the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Encyclopedias
Manetho
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or (Μανεθών or Μανεθώς ), OF SEBENNYTUS, a distinguished Egyptian historian, a native of Diospolis, according to some, or of Mende or Heliopolis, according to others, is said to have lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and to have been a man of great learning and wisdom Elian, De Animal. 10:16). He belonged to the priestly caste, and was himself a priest, and interpreter or recorder of religious usages, and of the religious and probably also historical writings. His name has been interpreted "beloved of Thoth;" in the song of Lagos and Ptolemy Philadelphus, Mai en tet, or Ma Net, "beloved of Neith;" but both interpretations are doubtful. Scarcely anything is known of the history of Manetho himself, and he is more renowned for his Egyptian history than on any other account. On the occasion of Ptolemy I dreaming of the god Serapis at Sinope, Manetho was consulted by the monarch, and, in conjunction with Timotheus of Athens, the interpreter of the Eleusinian mysteries, declared the statue of Serapis, brought by orders of the king from Sinope, to be that of the god Serapis or Pluto, and the god had a temple and his worship inaugurated at Alexandria. It appears probable, however, that there were more than one individual of this name, and it is therefore doubtful whether all the works which were attributed by ancient writers to Manetho were in reality written by the Manetho who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. (See below.)
Writings. — The only work of Manetho which has come down to us complete is a poem of six books, in hexameter verse, on the influence of the stars (ἀποτελεσματικά ), which was first published by Gronovius (Leyden, 1698), and has also been edited by Axtius and Rigler (Cologne, 1832). It is probable, however, for many reasons, as Heyne has shown in his Opuscula Academica (1:95), that parts, at least, of this poem could not have been written till a much later date. We also possess considerable fragments of a work of Manetho on the history of the ancient kings of Egypt. (See below.) It was in three books or parts, and comprised the period from the earliest times to the death of the last Persian Darius. Some of these fragments are preserved in the treatise of Josephus against Apion; and still greater portions in the "Chronicles" of George Syncellus, a monk of the 9th century. The "Chronicles" of Syncellus were principally compiled from the "Chronicles" of Julius Africanus and Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, both of whom made great use of Manetho's "History." The work of Africanus is lost, and we only possess a Latin version of that of Eusebius, which was translated out of the Armenian version of the Greek text preserved at Constantinople. Manetho is said to have derived his history of the kings of Egypt, whom he divides into thirty classes, called dynasties, from the sacred records in the temple at Heli opolis. In addition to these works, Manetho is also said to have written,
1, ῾Ιερὰ Βίβλος, on the Egyptian religion;
2, Περὶ ἀρχαϊσμοῦ και εὐσεβείας , on the ancient rites and ceremonies of the Egyptians;
3, Φυσικῶν ἐπιτομή (Laertius, Proem. s. 10), probably the same work as that called by Suidas φυσιολογικά;
4, Βίβλος τῆς Σώθεως, both the subject and genuineness of which are very doubtful. See Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biog. s.v.; English Cyclopaedia, s.v. His name is introduced here on account of the importance of his work on Egyptian history in determining the list of ancient Egyptian kings. (See EGYPT). In this regard his authority has been overestimated by one class of writers, and almost wholly set aside by others, according to their own preconceived theories. (See PHARAOH).
Authenticity of Manetho's History. — Manetho was a learned priest at the court of the first Ptolemy, according to Plutarch (de Isaiah et Os. c. 28), who cites a religious work of his in Greek, which is quoted also under various names by Elian, Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, and other late writers (Fruin, Manethonis Sebennytae Reliquiae, p. 133 sq.; Parthey, Plutarch ü ber Isis u. Osiris, p. 180 sq.). Josephus (Apion, 1:14-16, 26, 27) gives two long extracts, with a list of seventeen reigns, from the Αἰγυπτιακά, "a work composed in Greek by Manetho the Sebennyte, from materials which he professes to have rendered from the sacred records:" of which history all else that is extant is a catalogue of Egyptian dynasties, preserved in two widely different recensions by Georgius Syncellus, A.D. 800; the one from the lost Chronographia of Julius Africanus, A.D. 220; the other from the Chronicon of Eusebius, A.D. 325 (of which we have now the Armenian version); both texts are given by Fruin, and by Bunsen in the appendix to Egypt's Place, vol. 1. The statement that "Manetho the Sebennyte, of Heliopolis, high-priest and scribe of the sacred adyta, composed this work from the sacred records by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus," rests only on the dedication (ap. Syncell.) prefixed to the Sothis, an undoubted forgery of Christian times.
