MAN'ETHO, a celebrated Egyptian historian, native of Sebennytus, and of the sacer dotal order, flourished in the reign of Ptolemy. According to some, he WAS priest of Diospolis or Heliopolis; others contend that he was high-priest of Alexandria. His name has been interpreted "beloved of Thoth;" in the song of Lagos and Ptolemy Philadelphus, Mai en tet, Ma net, " beloved of Neith ;" but both interpretations are doubtful. Scarcely anything is known of the history of Manetho himself, and he is more renowned for his Egyptian history than on any other account. On the occasion of Ptolemy I. dreaming of the god Serapis at Sinope, 3Ianetho was consulted by the monarch, and in conjunction with Timotheus of Athens, the interpreter of the Eleusin ian mysteries, declared the statue of Serapis, brought by orders of the king from Sinope, to be that of the god Serapis or Pluto, and the god had a temple and his worship inau gurated at Alexandria. The fame of Alanetho was much increased by his writing in the Greek language, and so being enabled to communicate from Egyptian sources a more correct knowledge of the history of his native country than his Greek predecessors. Of this history, only extracts given by Josephus in. his work against Apion, and an epitome by Eusebius aud other ecclesiastical writers, remain. It appears to have been drawn up in a compendious annalistic style of narrative, resembling the accounts given by Herodotus. The work of Manetho was divided into three books, the first beginning with the mythic reigns of gods and kings, and ending with the llth dynasty of mortals; the second book continued the history from the 12th to the 19th dynasty; and the third from the 20th to the 30th dynasty, when Egypt fell under the dominion of Alexander the great. The reigns of the gods are given as amounting to 24,900 years, and the epoch of Menes, the founder of the monarchy, commenced 3,555 years before Alexander (332 um.). The difficulties attending the reconcilation of this chronology with the syn chronistic history of the Hebrews, Greeks, and other nailons, have given rise to numerous speculations and chronological systems since the revival of learning, by Scaliger, Freret, Marsham, Usher, Bunsen, Bockh, Lepsius, Poole, and others. The confusion in which the lists of kings have been transmitted, the ciphers of the lengths of each reig.n not agree
ing with the summations of the durations of the dynasties, and these, again, differing front the total period assio.ned to the existence of theEgyptian monarchy, has given rise to two or three schools oechronology. The so-called long chronology, which supposes, with. Scaliger and Bockh, that the 30 dynasties followed consecutively one after the other, has elevated the epoch of Dienes to 5,702 n.c. The short chronology, or that which endeavors to squate the dates of 3Ianetho with the Hebrew chronology, or 4004 B.C. for the year of the world, on the contrary, assumes that several of the dyna.sties were con temporary, and that some intervals, such as that of the rule of the shepherd-kings, have been either exaggerated or misunderstood. The accession of newer and better informa tion from the original sources of Egyptian monuments, papyri, and other documents, has considerably enhanced the general value of the history of 3fanetho, which, prior to their discovery, had fallen into discredit. But the restoration of the history of 3fane tho, notwithstanding all these resources, and the positive epoch of the rnonarchy, are still to be sought, although certain dynasties, in the 2d and 3d books of his work, can be reconciled with. monumental evidence. Besides the true work of lilanetho above cited, which he appears to have written in the reign of Ptolemy I., or II., another work, called Botha, or the Dogstar, in allusion to the cycle of the heliacal rising of that star of 1461 years, and dedicated to Sebastos or Augustus, the title of the Ronian emperors, and not found in use before that period, has been handed down. This work seems to have been added by the epitomizers; and another work called the Okl Chronicle, in which the history Wag arranged according to cycles, was compiled by them. Besides the history, Manetho wrote 7on PhysilanEMome (Epitome of Physics), treating on the origin of gods and the world, and the laws of morality; and another work on the preparatiom ef the -sacred kyphi, a kind of frankincense or aromatic food. rhe astronomical work called Apotelesmata is a spurious production of the 5th c. A.D.
Suidas, voce Manetho; Josephus Contr. Apion, 3, 9; Bunsen,. _ZEgyptens Stelle, Bd. ii.; Fruin, Manethon. Relig. (8vo. Leyd. 184'7); Bockh, Manetho (8vo. Berlin, 1845).