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