MANETHO. — Egyptian priest and scholar (*Mazvelōs* and *Mazvelōv*, from the original Egyptian compounded with the name of the god Thoth), who lived in the time of Ptolemy I Soter (322–285 BC) and his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He enjoyed a reputation for great learning (cf. Plutarch, *De Iside et Osir.*, 9); legend embroidered his life and attributed many writings to him. He was the first Egyptian to write the history of his country in the Greek language (*Aegyptiaca*, c. 280 BC), drawing on genuine documents. The work is lost; the few citations and references that survive have undergone such interpolations and transformations that they do not allow us to reconstruct the original.
A few genuine points have been confirmed by archaeological evidence (G. Maspero, *Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient*, 11th ed., Paris 1912, p. 738, n. 3). Many passages are cited by Flavius Josephus in *Contra Apionem*, and he informs us that M. corrected many of the judgments of Herodotus; hence some have supposed another work by M.: *Πρὸς Ἡροδότου*. Eusebius in his *Chronicon* (AD 327), in the Armenian version, preserves the entire celebrated list of the kings of Egypt; it is also reproduced in the *Chronographia* of G. Syncellus (792). Manetho divided Egyptian history into three parts or books: a) the dynasties of the gods, lasting 24,000 years, and the first nine dynasties of mortal kings, from Mene onwards; b) dynasties X–XIX; c) dynasties XX–XXX. The duration of the thirty dynasties up to 342 BC is 3,555 years. The addition of a thirty-first dynasty is spurious. Manetho’s influence was considerable in the past; modern scholars have taken from him the division into thirty dynasties.