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