fl. c. 280 BCE · Egyptian priest · historian
Manetho of Sebennytos
Μανέθων
In Alexandria: c. 285–260 BCE
An Egyptian priest of Sebennytos in the Delta who wrote the Aegyptiaca, the history of Egypt in Greek whose thirty dynasties are still used. Plutarch makes him an adviser on the cult of Sarapis. A later forgery under his name, the Book of Sothis, claims to translate stelae inscribed by Thoth, the first Hermes. Its dedicatory letter to Ptolemy II, which calls him high priest and scribe of the shrines of Egypt, living at Heliopolis, is the only source that places him there.
Their life and work
He wrote under the first two Ptolemies, as an Egyptian priest explaining Egypt to its Greek rulers. The Aegyptiaca is lost; what survives are excerpts in Josephus, who quotes him at length against his enemies (Against Apion 1.73–105, 1.227–287), and the king lists kept by the Christian chronographers Africanus and Eusebius, which reach us through George Syncellus and, for Eusebius, also through the Armenian version of his Chronicle. These versions often disagree with one another and with Josephus, so his reign lengths are uncertain.
His part in the Sarapis story rests on Plutarch, who names him with Timotheus the exegete as the men who identified the statue brought from Sinope as Sarapis (On Isis and Osiris 28). Tacitus tells the story with Timotheus and unnamed Egyptian priests and does not name him (Histories 4.83). The Book of Sothis is not his. Known: probable
Our device: Their emblem is a list of kings. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
On the shelves
- Manetho of Sebennytos, Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) and the Sacred Book · c. 285–246 BCE · Survives in fragments
Moments
- c. 280s–270s BCE · Manetho writes Egypt's history in Greek Known: attested
In the show
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Sources (5)
- W. G. Waddell (ed. and trans.), Manetho, Loeb Classical Library 350 (Cambridge, MA, 1940) (opens in a new tab)
- G. P. Verbrugghe and J. M. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996)
- Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 28 (Moralia 361f–362a)
- Josephus, Against Apion 1.73–105; 1.227–287
- Tacitus, Histories 4.83