority on the cult ofSerapis (a derivation ofOsiris andApis). Serapis was a Greco-Macedonian version of the Egyptian cult, probably started afterAlexander the Great's establishment ofAlexandria in Egypt. A statue of the deity was imported in 286 BC byPtolemy I Soter (or in 278 BC by Ptolemy II Philadelphus) asTacitus andPlutarch attest.[10] There was also a tradition in antiquity thatTimotheus of Athens (an authority onDemeter atEleusis) directed the project together with Manetho, but the source of this information is not clear and it may originate from one of the literary works attributed to Manetho, in which case it has no independent value and does not corroborate the historicity of Manetho the priest-historian of the early third century BC.
TheAegyptiaca (Αἰγυπτιακά,Aigyptiaka), the "History of Egypt", may have been Manetho's largest work, and certainly the most important. It was organised chronologically and divided into three volumes[11]. His division of rulers into dynasties was an innovation. However, he did not use the term in the modern sense, by bloodlines, but rather, introduced new dynasties whenever he detected some sort of discontinuity, whether geographical (Dynasty Four fromMemphis,Dynasty Five fromElephantine), or genealogical (especially inDynasty One, he refers to each successive king as the "son" of the previous to define what he means by "continuity"). Within the superstructure of a genealogical table, he fills in the gaps with substantial narratives of the kings.
Some have suggested[citation needed] thatAegyptiaca was written as a competing account toHerodotus'Histories, to provide a national history for Egypt that did not exist before. From this perspective,Against Herodotus may have been an abridged version or just a part ofAegyptiaca that circulated independently. Neither survives in its original form today.
Two English translations of the fragments of Manetho'sAegyptiaca have been published:[12] byWilliam Gillan Waddell in 1940,[13] and by Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John Moore Wickersham in 2001.
Despite the reliance of Egyptologists on him for their reconstructions of the Egyptian dynasties, the problem with a close study of Manetho is that not only wasAegyptiaca not preserved as a whole, but it also became involved in a rivalry among advocates of Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek histories in the form of supportingpolemics. During this period, disputes raged concerning the oldest civilizations, and so Manetho's account was probably excerpted during this time for use in this argument with significant alterations. Material similar to Manetho's has been found inLysimachus of Alexandria, a brother ofPhilo, and it has been suggested[citation needed] that this was inserted into Manetho. We do not know when this might have occurred, but scholars[citation needed] specify aterminus ante quem at the first century AD, when Josephus began writing.
The earliest surviving attestation to Manetho is that ofContra Apionem ("Against Apion") byFlavius Josephus, nearly four centuries afterAegyptiaca was composed. Even here, it is clear that Josephus did not have the originals, and constructed apolemic against Manetho without them.Avaris andOsarseph 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 andnineteen).
Contemporaneously or perhaps after Josephus wrote, anepitome 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 ahippopotamus". The extent to which the epitome preserved Manetho's original writing is unclear, so caution must be exercised. Nevertheless, the epitome was preserved bySextus Julius Africanus andEusebius 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 byJerome in his Latin translation, anArmenian translation, and byGeorge 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 includeMalalas'sChronographia and theExcerpta Latina Barbari, a bad translation of a Greek chronology.
Manetho's methods involved the use of king-lists to provide a structure for his history. There were precedents to his writing available in Egypt (plenty of which have survived to this day), and hisHellenistic and Egyptian background would have been influential in his writing. Josephus records him admitting to using "nameless oral tradition" (1.105) and "myths and legends" (1.229) for his account, and there is no reason to doubt this, as admissions of this type were common among historians of that era. His familiarity with Egyptian legends is indisputable, but how he learned Greek legends is more open to debate. He must have been familiar with Herodotus, and in some cases, he even attempted to synchronize Egyptian history with Greek (for example, equating KingMemnon withAmenophis, and Armesis withDanaos). This suggests he was also familiar with the GreekEpic Cycle (for which the Ethiopian Memnon is slain byAchilles during theTrojan War) and the history of Argos (inAeschylus'sSuppliants). However, it has also been suggested that these were laterinterpolations, particularly when the epitome was being written, so these guesses are at best tentative.[citation needed]
At the behest ofPtolemy Philadelphus (266–228 BC), Manetho copied down a list of eight successive Persian kings, beginning withCambyses, the son ofCyrus the Great.[14] Manetho's record of regnal years for these kings is mostly corroborated byPtolemy of Alexandria in hisCanon, excepting for the fact that Artabanus who reigned for only 7 months is omitted by Ptolemy, while Ptolemy puts 8 years (instead of 5) for Cambyses' reign.
