Berossus & Manetho: Berossus & Manetho
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com


======== Berossus — Book 1: Oannes and the Creation (FHG F1, from Syncellus / Alexander Polyhistor) ========

F1. (From Alexander Polyhistor, concerning the ten kings of the Chaldeans who reigned before the flood, and the flood itself, and concerning Noah and the ark — in which he also relates, along the way, certain monstrous things as written by Berossus.) 1. Berossus, in the first book of his Babyloniaca, says that he lived in the time of Alexander son of Philip; and that records of many things were preserved at Babylon with great care, covering a span of somewhere above one hundred and fifty thousand years; and that these records contained histories of the heaven and the sea, of the first birth of things, of the kings, and of their deeds. 2. And first he says that the land of the Babylonians lies between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates; that it bears wild wheat and barley and chickpea and sesame, and that the roots growing in its marshes are eaten — they are called gongai, and these roots are the equal of barley. There are date-palms too, and apples, and the other tree-fruits, and fish, and birds of the field and of the marsh. Its parts toward Arabia are waterless and barren, while those lying opposite Arabia are mountainous and barren. In Babylon there was a great crowd of people of foreign stock who had settled Chaldea, and they lived without order, like the beasts. 3. In the first year there appeared out of the Erythraean Sea, at the place where it borders Babylonia, a creature without reason(?) named Oannes — just as Apollodorus also recorded — having the whole body of a fish, but beneath the fish's head another head grown alongside it, and feet like a man's grown out from the fish's tail; and it had a human voice. And its image is preserved even to this day. This creature, he says, would pass the day among men, taking no food, and would hand over to men the knowledge of letters and sciences and crafts of every kind, and teach the founding of cities, the establishment of temples, the introduction of laws, and geometry, and show them seeds and the gathering of fruits — in short, it delivered to men everything that belongs to the taming of life. And from that time nothing further has been discovered. And when the sun set, this creature Oannes would sink back into the sea and spend the nights in the deep; for it was amphibious. Later other creatures like it appeared as well, about which he says he will speak in the record of the kings. And Oannes wrote about birth and government, and gave this account to men. 4. There was a time, he says, in which the whole was darkness and water, and in it monstrous creatures, with forms of strange growth, were brought to life. For men were born with two wings, and some with four wings and two faces; and having one body but two heads, a man's and a woman's, and double genitals, male and female; and other men with the legs and horns of goats, and others with horses' hooves, and others with the hind parts of horses and the fore parts of men — the very form of hippocentaurs. Bulls too were brought forth with human heads, and dogs with four bodies bearing fishes' tails from their hind parts, and horses with dogs' heads, and men likewise, and yet other creatures horse-headed and horse-bodied but finished behind with the tails of fish, and further creatures having the shapes of beasts of every kind. Besides these, fish and reptiles and snakes and many other astonishing creatures, each differing from the others in appearance — whose images are set up in the temple of Belus. Over all these ruled a woman whose name was Homoroka: in Chaldean this is Thalatth, which in Greek is rendered 'sea' [and by the count of its letters, 'moon' — an addition, it seems, of Syncellus]. 5. All things being thus constituted, Belus came up and split the woman down the middle, and made one half of her earth and the other half heaven, and made the creatures in her vanish. And he says this is an allegory of nature: for when the whole was moist and creatures had come to be in it, this god cut off his own head, and the other gods kneaded the blood that flowed out into the earth and formed men — which is why they are rational and share in divine understanding. 6. And Belus, whom they render as Zeus, cutting the darkness through the middle, separated earth and heaven from one another and set the world in order; but the creatures, unable to bear the power of the light, were destroyed. And Belus, seeing a land empty yet fruit-bearing, commanded one of the gods to cut off his own head, knead the earth with the blood that flowed out, and form men, and the beasts able to bear the air. And Belus brought to completion the stars, the sun, the moon, and the five planets. These things, says Alexander Polyhistor, Berossus relates in his first book; and in the second... (see fragment 4).
F1. Berossus, the writer of the Chaldean antiquities, who flourished in the time of Alexander of Macedon, as he says, and who found at Babylon carefully guarded records of many things, spanning somewhere around one hundred and fifty thousand years and a little more, wrote up — with a certain bombast — histories of heaven and earth and sea, of the antiquity of the kings and their deeds, of the situation of the Babylonian land and its fruitfulness, and of certain creatures out of the Erythraean Sea unnatural in form, and other such fabulous matter. [Then:] Wishing to glorify the nation of the Chaldeans and to show it older than all nations, Berossus and those of his line — Alexander called Polyhistor, I mean, and Abydenus — have written these things.
F1. First of all kingdoms, men well known for learning — Alexander Polyhistor, Berossus, Abydenus, and Apollodorus — record that of the Chaldeans; and they first relate 1,058(?) years without a king. For they say that Adam, the first man, led for the span of his life(?), and after him Seth his son for 128 years.

======== Berossus — Book 2: The Ten Antediluvian Kings (FHG F2–F6a: Athenaeus, Agathias, Syncellus, Apollodorus) ========

F2. But they called Belus perhaps Zeus, and Sandes Heracles, and Anaitis Aphrodite, and the others by other names — as is recorded by Berossus the Babylonian and by Athenocles and Simacus(?), who wrote up the most ancient affairs of the Assyrians and the Medes.
F3. Berossus, in the first book of the Babyloniaca, says that on the sixteenth of the month Loos a festival called the Sakaia is held in Babylon for five days, during which it is the custom for the masters to be ruled by their servants, and for one of the servants, dressed in a robe like the king's, to preside over the house — and he is called the zoganes. Ctesias also mentions the festival in the second book of his Persica.
F4. The conceit of both of these men is a fabrication — of Berossus and of Manetho alike, each wishing to glorify his own nation, the one the Chaldeans, the other the Egyptians. One may only marvel that they were not ashamed to set the beginning of their monstrous compositions in one and the same year. Berossus reckoned by saroi and neroi and sossoi, of which the saros means a span of three thousand six hundred years, the neros six hundred years, and the sossos sixty. And he totted up one hundred and twenty saroi across ten kings — that is, a span of four hundred and thirty-two thousand years.
F4. These things, says Alexander Polyhistor, Berossus asserts in his first book; and in the second, the Chaldeans' ten kings together with the span of their reign, one hundred and twenty saroi — that is, four hundred and thirty-two thousand years — down to the flood. For he says... (see fragment 7).
F6. Before these matters Apollodorus too, telling marvels like theirs, speaks thus: 'These things Berossus recorded: that the first king was Aloros, a Chaldean from Babylon, and he reigned ten saroi; and in order after him Alaparos, and Amelon of the Pantibiblians; then Ammenon the Chaldean, in whose time, he says, appeared the abominable [second?] Oannes, the Annedotos, from the Erythraean Sea [which Alexander, anticipating, said appeared in the first year; but this one after forty saroi(?); while Abydenus makes the second Annedotos appear after twenty-six saroi]; then Megalaros from the city of the Pantibiblians, and he reigned eighteen saroi; and after him Daonos, a shepherd from the Pantibiblians, reigned ten saroi. In his time, he says, there again appeared from the Erythraean Sea a fourth Annedotos, having the same composite shape as those above, the mingling of fish with man. Then ruled Euedorachos from the Pantibiblians, and he reigned eighteen saroi. In his time, he says, yet another appeared from the Erythraean Sea, like the rest in the fish-and-man mingling, whose name was Odakon. All these, he says, expounded part by part what Oannes had set out summarily. [About this one Abydenus said nothing.] Then ruled Amempsinos, a Chaldean from Larancha; he reigned, the eighth king, ten saroi. Then ruled Otiartes, a Chaldean from Larancha, and he reigned eight saroi. And on the death of Otiartes his son Xisouthros reigned eighteen saroi. In his time, he says, the great flood took place. So that all the kings together were ten, and the saroi one hundred and twenty.'
F6a. [To the men of old God granted length of days both for other reasons and] for their virtue and for the good use of the things which they could not have foretold with certainty had they not lived six hundred years; for it is through so many that the great year is completed. To this account of mine all who have written antiquities, among Greeks and among barbarians, bear witness: for Manetho, who made the record of the Egyptian matters, and Berossus, who gathered the Chaldean, and Mochus and Hestiaeus, and with them Hieronymus the Egyptian, who composed the Phoenician matters, agree with what I say.

======== Berossus — Book 3: The Flood of Xisouthros and the Tower (FHG F7, F10, F11a, from Syncellus) ========

F7. For the same Alexander says, following the writing of the Chaldeans, passing again from the ninth king Ardatos (properly Otiartes) to the tenth, called among them Xisouthros, thus: 'On the death of Ardatos his son Xisouthros reigned eighteen saroi. In his time a great flood took place; and the account of it stands written thus. (2) Kronos appeared to him in his sleep and said that on the fifteenth of the month Daisios mankind would be destroyed by a flood. He commanded him, therefore, to dig a hiding-place and deposit the beginnings and middles and ends of all writings in Sispara, the city of the sun; and to build a boat and go aboard with his kinsmen and closest friends; to stow food in it, and when he had made all ready, to sail. If he were asked where he was sailing, he was to say: to the gods, to pray that good things come to mankind. (3) He did not disobey, but built a boat five stades in length and two stades in breadth, gathered together everything as ordered, and put aboard his wife and children and closest friends. (4) When the flood had come, and as soon as it ceased, Xisouthros released some of the birds. Finding neither food nor a place to settle, they came back to the ship. After some days Xisouthros again released the birds, and these came back to the ship with their feet muddied. Released a third time, they came to the ship no more. Then Xisouthros understood that land had appeared; and tearing open part of the ship's seams and seeing that the ship had run aground on a certain mountain, he went out with his wife and his daughter and the pilot, did reverence to the earth, set up an altar, sacrificed to the gods, and — together with those who had gone out of the ship with him — vanished. (5) When those who had stayed in the ship saw that Xisouthros and his company did not come back in, they went out and searched for him, calling him by name. Xisouthros himself was seen by them no more; but a voice came out of the air commanding that they must be god-fearing, for it was because of his piety that he had gone to dwell with the gods; and his wife and his daughter and the pilot shared the same honor. (6) And the voice told them that they would come again to Babylon, and that it was fated for them to take up the writings from Sispara and hand them down to mankind; and that the place where they were was the land of Armenia. Hearing this, they sacrificed to the gods and made their way on foot to Babylon. (7) Of this ship, which came to rest in Armenia, some part still remains in the Kordyaean mountains of Armenia; and some people scrape off asphalt from the ship and carry it away, and use it for warding off evils. So these people came to Babylon, dug up the writings from Sispara, founded many cities, established temples anew, and rebuilt Babylon.' So much stands set forth from Alexander Polyhistor, as from Berossus, that teller of Chaldean falsehoods.
F10. From Alexander Polyhistor, on the building of the tower: 'The Sibyl says that when all mankind spoke one language, some of them built an enormous tower, so as to climb up into heaven; but God blew winds upon it and overturned them, and gave each his own language — for which reason the city was called Babylon. And after the flood came Titan and Prometheus.' So much on the building of the tower from Alexander, who himself also testifies that Babylon was named from the confusion — the city fabled among them to have held kingship many tens of thousands of years before.
F11a. From Nabonasaros onward the Chaldeans fixed with precision the times of the movement of the stars, and from the Chaldeans the mathematicians among the Greeks took them over — since, as Alexander and Berossus say, who have compassed the Chaldean antiquities, Nabonasaros gathered up the deeds of the kings before him and destroyed them, so that the reckoning of the Chaldean kings begins from himself.

======== Berossus — Book 4: Eusebius Chronicle (Armenian) material — postdiluvian kings, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar (FHG F5, F9, F11, F12) ========