All that can be inferred from it is that the forger had grounds, good or bad, for placing Manetho in the time of the second Ptolemy. In fact, the incident with which Plutarch (ut sup.) connects his name (the bringing in of Serapis) is related by other writers (without mention of Manetho), and is assigned by Tacitus also (Hist. 4:183 sq.) to the time of the first Ptolemy; but by Clem. Alex. (Protrept. 4:48) and Cyrill. Al. (c. Julian. p. 13) to Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the date 01. 124-B.C. 284-1. If he did live, and was a man of note, under the early Ptolemies, certain it is that "this most distinguished writer, the sage and scholar of Egypt" (as Bunsen calls him, Aeg. St. 1:88), was speedily and long forgotten; for more than three centuries after the time at which he is said to have flourished not a trace of him or his writings is anywhere discoverable. Nothing of the kind occurs in the remains of the Alexandrine scholars, the early Greek Jews, Polyhistor's collections, or the chronological writings of Castor. That the Catalogue of Thirty-eight Theban Kings (ap. Syncell.) is the work of Eratosthenes there is nothing to show; at any rate, it contains no reference to Manetho. If it was from Manetho that Dicsearchas, cir. A.D. 290 (ap. Schol. in Apollon. Rhod.), got his two Egyptian names and dates, it was in quite another form of the work; to the scholiast, Manetho is an unknown name. The Egyptian list in the Excespta Latino-barbara of Scaliger, bearing the name of Castor, is a mere abstract from Africanus. Diodorus Sic. and Strabo visited and wrote about Egypt, yet neither of them names or alludes to Manetho; and the former gives (1:44 sq., from the priests, he says) an account of the kingly succession altogether different from his. If, as Fruin suggests (p. 63), it was through measures taken by Domitian to repair the losses sustained by the public libraries (Sueton. Dom. 29) that Manetho's works were brought to Rome from the Alexandrine library where they had long slumbered unregarded, still it is strange that the AEgyptiaca should have caught the attention of Josephus alone (among extant writers), and that neither those who, as Plutarch, do mention the other work, nor others who have occasion to speak of the ancient times of Egypt, as Tacitus and the elder Pliny (esp. H. N. 36:8-13), ever name this history, or show any acquaintance with its list of kings. Lepsius (Chron. der Aeg. 1:583 sq.) better meets the difficulty by supposing that the original work, never widely known, was so early lost that even in the 1st century all that survived of it was a bare abstract of its names and numbers, and (distinct from this) the two passages relating to the "Hyksos" and the "lepers," with the accompanying list of seventeen reigns, which some Jewish reader had extracted on account of their Biblical interest, and beyond which Josephus knew nothing of Manetho. Whatever be the explanation, the fact is that it is only through Jewish and Christian writers that we ever hear of Manetho as a historian.
Of these, Theophilus Ant. (ad Autolyc. 3:20, cir. A.D. 181) does but copy Josephus. Clemens Alex. nowhere names Manetho. A history of "the Acts of the Kings of Egypt, in three books" — not, however, by Manetho, but by "Ptolemy the Mendesian" — is, indeed, quoted by him (Strong. 1:26, 101), but at second-hand from Tatian; who again (ad Gentes, p. 129), as perhaps Justin Martyr before him (ad Gr. 8), quotes Ptolemy, not directly, but from Apion. In short, it is plain, on comparing these passages and Euseb. (Pr. Ev. 10:11, 12), that Apion is the sole source of all that is known of this Ptolemy of Mendes; and Apion, as far as we know, makes no mention of Manetho. In what relation the work of Ptolemy may have stood to Manetho's, as there is no evidence to show, it is idle to speculate; and, indeed, the question with which we are concerned would remain very much where it is, even were it proved that "Manetho" is a borrowed name, and the AEgyptiaca a product of Roman times. For the important point is, not who wrote the book, and when, but what is its value? It may not be genuine, nor so old as it pretends to be, and yet may contain good materials, honestly rendered from earlier writings or original records, probably as available in the time of Domitian as they were under the Ptolemies; and, in fact, existing monuments do furnish so considerable a number of names unquestionably identical with those in the list, that to reject this altogether, and deny it all historical value, would betoken either egregious ignorance or a reckless scepticism that can shut its eyes to manifest facts.
Chronological Value of Manetho's History. — The attestation which the list obtains from contemporary monuments cannot be held to warrant the assumption that it is to be depended upon where these fail. For the monuments which attest, also correct its statements. Monuments prove some reigns, and even dynasties, contemporaneous, which in the list are successive; but we have no means of ascertaining what was truly consecutive and what parallel, where monuments are wanting. Their dates are always in years of the current reign, not of an sera. From Cambyses upward to Psammetichus, and his immediate predecessor, Taracus = Tirhaka, the chronology is now settled [ (See CHRONOLOGY), sec. 3].