Cambyses (Artaxerxes) b. Cyrus = reigned over Persia, his own kingdom, for 5 years, and over Egypt for 6 years.
Darius (II), the son of Hystaspes = reigned 36 years.
Xerxes (Artaxerxes), the Great, b. Darius = reigned 21 years.
Artabanus = reigned 7 months.
Artaxerxes (Cyrus) b. Xerxes the Great = reigned 41 years.
Xerxes = reigned 2 months.
Sogdianus = reigned 7 months.
Darius (III), the son of Xerxes = reigned 19 years.
Between Cambyses' reign and Darius, the son of Hystaspes, there was an interim period whereby theMagi ruled over Persia. This important anecdote is supplied byHerodotus who wrote the Magian ruled Persia for 7 months after the death of Cambyses.[15]Josephus, on the other hand, says they obtained the government of the Persians for a year.
The king-list that Manetho had access to is unknown to us, but of the surviving king-lists, the one most similar to his is theTurin Royal Canon (orTurin Papyrus). The oldest source with which we can compare to Manetho are theOld Kingdom Annals (c. 2500-2200 BC). From theNew Kingdom are thelist at Karnak (constructed by order ofThutmose III), two atAbydos (bySeti I andRamesses II— the latter a duplicate, but updated version of the former), and theSaqqara list by the priest Tenry.
The provenance of theOld Kingdom Annals is unknown, surviving as thePalermo Stone. The differences between theAnnals and Manetho are great. TheAnnals only reach to the fifth dynasty, but its pre-dynastic rulers are listed as the kings ofLower Egypt and kings ofUpper Egypt. By contrast, Manetho lists several Greek and Egyptian deities beginning withHephaistos andHelios. Secondly, theAnnals give annual reports of the activities of the kings, while there is little probability that Manetho would have been able to go into such detail.
The New Kingdom lists are each selective in their listings: that ofSeti I, for instance, lists seventy-six kings from dynasties one to nineteen, omitting theHyksos rulers and those associated with thehereticAkhenaten. TheSaqqara king list, contemporaneous withRamesses II, has fifty-eight names, with similar omissions. If Manetho used these lists at all, he would have been unable to get all of his information from them alone, due to the selective nature of their records. Verbrugghe and Wickersham argue:
[...] The purpose of these lists was to cover the walls of a sacred room in which the reigning Pharaoh (or other worshiper, as in the case of Tenry and his Saqqara list) made offerings or prayers to his or her predecessors, imagined as ancestors. Each royal house had a particular traditional list of these "ancestors", different from that of the other houses. The purpose of these lists is not historical but religious. It is not that they are trying and failing to give a complete list. They are not trying at all. Seti and Ramesses did not wish to make offerings toAkhenaten,Tutankhamen, orHatshepsut, and that is why they are omitted, not because their existence was unknown or deliberately ignored in a broader historical sense. For this reason, the Pharaonic king-lists were generally wrong for Manetho's purposes, and we should commend Manetho for not basing his account on them (2000:105).
These largestelae stand in contrast to the Turin Royal Canon (such as Saqqara, contemporaneous with Ramesses II), written inhieratic script. Like Manetho, it begins with the deities, and seems to be an epitome very similar in spirit and style to Manetho. Interestingly, the opposite side of the papyrus includes government records. Verbrugghe and Wickersham suggest that a comprehensive list such as this would be necessary for a government office "to date contracts, leases, debts, titles, and other instruments (2000:106)" and so could not have been selective in the way the king-lists in temples were. Despite numerous differences between the Turin Canon and Manetho, the format must have been available to him. As a priest (or chief priest), he would have had access to practically all written materials in the temple.