F5. These things Berossus told in his first book; in the second he reviewed the kings one by one. [As he himself says, Nabonassaros was king at that time — words which make no sense in this place.] He piles up the kings' names with care, yet recites no particular deed of any of them, perhaps because he judged nothing worth recording. From him, then, one can draw out only the sequence of kings. He begins the account in this fashion, as Apollodorus says: that the first to arise as king was Aloros, a Chaldean from the city of Babylon, and that he held the kingship ten saroi. Now he makes the saros amount to three thousand six hundred years; he adds also a certain neros and sossos — the neros, he says, consists of six hundred years, the sossos of sixty. Thus he counts the years after the manner of the ancients. Having said this he continues, and lists the kings of the Assyrians one by one and in order: ten, that is, from Aloros the first king down to Xisouthros, under whom, he says, occurred that first great flood which Moses also records. The sum of the times these kings reigned he gives as one hundred and twenty saroi — that is, four hundred and thirty-two thousand years. And then he writes expressly as follows: On the death of Aloros, his son Alaparos reigned three saroi. After Alaparos, Almelon (in Greek, Amelon), a Chaldean from the city of the Pantibiblians, thirteen saroi. Almelon was succeeded by Ammenon, likewise a Chaldean of the Pantibiblians, twelve saroi. In his age a certain beast named Idotion (Annedotos in Syncellus) came up out of the Red Sea, its shape a mixture of man and fish. Next Amegalaros of the Pantibiblians reigned eighteen saroi; then the shepherd Davonus of the Pantibiblians, who likewise held the kingship ten saroi. In his reign there again came up from the Red Sea four monsters of the same figure, man and fish together. Afterward Edoranchus of the Pantibiblians reigned eighteen saroi. In his time there likewise appeared out of the Red Sea another creature of fish-and-man kind, named Odakon. All these, he says, expounded with precision what Oannes had stated in summary. Then Amemphsinos, a Chaldean of Larancha, ruled ten saroi. Then Otiartes, a Chaldean of Larancha, held the kingdom eight saroi. At last, Otiartes having died, his son Xisouthros held the rule eighteen saroi, and under him the great flood came. So the sum is made up: ten kings, one hundred and twenty saroi. And this is the sequence of the kings: I. Aloros, 10 saroi. II. Alaparos, 3. III. Almelon, 13. IV. Ammenon, 12. V. Amegalaros, 18. VI. Davonus, 10. VII. Edoranchus, 18. VIII. Amemphsinos, 10. IX. Otiartes, 8. X. Xisouthros, 18. Total: ten kings, one hundred and twenty saroi. From these one hundred and twenty saroi, they say, are made up four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, since the saros consists of three thousand six hundred. These things are told in the books of Alexander Polyhistor.
F9. It has pleased me to begin my narrative from my beloved Sibyl of Berossus, more truthful than the rest, who says this: 'Before the tower, and before the speech of humankind was made manifold and various — but after Xisouthros's voyage to Armenia — Zerovanus, Titan, and Japetosthes held the chief power of the earth. (These seem to me to be Shem, Ham, and Japheth.) When they had divided the rule of the whole world among themselves, Zerovanus — whom this writer says was Zoroaster the Magus, king of the Bactrians, founder of the Medes and father of the gods, about whom he tells many other fables foreign to our present purpose — kindled with pride, wished to be master over the other two. Titan and Japetosthes resisted Zerovanus as he pressed his force upon them, and made war against him, because he was planning to set his own sons as kings over all. In that struggle Titan seized a certain part of Zerovanus's hereditary territory. Then their sister Astlicia, interposing herself, calmed the tumult by her charms, and it was agreed among them that Zerovanus should hold the rule. But they bound themselves by oath to kill thereafter every male offspring of Zerovanus, so that no descendant of his should reign over them; and to this task they appointed certain strong men of the Titans to watch the women in childbirth. When these had killed two, in keeping with the sworn pact, the sister Astlicia took counsel with the wives of Zerovanus to persuade some of the Titans to save the remaining boys and carry them off to the East, to a certain mountain they called the Meeting-place of the Gods, which is now called Olympus.'
F11. To the foregoing the same Polyhistor adds this: 'After the flood, Evexius (Euechoos in Syncellus) ruled the land of the Chaldeans four neroi; then the rule was taken up by his son Chomasbelos, four neroi and five sossoi.' From Xisouthros and the flood until the Medes seized Babylon, Polyhistor counts in all eighty-six kings, and reviews each by name from the book of Berossus; their ages all together he makes thirty-three thousand and ninety-one years. After these, who had held the kingship in unbroken succession, he says the Medes suddenly gathered forces, took Babylon, and set up tyrants of their own there. He then sets out the names of eight Median tyrants, with their two hundred and twenty-four years; then again eleven kings and forty-eight years [supplied from the margin; a gap in the manuscript]; then forty-nine Chaldean kings, four hundred and fifty-eight years; after that nine Arab kings, two hundred and forty-five years. Having written out the reckoning of these years, he tells also of Semiramis, who ruled the Assyrians. Then again he enumerates quite distinctly the names of forty-five kings, assigning them five hundred and twenty-six years. After these, he says, there was a king of the Chaldeans whose name was Phulus — whom the history of the Hebrews also records, likewise calling him Phulus, and who is said to have invaded Judea. Then Polyhistor says Senecherib became king — whom the books of the Hebrews report as reigning in the time of king Hezekiah and the prophecy of Isaiah. The divine book says expressly (2 Kings 18:13): 'In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Senecherib came up against the fortified cities of Judah and took them.' And when that history is completed, it adds: 'And Asordanes his son reigned in his place' (19:37). Continuing again, it says Hezekiah fell sick in that season (20:7), and then in order that at the same time Marudach Baldanes, king of the Babylonians, sent envoys with letters and gifts to Hezekiah (20:12). So the scriptures of the Hebrews. And indeed the historian of the Chaldeans too records Senecherib, with his son Asordanes and with Marudach Baldanes — and with them Nabuchodonosor as well, as will presently be told. And he writes of them in this fashion (see fragment 12).
F12. From the same Alexander, on Senecherib and Nabuchodonosor, their deeds and vigorous exploits. After the brother of Senecherib ended his reign, and after the domination of Hagises over the Babylonians — who, before he had completed his thirtieth day, was slain by Marudach Baldanes — Marudach Baldanes himself seized the tyranny for six months, until a man named Elibus removed him and took the kingship. In the third year of Elibus's reign, Senecherib king of the Assyrians was gathering his forces against the Babylonians; battle was joined, he came off the victor, and he ordered Elibus with his household to be carried off into Assyria. Master now of the Babylonians, he set his own son Asordanes over them as king, and himself hastened his return to Assyria. Soon, when a report reached his ears that the Greeks had gathered forces and carried war into Cilicia, he marched against them at once; battle was joined, and though he lost many of his own men, he routed the enemy nonetheless; and as a monument of the victory he left his own image erected on the spot, ordering the deeds he had done to be carved on it in Chaldean letters for the everlasting memory of the times. He also says Senecherib built the city of Tarsus on the model of Babylon, and gave it the name Tharsin. And having written out the rest of Senecherib's deeds, he adds that he lived reigning eighteen years, until he was destroyed by a plot laid against him by his son Ardunuzanes. Thus Polyhistor. Now the times agree with the narrative of the divine books: for under Hezekiah, Senecherib reigned, as Polyhistor indicates, eighteen years; after him his son eight years; then Sammughes twenty-one years, and his brother likewise twenty-one; then Nabupalassaros twenty years; finally Nabucodrossoros forty-three years — so that from Senecherib to Nabucodrossoros eighty-eight years run out. And if anyone searches the books of the Hebrews, he will find the like: for after Hezekiah, Manasseh son of Hezekiah rules the remaining Jews fifty-five years, then Amos twelve years, then Josiah thirty-one, then Joachim, at the beginning of whose reign Nabuchodonosor came upon Jerusalem to seize it and carried the Jews captive to Babylon — and from Hezekiah to Nabuchodonosor there run eighty-eight years, exactly as Polyhistor reckoned from the Chaldean history. 3. All this concluded, Polyhistor goes on again to set out several further deeds of Senecherib, and writes of his son in just the same manner as the books of the Hebrews, expounding everything with great care. Pythagoras the sage is said to have lived in that season, under these kings. Now after Sammughes, Sardanapallus ruled the Chaldeans twenty-one years. He sent auxiliary forces to Asdahages (Astyages), chief and satrap of the Median nation — namely, so that Amuhia, one of the daughters of Asdahages, might be betrothed to his son Nabucodrossoros. Then Nabucodrossoros ruled forty-three years; he gathered an army and, making his onslaught, reduced the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Syrians to servitude. There is no need for me to confirm at length that Polyhistor agrees here too with the Hebrew history. After Nabucodrossoros his son Amilmarudochus reigned twelve (properly: two) years — whom the letters of the Hebrews call Ilmarudochus. Next, Polyhistor says, Neglisaros ruled the Chaldeans four years, then Nabonedus seventeen. In that king's reign Cyrus son of Cambyses invaded the Babylonian territory with his forces; Nabonedus joined battle with him, was beaten, and took to flight. Cyrus reigned at Babylon nine years, until he perished in another battle joined on the plain of the Dahae. Then Cambyses held the rule eight years, then Darius thirty-six, then Xerxes and the rest of the kings of the Persians. As Berossus treats the kingdom of the Chaldeans briefly and distinctly, so exactly speaks Polyhistor also: from which it is plain that Nabuchodonosor took the Jews by force of arms; and from him to Cyrus king of the Persians seventy years are made up. — The last part of the fragment belongs to the third book.

======== Berossus — Book 5: Minor Greek citations (FHG F8, F13, F14a, F15, F16, F16a) ========

F8. Berossus mentions our father Abraham without naming him, speaking thus: 'In the tenth generation after the flood there was among the Chaldeans a certain man, just and great and skilled in the heavenly things.'
F13. Berossus mentions Babadas, king of the Babylonians.
F14a. In Zedekiah's twelfth year as king, Nabuchodonosor — seventy years before the supremacy of the Persians — marched against the Phoenicians and the Jews, as Berossus says in the Chaldean histories; and Juba, writing on the Assyrians, acknowledges that he took the account from Berossus, bearing witness to the man's truthfulness.
F15. That Berossus too agrees about the times of which we speak — he who practiced philosophy among the Chaldeans and made the Chaldean writings known to the Greeks — who has said certain things in accord with Moses, telling of the flood and of many other matters. Indeed he has also spoken in partial agreement with the prophets Jeremiah and Daniel, for he relates what befell the Jews at the hands of the king of the Babylonians, whom he himself names Abobassaros but who is called among the Hebrews Nabuchodonosor. He records also concerning the temple in Jerusalem, that it was laid waste by the king of the Chaldeans; and that when Cyrus stood in the second year of his kingship the temple's foundations were laid, and when Darius in his turn stood in his second year the temple was completed.
F16. As images of the gods they have not taken up wood and stone, like the Greeks, nor yet ibises and mongooses, like the Egyptians, but fire and water, like philosophers. Yet after many cycles of years thereafter, Berossus shows in the third book of the Chaldaica that they worshipped statues in human form — Artaxerxes son of Darius, son of Ochus, having introduced this: he first set up the statue of Aphrodite Anaitis in Babylon and Susa and Ecbatana, and taught the Persians and Bactrians, and Damascus and Sardis, to worship it.
F16a. Saracheiro: in Berossus, the adorner of Hera.

======== Berossus — Book 6: Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Babylonian kings down to Cyrus (Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.128–153) ========

CA 1.128-133. I shall now state what stands recorded and related about us among the Chaldeans — matters which are in great agreement with our own writings on other points as well. The witness for these things is Berossus, a man Chaldean by birth but familiar to all who occupy themselves with learning, since it was he who brought out for the Greeks the treatises on astronomy and on the philosophy practiced among the Chaldeans. This Berossus, then, following the most ancient records, has told — just as Moses does — of the flood that occurred and the destruction of mankind in it, and of the chest in which Nochos, the founder of our race, was brought safely through when it was carried to the summits of the Armenian mountains. Then, listing those descended from Nochos and adding their dates, he comes down to Nabopalassaros, who was king over Babylon and the Chaldeans; and recounting his deeds, he tells in what manner he sent his son Nabokodrosoros with a great force against Egypt and against our land, when he learned that they had revolted; and how he mastered them all, and burned the temple in Jerusalem, and uprooted our entire people and resettled them in Babylon — and so it came about that the city lay desolate for a span of seventy years, until Cyrus king of the Persians. And he says the Babylonian mastered Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia, surpassing in his deeds all who had reigned before him over the Chaldeans and Babylonians.
CA 1.134-139. [Then a little further down Berossus again sets this out in his history of antiquity.] I shall quote Berossus's own words, which run in this manner: 'His father Nabopalassaros, hearing that the satrap stationed in Egypt and in the districts of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had turned rebel, and being no longer able to bear hardship himself, entrusted certain parts of his force to his son Nabokodrosoros, who was still in his prime, and sent him out against the man. Nabokodrosoros engaged the rebel, joined battle, defeated him, and brought the land back from the start under their kingdom. And it happened that at this very season his father Nabopalassaros fell sick in the city of the Babylonians and departed this life, having reigned twenty-one years. Learning of his father's death not long after, Nabokodrosoros settled the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country; the captive Jews, Phoenicians, and Syrians, together with the peoples of Egypt he assigned to certain of his friends, to convey to Babylonia together with the heaviest part of the force and the rest of the spoils; and he himself, setting out with a small company, came through the desert to Babylon. Finding affairs administered by the Chaldeans and the kingship kept for him by the best man among them, and now master of his father's whole dominion, he ordered that, when the captives arrived, settlements be assigned them in the most suitable districts of Babylonia. He himself, from the spoils of the war, adorned the temple of Belus and the rest with an open hand; the city that existed from of old he refashioned, adding another outside it; and — compelling matters so that besiegers could no longer turn the river against the city — he threw around it three circuit-walls for the inner city and three for the outer, some of baked brick and asphalt, some of brick alone.'
CA 1.140-145. 'And having walled the city in worthy fashion and adorned its gateways as befits something sacred, he built beside his father's palace another palace adjoining it, whose height and general magnificence it would perhaps be long to describe — except that, vast and proud, the whole was brought to completion within fifteen days. In this palace he built up high stone terraces, gave them an appearance most like mountains, and planted them with trees of every kind, so producing and furnishing what is called the hanging garden — because his wife, who had been raised in the districts of Media, longed for a mountain landscape.' These things he has related about the aforesaid king, and much besides, in the third book of the Chaldaica, in which he faults the Greek writers for vainly supposing that Babylon was founded by Semiramis the Assyrian, and for falsely writing that its marvelous works were built by her. On these matters the record of the Chaldeans must be held trustworthy; and what is more, in the archives of the Phoenicians as well things are recorded that agree with what Berossus says about the king of the Babylonians — that he subdued Syria and all Phoenicia. On these points Philostratus concurs in his histories, mentioning the siege of Tyre, and Megasthenes in the fourth book of his Indica, through which he tries to show that this king of the Babylonians surpassed Heracles in courage and in the greatness of his deeds; for he says he subdued the greater part of Libya, and Iberia. And what was said above about the temple in Jerusalem — that it was burned down when the Babylonians marched against it, and began to be rebuilt when Cyrus had taken over the kingship of Asia — will be clearly demonstrated from Berossus's own words set beside it.
CA 1.146-151. For he speaks thus in his third book: 'Nabokodrosoros, then, after he had begun the aforesaid wall, fell into sickness and departed this life, having reigned forty-three years; and his son Eveilmaradouchos became master of the kingdom. This man, managing affairs lawlessly and wantonly, was plotted against by Neriglisaros, the husband of his sister, and was killed, having reigned two years. After his killing, Neriglisaros, the man who had plotted against him, succeeded to the rule and reigned four years. His son Laborosoardochos, though a boy, was master of the kingdom nine months; but being plotted against because he displayed much viciousness of character, he was beaten to death by his friends. On his destruction the plotters met together and by common counsel conferred the kingship on a certain Nabonnedos, one of the Babylonians, a man of the same conspiracy. In his reign the walls of the city of the Babylonians along the river were finely built up with baked brick and asphalt. And when his reign stood in its seventeenth year, Cyrus, having come forth from Persis with a great force and subdued all the rest of the kingdom, drove hard against Babylonia. Nabonnedos, learning of his advance, met him with his force and joined battle; beaten in the fight and fleeing with a small company, he was shut up in the city of the Borsippenes.'
CA 1.152-153. 'Cyrus took Babylon, and gave orders to raze the outer walls of the city, because the city had shown itself exceedingly troublesome to him and hard to take; and he then marched on Borsippa to besiege Nabonnedos out of it. But Nabonnedos did not await the siege; he gave himself up first, and Cyrus, treating him humanely, gave him Carmania for a dwelling-place and sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonnedos, then, passing the remainder of his time in that land, there ended his life.'