Thence up to Petubastes (dyn. 23) the materials are too scanty to yield any determination. For dyn. 22, headed by Sesonchis = Shishak, the records are copious: dates on apis-stelae, of which Mariette reports seven in this dynasty, prove that it lasted much more than the 120 years of Africanus. But even these reigns cannot be formed into a canon, and the epoch of Sesonchis can only be approximately given from the Biblical synchronism, "In 5 Rehoboam Shishak invaded Judaea" — in what year of his reign the monument which records the conquest does not say; although the epoch of Rehoboam is, as to B.C., a fixed point, or nearly so, for all chronologists. The inscription is dated 21 Shishak, but does not indicate the order or time of the several conquests recorded. The attempt has been made to prove from Biblical data that the invasion was in the 20th year. Thus: It was while Solomon was building Millo (2 Kings 11:27) that Jeroboam fled to "Shishak, king of Egypt" (2 Kings 11:40). This work began not earlier than 24 Solomon (2 Kings 6:37-7:1). If it began in that or the next year; if Jeroboam was immediately appointed overseer of the forced labor of his tribesmen; if he presently conceived the purpose of insurrection, encouraged by Ahijah; if his purpose became known to Solomon almost as soon as formed if, in short, his flight into Egypt was not later than 26 Solomon; lastly, if Shishak became king in that year, then 5 Rehoboam (= 45 Solomon) will be 20 Shishak. This is a specimen of much that passes for chronology, where the Bible is concerned. Some light is thrown on the dynastic connection of dyn. 12 and 23 by a stele recently discovered by Mariette in Ethiopia, which proves the fact of numerous contemporary reigns throughout Egypt at that time (Brugsch's Zeitschrift, July, 1863; De Rouge, Inscr. du roi Pianchi Meri Arun, 1864). But it helps the chronology little or nothing. In dyns. 20, 21, is another gap, at present not to be bridged over. The seven-named Tanites of 21 (Afr. 130, Eus. 121 years) seem to have been military priest-kings; and that they were partly contemporaneous with 20 and 21 may appear from the absence of apis- stelae, of which 20 has nine, 22 seven. Dyn. 20, for which the list gives no names, consisted of some ten or more kings, all bearing the name Rameses, beginning with R. III, and five of them his sons, probably joint-kings. The apis-inscriptions furnish no connected dates, nor can any inference be drawn f-om their number, since Mariette reports no less than five in the first reign. For dyn. 19 (Sethos), 18 (Amosis), the materials, written and monumental, are most copious; yet even here the means of an exact determination are wanting: indeed, if further proof were needed that the Manethonic lists are not to be implicitly trusted, it is furnished by the monumental evidence here of contemporary reigns which in the lists are successive. It is certain, and will at last be owned by all competent inquirers, that in the part of the succession for which the evidence is clearest and most ample, it is impossible to assign the year at which any king, from Amosis to Tirhaka, began to reign. No ingenuity of calculation and conjecture can make amends for the capital defects — the want of an sera, the inadequacy of the materials. The brilliant light shed on this point or that, does but make the surrounding darkness more palpable. Analysis of the lists may enable the inquirer, at most, to divine the intentions of their authors, which is but a small step gained towards the truth of facts.
But it has been supposed that certain fixed points may be got by means of astronomical conjunctures assigned to certain dates of the vague year on the monuments Thus,
(I) A fragmentary inscription of Takelut II, 6th king of dyn. 22, purports that "on the 25th Mesori of the 15th year of his father" (Sesonk II, according to Lepsius, Age of XXIT Dyn., but Osorkon II, according to Brugsch, Dr. Hincks, and v. Gumpach), "the heavens were invisible, the moon struggling... Hence Mr. Cooper (Athenaeum, 11 May, 1861) gathers, that on the (lay named, in the given year of Sesonk II, th:re was a lunar eclipse, which he considers must be that of 16th March, B.C. 851. Dr. Hincks. who at first also made the eclipse lunar, and its date 4th April, B.C. 945, now contends that it was solar, and the only possible date 1st April, B.C. 927 (Journnl of Sac. Lit. Jan. 1863, p. 333-376; compare lb. Jan. 1861, p. 459 sq.). In making it solar, he follows M. v. (Gumpach (Hist. Antiq. of the People of Egypt, 1863, p. 29), who finds its date 11th March, B.C. 841. Unfortunately the 25th Mesori of that year was 10th March. This is the only monumental notice supposed to refer to an eclipse: not worth much at the best; the record, even if its meaning were certain, is not contemporary.
