Manethos

, an ancient Egyptian historian, who pretends to take all his accounts from the sacred inscriptions on the pillars of Hermes Trismegistus, to whom the | Egyptians ascribed the first invention of their learning, and all excellent arts, and from whom they derived their history. Manethos, as Eusebius tells us, translated the whole Egyptian history into Greek, beginning from their gods, and continuing his history down to near the time of Darius Codomannus, whom Alexander conquered; for in Eusebius’s <k Chronica,“mention is made of Manethos’s history, ending in the sixteenth year of Artaxerxes Ochus, which, says Vossius, was in the second year of the third olympiad. Manethos, called from his country Sebennyta, was highpriest of Heliopolis in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, at whose request he wrote his history, and digested it into three tomes; the first containing the eleven dynasties of the gods and heroes, the second eight dynasties, the third twelve, and altogether, according to his fabulous computation, the sum oft 53, 53 5 years. These dynasties are yet preserved, being first epitomized by Julius Africanus, from him transcribed by Eusebius, and inserted in his” Chronica;“from Eusebius by Georgius Syncellus, out of whom they are produced by Joseph Scaliger, and may be seen both in his Eusebius and his” Canones Isagogici.“Manethos, as appears by Eusebius, vouches this as the principal testimony of the credibility of his history, that he took his relations” from some pillars in the land of Seriad, on which they were inscribed in the sacred dialect by the first Mercury Thoth, and after the flood were translated out of the sacred dialect into the Greek tongue in hieroglyphic characters, and are laid up in books among the reveries of the Egyptian temples by Agathodsemon, the second Mercury, the father of Tat.“” Certainly,“says bishop Stillingfleet, in his” Origines Sacroe,“” this fabulous author could not in fewer words have more manifested his own impostures, or blasted his own credit, than he hath done in these." ¹