Manetho

“ Manetho stood on the threshold between the sphinxes, wearing such a smile as God has never doomed us to see on a child's face!
To few men comes the opportunity of facing in this life those whom they believed they had put out of it. One might expect the palpable assurance of the victim's survival would electrify the fancied murderer. But to Balder's mind, his personal responsibility could not be thus lightened; and any emotion of selfish relief was therefore denied him. On the other hand, such inferences as he had been able to draw from things seen and heard were not to Manetho's advantage. ”

“ Dreaming and waking are alike real to her: she knows not to divide truth from falsehood.
"Whom should she thank for health, for life and birth? She is born of the fire that burns in her own bosom. To her is nothing lawful nor unlawful. No tie binds her soul to salvation. A fair ship is she, but rudderless, and the wind blows on the rocks. Let God save her if He will—and can!"
The inspiration of the Arab improvisatore would have seemed tame beside Manetho's nervous exaltation. Save for the tingling satire of the violin-strings, his rhapsody might easily have lapsed to madness. ”

“ People are all the time making such absurd mistakes. Manetho is a man who would be unalterable either in gratitude or enmity, although his external manner is so mild. And as to his taking orders, why, as long as he wore an Egyptian robe, and said his prayers in an Egyptian temple, it would be all the same to Glyphic what religion the man professed! ”

“ The grace and aerial beauty of sunshine lightened through the rain,—the pleasing loveliness of essential life was projected on the gloom of evil imaginations. For Manetho's actual deeds were apt to be prompted by far gentler influences than governed his theories. The man was better than his mind: and goodness, perhaps, bears an absolute blessing; insomuch that the sinner, doing ignorant good, yet feels the benefit thereof; just as the rain, however dismal, cannot prevent the sun from making rainbows out of it. ”

“ But that. those Egyptians who were thus diseased in their bodies were not mingled with us afterward, and that Moses who brought the people out was not one of that company, but lived many generations earlier, I shall endeavor to demonstrate from Manetho's own accounts themselves. Now, for the first occasion of this fiction, Manetho supposes what is no better than a ridiculous thing; for he says that" king Amenophis desired to see the gods." What gods, I pray, did he desire to see? ”

“ But for those that invent lies, what they write will easily give us very different accounts, while they forge what they please out of their own heads. Now Manetho says that the king's desire of seeing the gods was the origin of the ejection of the polluted people; but Cheremon feigns that it was a dream of his own, sent upon him by Isis, that was the occasion of it. Manetho says that the person who foreshowed this purgation of Egypt to the king was Amenophis ”

“ It is difficult to trace the information which Herodotus received from the Egyptian priests to any intelligible scheme of chronology; but this may be done in regard to Manetho with much plausibility, as the recent valuable and elaborate analysis of Boeckh (Manetho und die Hundssternperiode, Berlin, 1845) has shown. He gives good reason for believing that the dynasties of Manetho have been so arranged as to fill up an exact number of Sothiac cycles (or periods of the star Sirius, each comprehending 1460 Julian years = 1461 Egyptian years) . ”

“ In earlier times we can compare Manetho with the fragments of the Turin papyrus, written in the eighteenth dynasty; and here, in one of the most disputable points—the kings of the thirteenth dynasty—the average of eleven reigns legible in the papyrus is 61⁄2 years, and Manetho states sixty kings in 453 years, or 71⁄2 years’ average. The general character of a great number of short reigns in this age is quite supported. ”

“ The epitomists of Manetho are hopelessly at variance on the subject, and the monuments are silent, or nearly so. Moderns vary in the time, which they assign to the period between two centuries and five. On the whole, criticism seems to incline towards the shorter term, though why Manetho, or his epitomists, should have enlarged it, remains an insoluble problem. There is but one dynasty of "Shepherd Kings" that has any distinct historical substance, or to which we can assign any names. This is a dynasty of six kings only, whose united reigns are not likely to have exceeded two centuries. ”