(II) In several inscriptions certain dates are given to the "manifestation of Sothis," assumed to mean the heliacal rising of Sirius, which, for 2000 years before our aera, for the latitude of Heliopolis, fell on the 20th of July. (Biot, indeed, Recherches des quelques dates absolues, etc., 1853, contends that the calculation must be made for the place at which the inscription is datedeach day of difference, of course, making a difference of four years in the date B.C.) The dates of these "manifestations" are —
(1) "1 Tybi of 11 Takelut II" (Brugsch): the quaternion of years in which 1 Tybi would coincide with 20th July is B.C. 845-42. (2) "15 Thoth in a year, not named, of Rameses VI, at Thebes" (Biot, ut sup.; De Rouge, Memoire sur queques phenomenes celestes, etc., in Rdvue Archeol. 9:686). The date implied is 20th July, B.C. 1265-62 (Biot, 14th July, B.C. 1241-38).
(3) "1 Thoth in some year of Rameses III at Thebes" (Biot and De Rouge, ut sup., from a festival-calendar). The date implied is, of course, B.C. 1325-22 (Biot, 14th July, B.C. 1301-1298).
(4) "28 Epiphi in some year of Thothmes III" (Biot, etc., from a festival- calendar at Elephantine). This implies B.C. 1477-74 (Biot, 12th July, B.C. 1445-42). The antiquity of this calendar is called in question by De Rouge (Athen. Francais, 1855), and by Dr. Brugsch, who says the style indicates the 19th dynasty. Mariette assigns it to Thothmes III (Journal Asiatique, tom. 12, Aug., Sept., 1858). Lepsius, who in 1854 doubted (Monatsbericht of Berlin R. Acad.), now contends for its antiquity (Konigsbuch der Aeg. p. 164), having contrived to make it fit his chronology by assuming an error in the numeral of the month.
(5) "12 Mesori in 33 Thothmes III" (Mr. S. Poole in Trans. R. S. Lit. v. 340). This implies B.C. 1421-18. These dates would make the interval from Rameses III to Takelut II 480 years, greatly in excess even of Manetho's numbers, and more so of Lepsius's arrangement, in which, from the 1st of Rameses III to the 11th of Takelut II are little more than 400 years. Again, the interval of only 152 years, implied in (3) and (4), is unquestionably too little: from the last year of Thothmes III to the first of Rameses III, Lepsius reckons 296, Bunsen 225 years. Lastly, in (4) and (5) the dates imply an interval of 56 years, which is plainly absurd. The fact must be that these inscriptions are not rightly understood. We need to be informed what the Egyptians meant by the "manifestation of this;" what method. they followed in assigning it to a particular day; especially when, as in Biot's three instances, the date occurs in a calendar, and is marked as a "festival," we ask, were these calendars calculated only for four years? when a new one was set up, were the astronomical notices duly corrected, or were they merely copied from the preceding calendar?
(III) "At Semneh in 2 Thothmes III, one of the three feasts of the Commencement of the Seasons is noted on 21 Pharmuthi." Biot (ut sup.) supposes the vernal equinox to be meant, and assigns this to 6th April in the quaternion B.C. 1445-42 (as above), in which 6th April was 21 Pharmuthi. But the vernal equinox is not the commencement of one of the three seasons of the Egyptian year; these start either from the rising of Sirius, 20th July, or, more probably, from the summer solstice: as this, in the 14th century, usually fell on 6th July, the two other tetramenies or seasons would commence cir. 5th Nov. and 6th March. Now 6th March did coincide with 21 Pharmuthi in B.C. 1321-18, at which time it also occupied precisely the place which Mr. Stuart Poole assigns to "the great Rukh" (Leps., "the greater Heat"), just one zodiacal month before the little Rukh, or vernal equinox (Hore AEgypt. p. 15 sq.).
(IV). "On 1 Athur of II Amenophis III the king ordered an immense basin to be dug, and on the 16th s. m. celebrated a great panegyry of the waters" (Dr. Hincks, On the Age of Dynasty X VIII, Trans. R. Irish Acad. vol. 21, pt. 1; comp. Mr. S. Poole, Trans. R. S. Lit. v. 340). If the waters were let in when the Nile had reached its highest point — which, as it is from 90 to 100 days after the summer solstice, in the 14th century would be at 4-14 Oct. — the month-date indicates one of the years B.C. 1369-26. But if (which is certainly more likely) the time chosen was some weeks earlier, the year indicated would be after B.C. 1300. So this and the preceding indication may agree, and so far there is some evidence for the supposition that the sothiac epochal year B.C. 1322 lies in the reign of Thothmes III. (See Dr. Hincks, ut sup., and in the Dublin Univ. Magazine, 1846, p. 187.)