======== Berossus — Book 7: Josephus Antiquities parallels (AJ 1.92–95, 1.104–108, 1.157–160, 10.219–228) ========

AJ 1.92-95. When the dove came back muddied and carrying an olive-branch besides, Noah learned that the earth was released from the flood; and waiting seven more days, he sent the animals out of the chest, and himself came forth with his family, sacrificed to God, and feasted with his household. The Armenians call that place the Landing-place; for there the chest came safely to rest, and they display its remains even now. This flood and this chest are mentioned by all who have written up the histories of the barbarian peoples, among whom is Berossus the Chaldean; for in narrating the matter of the flood he runs through it somewhere thus: 'And it is said that a part of the vessel still remains in Armenia by the mountain of the Kordyaeans, and that some carry off pieces of the asphalt, which they scrape away; and people use what is carried off as charms against evils.' These things are mentioned also by Hieronymus the Egyptian, who composed the ancient history of Phoenicia, and by Mnaseas and many others; and Nicolaus of Damascus, in his ninety-sixth book, relates concerning them as follows: 'There is above Minyas a great mountain in Armenia called Baris, to which the story goes that many fled at the time of the flood and were saved; and that a certain man, carried on a chest, ran aground on its summit, and the remains of the timbers were preserved for a long time. This would be the man whom Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, recorded.'
AJ 1.104-108. Noah lived after the deluge three hundred and fifty years, and passing all that time in happiness, died, having lived nine hundred and fifty years in number. Let no one, comparing our present life and the shortness of the years we live against those of the ancients, think what is said about them false, inferring that because no one now stretches out his life to such a span, neither did they reach that length of life. For they were beloved of God, and made by God himself; and because their food was more suited to length of days, it is reasonable that they lived so great a number of years. And further, God granted them longer life both for their virtue and for the good use of what they were devising — astronomy and geometry — things they could not have foretold with certainty had they not lived six hundred years, for it is through so many that the great year is completed. To this account of mine all who have written antiquities among Greeks and barbarians bear witness: for Manetho, who made the record of the Egyptians, and Berossus, who gathered the Chaldean matters, and Mochus and Hestiaeus, and with them Hieronymus the Egyptian, who composed the Phoenician matters, agree with what I say; and Hesiod, and Hecataeus, and Hellanicus, and Acusilaus, and besides them Ephorus and Nicolaus, relate that the ancients lived a thousand years. But on these things, let each consider as it pleases him.
AJ 1.157-160. For which cause, the Chaldeans and the other peoples of Mesopotamia having risen against him, Abraham resolved to migrate; and by the will and help of God he took possession of the land of Canaan, and settling there he built an altar and performed sacrifice to God. Berossus mentions our father Abraham without naming him, speaking thus: 'In the tenth generation after the flood there was among the Chaldeans a certain man, just and great and skilled in the heavenly things.' Hecataeus has done something more than mention him: he composed and left behind a book about him. And Nicolaus of Damascus in the fourth book of his histories speaks thus: 'Abrames reigned as a newcomer, having arrived with an army out of the land above Babylon called the land of the Chaldeans. Not long after, he removed with his people from this country also, into the land then called Canaan and now Judea, he and those who multiplied from him — about whom I shall set out what is related in another book. Even now the name of Abram is honored in the region of Damascus, and a village is pointed out named for him: the Dwelling of Abram.'
AJ 10.219-223. King Nabuchodonosor, having reigned forty-three years, ends his life — an energetic man, and more fortunate than the kings before him. Berossus too records his deeds in the third book of the Chaldean histories, speaking thus: 'His father Nabuchodonosor, hearing that the satrap stationed in Egypt and in the districts of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia had turned rebel against him, and being unable to bear the hardship himself, entrusted certain parts of his force to his son Nabuchodonosor, who was in his prime, and sent him out against the man. Nabuchodonosor engaged the rebel, joined battle, defeated him, and brought the land from that dominion under his own kingdom. And it happened at that very season that his father Nabuchodonosor fell sick in the city of the Babylonians and departed this life, having reigned twenty-one years. Learning of his father's death not long after, he settled the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the country; the captive Jews, Phoenicians, and Syrians, together with the peoples in Egypt he assigned to certain of his friends, to convey to Babylonia together with the heaviest part of the force and the rest of the spoils; and he himself, setting out with a small company, came through the desert to Babylon. Taking over affairs administered by the Chaldeans, with the kingship kept for him by the best man among them, and now master of his father's whole dominion, he ordered that, when the captives arrived, colonies be assigned them in the most suitable districts of Babylonia.'
AJ 10.224-228. 'He himself, from the spoils of the war, adorned the temple of Belus and the rest with an open hand; the city that existed from of old he refashioned, granting other quarters besides; and — arranging matters so that besiegers could no longer turn the river against the city — he threw around it three circuit-walls for the inner city and three outside, these of baked brick. And having walled the city in worthy fashion and adorned its gateways as befits something sacred, he built within his father's palace precinct another palace adjoining it, whose height and general magnificence it would perhaps be superfluous to describe — save that these vast and proud works were finished in fifteen days. In this palace he built up stone terraces, gave them an appearance most like mountains, and planted them with trees of every kind, so producing and furnishing what is called the hanging garden, because his wife, raised as she was in the districts of Media, longed for her native landscape.' Megasthenes too, in the fourth book of the Indica, mentions these things, through which he tries to show that this king surpassed Heracles in courage and in the greatness of his deeds; for he says he subdued the greater part of Libya, and Iberia. And Diocles in the second book of his Persica mentions this king, and Philostratus in his Indian and Phoenician histories, telling that this king besieged Tyre for thirteen years, while Ithobalos reigned over Tyre at that season. Such were the things related by all concerning this king.

======== Berossus — Book 8: Astronomical and astrological fragments (FHG F17–F25; Latin marked) ========

F17. Berossus — who, having gone forth from the city, or rather nation, of the Chaldeans, opened up their learning in Asia as well — taught as follows: that the moon is a ball, glowing white over one half and of a dark blue color over the rest. When in the course of its journey it passes below the sun's disc, it is caught by the sun's rays and the force of its heat, and its glowing side is turned toward the sun's light, because of the affinity of light for light. When, drawn upward toward the sun's disc, its glowing half faces above, then its lower part, since it is not glowing, appears dark from its likeness to the air. When it stands perpendicular to the sun's rays, all its light is held on its upper face, and it is then called the first moon. When, passing on, it moves toward the eastern parts of the sky, it is released from the sun's force, and the very edge of its glowing side sends its brightness to the earth in an exceedingly thin line, and from this it is called the second moon; and by the daily easing of its turning, the third and fourth moons are counted day by day. On the seventh day, when the sun is in the west and the moon holds the middle regions of the sky between east and west, since it stands distant from the sun by half the breadth of the sky, it likewise has half its glowing side turned toward the earth. And when the whole span of the heavens lies between sun and moon, and the moon, passing to the west, looks back toward the sun's disc in the east, then, being farthest released from its rays, on the fourteenth day it sends forth its brightness with the full wheel of its whole disc; and on the remaining days, decreasing daily until the completion of the lunar month, by its turnings and its course it passes back, recalled by the sun, beneath its rays — and so makes up the monthly reckoning of the days.
F18. Berossus says the moon is a sphere fiery over one half.
F18. Berossus says the moon has a light of its own.
F19. Berossus: the moon fails when its unfired part turns toward us.
F20. The hemicycle, hollowed out of a square block and cut back to the latitude, Berossus the Chaldean is said to have invented; the bowl, or hemisphere, Aristarchus of Samos.
F21. Some think the earth too is shaken, and that when the ground is torn open new springs of rivers are uncovered, which pour forth more abundantly as if from a full source. Berossus, the interpreter of Belus, says these things come about by the course of the stars; and he affirms it so confidently as to assign dates to the conflagration and the deluge. For he maintains that the world will burn when all the stars which now run their different courses come together in Cancer, so placed under one and the same track that a straight line can pass through the discs of them all; and that the inundation will come when the same throng of stars gathers in Capricorn. Under the one sign the summer solstice is made, under the other the winter: signs of great power, since on them turn the very moments of the changing year.
F22. Epigenes teaches that among the Babylonians observations of the stars covering seven hundred and twenty years stand inscribed on baked tablets — and he is an especially weighty authority; Berossus and Critodemus, who give the least, say four hundred and eighty years (others: three hundred and ninety). From which it appears that the use of letters is eternal.
F23. Epigenes denied that one hundred and twelve years of life can be fulfilled; Berossus, that one hundred and seventeen can be exceeded.
F23. Epigenes fixed the longest life at one hundred and twelve years, Berossus at one hundred and sixteen.
F24. As for the rest of star-lore — what effects the twelve signs, the five planets, the sun, and the moon have on the course of human life — this must be conceded to the reckonings of the Chaldeans, since the science of casting nativities is properly theirs, enabling them to explain past and future from their calculations of the stars. And their discoveries, which they left in writing, show with what skill and sharpness of mind they worked, those who flowed forth from the Chaldean nation itself. First Berossus settled on the island and in the city of Cos, and there opened up the discipline; after him came the student Antipater, and likewise Achinapolus, who moreover left the methods of nativity-casting set out not from birth but from conception.
F25. Innumerable sciences of the various arts have shone forth, which it is fitting to touch on, sampling the flower of mankind. In star-lore: Berossus, to whom, for his divine predictions, the Athenians set up at public expense in the gymnasium a statue with a gilded tongue.

======== Manetho — Book 1: Testimonia and structure of the Aegyptiaca (FHG F1–F5) ========