While the precise origins for Manetho's king-list are unknown, it was certainly a northern,Lower Egyptian one. This can be deduced most noticeably from his selection of the kings for theThird Intermediate Period. Manetho consistently includes theTaniteDynasty Twenty-one andDynasty Twenty-two lineage in hisEpitome such asPsusennes I,Amenemope and even such short-lived kings asAmenemnisu (five years) andOsochor (six years). In contrast, he ignores the existence ofTheban kings such asOsorkon III,Takelot III,Harsiese A,Pinedjem I, and kings fromMiddle Egypt such asPeftjaubast ofHerakleopolis. This implies that Manetho derived the primary sources for hisEpitome from a local city's temple library in the region of the RiverNile Delta which was controlled by the Tanite-based Dynasty Twenty-one and Dynasty Twenty-two kings. The Middle and Upper Egyptian kings did not have any effect upon this specific region of the delta; hence their exclusion from Manetho's king-list.
By the Middle Kingdom, Egyptian kings each hadfive different names, the "Horus" name; the "Two Ladies" name; the "Gold Horus" name; thepraenomen or "throne name"; and anomen, the personal name given at birth (also called a "Son of Ra" name as it was preceded bySa Re'). Some kings also had multiple examples within these names, such asRamesses II who used six Horus names at various times. Because Manetho's transcriptions agree with many king-lists, it is generally accepted that he was reliant on one or more such lists, and it is not clear to what extent he was aware of the different pharaonic names of rulers long past (and he had alternate names for some). Not all of the different names for each king have been uncovered.
Manetho did not choose consistently from the five different types of names, but in some cases, a straightforward transcription is possible. EgyptianMen orMeni (Son of Ra and king-list names) becomesMenes (officially, this is Pharaoh I.1Narmer—"I" represents Dynasty I, and "1" means the first king of that dynasty), whileMenkauhor/Menkahor (Throne and king-list names, the Horus names isMenkhau and the Son of Ra name is "Kaiu Horkaiu[...]") is transcribed asMenkheres (V.7Menkauhor). Others involve a slight abbreviation, such asA'akheperen-Re' (Throne and king-list names) becomingKhebron (XVIII.4Thutmose II). A few more have consonants switched for unknown reasons, as for exampleTausret becomingThouoris (XIX.6 Twosre/Tausret). One puzzle is in the conflicting names of some early dynastic kings— although they did not have all five titles, they still had multiple names. I.3/4Djer, whose Son of Ra name isItti is considered the basis for Manetho's I.2 Athothis. I.4 Oenephes then is a puzzle unless it is compared with Djer's Gold Horus name,Ennebu. It may be that Manetho duplicated the name or he had a source for a name unknown to us. Finally, there are some names where the association is a complete mystery to us. V.6 Rhathoures/Niuserre's complete name wasSet-ib-tawi Set-ib-Nebty Netjeri-bik-nebu Ni-user-Re' Ini Ni-user-Re', but Manetho writes it as Rhathoures. It may be that some kings were known by names other than even just the five official ones.
Thus, how Manetho transcribed these names varies, and as such, we cannot reconstruct the original Egyptian forms of the names. However, because of the simplicity with which Manetho transcribed long names (see above), they were preferred until original king-lists began to be uncovered in Egyptian sites, translated, and corroborated. Manetho's division of dynasties, however, is still used as a basis for all Egyptian discussions.
Volume 1 begins from the earliest times, listing deities anddemigods as kings of Egypt. Stories ofIsis, Osiris,Set, orHorus might have been found here. Manetho does not transliterate either, but gives theGreek equivalent deities by a convention that predates him: (Egyptian)Ptah = (Greek)Hephaistos;Isis =Demeter;Thoth =Hermes;Horus =Apollo;Seth =Typhon; etc. This is one of the clues as to howsyncretism developed between seemingly disparate religions. He then proceeds to Dynastic Egypt, from Dynasty One toEleven. This would have included the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, and the early Middle Kingdom.
Volume 2 coversDynasties Twelve–Nineteen, which includes the end of the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period (Fifteen–Seventeen—theHyksos 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" as the ancientIsraelites who eventually made their way out of Egypt (Apion 1.82–92). He even includes a brief etymological discussion of the term "Hyksos".