(V.) An astronomical representation n the ceiling of the Hameseum (the work of Rameses II) has been supposed to yield the year B.C. 1322 as its date (bishop Tomlinson, Trans. R. S. Lit. 1839; Sir G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, etc., 2d ser. p. 377); while Mr. Cullimore, from the same, gets B.C. 1138. The truth is, these astronomical configurations, in the present state of our knowledge, are an unsolved riddle. Lepsius's inferences (Chron. der Aeg.) from the same representations in the reigns of Rameses IV and VI are little more than guesses, too vague and precarious to satisfy any man who knows what evidence means.
It appears, then, that the supposed astronomical notes of time hitherto discovered lend but little aid, and bring nothing like certainty into the inquiry. We cannot accept the lists as they stand. How are they to be rectified? Until we have the means of rectifying them, every attempt to put forth a definite scheme of Egyptian chronology is simply futile. The appeal to authority avails nothing here. Lepsius, Bunsen, Brugsch, and many more, all claim to have settled the matter. Their very discrepancies — on the scale of which half a century is a mere trifle — sufficiently prove that to them, as to us, the evidence is defective. The profoundest scholarship, the keenest insight, cannot get more out of it than is in it; "that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered." Yet, from the easy confidence with which people assign dates — their own, or taken on trust — to the Pharaohs after Amosis, and even of much earlier times, it might be thought that from Manetho and the monuments together a connected chronology has been elicited as certain as that of the Roman emperors. In particular, there appears to be a growing belief — even finding its way into popular Bible histories and commentaries — that the Pharaoh of the Exodus can be identified in Manetho, and so the time of that event determined.
Early Christian writers usually assumed, with Josephus, that the Hyksos or "shepherd-kings," whose story he gives from Manetho (Apion, 1:14-16), were the Israelites, and their expulsion by Amosis or Tethmosisone or both, for the accounts are confused — the Egyptian version of the story of the exode. This view has still its advocates (quite recently Mr. Nash, The Pharaoh of the Exodus, 1863), but not among those who have been long conversant with the subject. Indeed, there is a monument of Thothmes III which, if it has been truly interpreted, is conclusive for a much earlier date of the exode than this reign, or perhaps any of the dynasty. A long inscription of his twenty-third year gives a list of the confederates defeated by him at Megiddo, in which De Rouge reads the names Jacob and Joseph, and Mr. Stuart Poole thinks he finds the names of some of the tribes, Reuben, Simeon, Issachar, Gad (Report of R. S. H. in Athenceum, March 21, 1863).
But the story of the Jews put forth by "Manetho" himself (Josephus, Apion, 1:26, 27). with the confession, however, that he obtained it not from ancient records, but from popular tradition (ἀδεσπότως μυθογούμενα ), represents them as a race of lepers, who, oppressed by the reigning king, called to their aid the Hyksos from Palestine (where these, on their expulsion some centuries earlier by Tethmosis, had settled and built Jerusalem), and with these allies overran all Egypt for thirteen years, at the end of which Amenophis, who had taken refuge in Ethiopia, returning thence with his son Sethos, drove out the invaders. These, headed by Osarsiph (= Moses). a priest of Heliopolis, retired into Palestine, and there became the nation of the Jews. Josephus protests against this story as a mere figment, prompted by Egyptian malignity, and labors to prove it inconsistent with Manetho's own list: unsuccessfully enough, for, in fact, Amenophis (Ammenephthes, Afr.) does appear there just where the story places him, i.e. next to Sethos and Rameses II, with a reign of nineteen years and six months. The monuments give the name Menephtha, and his son and successor Seti Sethos II, just as in the story. The names are not fictitious, whatever may be the value of the story as regards the Israelites. This Menephtha, then, son and successor of Rameses the Great, is the Pharaoh of the Exode, according to Lepsius and Bunsen, and of late accepted as such by many writers, learned and unlearned.