F1. From the Egyptian records of Manetho, who divided his history into three books: on the gods, on the heroes, on the spirits of the dead, and on the mortal kings who ruled Egypt down to Darius, king of the Persians. 1. The first man (or god) for the Egyptians is Hephaestus, who is also celebrated among them as the discoverer of fire. From him came the Sun; [afterward Agathodaemon;] then Kronos; then Osiris; next Typhon, brother of Osiris; and last Horus, son of Osiris and Isis. These were the first to hold power among the Egyptians. Thereafter the royal authority came down in unbroken succession to Bydis through thirteen thousand nine hundred years. I understand, however, the lunar year — one consisting of thirty days; for what we now call a month, the Egyptians of old designated by the name of year. 2. After the gods, heroes reigned for 1,255 years; and again other kings ruled for 1,817 years; then thirty other kings, Memphites, for 1,790; then ten others, Thinites, for 350 years. 3. There followed the dominion of the spirits of the dead and the heroes, for 5,813 years. 4. The sum of the time rises to eleven thousand years — but lunar years, that is, months. In truth, the whole dominion the Egyptians relate — of gods, heroes, and spirits of the dead — is reckoned to have covered twenty-four thousand nine hundred lunar years in all, which make 2,206 solar years. 5. And if you care to compare this with the chronology of the Hebrews, you will see that it agrees fully with the same conclusion. For Egypt is called Mestraim by the Hebrews; and Mestraim arose long after the flood. For from Ham, son of Noah, after the flood, sprang Egypt — that is, Mestraim — who first set out to settle Egypt, at the season when the nations began to be scattered here and there. And the sum of time from Adam to the flood was, according to the Hebrews, 2,242 years. 6. But since the Egyptians boast, by a certain prerogative of antiquity, that they hold a line before the flood — of gods, heroes, and spirits reigning more than twenty thousand years — it is plainly fair that these years be converted into as many months as the years recorded among the Hebrews contain: that is, that the months contained in the years recorded among the Hebrews be understood as so many Egyptian lunar years, for the sum of time gathered from the first created man down to Mestraim. Mestraim was indeed the founder of the Egyptian race; and from him the first Egyptian dynasty must be held to flow. 7. But if the abundance of time still runs over, one must consider that several Egyptian kings perhaps existed in one and the same age; for they say that Thinites reigned, and Memphites, and Saites, and Ethiopians, and others at the same time. It appears, moreover, that others also held rule elsewhere; and that each of these dynasties confined itself to its own nome — so that it was not the case that the kings each received power in succession, but rather one reigned in one place, another in another, in the same age. And thus it came about that so great a number of years was made up. But we, leaving all this aside, shall run through the chronology of the Egyptians point by point.
F2. 1. After this Manetho relates also, concerning five Egyptian peoples in thirty dynasties, the history of those called among them gods, demigods, spirits of the dead, and mortals — of which Eusebius, the son of Pamphilus, making mention in his Chronicle, speaks thus: 2. 'The Egyptians string together a long and trifling mythology of gods and demigods, and after these of spirits of the dead and other mortal kings. For the most ancient among them claimed that their years were lunar, consisting of thirty days, while the demigods who followed called their years horoi, of three months each.' 3. And Eusebius wrote this with good reason, faulting them for their trifling — the man whom Panodorus, wrongly as I think, blames on this point, saying that Eusebius was at a loss to resolve the writers' meaning, which Panodorus himself, imagining he achieves something rather novel, states thus: 4. 'Since from the forming of Adam until Enoch — that is, until the general cosmic year 1,282 — no count of month or year was known; but the Watchers, who had descended in the general cosmic thousandth year, consorting with mankind, taught them that the circuits of the two luminaries are of twelve zodiacal signs, made up of three hundred and sixty degrees; and men, fixing their gaze on the nearer, smaller, and more conspicuous circuit of the moon — the thirty-day one — decreed that it be counted as a year, because the circuit of the sun too is fulfilled in the same twelve signs with the same number of degrees, three hundred and sixty. Hence it came about that the reigns of the six generations of gods who reigned among them, in six dynasties, were counted in years that were lunar thirty-day circuits: which total 11,985 lunar years, or 969 solar; and these, counted together with the 1,058 solar years before their kingship, gather a total of 2,027 years.' In like fashion, across the two dynasties of the nine demigods — who never existed, though treated as if they had — he labors to establish 214 and a half years out of the 858 horoi, or seasons, so that with the 969 there result, he says, 1,183 and a half years; and joined to the 1,058 years from Adam to the kingship of the gods, they gather 2,242 years down to the flood. 5. Thus Panodorus strives to show that the Egyptian writings agree with God and the divinely inspired scriptures, blaming Eusebius — not perceiving that these unproven and ill-reasoned arguments of his are demonstrated against himself and against the truth: since neither Babylon nor Chaldea was ruled by kings before the flood, nor Egypt before Mestrem — and I think it was not even inhabited.
F3. On the ancient history of the Egyptians. Manetho the Sebennyte, high priest of the polluted temples in Egypt, who lived after Berossus in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, writes to this same Ptolemy — telling falsehoods, he too, like Berossus — concerning six dynasties, that is, six orders of gods who never existed, who, he says, lasted through 11,985 years. The first of them, the god Hephaestus, reigned 9,000 years. These 9,000 years some of our historians, reckoning them again as lunar months and dividing the mass of their days by the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, have gathered into 727¾ years — imagining they have achieved something out of the ordinary, though it is more deserving of laughter, this reconciling of falsehood with truth. Of the Egyptians first reigned Hephaestus, 727¾ years. First dynasty: 2. Helios son of Hephaestus, 80 and 6/12 years. 3. Agathodaemon, 56 and 7/12 years. 4. Kronos, 40. 5. Osiris and Isis, 35. 6. Typhon, 29. 7. Horus, demigod, 25. 8. Ares, demigod, 23. 9. Anubis, demigod, 17. 10. Heracles, demigod, 15. 11. Apollo, demigod, 25. 12. Ammon, demigod, 30. 13. Tithoes, demigod, 27. 14. Sosos, demigod, 32. 15. Zeus, demigod, 20.
F4. We find the kingdom of the Egyptians the most ancient of all kingdoms; its beginning, as it is stated under Manetho, we undertake to write. First I shall set down the reigns of the gods as written by the Egyptians themselves, thus: Hephaestus, some say, reigned as god in Egypt 680 years; after him Helios, son of Hephaestus, 77 years; after him Osinosiris, 420 years; after him Horus the Ruler, 28 years; after him Typhon, 45 years. The reigns of the gods gather in all 1,550 years. Next the reigns of the demigods, thus: first Anubes [Amusis, who also composed the writings of the Egyptians], 83 years; [after him Apion the grammarian, who was interpreted as contemporary with Inachus,] 77 years, [in whose time the Argives began their reigns]. After this he set out the kings of the spirits of the dead, calling them demigods as well, for 2,100 years, calling them mighty ones (heroes). This is the end of Manetho's first volume, containing a span of 2,100 years.
F5. These old and ancient kingdoms of the Egyptians Manetho wrote up; and in these writings of his it is reported that the five planet-stars are called by other names: for the star called Kronos they named the Shining One; that of Zeus, the Blazing One; that of Ares, the Fiery One; that of Aphrodite, the Fairest; that of Hermes, the Glittering One — names which afterward Sotates the most wise interpreted.
F5. And the first king of the Egyptians was of the tribe of Ham, son of Noah — called Pharaoh, and also Naracho. The old kingdoms of Egypt before him were set forth by Manetho the most wise, as has been said before.
F5. There circulates among the Egyptians a certain ancient chronicle — from which, I think, Manetho too was led astray — containing thirty dynasties, in one hundred and thirteen generations, covering an unbounded span, not the same as Manetho's 36,525 years: first the era of the Aeritae, second of the Mestraeans, third of the Egyptians. It runs word for word somewhat thus: 'The kingship of the gods according to the Old Chronicle. For Hephaestus no time is given, because he shines by night and by day. Helios son of Hephaestus reigned thirty thousand years. Then Kronos, it says, and all the other twelve gods reigned 3,964 years. Then the eight demigod kings, 217 years. And after them fifteen generations of the Sothic cycle were recorded, in 443 years. Then the sixteenth dynasty, of Tanites, eight generations, 190 years. Then the seventeenth dynasty, Memphites, four generations, 103 years. After them the eighteenth dynasty, Memphites, fourteen generations, 348 years. Then the nineteenth dynasty, Diospolites, five generations, 194 years. Then the twentieth dynasty, Diospolites, eight generations, 228 years. Then the twenty-first dynasty, Tanites, six generations, 121 years. Then the twenty-second dynasty, Tanites, three generations, 48 years. Then the twenty-third dynasty, Diospolites, two generations, 19 years. Then the twenty-fourth dynasty, Saites, three generations, 44 years. After them the twenty-fifth dynasty, Ethiopians, three generations, 44 years. After them the twenty-sixth dynasty, Memphites, six generations, 177 years. And after the twenty-six dynasties, the twenty-seventh dynasty, of Persians, five kings, 124 years. [The twenty-eighth, a single Saite, six years, is held to have fallen out.] Then the twenty-ninth dynasty, Tanites, 39 years. And over and above all, the thirtieth dynasty, of a single Tanite, 18 years. The whole together of the thirty dynasties: 36,525 years.' These, resolved — that is, divided — by 1,461 years twenty-five times, disclose the fabled restoration of the zodiac among the Egyptians and Greeks: that is, the return from the same point to the same point, namely the first minute of the first degree of the equinoctial sign, called by them the Ram, as is said also in the Genika of Hermes and in the Kyrannides books. From this, I think, Claudius Ptolemy also decreed that his Handy Tables of astronomy be computed by twenty-five-year periods... And from this one may recognize the disagreement of such editions both with our divine scriptures and with each other: this supposedly older Egyptian composition brings in an unbounded time for Hephaestus, and for the remaining twenty-nine dynasties 36,525 years — although Hephaestus reigned over Egypt many years after the flood and the building of the tower, as will be shown in its proper place. And Manetho, the most distinguished among the Egyptians, writing about the same thirty dynasties — having plainly taken his starting-points from these records — disagrees greatly with them about the times, as can be learned both from what we have said above and from what will be said below. For of the one hundred and thirteen generations recorded [in his three volumes] across thirty dynasties, his time gathered in all 3,555 years, beginning in the year of the world 1,586 and ending in the cosmic year 5,147 — that is, some fifteen years before the world-rule of Alexander of Macedon. If, then, one subtracts from these the 656 years before the flood — as false and non-existent, filling up the 2,242 from Adam to the flood — and the 534 from the flood to the building of the tower and the confusion of tongues and the dispersal of the nations, he will have clearly the beginning of the Egyptian kingdom, from the first king of Egypt, Mestraim — who is also called Menes by Manetho — from the year 2,776 from Adam down to Nektanabo, the last king of Egypt: so that the whole from Mestraim to this Nektanabo is 2,365 years, reaching, as said before, to the cosmic year 5,147, about fifteen years before the rule of Alexander the founder.
F5. I. Mineus and seven of his descendants reigned 253 years. II. Eight others reigned 302 years. III. Necherocheus and eight others, 214 years. IV. Likewise seventeen others, 214. V. Likewise twenty-one others, 258. VI. Othoes and others, 203. VIII. Likewise fourteen others, 140. IX. Likewise twenty others (nineteen in Africanus), 409. X. Likewise seven others, 204. XI. The rule of the Diospolites, 9 years. [From the second book:] XII. The rule of the Bubastites, 153 years. XIII. The rule of the Tanites, 184. XIV. The rule of the Sebennytes, 224. XV. The rule of the Memphites, 318. XVI. The rule of the Heliopolites, 221. XVII. The rule of the Hermopolites, 260. Down to the seventeenth rule the second volume is written, as he shows, holding a count of one thousand five hundred and twenty years. These are the dominions of the Egyptians.

======== Manetho — Book 2: The Epitome, Dynasties I–XI, Africanus and Eusebius versions (FHG F6–F33) ========

