Manetho

You know, you read Tacitus, the Roman writing about them.

You read Manetho, various Greek writers writing about Jews.

And you kind of see that there is a running theme.

that comes up again in europe you know that uh in in uh a society like feudal europe was uh in traditional you know traditionalist aristocracy different estates with different rights and privileges and everybody kind of nobody really questioned that that was the way things ought to be put together you know the idea of universal human rights that apply to everybody equally was just not a thing and so you know the fact that you had this sort of self-contained semi-autonomous self-governing community of people who weren't really quite part of the community but they performed certain vital that was okay um in a society you know where where you didn't words like things like the rule of law like we're not uh nobody really thought that something like that should be applicable to uh you know like a peasant should be able to bring a suit against a king or something nobody

In fact, we can trace the two histories almost contemporaneously, and see how remarkably the one sheds light upon the other.

In general, our knowledge of Egyptian history is derived from the monuments, of which we have already spoken, from certain references in Greek historians, which are not of much value, and especially from the historical work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote about the year 250 BC.

At that time the monuments of Egypt were still almost intact.

Manetho had access to them all.

He was thoroughly conversant with the ancient literature of his country, and he wrote under the direction and patronage of the then monarch of the land.

Unfortunately, however, his work has been lost, and the fragments of it preserved exist only in the distorted form which Josephus has given them for his own purposes, and in a chronicle written by a learned Christian convert of the 3rd century, Julius Africanus.

Such are the difficulties before the student.

On the other hand, both Africanus and Eusebius gathered their materials in Egypt itself, and were competent for their task.

Um, so you, you kinda have to take the high chronology, which is the original idea of the, of the timeline of Egypt based on their own king's list, which is also kind of itself late.

That's by a, a Egyptian historian named Manetho.

Um, so if you take that high chronology and you take the early exodus date from, based on the date of the temple, then you end up at 1446.

You end up with a pharaoh named Amenhotep II, who's the pharaoh of the exodus in that case.

It, it, it doesn't have much spiritual meaning to it, right? It's just kind of plain, which is why I think most people kind of read past it and don't really realize it's something special.

Well, fast-forward a little bit.

There's this guy named Manetho, who I mentioned a minute ago.

Um, he has a history of the, of the Egyptian kings, and we have our dynasties mainly primarily because of Manetho, 'cause he put them into dynasties.

Not indeed of those who have written in the Egyptian language, which it is impossible for me to do.

But Manetho was a man who was born an Egyptian, yet he made himself master of the Greek learning, as is very evident, for he wrote the history of his own country in the Greek tongue, by translating it, as he saith himself, out of their sacred records.

He also finds great fault with Herodotus for his ignorance and false relations of Egyptian affairs.

Now this Manetho, in the second book of his Egyptian history, writes concerning us in the following manner.

I will set down his very words as if I were to bring the man himself into a court for a witness.

There was a king of ours whose name was Timaeus.

For that Hyk, with the aspiration in the Egyptian tongue, again denotes shepherds, and that expressly also.

And this to me seems the more probable opinion, and more agreeable to ancient history.

The boulder was subsequently concealed under the southern side of the city wall, and as fragments of inscribed papyrus coeval with the sixth dynasty have been discovered in the immediate neighborhood, on one of which mention is made of this domain of Pepi II, it would seem that the town of Elephantine must have been founded between the period of the fourth dynasty and that of the sixth.

Manetho is therefore justified in making the fifth and sixth dynasties of Elephantine origin.

It is in Babylonia, however, that the most startling discoveries have been made.

At Tello, M. de Sarzac has found a library of more than 30,000 tablets, all neatly arranged, piled in order one on the other, and belonging to the age of Judea, B.C. 2700.

They divided this interminable succession of often problematical personages into dynasties, following in this division rules of which we are ignorant, and which varied in the course of ages.

In the time of the Ramessides, names in the list which subsequently, under Lagides, formed five groups, were made to constitute one single dynasty.

Manetho of Sebenitus, who wrote a history of Europe for the use of Alexandrine Greeks, had adopted, on some unknown authority, a division of thirty-one dynasties from Menes to the Macedonian conquest, and his system has prevailed.

Not, indeed, on account of its excellence, but because it is the only complete one which has come down to us.