MANETHO, of Sebennytus, was distinguished for priestly learning at the court of the first Ptolemy ; so Plutarch relates (de Is. et Os., c. 28), who cites a religious work of his in Greek, which is quoted also under various names by .1Elian, Diogenes Ldertius, Porphyry, and other late writers (Fruin, llfanethonis Sebennyta p. 133, ff. ; Parthey, Plutarch fiber Isis u. Osiris, p. 18o, /11) Josephus (c. Apion, i. 4-16, 26, 27) gives two long extracts, with a list of seventeen reigns, from the A/ran-twat, '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, pre served in two widely different recensions by Geor gius Syncellus, 80o A.D. ; the one from the lost Chrono'raphia of Julius Africanus, 220 A. D. ; the other from the Chronicon of Eusebius, 325 A. D. (of which we have now the Armenian ver sion) ; both texts are given by Fruin, and by Bunsen in the appendix to Egypt's 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 command of Ptolemy Philadelphus,' rests only on the dedication (ap. Syncell.) prefixed to the Sothis, an undoubted forgery of Christian times. All that can be inferred from it is, that the forger had grounds, good or bad, for placing Manetho in the time of the second Ptolemy. In fact, the incident with which Plutarch, u. s., connects his name (the bringing in of Serapis), is related by other writers (without mention of Manetho), and is assigned by Tacitus also (Hist., iv. 183, E) to the time of the first Ptolemy ; but by Clem. Alex. (Frotrefit., iv. 48), and Cyril. Al. (c. p. 13), to Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the date 01. 124 = 284-1 B.C. 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, Act,: 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, the Polyhistor's collections, the chronological writings of Castor.• Diodorus Sic. and Strabo visited and wrote about Egypt, yet neither of them names or alludes to Manetho ; and the former gives (i. 44, ff., from the priests, he says) an account of the kingly succes sion altogether different from his. If, as Fruin suggests (p. lxiii.), it was through measures taken by Domitian to repair the losses sustained by the public libraries (Sueton., Dom. 2o), that Manetho's works were brought to Rome from the Alexandrine library, where they had long slumbered unregarded, still it is strange that the ,E,uptiaca should have caught the attention of Josephus alone (among extant writers), and that neither those who, as Plutarch, do mention the other work, nor others who have occasion to speak of the ancient times of Egypt, as Tacitus and the elder Pliny (esp. H. N.,
xxxvi. 8-13), ever name this history, or show any acquaintance with its list of kings. Lepsius (Chiron. der Aeg., i. 583, ff.) better meets the diffi culty by supposing that the original work, never widely known, was so early lost that even in the 1st century all that survived of it was a bare abstract of its names and numbers, and (distinct from this) the two passages relating to the Hyk sos' and the lepers,' with the accompanying list of seventeen reigns, which some Jewish reader had extracted on account of their I3iblical interest, and beyond which Josephus knew nothing of Manetho. Whatever be the explanation, the fact is, that it is only through Jewish and Christian writers that we ever hear of Manetho as an historian. Of these, Theophilus Ant. (ad Autolyc., Ili. 20, cir. 181 A.D.) does but copy Josephus. Clemens Alex. nowhere names Manetho. A history of 'the Acts of the Kings of Egypt, in three books '—not, how ever, by Manetho, but by Ptolemy the Mende sian'—is, indeed, quoted by him (Strom. i. 26, tot), but at second-hand from Tatian ; who again (ad Gentes, p. 129), as perhaps Justin Martyr before him (ad Gr., 8), quotes Ptolemy, not directly, but from Apion. In short, it is plain, on comparing these passages and Euseb. (Pr. Ev., x. II, 12), that Apion is the sole source of all that is known of this Ptolemy of Mendes ; and Apion, as far as we know, makes no mention of Manetho. In what relation the work of Ptolemy may have stood to Manetho's, as there is no evidence to show, it is idle to speculate ; and, indeed, the question with which we are concerned would re main very much where it is, even were it proved that Manetho' is a borrowed name, and the ./Egyptiaca a product of Roman times. For the important point is, not who wrote the book, and when ? but what is its value ? It may not be genuine, nor so old as it pretends to be, and yet may contain good materials, 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, existing monu ments do furnish so considerable. a number of names unquestionably identical with names 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 eyes to manifest facts.