F6. Since the dates of the Egyptian dynasties from Mestraim down to Nektanabo prove useful in many of the inquiries occupied with chronology, yet these, as taken from Manetho, have been handed down by the church historians in disagreement both as to the kings' names and as to the quantity of their regnal years — and as to under which of them Joseph governed Egypt, and after him Moses, who saw God, led Israel's journey out of Egypt — I judged it necessary to select the editions of the two most distinguished, and to set them beside one another: Africanus, I mean, and after him Eusebius called the son of Pamphilus, so that anyone applying himself rightly may learn which opinion comes nearer the truth of scripture; knowing this before all with precision, that Africanus adds twenty years to the times from Adam to the flood, and would have 2,262 years instead of 2,242 — which does not seem sound; while Eusebius set down 2,242 rightly, in agreement with scripture. But in the times from the flood to Abraham and Moses both went astray by the 130 years of the second Kainan, son of Arphaxad — a generation, the thirteenth from Adam, which stands in the divine evangelist Luke. Africanus, however, in the twenty years he had added between Adam and the flood, had already snatched these away in part, and in the matter of Kainan and what follows falls short by only 110; hence he reckoned 3,202 years to the first year of Abraham. Eusebius, subtracting the whole 130, gave out 3,184 to the first year of Abraham.
F6. On the dynasties of Egypt [after the flood], according to Africanus. First: after the spirits of the dead and the demigods, a first dynasty of eight kings is counted. Of these Menes the Thinite reigned first, 62 years; he was carried off by a hippopotamus and perished. 2. Athothis his son, 57 years: he who built the palace at Memphis; books of anatomy by him are in circulation, for he was a physician. 3. Kenkenes his son, 31 years. 4. Ouenephes his son, 23 years; in his time a great famine gripped Egypt. He raised the pyramids near Kochome. 5. Ousaphaidos his son, 20 years. 6. Miebidos his son, 26 years. 7. Semempses his son, 18 years; in his time a very great pestilence gripped Egypt. 8. Bieneches his son, 26 years. Together, 253 years. The matter of the first dynasty Eusebius also set out much as Africanus did.
F7. On the dynasties of the Egyptians [after the flood], according to Eusebius. After the spirits of the dead and the demigods they count a first dynasty of eight kings, among whom was Menes, who led them with distinction; beginning from him we shall write up the kings of each line, whose succession runs in this manner: 1. Menes the Thinite and his seventeen (in another copy, seven) descendants — whom Herodotus named Men — reigned 60 years (30 in the Latin). He led an expedition beyond the borders and was judged glorious, and was carried off by a hippopotamus. 2. Athothis his son ruled 27 years; he built the palace at Memphis, practiced medicine, and composed books of anatomy. 3. Kenkenes his son, 39 years. 4. Ouenephes, 42 years; in his time famine gripped the land; he also raised the pyramids near Kochome. 5. Ousaphais, 20 years. 6. Niebais, 26 years. 7. Semempses, 18 years; in his time many portents occurred, and a very great pestilence. 8. Oubienthes, 26 years. All together they reigned 252 years.
F7. After the spirits and the heroes they count a first dynasty of eight kings; first among them stood Menes, preeminent in the glory of administering the kingdom; beginning from him we shall write carefully the several families of the rulers, whose successive series is woven thus: Menes the Thinite and his seven descendants (whom Herodotus called Men). He reigned 30 years. He also advanced with an army beyond the borders of his own land, and became famous for his deeds; he was carried off by a hippopotamus spirit. Athothis his son held the kingdom 27 years; he built himself the royal palace at Memphis, cultivated the art of medicine, and wrote books on the dissection of bodies. Kenkenes his son, 39 years. Vavenephis, 42, in whose age famine seized the land; he raised the pyramids near the town of Cho. Ousaphais, 20 years. Niebais, 26. Mempses, 18; under him many prodigies and a very great plague occurred. Vibesthes, 26. Sum of the dominion: 252 years.
F7a. I. First reigned Menes the Thinite, whose name is interpreted 'everlasting'; he reigned 62 years. It was the year of the world 2,080. II. Second of the Thebans reigned Athothes, son of Menes, 59 years; his name is interpreted Hermogenes. Year of the world 2,162. III. Third of the Theban Egyptians reigned Athothes of the same name, 32 years. It was the year of the world 3,021. IV. Fourth of the Thebans reigned Diabies son of Athothes, 19 years; his name is interpreted 'lover of bulls.' It was the year of the world 3,053. V. Fifth of the Thebans reigned Pemphos, son of Athothes, which is Heracleides.
F8. Second dynasty: nine Thinite kings, of whom the first, Boethos, 38 years; in his time a chasm opened at Bubastis and many perished. 2. Kaiechos, 39 years; in his time the bulls — Apis at Memphis and Mnevis at Heliopolis — and the Mendesian goat were held to be gods. 3. Binothris, 47 years; in his time it was decided that women could hold the privilege of kingship. 4. Tlas, 17 years. 5. Sethenes, 41 years. 6. Kaires, 17 years. 7. Nefercheres, 25 years; in his time, as the tale goes, the Nile flowed mixed with honey for eleven days. 8. Sesochris, 48 years — his height was 5 cubits, 3 palms. 9. Chenephres, 30 years. Together, 302 years. Together, the first and second dynasties after the flood: 555 years, according to the second edition of Africanus.
F9. Second dynasty of nine kings. First Bochos, in whose time a chasm opened at Bubastis and many perished. After him, second, Kaiechos, when Apis and Mnevis and also the Mendesian goat were held to be gods. 3. Biophis, in whose time it was decided that women too could hold the privilege of kingship. And after these three others, in whose time nothing notable occurred. 7. Under the seventh, the tale goes that the Nile flowed mixed with honey for eleven days. 8. After him Sesochris, 48 years, who is said to have stood 5 cubits, 3 palms in stature. 9. Under the ninth nothing worth recording took place. And they reigned 297 years. Together, the first and second dynasties: 549 years, according to the edition of Eusebius.
F10. Second dynasty of nine kings. First Bochos; under him a huge chasm sank open at Bubastis and swallowed many mortals. After him Kechoos; in whose time Apis and Mnevis and the Mendesian goat were thought to be gods. Then Biophis, under whom it was established by law that women too could obtain royal dignity. Then three others, in whose age no notable deed was done. Under the seventh, the tellers of myth say the river Nile flowed with honey together with water for eleven days. Then Sesochris, 48 years, whom they call five cubits tall and three palms broad. Under the ninth, finally, nothing worth remembering was done. These reigned 297 years.
F11. ACCORDING TO AFRICANUS. Third dynasty: nine Memphite kings. 1. Necherophes, 28 years — under him the Libyans rose against the Egyptians, and when the moon waxed beyond reason, they surrendered themselves out of fear. 2. Tosorthros, 29 years: he is held to be Asclepius among the Egyptians for his medicine, and invented building with dressed stone; he also gave attention to writing. 3. Tyris, 7 years. 4. Mesochris, 17 years. 5. Soyphis, 16 years. 6. Tosertasis, 19 years. 7. Aches, 42 years. 8. Sephouris (no years given). 9. Kerpheres, 26 years. Together, 214 years. Together, the three dynasties according to Africanus: 769 years.
F12. Third dynasty: eight Memphite kings. 1. Necherochis, in whose time the Libyans revolted from the Egyptians, and when the moon waxed beyond reason, they surrendered themselves out of fear. 2. After him Sesorthos, who was called Asclepius among the Egyptians for his medicine; he invented building with dressed stone, and gave attention to writing besides. The remaining six did nothing worth recording. And they reigned 198 years. Together, the three dynasties according to Eusebius: 747 years.
F12. Third dynasty of eight Memphite kings. Necherochis, under whom the Libyans defected from the Egyptians; soon, terrified by a monstrously waxing moon, they returned to obedience. Then Sosorthos, who for his medical art was called Asclepius by the Egyptians; he was also the originator of building with cut stone, and devoted care to the writing of books. The remaining six did nothing worth telling. The reign lasted 197 years (198 in the Greek).
F13. VI. Sixth of the Theban Egyptians reigned Momcheiri the Memphite, 79 years; his name is interpreted 'a man of superfluous limbs, therefore irresistible.' It was the year of the world 3,090. VII. Seventh of the Theban Egyptians reigned Stoichos his son — that is, Ares the unfeeling — 6 years. Year of the world 3,169. VIII. Eighth reigned Gosormies, that is, 'demander of all,' 30 years. Year of the world 3,175. IX. Ninth reigned Mares his son, that is, Heliodoros, 26 years. Year of the world 3,205. X. Tenth reigned Anoyphis, that is, 'the reveller,' 20 years. Year of the world 3,231. XI. Eleventh reigned Sirios, that is, 'son of the pupil of the eye' — or, as others say, 'proof against the evil eye' — 18 years. Year of the world 3,251. XII. Twelfth reigned Chnoubos Gneuros, that is, Chryses son of Chryses, 22 years. Year of the world 3,269. XIII. Thirteenth reigned Rhauosis, that is, 'master-ruler,' 13 years. Year of the world 3,291. XIV. Fourteenth reigned Biyres, 10 years. Year of the world 3,304.
F14. Fourth dynasty: eight kings of Memphis, of another family. 1. Soris, 29 years. 2. Souphis, 63 years — he who raised the greatest pyramid, which Herodotus says was built by Cheops. He became a despiser of the gods, and composed the sacred book, which I acquired as a great treasure when I was in Egypt. 3. Souphis, 66 years. 4. Mencheres, 63 years. 5. Ratoises, 25 years. 6. Bicheris, 22 years. 7. Sebercheres, 7 years. 8. Thamphthis, 9 years. Together, 274 years. Together, the four dynasties after the flood: 1,046 years, according to Africanus.
F15. Fourth dynasty: seventeen kings of Memphis, of another royal family. The third of them was Souphis, who raised the greatest pyramid, which Herodotus says was built by Cheops; he became a despiser of the gods — yet repenting, he composed the sacred book, which the Egyptians treat as a great treasure. Of the rest nothing worth recording was written. And they reigned 448 years. Together, the four dynasties after the flood: 1,195 years, according to Eusebius.
F16. Fourth dynasty of seventeen Memphite kings, of another royal family: the third of whom, Souphis, was builder of the greatest pyramid — which Herodotus says was built by Cheops — a man who was arrogant toward the very gods; then, repenting of the deed, he wrote the sacred book, which the Egyptians hold as a great treasure. Of the remaining kings nothing memorable has been committed to writing. The reign lasted 448 years.
F17. XV. Fifteenth of the Theban Egyptians reigned Saophis, 'the reveller' — or, according to some, 'the money-getter' — 29 years. Year of the world 3,314. XVI. Sixteenth reigned Saophis the Second, 27 years. Year of the world 3,343. XVII. Seventeenth reigned Moscheres, 'given by the sun,' 31 years. Year of the world 3,370. XVIII. Eighteenth reigned Mosthes, 33 years. Year of the world 3,401. XIX. Nineteenth reigned Pammes, 'the ruler,' 35 years. Year of the world 3,434.
F18. Fifth dynasty: eight (properly nine) kings from Elephantine. 1. Ousercheres, 28 years. 2. Sephres, 13 years. 3. Nefercheres, 20 years. 4. Sisires, 7 years. 5. Cheires, 20 years. 6. Rathoures, 9 years. 7. Mencheres, 9 years. 8. Tancheres, 44 years. 9. Onnos, 33 years. Together, 248 years. With those set down before, the four dynasties' 1,046 years make 1,294 years.
F19. Fifth dynasty of thirty-one kings from Elephantine. The first of them was Othoes, who was killed by his bodyguards. The fourth, Phiops, beginning his reign at six years old, reigned until his hundredth year. So with those set down before, the four dynasties' 1,195 years make 1,295.
F19. Fifth dynasty of thirty-one kings of Elephantine, of whom the first was Othius, who was killed by his own attendants. The fourth was Phiops, who held the royal dignity from the sixth year of his age up to the hundredth.
F20. Sixth dynasty: six Memphite kings. 1. Othoes, 30 years, who was killed by his bodyguards. 2. Phios, 53 years. 3. Methousouphis, 7 years. 4. Phiops, crowned at six years old, continuing to his hundredth year. 5. Menthesouphis, one year. 6. Nitokris, the most spirited and most beautiful woman of her time, fair of complexion, who raised the third pyramid: she reigned 12 years. Together, 203 years. With those set down before, the five dynasties make 1,497 years.
F21. Sixth dynasty. A woman, Nitokris, reigned — the most spirited and most beautiful of her time, being fair of complexion — who is also said to have built the third pyramid. And they reigned three years; in another copy, 203. With those set down before, the five dynasties make 1,498 years.
F21. Sixth dynasty. A certain woman, Nitocris, reigned — of all the men of her age the bravest, and of the women the most beautiful, fair-haired with red cheeks. By her, it is said, the third pyramid was raised, bearing the look of a hill. By these too the reign lasted 203 years.
F22. XX. This one, as they say, reigned beyond his season 100 years. Year of the world 3,469. XXI. Twenty-first of the Thebans reigned Echeskosokaras, one year. Year of the world 3,569. XXII. Twenty-second of the Thebans reigned Nitokris, a woman in place of her husband — that is, Athena the victory-bearer — 6 years. Year of the world 3,570.
F23. Seventh dynasty: seventy Memphite kings, who reigned seventy days.
F24. Seventh dynasty: five Memphite kings, who reigned seventy-five days.
F24. Seventh dynasty of five Memphite kings, who ruled seventy-five years (thus the text; properly days).
F25. Eighth dynasty: twenty-seven Memphite kings, who reigned 146 years. With those set down before, the eight dynasties make 1,639 years.
F26. Eighth dynasty: five Memphite kings, who reigned one hundred years. With those set down before, the eight dynasties make 1,598 years.
F26. Eighth dynasty of nine (margin: nineteen) Memphite kings, whose dominion took up one hundred years.
F27. Ninth dynasty: nineteen Heracleopolite kings, who reigned 409 years. The first of them, Achthoes, proving more terrible than those before him, worked evils on the people in all Egypt, but afterward fell into madness and was destroyed by a crocodile.
F28. Ninth dynasty: four Heracleopolite kings, who reigned one hundred years. The first of them, Achthoes, proving more terrible than those before him, worked evils on the people in all Egypt, but afterward fell into madness and was destroyed by a crocodile.
F28. Ninth dynasty of four Heracleopolite kings, one hundred years. The first of them, Ochitois, was the most savage of the kings who had gone before him, and afflicted the whole of Egypt with dire calamities; at last he was seized by madness and slain by a crocodile.
F29. Tenth dynasty: nineteen Heracleopolite kings, who reigned 125 years.
F30. Tenth dynasty: nineteen Heracleopolite kings, who reigned 185 years.
F30. Tenth dynasty of nineteen Heracleopolite kings, 185 years (187 in Samuel).
F31. Eleventh dynasty: sixteen Diospolite kings, who reigned 43 years. After them, Ammenemes, 16 years. To this point Manetho has brought down his first volume. Together: 192 kings; 2,300 years, 70 days.
F32. Eleventh dynasty: sixteen Diospolite kings, who reigned 43 years. After them, Ammemenes, 16 years. To this point Manetho has brought down his first volume. Together: 192 kings; 2,300 years, 75 days.
F32. Eleventh dynasty of sixteen kings, 43 years. After these, Ammemenes, 16 years. Thus far Manetho carried his first book. The kings are 192, the years 2,300.
F33. XXIII. Twenty-third of the Thebans reigned Myrtaios, 'given by Ammon,' 22 years. Year of the world 3,576. XXIV. Twenty-fourth reigned Thyosimares, 'the mighty, which is the sun,' 12 years. Year of the world 3,610. XXVI. Twenty-sixth reigned Semphroukrates, that is, Heracles Harpocrates, 18 years. Year of the world 3,618. XXVII. Twenty-seventh reigned Chouther Tauros, 'the tyrant,' 7 years. Year of the world 3,636. XXVIII. Twenty-eighth reigned Meures, 'lover of glory,' 12 years. Year of the world 3,655. XXX. Thirtieth reigned Soikounios, 'tyrant like Ochos,' 60 years. Year of the world 3,656. XXXI. Thirty-first of the Thebans reigned Peteathyres, 16 years. Year of the world 3,726.

======== Manetho — Book 3: The Epitome, Dynasties XII–XVII incl. the Hyksos lists (FHG F34–F49) ========

F34. Of Manetho's second volume. Twelfth dynasty: seven Diospolite kings. 1. Sesonchosis, son of Ammanemes, 47 years. 2. Ammanemes, 38 years — he was killed by his own eunuchs. 3. Sesostris, 48 years, who subdued the whole of Asia within nine years, and Europe up to Thrace, everywhere raising memorials of his hold over the nations, carving on the pillars a man's members for the brave peoples and a woman's for the base — so that he was ranked by the Egyptians as first after Osiris. 4. Lachares, 8 years — builder of the Arsinoite labyrinth as his own tomb. 5. Ameres, 8 years. 6. Amenemes, 8 years. 7. Schemiophris, his sister, 4 years. Together, 160 years.
F35. Twelfth dynasty: seven Diospolite kings. The first of them, Sesonchosis, son of Ammenemes, 46 years. 2. Ammanemes, 38 years — he was killed by his own eunuchs. 3. Sesostris, 48 years, who is said to have stood 4 cubits, 3 palms, and 2 fingers; he subdued the whole of Asia within nine years, and Europe up to Thrace, everywhere raising memorials of his hold over the nations, carving on the pillars a man's members for the brave peoples and a woman's for the base — so that he was ranked by the Egyptians as first after Osiris. After him Lamaris, 8 years, who built the labyrinth in the Arsinoite nome as his own tomb; and his successors for 42 years. All together they reigned 245 years.
F36. Twelfth dynasty of seven Diospolite kings, of whom the first, Sesonchosis son of Ammenemes, 46 years. Ammenemes, 38 years, who was slain by his own eunuchs. Sesostris, 48 years, whose stature is reported at four cubits, three palms, and two fingers. He subjected all Asia to himself in the space of nine years, and likewise the part of Europe as far as Thrace. He also set up everywhere monuments of his dominion over the several nations, carving on columns a man's parts for the vigorous nations and a woman's for the unwarlike, as a mark of disgrace — for which he won from the Egyptians honors next after Osiris. There followed Lampares, 8 years; he made himself the cavernous labyrinth in the Arsinoite nome as a tomb. His successors reigned 42 years. Sum of the whole dominion: 245 years (248 in Samuel).
F37. XXXII. Thirty-second of the Thebans reigned Stammenes, 26 years. Year of the world 3,742. XXXIII. Thirty-third reigned Stammenemes the Second, 23 years. Year of the world 3,768. XXXIV. Thirty-fourth reigned Sistosichermes, 'Heracles the mighty,' 53 years. Year of the world 3,791. XXXV. Thirty-fifth reigned Mares, 43 years. Year of the world 3,846.
F38. Thirteenth dynasty: sixty Diospolite kings, who reigned 453 years.
F39. Thirteenth dynasty of sixty Diospolite kings, who reigned 453 years (454 in Samuel).
F40. XXXVI. Thirty-sixth of the Thebans reigned Siphoas, [also called Hermes,] son of Hephaestus, 5 years. Year of the world 3,889. XXXVII. Thirty-seventh reigned Phrouoro — that is, Nile — 19 years. Year of the world 3,894. XXXVIII. Thirty-eighth reigned Amouthartaios, 63 years. Year of the world 3,913.
F41. Fourteenth dynasty: seventy-six Xoite kings, who reigned 184 years.
F41. Fourteenth dynasty: seventy-six Xoite kings, who reigned 184 years; in another copy, 484.
F41. Fourteenth dynasty of seventy-six kings, who reigned 484 years.
F43. Fifteenth dynasty: of Shepherds. They were six foreign Phoenician kings, who took Memphis as well; and they founded a city in the Sethroite nome, setting out from which they mastered the Egyptians. The first of them, Saites, reigned 19 years — from whom the Saite nome is named. 2. Bnon, 44 years. 3. Pachnan, 61 years. 4. Staan, 50 years. 5. Archles, 49 years. 6. Aphobis, 61 years. Together, 284 years.
F44. Fifteenth dynasty: Diospolite kings, who reigned 250 years.
F44. Fifteenth dynasty of Diospolite kings, who reigned 250 years.
F45. Sixteenth dynasty: Shepherds again, thirty-two kings; they reigned 518 years.
F46. Sixteenth dynasty: Theban kings, five (properly eight), who reigned 190 years.
F46. Sixteenth dynasty of five Theban kings, who reigned 190 years.
F47. Seventeenth dynasty: Shepherds again, forty-three kings, and Thebans or Diospolites, forty-three. Together the Shepherds and the Thebans reigned 151 years.
F48. In the seventeenth dynasty the Shepherds were brothers, foreign Phoenician kings, who took Memphis as well. The first of them, Saites, reigned 19 years — from whom the Saite nome too was named; and they founded a city in the Sethroite nome, setting out from which they mastered the Egyptians. 2. Bnon, 40 years. 3. Aphophis, 14 years. After him Archles, 30 years. Together, 103 years. In their time Joseph is shown to have reigned in Egypt.
F48. Seventeenth dynasty of Shepherds, who were brothers, Phoenician and foreign kings, and occupied Memphis. The first of these, Saites, ruled 19 years, from whom the Saite nome also drew its name. These same men founded a city in the Sethroite nome, from which, making their incursion, they thoroughly subdued the Egyptians. The second, Benon, 40 years; then Archles, 30 years; Aphophis, 14 years. Sum: 103 years. In their age Joseph appears to have ruled in Egypt.
F49. 'Saitic': From the Aegyptiaca of Manetho. In the seventeenth dynasty there were brothers, foreign Phoenician kings, who took Memphis as well; the first of them, Saites, reigned 19 years — from whom the Saite nome too was named; and they founded a city in the Sethroite nome, setting out from which they mastered the Egyptians. The second of them, Bnon, 40 years; the third, Archles, 30 years; the fourth, Aphophis, 14 years. Together, 103. And Saites added twelve hours to the month, so that it should be of 30 days, and six (or five) days to the year, and it came to be of 365 days.

