MANETONE. – An Egyptian learned priest (Μανεθὼς and Μαναθὼν, from the original Egyptian name compounded with that of the god Thoth), of the time of Ptolemy I Soter (322–285 B.C.) and his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He was renowned as a great scholar (cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osir., 9); legend embroidered upon his life and attributed many writings to him. He was the first Egyptian to write the history of his country in the Greek language (Αὐγεντιακά, ca. 280 B.C.), drawing upon genuine documents. The work was lost; the few quotations and references preserved from it have undergone such interpolations and transformations that they do not permit reconstruction of the original.
Certain genuine details have been confirmed by archaeological evidence (G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient, 11th ed., Paris 1912, p. 738, n. 3). Flavius Josephus cites many passages in the Contra Apionem and reports that M. corrected many of Herodotus’s judgments; for this reason some scholars posited another work by M.: Πρὸς Ἡράβαστον. Eusebius, in the Chronicle (A.D. 327), in the Armenian version, preserves the celebrated list of M.’s kings in its entirety; it is also reported in the Chronography of G. Syncellus (792). M. 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, beginning with Menes; b) dynasties X–XIX; c) dynasties XX–XXX. The duration of the thirty dynasties up to 342 B.C. is 3555 years. The addition of a XXXI dynasty is spurious. M.’s influence was considerable in the past; modern scholars have taken from him the division into thirty dynasties.