Those to whom the name of Manetho is not voucher enough, will demand independent evidence. In fact, it is alleged that the monuments of the time of Menephtha attest a period of depression: no great works of that king are known to exist; of his reign of twenty years the highest date hitherto found is the fourth; and two rival kings, Amenmessu (the Ammenemses of the lists) and Siphtha, are reigning at the same to e with him, i.e. holding precarious sovereignty in Thebes during the time of alien occupation and the flight of Menephtha (Bunsen, Aeg. Stelle, 4:208 sq.). That these two kings reigned in the time of Menephtha, and not with or after Sethos II, is assumed without proof; that the reign of Rameses II was followed by a period of decadence proves nothing as to its cause; and the entire silence of the monuments as to an event so memorable as the final expulsion of the hated "Shepherds" (Shas-u), who so often figure in the monumental recitals of earlier kings (e.g. of Sethos I, who calls them shas-u p'kanana- kar, "shepherds of the land of Canaan"), tells as strongly against the story as any merely negative evidence can do it. More important is the argument derived from the mention (Exodus 1:11) of the "treasure-cities Pithom and Raamses," built for the persecuting Pharaoh by the forced labor of the Hebrews; the Pharaoh (says Rosellini, Mon. Storici, 1:294 sq.) was Rameses [II, son of Sethos I], who gave one of the cities his own name. (Comp. Ewald, Gesch. 2:66, note.) Lepsius, art. Aegypten, in Herzog's Encyklop., calls this "the weightiest confirmation," and in Chronol. der A eg. 1:337-357, enlarges upon this argument. Raamses, he says, was at the eastern, as Pithom (Πάτουμος) was certainly at the western end of the great canal known to be the work of Rameses II, and the site of the city bearing his name is further identified with him by the granite group disinterred at Abu Keisheib, in which the deified king sits enthroned between the gods Ra and Tum. Certainly a king Rameses appears first in the 19th dynasty, but the place may have taken its name, if from a man at all, from some earlier person. That the exode cannot be placed before the 19th dynasty, Bunsen (ut sup. p. 234) holds to be conclusively shown by the fact that on the monuments which record the conquests of Rameses the Great in Palestine, no mention occurs of the Israelites among the Kheti (Hittites) and other conquered nations; while, on the other hand, there is no hint in the book of Judges of an Egyptian invasion and servitude. On similar negative grounds he urges that the settlement in Palestine must have been subsequent to the conquests made in that country by Rameses III, first king of the 20th dynasty. To this it may be replied,
(1.) that we have no clear information as to the route of the invaders; if it was either along the coast or to the east of Jordan, the tribes. perhaps, were not directly affected by it.
(2.) The expeditions so pompously described on the monuments (as in the Statistical Table of Karnak, Thothmes III, and similar recitals of the conquests of Ramses II and III; see Mr. Birch, in Tratns. Of R. S. Lit. 2:317 sq.; and 7:50 sq.) certainly did not result in the permanent subjugation of the countries invaded. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that the conquests repeat themselves under different kings, and even in the same reign. Year by year the king with his army sets out on a gigantic razzia, to return with spoil of cattle, slaves, and produce of the countries overrun.
(3.) If the lands of the tribes were thus overrun, it may have been during one of the periods of servitude, in which case they suffered only as the vassals of their Canaanitish, Moabitish, or other oppressors. That this may possibly have been the case is sufficient to deprive of all its force the argument derived from the silence of the monuments, and of the book of Judges.
There remains to be noticed one piece of documentary evidence which has quite recently been brought to light. Dr. Brugsch (Zeitschrift, Sept. 1863) reports that "one set of the Leyden hieratic papyri, now publishing by Dr. Leemans, consists of letters and official reports. In several of these, examined by M. Chabas, repeated mention is made of certain foreigners, called Apuruju, i.e. Hebrews, compelled by Rameses II to drag stones for the building of the city Raamses." In his Melanges Egyptol. 1862, 4th dissertation, M. Chabas calls them Aperiu. It is certainly striking, as Mr. Birch remarks (in Revue Archeol. April, 1862, p. 291), that "in the three documents which speak of these foreigners, they appear engaged on works of the same kind as those to which the Hebrews were subjected by the Egyptians; it is also important that the papyri were found at Memphis. But the more inviting the proposed identification, the more cautious one needs to be." As the sounds R and L are not discriminated in Egyptian writing, it may be that the name is Apeliu; and as B and P have distinct characters, one does not see why the b of עברים should be rendered byp. (The case of Epep = אָבַיב is different; see below.) It seems, also, that the same name occurs as late as the time of Rameses IV, where it can hardly mean the Hebrews. Besides, the monument of Thothmes III above mentioned leads to quite a different conclusion. Where the evidence is so conflicting, the inquirer who seeks only truth, not the confirmation of a foregone conclusion, has no choice but to reserve his judgment.
The time of this Menephtha, so unhesitatingly proclaimed to be the Pharaoh of the Exode, is placed beyond all controversy — so Bunsen and Lepsius maintain — by an invaluable piece of evidence furnished by Theon, the Alexandrine mathematician of the 4th century. In a passage of his unpublished commentary on the Almagest, first given to the world by Larcher (Hierodot. 2:553), and since by Biot (Sur la periode Sothiaque, p. 18, 129 sq.), it is stated that the Sothiac Cycle of Astronomy which, as it ended in A.D. 139, commenced in B.C. 1322 (20th July), was known in his time as "the sera of Menophres" (ἔτη ἀπὸ Μενόφρεως .). There is no king of this name: read Μενόφθεως — so we have Menephtha of the 19th dynasty, the king of the leper-story, the Exodus Pharaoh. Lepsius, making the reign begin in B.C. 1328, places the exode at B.C. 1314-15 Menephtha, in accordance with the alleged thirteen years' retirement into Ethiopia and the return in the fourteenth or fifteenth year. Certainly the precise name Menophres does not appear in the lists; but in later times that name may have been used for the purpose of distinguishing some particular king from others of the same name; and there is reason to think this was actually the case.