======== Manetho — Book 4: The Epitome, Dynasties XVIII–XXII (FHG F51–F61) ========

F51. Moses guided the Jews, as we said before, when they had been cast out of the land of Egypt by king Pharaoh, whose name was Tethmosis — who, they say, after the expulsion of the people reigned twenty-five years and four months, as Manetho reckons it. 2. And after him Chebron, 13 years. 3. After him Amenophis, 20 years, seven months. 4. After him his sister Amessis, 21 years, one month. 5. After her Mephres, 12 years, nine months. 6. After him Mephramouthosis, 20 years, ten months. 7. And after him Tythmoses, 9 years, eight months. 8. And after him Amenophis, 30 years, ten months. 9. After him Horus, 36 years, five months. 10. And his daughter Akenchres, 12 years, one month. 11. After her Rathotis, 9 years. 12. After him Akencheres, 12 years, five months. 13. After him Akencheres the Second, 12 years, three months. 14. Then Armais, 4 years, one month. 15. And after him Ramesses, one year, four months. 16. And after him Ramesses Miammou, 66 years, two months. 17. And after him Amenophis, 19 years, four months. Then Sethos, also called Ramesses, 19 years — who, they say, held a great force of cavalry and an array of ships.
F52. Eighteenth dynasty: sixteen Diospolite kings. The first of them, Amos, in whose time Moses went out of Egypt, as we demonstrate — though as the present reckoning compels, Moses in his time was still young. Second, according to Africanus, in the eighteenth dynasty reigned Chebros, 13 years. Third, Amenophthis, 24 years. Fourth, Amensis, 22 years. Fifth, Misaphris, 13 years. Sixth, Misphragmouthosis, 24 years — in whose time came the flood of Deucalion's day. Together, from Amos to the reign of Misphragmouthosis, according to Africanus: 69 years — for of Amos he gave no years at all. 7. Touthmosis, 9 years. 8. Amenophis, 31 years: this is he who was thought to be Memnon, the speaking stone. 9. Horus, 37 years. 10. Acherres, 32 years. 11. Rathos, six years. 12. Chebres, 12 years. 13. Acherres, 12 years. 14. Armesses, 5 years. 15. Ramesses, one year. 16. Amenophath, 19 years. Together, 263 years.
F53. ACCORDING TO EUSEBIUS. Eighteenth dynasty: fourteen Diospolite kings. The first of them, Amosis, 25 years. 2. Chebron second, 13 years. 3. Ammenophis, 21 years. 4. Miphres, 12 years. 5. Misphragmouthosis, 26 years. Together, from Amosis, first of this eighteenth dynasty, to the reign of Misphragmouthosis, according to Eusebius: 71 years, five kings instead of six — for passing over the fourth, Amenses, whom Africanus and the rest record, he lopped off that ruler's 22 years. 6. Touthmosis, 9 years. 7. Amenophis, 31 years: this is he who was thought to be Memnon, the speaking stone. 8. Horus, 36 years (in another copy 38, more correctly). 9. Achencherses, 12 years; Athoris, 9 years; Kencheres, 16 years — in this one's time Moses led the journey of the Jews out of Egypt. (Syncellus adds: Eusebius alone places the exodus of Israel under Moses in this reign, with no argument to bear him witness, but with all his predecessors standing against him, as he testifies.) 10. Acherres, 8 years. 11. Cherres, 15 years. 12. Armais, also called Danaos, 5 years — after which, driven out of Egypt and fleeing his brother Aigyptos, he came to Greece, and mastering Argos he reigned over the Argives. 13. Ramesses, also called Aigyptos, 68 years. 14. Ammenophis, 40 years. Together, 348 years. Eusebius added 85 years beyond Africanus in the eighteenth dynasty. The same, says Syncellus: Eusebius concealed two kings, and added 85 years, setting 348 in place of Africanus's 263.
F53. Eighteenth dynasty of fourteen Diospolite kings: the first, Amoses, 25 years. Chebron, 13 years. Amophis, 21 years. Memphres, 12 years. Mispharmuthosis, 26 years. Tuthmosis, 9 years. Amenophis, 31 years — this is he who was thought to be Memnon, the speaking stone. Orus, 28 years (Greek: 38). Achencheres, 16 years: in his age Moses offered himself as leader to the Hebrews departing from Egypt. [There follow in the Canon: Athoris, 9 years, and Chencheres, 16.] Ancheres, 8 years. Cheres, 15 years. Armais, also called Danaus, 5 years; these completed, expelled from the region of Egypt and fleeing his brother Aegyptus, he escaped to Greece, and taking Argos, ruled the Argives. Ramesses, also called Aegyptus, 68 years. Amenophis, 40 years. Sum of the dominion: 348.
F55. Nineteenth dynasty: six Diospolite kings. 1. Sethos, 51 years. 2. Rhapsakes, 66 years. 3. Ammenephthes, 20 years. 4. Ramesses, 60 years. 6. Thouoris — he who in Homer is called Polybos, husband of Alkandra — in whose time Ilion was taken: 7 years. Together, 209 years. In the same second volume of Manetho: 96 kings.
F56. Nineteenth dynasty: five Diospolite kings. 1. Sethos, 55 years. 2. Rhampses, 66 years. 3. Ammenephthes, 40 years. 4. Ammenemes, 26 years. 5. Thouoris, he who in Homer...
F56. Nineteenth dynasty of five Diospolite kings. Sethus, 55 years. Rampses, 66 years. Amenephthis, 40 years. Ammenemes, 26 years. Thuoris — called Polybus by Homer, a vigorous and most brave man — in whose age Ilium was taken: 7 years. Sum: 194 years. In Manetho's second book the total is made up of 92 kings, 2,121 years.
F57. ACCORDING TO AFRICANUS. Of Manetho's third volume. Twentieth dynasty: twelve Diospolite kings, who reigned 135 years. ACCORDING TO EUSEBIUS. Twentieth dynasty: twelve Diospolite kings, who reigned 178 years.
F57. Twentieth dynasty of twelve Diospolite kings, who ruled 172 years (178 and 172 confused, as often; in the Canon, 178 years).
F58. Twenty-first dynasty: seven Tanite kings. 1. Smendes, 26 years. 2. Psousennes, 46 years. 3. Nefercheres, 4 years. 4. Amenophthis, 9 years. 5. Osokor, 6 years. 6. Psinaches, 9 years. 7. Psousennes, 14 years. Together, 130 years.
F59. Twenty-first dynasty: seven Tanite kings. 1. Smendis, 26 years. 2. Psousennes, 41 years. 3. Nefercheres, 4 years. 4. Amenophthis, 9 years. 5. Osochor, 6 years. 6. Psinaches, 9 years. 7. Psousennes, 35 years. Together, 130 years.
F59. Twenty-first dynasty of seven Tanite kings. Smendis, 26 years. Psusennes, 41. Nephercheres, 4. Amenophthis, 9. Osochor, 6. Psinnaches, 9. Psusennes, 35. The sum of the years is 130.
F60. Twenty-second dynasty: nine Bubastite kings. 1. Sesonchis, 21 years. 2. Osorthon, 15 years. 3–5. Three others, 25 years. 6. Takelothis, 13 years. 7–9. Three others, 42 years. Together, 120 years.
F61. Twenty-second dynasty: three Bubastite kings. 1. Sesonchosis, 21 years. 2. Osorthon, 15 years. 3. Takelothis, 13 years. Together, 49.
F61. Twenty-second dynasty of three Bubastite kings. Sesonchosis, 21 years. Osorthon, 15 years. Tacelothis, 13 years. Sum of the years: 49 (in Samuel: 29).
F62. Twenty-third dynasty: four Tanite kings. 1. Petoubates, 40 years — in whose time the first Olympiad was held. 2. Osorcho, 8 years, whom the Egyptians call Heracles. 3. Psammous, 10 years. 4. Zet, 31 years. Together, 89 years.
F63. Twenty-third dynasty: three Tanite kings. 1. Petoubastis, 25 years. 2. Osorthon, 9 years. 3. Psammous, 10 years. Together, 44 years.
F63. Twenty-third dynasty of three Tanite kings. Petubastis, 25 years. Then Osorthon, whom the Egyptians named Hercules (the number of his years has fallen out; in the Canon he is said to have reigned 9). Psammus, 10 years. Sum of the years: 44.
F64. Twenty-fourth dynasty: Bocchoris the Saite, 6 years — in whose time a lamb spoke. [A corrupt year-figure follows in the text.]
F64. Twenty-fifth dynasty: three Ethiopian kings. 1. Sabakon, who, taking Bocchoris captive, burned him alive, and reigned 8 years. 2. Sebichos his son, 14 years. 3. Tarkos, 18 years. Together, 40 years.
F65. Twenty-fourth dynasty: Bocchoris the Saite, 44 years — in whose time a lamb spoke. Together, 44 years.

======== Manetho — Book 5: The Epitome, Dynasties XXIII–XXXI (FHG F62–F73) ========

F65. Twenty-fourth dynasty. Bocchoris the Saite, 44 years (43 in Samuel), under whom a lamb spoke.
F65. Twenty-fifth dynasty: three Ethiopian kings. 1. Sabakon, who, taking Bocchoris captive, burned him alive, and reigned 12 years. 2. Sebichos his son, 12 years. 3. Tarakos, 20 years. Together, 44 years.
F65. Twenty-fifth dynasty of three Ethiopian kings. Sabacon, who burned the captive Bocchoris alive, and reigned 12 years. Sebichus his son, 12 years. Taracus, 20 years. Sum: 44 years. [Editorial note: Sabacus and Sebichus are by Bunsen's account one name, the one Greek, the other nearer the Egyptian Schebek; the monuments give (Sevech I) Schebek Nefrukera, (Sevech II) Schebek, and (Tarkos) Thak, that is, Tirhaka. The second king's eighteenth year and the third's twentieth are attested, while Africanus gives Tarkos only 18 years; hence the 20 of the Eusebian Manetho is to be preferred. Sabako is called Sua or So in the sacred books (2 Kings 17:4), to whom Hoshea sent an embassy; Tarkos is Tearkos in Strabo, Tharaka in the Septuagint, Tirhakah in the Hebrew text, Tharsikes in Josephus, Tharthas king of the Ethiopians in the Paschal Chronicle. He undertook the expedition against king Sennacherib in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, when he was not yet king but had brought auxiliary forces from Ethiopia to the Egyptians; afterward he appears to have turned against the very people he had come to help, and to have seized the rule through the slaying of Sebichus — though perhaps 'slain' stands wrongly for 'dead.']
F66. Twenty-sixth dynasty: nine Saite kings. 1. Stephinates, 7 years. 2. Nechepsos, 6 years. 3. Nechao, 8 years. 4. Psammetichos, 54 years. 5. Nechao the Second, 4 years: this one took Jerusalem, and led king Joachaz captive into Egypt. 6. Psammouthis the second, six years. 7. Ouaphris, 19 years — to whom the remnant of the Jews fled when Jerusalem was taken by the Assyrians. 8. Amosis, 44 years. 9. Psammecherites, 6 months. Together, 150 years and 6 months.
F67. Twenty-sixth dynasty: nine Saite kings. 1. Ammeris the Ethiopian, 12 years. 2. Stephinathis, 7 years. 3. Nechepsos, 4 years. 4. Nechao, 8 years. 5. Psammetichos, 44 years. 6. Nechao the Second, 6 years: this one took Jerusalem (etc., as in Africanus). 7. Psammouthis the second, also called Psammetichos, 17 years. 8. Ouaphris, 25 years, to whom the remnant fled (see Africanus). 9. Amosis, 42 years. Together, 163 years (the true sum is 168; in the Latin, more correctly, 167).
F67. Twenty-sixth dynasty of nine Saite kings. Ammeres the Ethiopian, 12 years. Stephinathis, 7. Nechepsos, 6. Nechaus, 8. Psammetichus, 44. Nechaus the second, 6: by him Jerusalem was taken, and king Joachaz led captive into Egypt. Psammuthes the second, also called Psammetichus, 17. Vaphres, 25, to whom the remnant of the Jews fled when Jerusalem had been brought under the power of the Assyrians. Amosis, 42. Sum of the years: 167.
F68. Twenty-seventh dynasty: eight Persian kings. 1. Cambyses, in the fifth year of his own kingship over the Persians, became king of Egypt: 36 years. 2. Darius, Hystaspes' son: 36 years. 3. Xerxes the Great: 21. 4. Artabanos: seven months. 5. Artaxerxes: 41. 6. Xerxes: two months. 7. Sogdianos, 7 months. 8. Darius son of Xerxes, 19 years. Together, 124 years, 4 months.
F69. Twenty-seventh dynasty: eight Persian kings. 1. Cambyses, in the fifth year of his own kingship, became king of Egypt: 3 years. 2. The Magi, 7 months. 3. Darius, 36 years. 4. Xerxes son of Darius, 21 years. 5. Artaxerxes the Long-handed, 40 years. 6. Xerxes the Second, 2 months. 7. Sogdianos, 7 months. 8. Darius son of Xerxes, 19 years. Together, 120 years and 4 months.
F69. Twenty-seventh dynasty of eight Persian kings. Cambyses, who in the fifth year of his reign became master of the Egyptians, 3 years. The Magi, seven months. Darius, 36 years. Xerxes son of Darius, 21. Artaxerxes, 40. Xerxes the second, 2 months. Sogdianus, 7 months. Darius son of Xerxes, 19 years. Sum: 120 years and 4 months.
F70. Twenty-eighth dynasty. Amyrteos the Saite, 6 years.
F70. Twenty-eighth dynasty. Amyrtaios the Saite, 6 years.
F70. Twenty-eighth dynasty. Amyrtes the Saite, 6 years.
F71. Twenty-ninth dynasty: four Mendesian kings. 1. Nepherites, 6 years. 2. Achoris, 13 years. 3. Psammouthis, one year. 4. Nepherites, 4 months. Together, 20 years, 4 months.
F71. Twenty-ninth dynasty: Mendesian kings, four (or five). 1. Nepherites, 6 years. 2. Achoris, 13 years. 3. Nepherites, 4 months. 5. Mouthis, one year and 4 months.
F71. Twenty-ninth dynasty of four Mendesian kings. Nepherites, 6 years. Achoris, 13 years. Psammuthes, one year. Muthes, one year (not counted in the Canon). Sum: 21 years and 4 months.
F72. Thirtieth dynasty: three Sebennyte kings. 1. Nektanebes, 18 years. 2. Teos, 2 years. 3. Nektanebos, 18 years. Together, 38 years.
F72. Thirtieth dynasty: three Sebennyte kings. 1. Nektanebes, 18 years. 2. Teos, 2 years. 3. Nektanebos, 8 years. Together, 20 years.
F72. Thirtieth dynasty of three Sebennyte kings. Nectanebis, 10 years (in the Canon, 18). Teos, 2 years. Nectanebis, 8 years (in the Canon, 19). Sum: 20 years.
F73. Thirty-first dynasty: three Persian kings. 1. Ochos, in the twentieth year of his own kingship over the Persians, became king of Egypt: 2 years. 2. Arses, 3 years. 3. Darius, 4 years. Together, the years of the third volume: 850. Thus far Manetho.
F73. Thirty-first dynasty: three Persian kings. 1. Ochos, in the twentieth year of his own kingship over the Persians, masters Egypt for 7 years. 2. After him Arses son of Ochos, 4 years. 3. After him Darius, six years — whom Alexander the Macedonian brought down. These things from Manetho's third volume. Thus far Manetho.
F73. Thirty-first dynasty of the Persians. Ochus, already ruling the Persians in his twentieth year, occupied Egypt and held it 6 years. Afterward Arses son of Ochus, 4 years. Then Darius, 6 years, whom Alexander the Macedonian slew. And these things are from Manetho's third book.

