Berossus & Manetho · a new plain-English translation from the original language
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.