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 computer. My search engines were the large Collins English Dictionary and the full set of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the micro and the macro that you cross-referenced between, that were then probably seven years old. Not that I looked up Manetho because I, with the confidence of a 12 year old nerd, had decided that 1. Manetho was Greek; and 2. a Greek writing in the third century BCE could not have truly known what had happened back when Tutankhamen was buried let alone when the pyramids were built. I can still understand my logic, but my take was based on a false presumption I did not challenge with further information: (Manetho’s ethnicity), and a belief that he couldn't have known hieroglyphics. Yes, I was young, stupid, and arrogant; my interest at that time was far more archaeological than historical; and I did not know the date of the Rosetta Stone because all the media I had interacted with talked about how it resulted in the ability to finally translate hieroglyphics, not about the stone itself. 

Have you ever considered just how pervasive, and to be brutally honest, colonial in mind-set, the manner in how the topic of Jean-Francois Champollion's translation of hieroglyphics in 1822 is? Discussions of how and when the knowledge of hieroglyphics was lost don't get the same attention or romanticisation. The entire scramble for the western powers to understand hieroglyphics has a docudrama; to my utter dismay, I witnessed it being shown to a third year university class in lieu of a discussion on the historiography surrounding hieroglyphics because the lecturer did not specialise in the area and either could not or chose not to find the information to provide a proper lecture. This was not by student experience; with my undergraduate courses leaving thorough historiography to a dedicated honours course which focused on Greek and Latin writings. The knowledge faded with the closure of the Egyptian temples when Christianity became the official and only religion of the Roman empire; the last known piece of hieroglyphic script is a graffito from Philae in 394 CE. I guess the idea that the knowledge was lost owing to the implementation of western religious monotheism and laws (don't come at me that Constantinople was north of Egypt; the Byzantines identified as Romans, not even Greeks), just doesn't make predominantly western audiences feel as good about themselves. 

So the material I was originally exposed to as a kid relating to the homogenous mass called "Ancient Egypt" was predominately from a western perspective. The move to actively train and involve Egyptian people in Egyptology was starting, but the documentaries didn't address that, and the concept of decolonisation was far from mainstream. Hell, almost three years prior I was made dance with my school in a dodgy celebration of what was called "the bicentennial", 200 years since the First Fleet had arrived in Australia. I was living in a small community in which obviously indigenous people were not welcome, and so the idea of what this meant for the people who truly discovered Australia more than 60,000 years prior did not enter my 9 year old head. Yet despite my constant exposure to western culture and history, my logical mind decided that a Greek could not tell Egyptian history! He couldn't know what he was talking about, and so I was not going to read about him! I can't recall whether I had previously read what a hash Herodotus was thought to have made of Egyptian history and culture before this, but it might explain a lot if I had.

So imagine my surprise when decades (yes, decades) later, I find out Manetho wasn't Greek! I would have climbed into a time machine if one had existed and gone and told my 12 year old self to pull my head out of my posterior. Why was it so long? I am not Egyptologist. My area of speciality is Roman history. Manetho is not someone who pops up in my day-to-day research.

Manetho the Egyptian

Yes, the historian I disregarded because I thought he was Greek was an Egyptian priest who wrote numerous works about his homeland's history and culture in the Greek language during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigning 284 to 246 BCE) to make it more accessible to the Greek-speaking rulers and the migrants who accompanied them. 

Manetho not only understood hieroglyphics and spoke the Egyptian language, he used the materials available to him written in this script to write his works. According to Josephus' Against Apion which provides fragment 54:

This writer [Manetho], who had undertaken to translate the history of Egypt from the sacred books, ... so long as Manetho followed the ancient records, he did not stray far from the truth; 

Manetho used works written in hieroglyphics to assist in the composition of his works. Eight have been attributed to him, but there are debates about whether all of these were actually written by him (The Book of Sothis is now thought not to be his), and if some of the following titles were actually amalgamated together:

1. Αἰγυπτιακά or The History of Egypt, 
2. The Book of Sothis, 
3. The Sacred Book, 
4. An Epitome of Physical Doctrines, 
5. On Festivals, 
6. On Ancient Ritual and Religion, 
7. On the Making of Kyphi [a kind of incense], 
8. Criticisms of Herodotus. 