======== Manetho — Book 6: The Hyksos (Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.73–105) ========

CA 1.73-78. I shall begin first from the writings of the Egyptians. Their originals themselves cannot be set out here; but Manetho was a man Egyptian by birth who had shared in Greek learning, as is plain — for he wrote his country's history in the Greek tongue, translating, as he himself says, from the sacred records; and he convicts Herodotus of having falsified many of the Egyptian matters through ignorance. This Manetho, then, in the second book of his Aegyptiaca, writes as follows about us. I shall quote his wording, as if bringing forward the man himself as witness: 'There was a king of ours named Timaios. In his reign, I know not how, the god blew against us; and unexpectedly, from the eastern parts, men of obscure stock, emboldened, marched against the country, and easily, without a battle, took it by main force; and having overpowered its rulers, they thereafter burned the cities savagely, razed the temples of the gods, and treated all the natives with the utmost hostility, slaughtering some, and leading the children and wives of others into slavery. In the end they made one of their own number king, whose name was Salitis. He kept his seat at Memphis, levying tribute on the upper and the lower country, and leaving garrisons in the most suitable places. Above all he secured the eastern parts, foreseeing that the Assyrians, as they one day grew stronger, would make an assault upon his kingdom in desire of it. And finding in the Sethroite nome a city most advantageously placed, lying east of the Bubastite branch of the river, called from some ancient theology Auaris, he founded it, made it exceedingly strong with walls, and settled in it a mass of armed men — up to two hundred and forty thousand — as a garrison.'
CA 1.79-84. 'There he would come in summer, partly to measure out grain and to provide pay, and partly to drill the troops carefully in arms, to frighten those outside. And having ruled nineteen years, he ended his life. After him another reigned forty-four years, called Beon; after him another, Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven months; then Apophis, sixty-one, and Iannas, fifty years and one month; and after all these, Assis, forty-nine years with two months besides. And these six arose among them as the first rulers, longing always and ever more to tear out the root of Egypt. And their whole nation was called Hyksos — that is, shepherd kings: for hyk in the sacred tongue means king, and sos in the common speech is shepherd and shepherds; and so joined together it becomes Hyksos. Some say they were Arabs.' In another copy, however, it is said that the expression hyk denotes not kings but, on the contrary, marks the shepherds as captives; for hyk again in Egyptian, and hak aspirated, expressly signifies captives. And this seems to me more persuasive, and more in keeping with ancient history. 'These kings named above, of the people called Shepherds, and their descendants,' he says, 'held mastery of Egypt for five hundred and eleven years.'
CA 1.85-90. 'After this,' he says, 'the kings of the Thebaid and of the rest of Egypt rose against the Shepherds, and a great and long war broke out. Under a king whose name was Misphragmouthosis, the Shepherds,' he says, 'being worsted, were driven out of all the rest of Egypt and shut up in a place holding ten thousand arouras in circuit: Auaris is the place's name. All this,' says Manetho, 'the Shepherds surrounded with a great strong wall, so as to keep all their possessions and their plunder within a stronghold. And Thoummosis, the son of Misphragmouthosis, attempted to take them by siege and main force, sitting down before the walls with four hundred and eighty thousand men; but when he despaired of the siege, he made a covenant that they should all leave Egypt and go wherever they wished, unharmed. And they, upon these terms, with their whole households and possessions — no fewer than two hundred and forty thousand — journeyed out of Egypt across the desert into Syria; and fearing the dominion of the Assyrians, who at that time were masters of Asia, they built a city in the land now called Judea, sufficient for so many tens of thousands of people, and named it Jerusalem.'
CA 1.91-96. In another book of the Aegyptiaca Manetho says that this nation, the so-called Shepherds, stand written in their sacred books as captives — and rightly so; for to our earliest forefathers shepherding was ancestral, and leading a nomad life they were called shepherds. And again, it was not without reason that they were recorded as captives by the Egyptians, since our forefather Joseph told the king of the Egyptians that he was a captive, and later, with the king's permission, sent for his brothers to come to Egypt. But I shall make a more precise examination of these matters elsewhere. For now I bring forward the Egyptians as witnesses of this antiquity. I shall set down again, then, how Manetho's account stands with respect to the order of the times. He says thus: 'After the people of the Shepherds went out of Egypt to Jerusalem, Tethmosis, the king who drove them out of Egypt, reigned thereafter twenty-five years and four months, and ended his life; and his son Chebron took over the rule, thirteen years. After him, Amenophis, twenty years, seven months. His sister Amessis next: twenty-one years, nine months. Then her son Mephres: twelve years, nine months. Then his son Mephramouthosis: twenty-five years, ten months. Then his son Thmosis: nine years, eight months. Then his son Amenophis: thirty years, ten months. Then his son Horus: thirty-six years, five months. Then his daughter Akencheres: twelve years, one month. Then her brother Rathotis: nine years.'
CA 1.97-102. 'Then his son Akencheres, twelve years and five months; then his son Akencheres the Second, twelve years and three months; then his son Harmais, four years and one month; then his son Ramesses, one year and four months; then his son Harmesses Miamoun, sixty-six years and two months; then his son Amenophis, nineteen years and six months; and then his son Sethos, also called Ramesses, holding a force of cavalry and of ships. This king appointed his brother Harmais steward of Egypt and clothed him with all the rest of the royal authority, charging him only not to wear the diadem, not to wrong the queen who was mother of his children, and to keep away likewise from the other royal concubines. He himself marched against Cyprus and Phoenicia, and again against the Assyrians and the Medes, and took them all under his hand, some by the spear, some without a battle through fear of his great force; and growing proud on his successes, he advanced still more boldly, overthrowing the cities and lands toward the east. When a good span of time had passed, Harmais, who had been left behind in Egypt, did fearlessly everything the opposite of what his brother had charged him not to do: he took the queen by force, used the other concubines continually and without restraint, and, persuaded by his friends, began wearing the diadem, and rose against his brother. But the man set over the priests of Egypt wrote a letter and sent it to Sethos, disclosing everything to him — and that his brother Harmais had risen against him. At once, therefore, he turned back to Pelusium and took hold of his own kingdom. And the land was called Aigyptos from his name; for he says that Sethos was called Aigyptos, and Harmais his brother, Danaos.'
CA 1.103-105. So far Manetho. And it is plain, from the reckoning of the years of time stated, that the so-called Shepherds — our forefathers — departed from Egypt and settled this land three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaos came to Argos; and yet the Argives count him their most ancient figure. Manetho has thus borne witness for us, from the writings of the Egyptians, to two things of the greatest weight: first, the arrival into Egypt from elsewhere; and then the departure from there, so ancient in time that it precedes the Trojan war by nearly a thousand years. But as for the things Manetho added not from the Egyptian writings but, as he himself has admitted, from tales told without an author, I shall refute them later in detail, and show his implausible falsehood for what it is.

======== Manetho — Book 7: Amenophis, the lepers, and Osarseph (Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.227–287) ========

CA 1.227-233. I shall build my case first on one man — the same whom a little earlier I used as witness for our antiquity. For this Manetho, who undertook to translate the Egyptian history from the sacred writings, having first stated that our forefathers came against Egypt many tens of thousands strong and mastered its inhabitants, and then admitting himself that at a later time they were driven out, occupied what is now Judea, founded Jerusalem, and built the temple — up to this point he followed the records. But then, giving himself license by professing that he would write the fables and hearsay told about the Jews, he inserted implausible tales, wishing to mix in with us a mass of Egyptian lepers and men condemned for other diseases, forced, as he says, to flee from Egypt. For introducing a king Amenophis — a false name, which is why he did not dare fix the length of his reign, though for the other kings he adds the years precisely — he attaches to him certain mythologies, all but forgetting that he has already related the departure of the Shepherds to Jerusalem five hundred and eighteen years earlier. For Tethmosis was king when they went out; and from him, through the intervening kings, by his own account there are three hundred and ninety-three years down to the two brothers Sethos and Hermaios — of whom he says Sethos was renamed Aigyptos and Hermaios Danaos — and Sethos, having driven out his brother, reigned fifty-nine years, and after him the elder of his sons, Rampses, sixty-six. Having thus admitted that our fathers left Egypt all those years before, he then foists in his intercalated king Amenophis, and says this man desired to become a beholder of the gods, as Or, one of those who had reigned before him, had been; and he referred the desire to his namesake Amenophis, son of Paapis, who seemed to share in a divine nature for his wisdom and his foreknowledge of things to come. This namesake told him that he would be able to see the gods if he cleansed the whole land of lepers and the other polluted people.
CA 1.234-240. The king was delighted, and gathered together out of Egypt everyone maimed in body — the multitude came to eighty thousand — and threw them into the stone-quarries on the eastern side of the Nile, to labor there, segregated from the rest of the Egyptians. There were among them, he says, some even of the learned priests, infected with leprosy. But that Amenophis, the wise man and prophet, grew afraid of the anger of the gods against himself and against the king, if the gods should be seen under compulsion; and he added a prediction that certain allies would join the polluted and master Egypt for thirteen years. He did not dare tell this to the king himself, but left a writing behind about it all and did away with himself; and the king was in despair. And then Manetho has written word for word thus: 'When those in the quarries had spent a long while in misery, the king, being petitioned to allot them a lodging and shelter, granted them Auaris, the city of the Shepherds, then lying deserted — a city which by the old theology is Typhonian. Entering it, and holding this place as a base for revolt, they set over themselves as leader a certain Osarsephos, one of the priests of Heliopolis, and swore an oath to obey him in everything. And he laid down for them, as his first law, that they were neither to worship the gods nor to hold back from any of the animals held most sacred by law in Egypt, but sacrifice and consume them all, and join themselves to no one except those bound by the oath. Having enacted such laws, and very many others utterly contrary to Egyptian custom, he ordered them with all hands to repair the walls of the city and make themselves ready for war against king Amenophis.'
CA 1.241-247. 'And he himself, taking with him certain of the other priests and of the polluted, sent envoys to the Shepherds who had been driven out by Tethmosis, to the city called Jerusalem; and setting out his own case and that of the others dishonored with him, he asked them to join in a united campaign against Egypt. He promised to bring them first to Auaris, the homeland of their ancestors, to provide supplies in abundance for their hosts, to fight for them when it was needed, and to bring the country easily under their hand. Overjoyed, they all eagerly set out together, some two hundred thousand men, and not long after arrived at Auaris. And Amenophis, the king of the Egyptians, when he learned of their invasion, was thrown into no small confusion, remembering the prediction of Amenophis son of Paapis. He first gathered a multitude of Egyptians, and having taken counsel with their leaders, he sent for the sacred animals most honored in the temples to be brought to him, and charged the priests severally to hide away the images of the gods as safely as possible. His son Sethos, also called Ramesses after his father Rapses, being five years old, he placed with a friend of his. He himself crossed over with the rest of the Egyptians — some three hundred thousand of the most warlike men — and met the enemy, yet did not engage; but thinking he was about to fight against the gods, he wheeled about, came to Memphis, took up Apis and the rest of the sacred animals he had summoned there, and at once set off for Ethiopia with his whole fleet and the mass of the Egyptians. For the king of the Ethiopians was subject to him out of gratitude; he received him, sustained all his hosts with whatever the land held fit for human food, allotted cities and villages sufficient for the fated thirteen years of his exile from his kingdom, and — no less — stationed an Ethiopian army on the borders of Egypt as a guard for king Amenophis and his people.'
CA 1.248-254. 'Such was the situation in Ethiopia. But the men of Jerusalem, coming down with the polluted of the Egyptians, treated the people so impiously that the domination of the Shepherds looked like gold to those who now beheld these men's sacrileges. For not only did they burn cities and villages; not content with robbing the temples and mutilating the images of the gods, they kept using the very sanctuaries as kitchens for roasting the venerated sacred animals, forced the priests and prophets to be their sacrificers and slaughterers, and cast them out naked. And it is said that the priest who laid down their polity and laws was a Heliopolitan by birth, named Osarsiph after the god Osiris at Heliopolis; and that when he went over to this people he changed his name and was called Moyses.' This, then, and much else besides which I pass over for brevity's sake, is what the Egyptians report about the Jews. Manetho says further that after this Amenophis came back from Ethiopia with a great force, and his son Rampses, himself with a force as well; that the two engaged the Shepherds and the polluted in battle, defeated them, killed many, and pursued them to the borders of Syria. This and the like is what Manetho composed. That he is talking nonsense and lying transparently, I shall demonstrate — first marking off one point, for the sake of what I shall say later against others: he has granted us and acknowledged that from the beginning our race was not Egyptian, but came in from outside, mastered Egypt, and departed from it again. But that the maimed in body among the Egyptians were not afterward mingled with us, and that Moses, who led the people, was not of them but had lived many generations earlier — this I shall try to refute from Manetho's own statements. The first cause he lays down for his fiction is laughable: the king Amenophis, he says, desired to see the gods. What gods? If those established by their own law — the ox, the goat, crocodiles, and dog-faced baboons — he saw them already.
CA 1.255-261. And the heavenly gods — how could he? And why did he conceive this desire? Because, by Zeus, another king before him had seen them! From that king, then, he could have learned what sort of beings they are and how he saw them — so no new contrivance was needed. But the prophet through whom the king expected to accomplish this was wise: how then did he not foreknow that the desire was impossible? For it never came to pass. And what sense was there in the gods being invisible because of the maimed or the leprous? The gods are angered at impieties, not at defects of the body. And eighty thousand lepers and men in evil condition — how could they be gathered in practically a single day? And how did the king disobey the prophet? For he bade him drive the maimed out beyond Egypt's borders, but the king threw them into the stone-quarries — as if he needed laborers rather than intending to purge the land. He says, moreover, that the prophet did away with himself, foreseeing the anger of the gods and what would befall Egypt, and left his prediction behind for the king in writing. Then how did the prophet not know from the beginning his own death? How did he not object at once to the king's wish to see the gods? How was it reasonable to fear evils that would not fall in his own lifetime? Nothing worse could have befallen him than what he hastened to do to himself. But let us look at the silliest thing of all: informed of these things, and afraid of what was to come, the king even then did not drive out of the land those maimed men of whom it had been foretold that he must cleanse Egypt; instead, at their entreaty, he gave them (says Manetho) a city — the one anciently inhabited by the Shepherds, called Auaris. Gathered into it, he says, they chose as leader one of the priests formerly of Heliopolis, and this man taught them not to worship the gods and not to abstain from the animals revered in Egypt, but to sacrifice and eat them all, and to join themselves with no one except those bound by the oath; and binding the multitude with oaths to abide by these laws without fail, and walling Auaris, he carried war against the king.
CA 1.262-268. And he adds that this man sent to Jerusalem, calling on those people to fight in alliance with them, promising to give them Auaris — for it belonged, he says, to the ancestors of those who would come from Jerusalem — from which, setting out, they would hold all Egypt. Then he says they came on with two hundred thousand troops; and that Amenophis, king of the Egyptians, thinking he must not fight against the gods, fled at once into Ethiopia, having committed Apis and certain of the other sacred animals to the priests with orders to keep them safe. Then that the men of Jerusalem, coming on, overturned the cities, burned down the temples, slaughtered the horsemen, and in short held back from no lawlessness or savagery. And the priest who founded their polity and their laws, he says, was by birth a Heliopolitan, named Osarseph after the god Osiris at Heliopolis, but changing his name he called himself Moyses. In the thirteenth year, he says, Amenophis — for so long a time was his expulsion fated — came on from Ethiopia with a great army, engaged the Shepherds and the polluted in battle, conquered in the fight, and killed many, pursuing them to the borders of Syria. Here again Manetho does not perceive how implausibly he lies: for the lepers and the multitude with them, even if they were angry before at the king and at those who had so dealt with them following the prophet's prediction, yet when they had come out of the quarries and received from him a city and land, they would surely have grown milder toward him. And if indeed they still hated him, they would have plotted against him personally, not raised war against everyone — clearly, being so great a multitude, they had a great many kinsmen among them.
CA 1.269-275. And even had they resolved to war against the men, they would not have dared to war against their own gods, nor would they have laid down laws most contrary to those of their fathers, in which they had been reared. Yet we must be grateful to Manetho, that he makes the originators of this lawlessness not the people who came from Jerusalem, but those men themselves, being Egyptians — and chiefly their priests — who devised these things and swore the multitude to them. But again, how is this not senseless: that none of their own kin and friends joined the revolt or shared the danger of the war, but the polluted sent to Jerusalem and brought in allies from there? What friendship, what prior kinship existed between them? On the contrary, they were enemies, and differed most widely in customs. Yet he says they obeyed at once at the promise that they would hold Egypt — as though those people were not thoroughly acquainted with the country from which they had been driven by force! If they had been in want or misfortune, perhaps they might have taken the risk; but dwelling in a prosperous city and enjoying a broad land better than Egypt, why ever would they hazard themselves helping men who were their old enemies, and maimed in body — men whom not even any of their own kin could bear? For they surely could not have foreseen the king's flight: the very opposite — Manetho himself has said that the son of Amenophis with three hundred thousand men was moving to meet them at Pelusium. This those coming on assuredly knew; but the king's change of heart and his flight — from what could they have guessed it? Then he says that, having mastered Egypt, those who marched from Jerusalem did many terrible things; and he reproaches them for these — as though he had not brought them in as enemies, or as though one ought to blame allies called in from abroad, when men Egyptian by race were doing these things before their arrival, and had sworn to do them.
CA 1.276-282. But 'some time later Amenophis came on, conquered in battle, and drove the enemy, with slaughter, all the way to Syria.' So very easy a prey is Egypt to invaders from any quarter whatever! And those who then held it by conquest, though they learned that Amenophis was alive, neither fortified the passes from Ethiopia — though they had ample means for it — nor made the rest of their force ready; but he, says Manetho, cutting them down, followed them as far as Syria across the waterless sand — which is plainly no easy thing for an army to cross even without a battle. By Manetho's own account, then, our race is not out of Egypt, and none of the Egyptians were blended into us; for of the lepers and the sick, it is likely that many died in the quarries, being there a long while and in misery, many in the battles that followed, and most in the final battle and the flight. It remains for me to answer him about Moses. This man the Egyptians hold wonderful and divine; but they wish to claim him for themselves by an implausible slander, saying that he was a Heliopolitan, one of the priests from there, expelled with the rest for leprosy. Yet he is shown in the records to have lived 518 years before, and to have led our fathers out of Egypt into the land we now inhabit. And that he suffered from no such affliction of the body is plain from his own words: for he has forbidden lepers either to stay in a city or to dwell in a village, but to walk about alone with their garments torn; and he holds anyone who touches them, or lives under the same roof, unclean. And what is more, even if the disease is cured and the man regains his natural condition, Moses has prescribed certain rites of purification — cleansings by baths of spring water and shavings of all the hair — and commands him to perform many sacrifices of every sort before entering the holy city.
CA 1.283-287. Yet the opposite would have been likely: that a man who had lived under this affliction would show some forethought and kindness toward those who shared his misfortune. And it was not only about lepers that he legislated thus: those maimed in even the smallest part of the body are not permitted to serve as priests; indeed, if a priest already serving suffers such a misfortune, Moses strips him of the honor. How likely is it, then, that Moses would enact these things so senselessly — that men gathered out of such misfortunes would set up laws against themselves, to their own reproach and hurt? But indeed the name too Manetho has changed most implausibly: 'he was called Osarseph,' he says. This does not fit the change at all; the true name means the one saved from the water — water in Egyptian being möu. I think, then, it has become sufficiently plain that so long as Manetho followed the ancient records, he did not stray far from the truth; but when he turned to unattributed fables, he either composed them implausibly or trusted certain men who spoke out of hatred.

======== Manetho — Book 8: The minor works (FHG F74–F85) ========

F74 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. The whole Egyptian history, at full breadth, Manetho the Egyptian carried over into the tongue of the Greeks — and in particular the matters of their theology — both in the Sacred Book he wrote and in others of his treatises.
F75 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. While most people suppose that Amoun (which we, altering it, pronounce Ammon) is the Egyptians' own name for Zeus, Manetho the Sebennyte thinks that what is hidden, and hiddenness itself, is disclosed by this word.
F76 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. Some say Bebon was one of the companions of Typhon; but Manetho says Typhon himself is also called Bebon. The name signifies holding-back or hindrance — the power of Typhon standing in the way of things as they walk their road and move toward their proper end.
F77 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. The Egyptian usages resemble these. For they often call Isis by the name of Athena, which expresses some such sense as 'I came from myself' — indicative of self-moved motion; while Typhon, as has been said, is named Seth and Bebon and Smy, the names meaning to convey a violent and obstructing check, an opposition, an overturning. Further, they call the lodestone the bone of Horus, and iron the bone of Typhon, as Manetho relates: for as iron is often like a thing drawn to the stone and following it, and often turns away and is repelled to the opposite side, so the saving, good, reason-endowed motion of the world turns toward, draws to itself, and softens by persuasion that hard and Typhonian motion; and then, checked, it turns back into itself and sinks down into the trackless deep.
F78 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. Ptolemy Soter saw in a dream the colossus of Pluto at Sinope — not knowing, never having seen, what its shape was — commanding him to convey it as quickly as possible to Alexandria. He was at a loss and did not know where the statue stood; but as he described the vision to his friends, a much-traveled man named Sosibios was found, who said he had seen at Sinope just such a colossus as the king thought he had seen. He therefore sent Soteles and Dionysos, who after a long time, and barely — yet not without divine providence — stole it away and brought it. When it had been conveyed and was seen, Timotheos the interpreter and Manetho the Sebennyte and their circle, inferring from the Cerberus and the serpent that it was a statue of Pluto, persuaded Ptolemy that it was of no other god than Sarapis. For it did not come from there bearing that name; rather, after it was brought to Alexandria it acquired the name which the Egyptians give to Pluto: Sarapis.
F79 ΙΕΡΑ ΒΙΒΛΟΣ. THE SACRED BOOK. I hear too that Manetho the Egyptian, a man driven to the very summit of wisdom, said that one who tastes sow's milk is filled with tetter and leprosy — and all the peoples of Asia loathe those afflictions. The Egyptians hold the sow to be most hateful to the sun and the moon; and when they hold festival for the moon, they sacrifice swine to her once in the year, but at other times they will sacrifice this animal neither to her nor to any other of the gods, holding it polluted.
F80 ΤΩΝ ΦΥΣΙΚΩΝ ΕΠΙΤΟΜΗ. EPITOME OF PHYSICS. The gods, they hold, are the sun and the moon — the one called Osiris, the other Isis; and they speak of them in riddles, through the beetle and the serpent and the hawk and other creatures, as Manetho says in the Epitome of Physics.
F81 ΤΩΝ ΦΥΣΙΚΩΝ ΕΠΙΤΟΜΗ. EPITOME OF PHYSICS. Isis and Osiris, they say, are the sun and the moon; the breath that passes through all things they name Zeus, fire Hephaestus, and the earth they surname Demeter. The moist element the Egyptians hold to be Oceanus — and among themselves, their own river Nile, to which they attribute the births of the gods. The air, they say, they address as Athena. And these five gods — the Air, I mean, and the Water, the Fire, the Earth, and the Breath — traverse the whole inhabited world, shaping themselves now one way, now another, into the forms and likenesses of men and of creatures of every kind; and among the Egyptians themselves there have been mortal men bearing these same names, called Helios and Kronos and Rhea, and again Zeus and Hera and Hephaestus and Hestia. Manetho writes of these matters at greater breadth, Diodorus in compressed form.
F82 ΠΕΡΙ ΕΟΡΤΩΝ. ON FESTIVALS. Know that Manetho, in his work On Festivals, says that an eclipse of the sun brings an evil influence upon men, concerning the flank and the stomach.
F83 ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΣΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΣΕΒΕΙΑΣ. ON ANCIENT RITUAL AND PIETY. Amosis abolished the law of human slaughter at the city of Heliopolis (rather: of Eileithyia) in Egypt, as Manetho testifies in his book On Ancient Ritual and Piety. The victims were sacrificed to Hera, and were examined like the pure calves that are sought out and sealed; three were sacrificed in the day — in place of whom Amosis ordered that an equal number of wax figures be offered.
F84 ΠΕΡΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΣΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΕΥΣΕΒΕΙΑΣ. ON ANCIENT RITUAL AND PIETY. Many say that to these animals fell the portion of the evil daemon; and it is by soothing and appeasing him that they tend and care for them. But if a great and grievous drought falls, bringing beyond measure either deadly diseases or other strange and monstrous calamities, the priests lead away some of the honored animals under darkness, with silence and stillness, and first threaten and try to frighten them; but if the calamity persists, they consecrate and slaughter them — this being, as it were, a chastisement of the daemon, or else a great purification for the greatest ills. For indeed in the city of Eileithyia they used to burn living men, as Manetho has related, calling them Typhonians; and winnowing their ashes, they made them vanish, scattering them abroad. But that was done openly, and at one set season, in the dog-days; whereas the consecrations of the honored animals are secret, occurring at irregular times as events dictate, and escape the many — except when the animals have their burials, and the priests, displaying some of the others, throw them into the grave in the presence of all, thinking thereby to grieve Typhon in return and to clip his pleasure.
F84 ΠΕΡΙ ΚΑΤΑΣΚΕΥΗΣ ΚΥΦΙΩΝ. ON THE PREPARATION OF KYPHI. [That Manetho — called the Mendesian priest, doubtless the same man — wrote on the preparation of kyphi, Suidas testifies; and Plutarch will have drawn chiefly on Manetho:] Kyphi is a mixture compounded of sixteen kinds: honey and wine and raisins and galingale; resin and myrrh and camel-thorn and hartwort; and further mastic and asphalt and rush and dock; and besides these, both junipers (of which they call one the greater and one the lesser), and cardamom, and sweet flag — and so on.
F85 [ΤΑ ΠΡΟΣ ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΝ]. [AGAINST HERODOTUS.] The word 'lion' (leon) comes from loo, 'I behold': for the beast is the sharpest-sighted of all, as Manetho says in his Against Herodotus — adding that the lion never sleeps; but this is implausible. And Eustathius on the Iliad: some say that from lao, 'I see,' comes leon, and likewise lis, according to the grammarian Horus, as the sharp-sighted one; and that, as Manetho says in the books Against Herodotus, the lion does not sleep.