Manetho

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 the Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) written during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE). None of Manetho’s original texts have survived; they are lost literary works, known only from fragments transmitted by later authors of classical and late antiquity.

Excerpt from Manetho, with an English translation by W.G. Waddell, p. ix.

The remaining fragments of the Aegyptiaca continue to be a singular resource for understanding ancient Egyptian history and delineating its chronology, more than two millennia since its composition. Until the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian scripts in the early 19th century CE, Manetho's fragments were an essential source for understanding Egyptian history. His work remains of unique importance in Egyptology.

Works attributed to Manetho

Eight works have been attributed to Manetho:

1. Aegyptiaca
2. The Book of Sothis
3. The Sacred Book
4. An Epitome of Physical Doctrines
5. On Festivals
6. On Ancient Ritual and Religion
7. On the Making of Kyphi [a kind of incense]
8. Criticisms of Herodotus

Some of these have been considered "ghost" titles. Of these eight, modern scholars agree that: the historical Manetho is the author of Aegyptiaca; that Manetho cannot be the author of Sothis; and that the Criticisms is likely a part of the larger Aegypticia and not written as a separate work.

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 the writings of 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 temple cult of Serapis (a Hellenistic appropriation of Osiris and Apis).

Most of the ancient witnesses group Manetho together with the Mesopotamian writer Berossus and treat the pair as similar in intent. Those who preserved the bulk of their writing are largely the same (Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus). Both wrote in Greek at about the same time, and adopted the historiographical approach of the Greek writers Herodotus and Hesiod who preceded them. Both used chronological royal genealogies and regnal lists (also called "king-lists") as the structure for the narratives, and extended their histories far into a mythic past or origin myth—in Manetho's case a syncretized one. Modern historians consider Berossus and Manetho to have been rough contemporaries.

The Fragments of Manetho

All of Manetho's original works are lost. What remains are purported excerpts, epitomes (summaries), and allusions as transmitted in the writings of later authors. These pieces of transmitted text are called "literary fragments"; and scholars have indexed individual fragments with numbers, as in "Fragment 1", "Fragment 2", etc.

Two English translations of the fragments of Manetho have been published: one by William Gillan Waddell (1884 – 1945) in 1940, and another by Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John Moore Wickersham in 2001.

Waddell's 1940 translation grouped fragments based on the preserving author and attempted to arrange them according to Manetho's original dynastic structure. His numbering followed this organizational principle.

Verbrugghe and Wickersham's work is informed by scholarship published after Waddell, particularly that of the German classicist and philologist Felix Jacoby (1876 – 1959).

Jacoby's Fragments of the Greek Historians (Ger: Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker), commonly abbreviated as "FGrHist" or "FGrH", is a reference work that compiles extant citations, excerpts, and epitomes of otherwise lost works by ancient historians written in Greek. Jacoby's section on Manetho (FGrHist 609) established a highly influential system for classifying and numbering the fragments.

Verbrugghe and Wickersham's decision to base their work on Jacoby's system reflects a desire to align with the prevailing scholarly consensus in the field. Jacoby's work is known for its meticulousness and comprehensive approach to fragment collection and analysis. As Jacoby's work was in German and not immediately accessible in English translation at the time that Verbrugghe and Wickersham were working, their translation and commentary proved invaluable for English-speaking scholars.

The Aegyptiaca

The Aegyptiaca (Αἰγυπτιακά, Aigyptiaka), (or "History of Egypt") was a chronological history divided into three papyrus scrolls (Gr: tomoi), or "books" or "volumes"; it may have been written as a response to Herodotus' Histories. It is a foundational text for understanding the very long history of ancient Egypt, particularly Egyptian chronology. It 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's Aegyptiaca chronicles the history of Egypt from a mythical epoch of divine rulers, through the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Menes (c. 3100 BCE in modern dating) and the subsequent thirty (or thirty-one) dynasties, culminating in the establishment of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in 305 BCE. Key themes included the importance of a unified kingdom, periods of stability and innovation versus internal strife and foreign rule (like the Hyksos, Kushites, and Achaemenids), and the restoration of Egyptian power. Manetho aimed to present a comprehensive and continuous history of Egypt under divinely-sanctioned rulers, including foreign ones.

Manetho's Legacy

Manetho's unique legacy rests on the singular importance of his Aegyptiaca.

The Dynastic Framework

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.

Arguably his most important legacy, Manetho's division of Egyptian rulers into thirty (or sometimes thirty-one) dynasties—despite its imperfections and the passage of millennia—still serves as the fundamental chronological backbone for Egyptology. Indeed, since Syncellus, his method of dynastic arrangement remains the foundational structure for all presentations of Pharaonic Egypt.