And his historical work, The History of Egypt, remains extremely influential to this day! Why? Because it is from this work that we have the basic architecture of the history we use to describe Egyptian history in antiquity. Every time you hear or read "the Fourth Dynasty king Kufhu built the Great Pyramid", you are engaging with Manetho's History, because he recorded that basic outline of the dynasties still used in describing Egyptian history. An Egyptian created the dynastic system used in Egyptian history.

The Problem of Manetho

While Manetho was an Egyptian writing in Greek, unfortunately we don't actually have Manetho's text. No manuscript of any of his works has survived to today, only 88 identified fragments through other authors. In fact, it appears that Manetho's The History of Egypt was lost well before 800, as one of the works from which we obtain many of the fragments is Extracts of Chronographies by George Syncellus, a Byzantine monk who died sometime after 810 CE. In fragment 6, Syncellus wrote:

Since a knowledge of the periods of the Egyptian dynasties from Mestraïm down to Nectanabo is on many occasions needful to those who occupy themselves with chronological investigations, and since the dynasties taken from Manetho’s History are set forth by ecclesiastical historians with discrepancies in respect both to the names of the kings and the length of their reigns, and also as to who was king when Joseph was governor of Egypt, and in whose reign thereafter Moses,—he who saw God,—led the Hebrews in their exodus from Egypt, I have judged it necessary to select two of the most famous recensions and to set them side by side—I mean the accounts of Africanus and of the later Eusebius, the so-called “son” of Pamphilus,—so that with proper application one may apprehend the opinion which approaches nearest to Scriptural truth. 

I love how this outlines Syncellus' approach and how the fragments of Manetho's work were contradictory and problematic, and if it were not for his attempt to analyse this problem we would not have much of his work at all. In fact, 59 of 69 fragments of Manetho come of Syncellus thanks to this little project of his. But this quote also highlights another problem that plagues the scholarship on Manetho - the ancient authors who cite him are usually Christian or Jewish and are only interested in Egypt for what it can tell them about these two religions. 63 of the 69 fragments come from Christian chronographers whose intent is to show how Egyptian history lines up with biblical history, hence Syncellus' goal is to find the "nearest to Scriptural truth." It also likely explains why Manetho's dynastic framework was adopted early: it was fed to early Egyptologists via a Christian source when Egyptology was really just seen as an offshoot of biblical archaeology.

So Manetho is a fragmentary source, and fragmentary sources are exceptionally problematic. When you use them for historical study you must take into consideration multiple issues in addition to the typical historiographical considerations such as source biases:

• Is what has been quoted or cited been manipulated, creatively edited, or added to?
• Are the fragments representative of the whole work?
• Why was this source chosen?
• Plus all the typical historiographical considerations such as source biases, and others I can't remember from my honours historiography course.

Now, these issues are even greater for Manetho. This is a stemma of a minimised path of transmission for the fragments of Manetho. Eusebius wrote his Chronicon as an extension of Julius Africanus' Chronographiai, and he states in places that he disagrees with Africanus in relation to calculations relating to biblical history. My inclusion of the Eusebius line following Julius Africanus might be incorrect if at no point Eusebius used any of Africanus work related to Manetho.

Looking at the Armenian translation of Eusebius, his citation of Manetho appears to be one long quote, but Syncellus chops up this quote to compare it with Africanus. We have no idea how Manetho looked in Africanus' work, and so we cannot be sure whether any of the differences Syncellus was identifying was caused by Eusebius misrepresenting what he read of Manetho in Africanus. My gut, a distinguished authority on this topic (I write sarcastically), says he did not. Given that the Armenian translation shows a full list of Manetho's "Kings' List" with additional notes, I can't help but think that Africanus might have included something similar in his work. I could be completely wrong, as this is not my area of speciality. If you would like to know how the Manetho's fragments compare to one another for Dynasties 18 and 19, you can have a look at the handout I created for Curiosities and Conversations in which I place them side-by-side along with Jerome which you can access here through this link. The texts are copied and pasted from the Loeb edition and the online translation of Jerome's Chronicon.

