Manetho

MAN-eh-tho

greek: Μανέθων

Definition

Manetho was an Egyptian-Greek priest of Sebennytos, active under Ptolemy II Philadelphus (c. 282-229 BCE). He wrote the Aegyptiaca, a history of Egypt in Greek built around the 30-dynasty framework that is still the basic chronological skeleton of all Egyptian dating. The work itself is lost: it survives only in fragments quoted by later Greek and Christian writers — Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, Syncellus — and is gathered in the standard 1940 Loeb edition by W. G. Waddell.

In Tradition

Egyptologists — Belmonte-Lull and Copenhaver — read Manetho as the leading Egyptian-Greek priestly historian, whose Aegyptiaca set up the dynasty-by-dynasty framework underlying all later Egyptian chronology. Belmonte and Lull, citing Waddell 1940, call Manetho "basically useless" for dating anything before the 21st Dynasty — the 1st Dynasty excepted, since there the nesu-bity and nebty names of the kings were reported. He is one of three principal Old Kingdom chronology sources, alongside the Royal Canon of Turin and the monumental royal lists.

In Practice

Manetho does two jobs for the historian. First, he is the canonical source for Egyptian dynastic chronology: his 30-dynasty framework still organises all modern Egyptian dating. Second, he is a Hermetic-Egyptian transmission-figure, a link between Pharaonic Egyptian wisdom and Hellenistic Greek scholarship. In a pseudonymous letter preserved by Syncellus, Manetho is made to claim he was giving Ptolemy II "the sacred books that I have learned about, written by your ancestor, Hermes Trismegistus" — placing him within the chain of Hermetic pseudepigraphic attribution. Egyptologists cite Manetho through Waddell's 1940 Loeb Classical Library 350 edition; using the 1st-Dynasty nesu-bity names while treating his data as unreliable before the 21st Dynasty is standard practice in reconstructing New Kingdom and earlier chronology. Belmonte and Lull cite the Waddell Loeb as their access-point for the dynastic divisions behind their Table 7.1 of Egyptian-chronology synthesis.

Historical Origin

Manetho was active under Ptolemy II Philadelphus (282-229 BCE) and was a priest of Sebennytos; the Aegyptiaca was composed in Greek for the Ptolemaic court. It survives only in fragments preserved by Josephus (1st century CE), Sextus Julius Africanus (3rd century CE), Eusebius (4th century CE), and George Syncellus (8th-9th century CE). The standard modern edition is W. G. Waddell, Manetho, Loeb Classical Library 350 (1940). Manetho is treated in Belmonte-Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order (2018), Table 7.1, and in the Introduction to Copenhaver, Hermetica (1992).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading