MANETHO. - Learned Egyptian priest (Μανεθὼς and Μαναθών, from the original Egyptian composed with the name of the god Thoth), of the time of Ptolemy I Soter (322-285 B.C.) and of his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He had a reputation as a great scholar (cf. Plutarch, De Iside et Osir., 9); legend has embroidered his life and attributed many writings to him. He was the first Egyptian who wrote the history of his country in Greek (Αὐγεντιακά, ca. 280 B.C.), drawing on genuine documents. The work was lost; the few citations and references that survive from it have undergone such interpolations and transformations that they do not allow us to trace it back to the original.
Some genuine points have been confirmed by archaeological data (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 the Contra Apionem, and he reports that M. corrected many of Herodotus' judgments; for which reason some thought of another work by M.: Πρὸς Ἡράβαστον. Eusebius in the Cronica (327 A.D.), Armenian version, preserves entire the famous list of the kings of M.; it is also reported in the Chronography of G. Syncellus (792). The Egyptian history was divided by M. into three parts or books: a) the dynasties of the gods, lasting 24,000 years, and the first nine dynasties of mortal kings, from Menes onward; b) dynasties X-XIX; c) dynasties XX-XXX. The duration of the thirty dynasties down to 342 B.C. is 3555 years. The addition of a XXXI dynasty is spurious. The influence of M. was notable in the past; the moderns have taken from him the division into thirty dynasties.
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Francesco Spadafora