“ But a complete counterpart of the tablet of Memphis has been recently found at Abydos by M. Mariette, fully confirming the chronology of Manetho, and bearing out the views of Bunsen and Lepsius. The Moniteur publishes a letter from M. Mariette, containing the following statement:—"At Abydos I have discovered a magnificent counterpart of the tablet of Sakharah. Seti I., accompanied by his son, subsequently Remeses II. (Sesostris) , presents an offering to seventy-six Kings drawn up in line before him. Menes (the first King of the first dynasty on Manetho's list) is at their head. ”

“ It is only by making due allowance for these uncertainties that any historical value can be attached to these earlier dynasties of Manetho. Yet Bunsen has built on an uncertain interpretation of this writer, as handed down in a very fragmentary and evidently garbled condition, and on the equally or more uncertain chronology of Eratosthenes, a system differing from all previous belief on the subject, from the Hebrew history, and from all former interpretations of the monuments and Manetho. ”

“ And even if Manetho himself intended his dynasties to follow one another in direct order, the question still remains whether his authorities did so too. Gods, spirits, demigods, and Manes, or the souls of men were, according to Manetho, the first rulers of Egypt. They began with Ptha or Hephaestus and closed with Horus. Then follow thirty dynasties of mortal kings, 300 in number, according to the lowest, and 500, according to the highest computation. ”

“ Before the adventure with the boy, I remember, he had formed the idea of building a miniature Egypt in New Jersey; and Manetho served well as the living human element in it. 'Though I take him to America,' you know he said, 'he shall live in Egypt still. He shall have a temple, and an altar, and Isis and Osiris, and papyri and palm-trees and a crocodile ”

“ It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now the Egyptians acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a divine person; nay, they would willingly lay claim to him themselves, though after a most abusive and incredible manner, and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and one of the priests of that place, and was ejected out of it among the rest, on account of his leprosy; although it had been demonstrated out of their records that he lived five hundred and eighteen years earlier, and then brought our forefathers out of Egypt into the country that is now inhabited by us. ”

“ In this case the Hyksos conquest of Egypt would have taken place about 2550 b.c.
Unfortunately the original work of Manetho is lost, and we are dependent for our knowledge of it on later writers, most of whom sought to harmonise its chronology with that of the Septuagint. When we further remember the corruptions undergone by numerical figures in passing through the hands of the copyists, it is clear that we cannot place implicit confidence in the Manethonian numbers as they have come down to us. ”

“ As knowledge dwindled, legend grew, and wild were the tales told of the invisible Doctor and his foster-son. In his youth, the former had been suspected of simple witchcraft, but he was not let off so easily now. Manetho was first dubbed a genie whom the Doctor had brought out of Egypt. Afterwards it was hinted that these two worthies were in fact one and the same demon, who by some infernal jugglery was able to appear twain during the daytime, but resumed his proper shape at night, and cut up all manner of unholy capers. ”

“ It is difficult to judge the value of the original from these extracts: it is clear from the different versions of the lists that they have been corrupted. Manetho’s work was probably based on native lists like that of the Turin Papyrus of Kings: even his division into dynasties may have been derived from such. ”

“ But if having credited Manetho with the record of such a name and date, one tortures a hieroglyph into a faintly similar name, and concludes at once that the same name must be the same person, and that therefore this is the oldest record in the world, the confirmation is not so striking. That it is so in this instance we do not affirm; but we should need the assertion of a man of more intellectual sobriety than Mr. Laing to make it worth the trouble of investigating. ”

“ The fragments of narrative give a very confused idea of Egyptian history in the time of the Hyksos and the XVIIIth Dynasty. The royal lists, too, are crowded with errors of detail, both in the names and order of the kings, and in the lengths attributed to the reigns. The brief notes attached to some of the names may be derived from Manetho’s narrative, but they are chiefly references to kings mentioned by Herodotus or to marvels that were supposed to have occurred: they certainly possess little historical value. ”