Written in Greek

Use of Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic writing began to disappear in the third century CE, and with it went the knowledge to read these scripts. The temple-based priesthoods died out and Egypt was gradually converted to Christianity, and because Egyptian Christians wrote in the Greek-derived Coptic alphabet, it came to supplant demotic. The last hieroglyphic text was written by priests at the Temple of Isis at Philae in 394 CE, and the last known demotic text was inscribed there in  452 CE.

Manetho's decision to write his Aegyptiaca in Greek—the lingua franca of his day—rather than Egyptian ensured that the text remained accessible even after the knowledge of Egyptian scripts was lost, and enabled scholars from classical and late antiquity to the modern era to encounter Egypt's deep past. This history would have otherwise been largely inaccessible until the decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.

A Native Egyptian Perspective

Manetho, an educated Egyptian who wrote for an audience of foreigners, is even today a singular guide to his civilization's profoundly ancient history. As the author of a complete and systematic work by a native Egyptian, Manetho's perspective held an inherent authority. His viewpoint still offers unparalleled insights into how Egyptians themselves conceived of their own past and their place in a changing world.

A Foundation for Later Scholarship

Despite the fragmented and imperfect transmission of his Aegyptiaca, Manetho established a foundational chronology for thinking and writing about Egyptian history that endures to this day. For centuries, Manetho's fragments and summaries were the primary textual sources for understanding the sequence of Egyptian rulers. They provided a framework, however flawed, upon which early Egyptological scholarship was built. Jean-François Champollion relied on Manetho's king-lists as a cross-reference in his pioneering translations of ancient Egyptian scripts.

See also

• Aegyptiaca (Manetho)
• Berossus
• Cory’s Ancient Fragments
• Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
• Hecataeus of Abdera
• List of lists of ancient kings
• Menander of Ephesus

References

Bibliography

• — (2002). Adler, William; Tuffin, Paul (eds.). The Chronography of George Synkellos: a Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Greenberg, Gary (1995). "Manetho's 7th and 8th Dynasties: A Puzzle Solved". Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (JSSEA). XXV: 50–55.

• Iversen, Erik (1993) [First edition 1961]. The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02124-9.

• Loprieno, Antonio (1995). Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-44384-5.

• Moyer, Ian S. (2011). Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge University Press.

• Rutherford, Ian (2016). Greco-Egyptian Interactions: Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC–AD 300. Oxford University Press.

• Schneider, Thomas (27 August 2008). "Periodizing Egyptian History: Manetho, Convention, and Beyond". In Klaus-Peter Adam (ed.). Historiographie in der Antike. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 181–197. ISBN 978-3-11-020672-2.

• Schneider, Thomas (2023). Language Contact in Ancient Egypt. Zurich: LIT Verlag. ISBN 978-3-643-96507-3.

• Verbrugghe, Gerald; Wickersham, John Moore (2001). Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472086870. Retrieved 28 April 2025.

• Waddell, William Gillan (1940). Manetho; with an English translation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Further reading

• Barclay, John M.G. (2011). Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Volume 10: Against Apion. Vol. 10. N.p.: Brill.

• Candelora, Danielle (2024). "The Second Intermediate Period". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Retrieved 28 April 2025.

• Dillery, John (1999). "The First Egyptian Narrative History: Manetho and Greek Historiography". Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik. 127: 93–116. JSTOR 20190475.

• Herodotus (1921). The Histories. Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann Ltd.

• Leahy, A., ed. (1990). Libya and Egypt: c. 1300–750 BC. London: SOAS Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies and the Society for Libyan Studies.

• Redford, Donald B. (1986a). "The Name Manetho". In Lesko, Leonard H. (ed.). Egyptological Studies in Honor of Richard A. Parker Presented on the Occasion of His 78th Birthday, December 10, 1983. Hannover and London: University Press of New England. pp. 118–121.

• Redford, Donald B. (1986). Pharaonic king-lists, annals, and day-books: a contribution to the study of the Egyptian sense of history. Mississauga: Benben.

• Thompson, Dorothy J. (2012). Memphis Under the Ptolemies: Second Edition. NED-New edition (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1n9dknx.

External links

• Verbrugghe, Gerald P.; Wickersham, John M.; Moore, Sandra (2001). Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Retrieved 2025-05-14 – via HathiTrust.

• "The Fragments of Manetho online". transcribed from the 1940 Waddell Loeb Classical Library edition. Retrieved 2025-05-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

• Manetho und die Hundssternperiode, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Pharaonen [Manetho and the Sothic Period, A Contribution to the History of the Pharaohs]. 1845. Retrieved 2025-05-14.

• "The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 2025-05-14.