(1.) The king Tethmosis or Thothmes III repeatedly appears on monuments with the addition to his royal legend Mai-Re, "Beloved of Re," with the article Mai-ph-Re, and with the preposition Mai-n'-ph-Re, which last is precisely Theon's Μενόφρης .
(2.) The acknowledged confusion of names in that part of the 18th dynasty where this king occurs — Misaphris, Misphres, Memphres (Armen.), then Misphragmuthosis (the ΑΛΙΣΦΡ . of Josephus is evidently an error of copying for ΜΙΣΦΡ : in the list ibid. the 5th and 6th names are Μήφρης, Μεφραμούθωσις ) — is perhaps best explained by supposing that the king was entered in the lists by his distinctive as well as his family name.
(3.) In Pliny's notice of the obelisks (H. N. 36:64), that known to be of Thothmes III is said to belong to Mesphres, which, says Bunsen (4:130), "would be the popular distinctive name given to this Thothmes." Just so! And in the statement of Theon the king is presented by "his popular distinctive name," Menophres.
(4.) "There was (says Dr. Hincks, Trans. R. Irish. Acad. vol. 21, pt. 1) a tradition, if it does not deserve another name, current among the Egyptians in the time of Antoninus, to the effect that the Sothiac Cycle, then ending (A.D. 139), commenced in the reign of Thothmes III. The existence of such a tradition is evidenced by a number of scarabaei, evidently of Roman workmanship, referring to the Sothiac Cycle, and in which the royal legend of this monarch appears." These are sufficient grounds for believing that the Menophres of Theon is no other than Thothmes III, and that his reign was supposed (rightly or wrongly) to include the year B.C. 1322. It may be, also, that when Herodotus was told that Moeris lived about 900 years before the time of his visit to Egypt — a date not very wide of B.C. 1322 Thothmes was named to him by his popular distinctive appellation, Mai- Re. only confused with Mares = Ameneinha III, the Pharaoh of the Labyrinth and its Lake. (Other explanations of the name Menophres may be seen in Bockh, Manetho, p. 691 sq.; Biot, Recherches, interprets it as the name of Memphis, Mennofru, importing that the normal date, 20th July, for the heliacal rising of Sirius and epoch of the cycle, is true only for the latitude of Memphis.) What has been said is sufficient to show that there is no necessity for altering a letter of the name; consequently that the time of Menephtha is not defined by the authority of Theon. De Rouge emphatically rejects Lepsius's notion of Menophres (Revue Archeol. 9:664; Journal Asiatique, Aug. 1858, p. 268). He thinks the year 1322 lies in the reign of Rameses III.
In support of his date, B.C. 1314, for the exode, Lepsius (Chronol. p. 359 sq.) has an argument deduced from the modern Jewish chronology (Hillel's Mundane Era), in which he says that it is the precise year assigned to that event. Hillel, he is confident, was led to it by Manetho's Egyptian tradition, which gave him the name of the Pharaoh, and this being obtained would easily give him the time. Bunsen, though finally settling on the year B.C. 1320, had previously declared with Lepsius for B.C. 1314," decided by the circumstance that a tradition not compatible with the usual chronological systems of the Jews, but which cannot be accidental, places the exode at that year. This fact seems, from Lepsius's account of the Seder Olam Rabba, to admit of no doubt" (4:336). It admits of more than doubt — of absolute refutation. Hillel's whole procedure, from first to last, was simply Biblical. Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks gave him B.C. 422 for 11 Zedekiah; thence up to 6 Hezekiah he found the sum — 133 years; for the kings of Israel the actual numbers were 243, of which he made 240 years; then 37 years of Solomon; 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1, added to these, made the total 890 years, whence the date for the exode was B.C. 422 +890 = 1312; for that this, not 1314, was Hillel's year of the exode is demonstrable (Review of Lepsius om Bible Chronology, by H. Browne, in Arnold's Theolog. Critic, 1:52-59, 1851). Yet, though the process by which Hillel got his date is so transparent, it is spoken of as "an important tradition" by those who take ready-made conclusions at second-hand, without inquiry into their grounds. So Duncker, Gesch. des Alterthums, 1:196, note; Dr. Williams, in Essays and Reviews, p. 58.