Volume 3 continues withDynasty Twenty and concludes with DynastyThirty (or Thirty-one, see below). TheSaite Renaissance occurs inDynasty Twenty-six, while DynastyTwenty-seven involves theAchaemenid interruption of Egyptian rule. Three more local dynasties are mentioned, although they must have overlapped withPersian rule. DynastyThirty-one consisted of three Persian rulers, and some have suggested that this was added by a continuator. BothMoses of Chorene andJerome end atNectanebo II ("last king of the Egyptians" and "destruction of the Egyptian monarchy" respectively), but Dynasty Thirty-one fits within Manetho's schemata of demonstrating power through thedynasteia well. The Thirty-second dynasty would have been thePtolemies.
Most of the ancient witnesses group Manetho together withBerossos, 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, andSyncellus). Certainly, both wrote about the same time, and both adopted the historiographical approach of the Greek writers Herodotus andHesiod, 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 thedeities rule over the earliest ancestral histories.
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 theChaldean, 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.[16]
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 theFlood to 120saroi (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 of1,183+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 spuriousBook 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 of29+1⁄2 days each (a conversion used in antiquity, for example byDiodorus Siculus), which comes out to 969 years. The latter period, however, was divided into seasons, or quarters of a year, and reduces to214+1⁄2 years (another conversion attested to by Diodorus). The sum of these comes out to1,183+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 theBible. Ironically as we see, he also blamed them for the synchronicity concocted by later writers.
It is speculated that Manetho wrote at the request ofPtolemy I orPtolemy II to give an account of the history of Egypt to the Greeks from a native perspective. However, there is no evidence for this hypothesis. If such were the case,Aegyptiaca was a failure, since Herodotus'Histories continued to provide the standard account in the Hellenistic world.[citation needed] It may also have been that some nationalistic sentiments in Manetho provided the impetus for his writing, but that again is a conjecture. It is clear, however, that 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.[citation needed]
Syncellus similarly recognised its importance when recording Eusebius and Africanus, and even provided a separate witness from theBook of Sothis. Unfortunately, this material is likely to have been a forgery or hoax of unknown date. Every king inSothis afterMenes is irreconcilable with the versions of Africanus and Eusebius.
Finally, in modern times, the effect is still visible in the way Egyptologists divide the dynasties of the Egyptian kings. The French explorer and EgyptologistJean-François Champollion reportedly held a copy of Manetho's lists in one hand as he attempted to decipher thehieroglyphs he encountered.[citation needed] 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.
Manetho'sAegyptiaca has been cited as a source for earlyantisemitic ideas because of his account of Exodus, in which he portrays the Jewish people as forming from a group of lepers and shepherds who were expelled from Egypt and later conquered it, was repeated by later ancient authors such as Posidonius of Apamea, Lysimachus, Chaeremon, Apion, and Tacitus.[17] It is likely, though, that these ideas were current at the time, rather than being inventions of Manetho specifically.[18]
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Josephus, Titus Flavius, ca 70-90 B.C.EAgainst Apion
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M.A. Leahy. 1990. "Libya and Egypt c1300–750 BC." London: School of Oriental and African Studies, Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, and The Society for Libyan Studies.
Redford, Donald Bruce. 1986a. "The Name Manetho". InEgyptological Studies in Honor ofRichard A. Parker Presented on the Occasion of His 78th Birthday, December 10, 1983, edited byLeonard H. Lesko. Hannover and London: University Press of New England. 118–121.ISBN0-87451-321-9.
———. 1986b.Pharaonic King–Lists, Annals and Day–Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History. Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Publications 4, ser. ed. Loretta M. James. Mississauga: Benben Publications.ISBN0-920168-08-6.
———. 2001. "Manetho". InThe Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by Donald Bruce Redford. Vol. 2 of 3 vols. Oxford, New York, and Cairo: Oxford University Press and The American University in Cairo Press. 336–337.ISBN0-19-510234-7.
Thissen, Heinz-Josef. 1980. "Manetho". InLexikon der Ägyptologie, edited by Hans Wolfgang Helck, and Wolfhart Westendorf. Vol. 3 of 7 vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. 1180–1181.ISBN3-447-01441-5.
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