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