It is alleged that an indication confirmatory of the low date assigned by these writers is furnished by the month-date of the Exodus passover, 14 Abib, a name which occurs only in connection with that history (Exodus 12:2; Exodus 13, 4; Exodus 23:15; Exodus 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:1). This argument proceeds on the presumption that Abib is the Hebraized form of the Egyptian Epep, Coptic Epiphi, of which the Arabic rendering is also Abib. The Egyptian month takes its name from the goddess Apap: the change of p to b is intended to make the word pure Hebrew, denoting the time of year, חֹדֶשׁ הָאָבַיב = the month when the barley is in the ear (abib) (Exodus 9:31). "At the time assigned, the vague month Epep would pretty nearly coincide with the Hebrew Abib" (Lepsius, Chron. p. 141). Hardly so, for in the year named 1 Epiphi would fall on 14th May, and it is scarcely conceivable that the passover month (whose full moon is that next to the vernal equinox, which in that century fell cir. 5th April) should begin so late as the middle of May. Not till a hundred years later would the vague month Epiphi and the Hebrew passover month coincide. The argument proves too much, unless we are prepared to lower the exode to cir. B.C. 1200. (To some it may imply that the narrative of the exode was written about that time — Mr. Sharpe, History of Egypt, 1:63 — but one can hardly suppose that the Hebrews retained the vague Egyptian months as well as their names so long after their settlement in Palestine.) If in any year from B.C. 1300 upwards, the full moon next the vernal equinox fell in the month Epiphi, it would follow that the Coptic month-names (which, it is well understood, never occur on the monuments) belonged then to a different form of the year.
For the first seventeen dynasties, numbering in Afr. more than 4000 years, a bare statement of their contents and of the monumental evidence would greatly exceed the limits of this article. Perhaps the time is not far distant when the attempt to educe a connected chronology from Manetho (whether for or against the Mosaic numbers) will be abandoned by all sensible men. Full and unprejudiced inquiry can have but one result: for times anterior to B.C. 700 Eg.(?) has no fixed chronology. De Rouge has in two words set the whole matter in its true light: "Les textes de Manethlon sont profondement alteres, et la serie des dates monumentales est tres incomiplete." The incompleteness of the record is palpable: the alteration of the texts is the result of their having passed through numerous hands, and been refashioned according to various intentions, by which the whole inquiry has been complicated to a degree that baffles all attempts to determine what was their original form. These intentions were mainly cyclical. A very brief statement of facts, not resting on critical conjecture and questionable combinations, as in the elaborate treatise of Bickh, but lying on the surface, will place the character and relations of the several texts in a clear light. Menes stands,
1. In Africanus (according to Syncellus's running summation of the numbers in book 1) just three complete sothiac cycles, 3 x 1460 Julian years, before B.C. 1322;
2. In Eusebius, according to the epigraphal sum of book 1, three cycles before the epoch of Sethosis, dyn. 19;
3. In Eusebius, according to the actual sum of book 1, three cycles before the year B.C. 978-77, meant as the goal of the Diospolitan monarchy or epoch of Shishak;
4. In Syncellus's period of 3555 years (accepted by Lepsius and Bunsen as the true Manethonic measure from Menes to Nectanebus), two cycles before the same goal; 5. In the Old Chronicle, according to its scthiac form, one cycle before the same goal;
6. In the Sothis, one cycle before B.C. 1322; but here it is contrived that Osiropis, or the commencement of Diospolitan monarchy, stands one cycle before Susak-eim = Shishlak. ‘ The inquirer may easily verify these facts for himself. In the series of papers, "Cycles of Egyptian Chronology," published in Arnold's Theol. Critic, 1851-52, he will find them fully stated, with many other like facts, which prove that these chronographies, one and all, are intensely cyclical. But if Manetho, as we have him, is cyclical, then, Lepsius himself confesses (K. B. p. 6, 7), "the historical character of his work falls to the ground; for the very fact of Menes heading a sothiac circle could only be the result of after-contrivance;" and Bunsen (Aeg. James 4:13) sees that in place of "the genuine historical work of Manetho, the venerable priest and conscientious inquirer," we get "a made-up thing, systematically carved to shape, and therefore really fabulous." Whether or not the original "Manetho," whatever its authorship and date, was contrived upon a cyclical plan, we have but the lists as they come to us finally from the hands of Annianus and Pandorus through Syncellus. It may be observed, however, that the cardinal dates given by Dicesarchus, which we have from an independent source, imply that the cyclical treatment of Egyptian chronology is at least as old as the alleged time of Manetho ("Cycles," etc., u. s., sec, 4, 16, 34, 36).
For literature additional to the above, (See EGYPT); also Fruin, Dissertatio Historica de Manethone (Leyd. 1847, 8vo); Bö ckh, Manetho (Berlin, 1845, 8vo); A. H. von Sagaus, Mtanethos, die Origines unserer Gesch. (Gotha, 1865, 8vo); Ain. Presb. Rev. Jan. 1866, p. 180.
These files are public domain.
McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Manetho'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/m/manetho.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
