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