Manetho: Just a 3rd Century BCE Egyptian Historian Doing His Part to Decolonise Egyptology
When I had just turned 12 (my birthday’s in December, so yes - just), my parents bought me this book for Christmas through the old Double-Day Books mail order catalogue: Yes, I was that kind of child. And if it weren’t for the arthritis in my hands, I would say buying me books for Christmas is a solid choice, but alas… And yes, of course I still have the book! Sure it was published in 1984, but its maps are fantastic and I have used them numerous times. Anyway, this book is where I first came across the name Manetho. On page 36 to be precise: With my nascent, self-taught historiographical skills based on what logic a 12 year old can have, far too little information, and far too much arrogance, I decided that "a Greek writing the the third century BC couldn’t have known anything about what had happened all those centuries, if not millennia before his time" and refused to read anything more about him. In my defence, Google didn’t exist, and even if it did, we didn’t have a comp...