Now my investigation of Manetho was the result of a Curiosities and Conversations event I led last Thursday on the Colossus of Memnon (click this link for the blog I wrote on this statue), for which Manetho is a source. This was the bottom part of a colossal statue of Amenhotep III which was partially destroyed by an earthquake in the 1st century BCE resulting in its bottom half emitting a sound around dawn and the creation of the moniker "Colossus of Memnon". Both the fragments of Manetho in Africanus and Eusebius mention this new name which was given following the earthquake which occurred two centuries after Manetho wrote The History of Egypt. This is just one proof that this text was added to and changed before either chronographer got his hands on it and Syncellus mentions multiple "recensions" (i.e. different versions which showed editorial changes over time) of Manetho's text. If we knew what those changes were, my stemma above would have many more branches added to it, including branches between Manetho and Eusebius and Julius Africanus. 

These changes might account for some of what appear today to be obvious errors. It is widely understood today on the basis of hierographic and archaeological study that the Ramesside pharaohs belong to the 19th Dynasty, but the fragments place the first Ramses in the 18th Dynasty. Perhaps the errors we now can identify within Manetho are the result of such changes made by those who copied and used his text over time. So my point here is that Manetho is difficult to understand historiographically, and that some errors do appear in his work.

Manetho's Inadvertent Role in the Decolonisation of Egyptology

Regardless of what errors might have been made by Manetho himself, or errors imposed on his text afterwards, his work on Egyptian history really is the foundation on which all Egyptological study since even before the discipline was formally recognised. And that discipline is an absolute result of colonisation. Egyptian Egyptologist Monica Hanna has done a lot of public work on the need to decolonise the discipline, and the article Decolonising Egyptology and historical (mis)translations: In conversation with Egyptologist Monica Hanna provides an excellent and accessible summation of the issue that I thoroughly recommend. She says two of the biggest issues plaguing Egyptology is the disconnection of ancient Egypt from Egypt and its inhabitants today, and associated with that the failure of scholars to learn modern Arabic as spoken in Egypt today. 

I am not an Egyptologist, as I stated earlier, and I have no Arabic skills, but I can see her frustration relating to the lack of Arabic: how can a project leader direct workers on an archaeological site when they cannot even speak directly to them. This example might be prompted by my enjoyment of the Elisabeth Peters Amelia Peabody series of historical novels (I thoroughly recommend btw). As for the disconnection of between the Egypt of today and the Egypt of antiquity? I invite people to look at the Graeco-Roman mummy portraits. I invite people to recognise that the script of hieroglyphics was understood until outside influences brought about its loss. I invite people to view Manetho as an Egyptian; not an "ancient Egyptian". An Egyptian!

Addressing many of these issues will have a bigger societal impact than people realise. I wasn't the only Egypt obsessed 12 year old. There are even memes about this:

If we can get this idea implemented in the sorts of books children are given as presents, borrow from libraries, and see in schools, people would come to the discipline as students with different, better expectations.

The fact that the framework which underpins Egyptology and provides its most basic timeline as used by every Egyptologist throughout the history of the discipline was recorded in the Egyptian language and then translated by an Egyptian man, to make it accessible to foreigners holding hegemony over the Egyptian people, makes me so happy that the discipline has deeply Egyptian roots, but also sad regarding how the interest in Egyptian history was becoming the target of western gate-keeping as early as the 3rd century BCE.

And I am also glad I am no longer a stupid, arrogant, know-it-all 12 year old. One would hope so after the subsequent years, but I look around the world and sometimes wonder.

Want to read Manetho for yourself?

A freely available copy of the fragments of Manetho in translation can be found through this link on Archive.org.

You can also read the translation of the Armenian translation of Eusebius' Chronicon through this link to ToposText. If you want to look at how Manetho appears in this text use your search function - that's what I did.