“ MANETENERIS, a tribe of South American Indians of the upper Purus river, and between it and the Jurua, north-western Brazil. They manufacture cotton cloth, and have iron axes and fish hooks. The men wear long ponchos, the women sacks open at the bottom. The Maneteneris are essentially a waterside people. Their cedarwood canoes are very long and beautifully made.
MANETHO (Μανέθων in an inscription of Carthage; Μανεθὼς in a papyrus) , Egyptian priest and annalist, was a native of Sebennytus in the Delta. ”

“ Manetho’s lists give, in one place, twenty-five years and four months after the expulsion; in another, twenty-six years in round numbers, as the total duration of his reign, which has every appearance of probability. ** There is no direct evidence to prove that Amenôthes I. was a minor when he came to the throne; still the presumptions in favour of this hypothesis, afforded by the monuments, are so strong that many historians of ancient Egypt have accepted it. ”

“ As to the numbers of the multitude that were expelled, they agree exceedingly well [24] the former reckoning them eighty thousand, and the latter about two hundred and fifty thousand! Now, for Manetho, he describes those polluted persons as sent first to work in the quarries, and says that the city Avaris was given them for their habitation. ”

“ A tribe dwelt in one locality while pasturage was good, and when it was exhausted, would move on to new fields. Sometimes the tribe in possession of one district would learn that other tribes were drawing near, and in an age when strangers were considered enemies, this would furnish sufficient pretext for starting out on the march again. Periods of unrest sometimes swept over vast areas; in such a time as this, perhaps, Asiatic tribes poured into Egypt. In her pitiable plight, the country lay an easy prey to such invaders, who Manetho tells us numbered a quarter of a million. ”

“ Manetto—Manetho—Manathou, on the magnet stone, 14. At pp. 51–54 of Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren’s “Manual of Ancient History,” Oxford, 1833, it is said that Manetto was a celebrated high priest at Heliopolis who flourished under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 260 B.C. He wrote the Ægyptica, and his authenticity is now completely established. Consult George Stanley Faber, Horæ Mosaicæ, I. 251; George Rawlinson’s “Bampton Lectures,” p. 56; William Osburn, “Monumental History of Egypt,” II. 606–608; J. P. Cory, “Of the writings of Manetto, translated from the Greek.” ”

“ The old attempts to form artificial schemes of chronology—which, however, satisfied no one but their authors—upon the supposition that some of the dynasties reigned together are now discredited for ever. Every fresh discovery made in Egypt, which adds to our knowledge of ancient Egyptian history, makes the fact still more certain. There were epochs, indeed, when more than one line of kings claimed sway in the valley of the Nile, but when such was the case, Manetho selected what he or his authorities considered the sole legitimate dynasty, and disregarded every other. ”

“ There is one discordance that it may be right slightly to point out, as it is presented by Plate 43 of the Hieroglyphics: we there find the 29th year of the Sesenchosis of Manetho; and Manetho allots but 21 years to this king, who was the first of his dynasty, and could not, therefore, like Philadelphus, have continued any era from an earlier period.
It is easy to observe, in comparing Mr. Cailliaud’s copy of the Tablet of Abydus, as published by Mr. Champollion, with those of our countrymen, Mr. Bankes and Mr. ”

“ I knew he was at work, silently, quietly following the conspirators, for once as I turned the cabin upon the [Pg 211] deck, I had seen a sudden shadow upon the floor but as I looked around I had discovered nothing. I knew it must have been Manteo, for no one else could have vanished in an instant like that. Out of mere curiosity, I searched everywhere for him, for I knew the savage Indians prided themselves upon their skill and cunning. I peered into every nook and cranny, looked behind every box and barrel, but as well look for last year's flowers or the frost of a winter ago—he had vanished. ”

“ He is glad that the beautiful one will be with the Eagle in his tepee, to cheer him when Manteo is gone."
"Surely thou too wilt not leave us, Manteo?" I cried. "Winona has gone back into the forest. Wilt thou desert us too? I had planned many pleasant things for the future, when thou too shouldst walk with us the smooth sod of my own green country."
"Manteo thanks the Eagle," he replied. "Manteo loves him, and would wish him well, but the fish cannot live out of the water, nor the bird when it beats its wings against the cage; neither can Manteo in that crowded land to which thou goest. ”