MANETHO
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MANETHO
opolis. In addition to these works, Manetho is also said to have written, l,'l(pa Bi'/iAor, on the Egyptian re- ligion; 2, liepl upxdiafiov kch tvatjinac, on the an- cient rites and ceremonies of the Egyptians; 3, ^vaiKujv iiriTOfii] (Laertius, Proam. s. 10), probably the same work as that called by Suidas (pvmoXoytKu ; 4, Bi'/SAoc rjjc Soi^Eoic, both the subject and genuineness of which are very doubtful. See Smith, JJict. of Or. and Rom. Biog. s. V. ; English Cychrpccdia, s. v. His name is in- troduced here on account of the importance of his work on Egyi)tian history in determining the list of ancient Egyptian kings. See Egypt. In the following dis- cussion of this point we chietly make use of the elabo- rate and searching article on the subject in Kitto's Cij- clopcdia, s. v.
Authenticity of Manetho'' s History. — Manetho was a learned priest at the court of the first Ptolemy, accord- ing to Plutarch (de Is. et Os. c. 28), who cites a religious work of his in Greek, which is quoted also under vari- ous names by ^lian, Diogenes Liiertius, Porphyry, and other late writers (Fruin, Manethonis Sehennytoe lieli- quice, p. 133 sq. ; Parthey, Plutarch iiber Isis u. Osiris, p. 180 sq.). Josephus (.-l^/jo/;, i, 14-16, 26, 27) gives two long extracts, with a list of seventeen reigns, from the Ai'yi^TrrioKw, "a work composed in Greek by Manetho the Sebennyte,from materials which he professes to have rendered from the sacred records :" of which history all else that is extant is a catalogue of Egyptian dynasties, preserved in two widely different recensions by Geor- gius SyncelluS, A.D. 800 ; the one from the lost Chrono- grapkia of Julius Africanus, A.D. 220 ; the other from the Chronicon of Eusebius, A.D. 325 (of which we have now the Armenian version) ; both texts are given by Fruin, and by Bunsen in the appendix to Egypfs Place, vol. i. The statement that "Manetho the Sebennyte, of Heliopolis, high-priest and scribe of the sacred adyta, composed this work from the sacred records by com- mand of Ptolemy Philadelphus," rests only on the dedi- cation (ap. Syncell.) prefixed to the Sothis, an undoubt- ed forgery of Christian times. All that can be inferred from it is that the forger had grounds, good or bad, for placing Manetho in tlie time of the second Ptolem3% In fact, the incident with which Plutarch {ut sup.') con- nects his name (the bringing in of Serapis) is related by other writers (icithout mention of Manetho), and is assigned by Tacitus also {Hist, iv, 183 sq.) to the time of the first Ptolemy ; but by Clem. Alex. (Protrept. iv, 48) and Cyrill. Al. (c. .Tulian. p. 13) to Ptolemy Phila- delphus, w"ith the date 01. 124 = B.C. 284-1. If he did live, and was a man of note, under the early Ptolemies, certain it is that " this most distinguished writer, the sage and scholar of Egypt"' (as Bunsen calls him, A eg. St. i, 88), was speedily and long forgotten ; for more than three centuries after the time at which he is said to have flourished not a trace of him or his writings is anywhere discoverable. Nothing of the kind occurs in the remains of the Alexandrine scholars, the early Greek Jews, Polyhistor's collections, or the chronological writ- ings of Castor. That the Catalogue of Thirty-eight The- han Kings (ap. Syncell.) is the work of Eratosthenes there is nothing to show ; at any rate, it contains no reference to jNIanetho. If it was from Manetho that Dicasarchas, cir. A.D. 290 (ap. Schol. in Apollon. Rhod.), got his two Egyptian names and dates, it was m quite another form of the work ; to the scholiast, Manetho is an unknown name. The Egyptian list in the Excerpta Latiiio-harbara of Scaliger, bearing the name of Castor, is a mere abstract from Africanus. Diodorus Sic. and Strabo visited and wrote about Egypt, yet neither of them names or alludes to Manetho; and the former gives (i,44 sq., from the priests, he says) an account of the kingly succession altogether diflferent from his. If, as Fruin suggests (p. Ixiii) , it was through measures taken by Domitian to repair the losses sustained by the public libraries (Sueton. Bom. 29) that Manetho's works were brought to Kome from the Alexandrine library, where they had long slumbered unregarded, still it is
strange that the uEgypiiaca .should have caught the at- tention of Josephus alone (among extant writers), and that neither those who, as Plutarch, do mention the oth- er work, nor others who have occasion to speak of the ancient times of Egypt, as Tacitus and the elder Pliny (esp. //. A', xxxvi, 8-13), ever name this history, or show any acquaintance with its list of kings. Lepsius (Chron. der Aeg. i, 583 sq.) better meets the difficulty by sup- posing that the original work, never widely known, was so early lost that even in the 1st century all that sur- vived of it was a bare abstract of its names and num- bers, and (distinct from thi,s) the two passages relating to the " Hyksos" and the " lepeis,'' with the accompany- ing list of seventeen reigns, which some Jewish reader had extracted on account of their Biblical interest, and beyond which Josephus knew nothing of Blanetho. Whatever be the explanation, the fact is that it is only through Jewish and Christian writers that we ever hear of Manetho as a historian. Of these, Theophilus Ant. (ad A utolyc. iii, 20, cir. A.D. 181) does but copy Josephus, Clemens Alex, nowhere names Manetho. A history of "the Acts of the Kings of Egypt, in three books" — not, however, by Manetho, but by " Ptolemy the Mendesian" — is, indeed, quoted by him (Str-om. i, 26, 101), but at second-hand from Tatian ; who again (ad Gerties, p. 129), as perhaps Justin Martyr before him (ad Gr.S), quotes Ptolemj', not directly, but from Apion. In short, it is plain, on comparing these passages and Euseb. (I'r. Er. X, 11, 12), that Apion is the sole source of all that is known of this Ptolemj' of Jlendes; and Apion, as far as we know, makes no mention of Manetho. In what re- lation the work of Ptolemy may have stood to Mane- tho's, as there is no evidence to show, it is idle to spec- ulate ; and, indeed, the question with which we are con- cerned would remain very much where it is, even were it proved that " Manetho" is a borrowed name, and the yEgyptiaca a product of Roman times. For the impor- tant point is, not who wrote the book, and when, but what is its value? It maj' not be genuine, nor so old as it pretends to be, and yet may contain good materi- als, honestly rendered from earlier writings or original records, probably as available in the time of Domitian as they were under the Ptolemies; and, in fact, exist- ing monuments do furnish so considerable a' number of names unquestionably identical with those in the list, that to reject this altogether, and deny it all historical value, would betoken either egregious ignorance or a reckless scepticism that can shut its ej'es to manifest facts.