Dillery John Clios Other Sons Berossus and Manetho

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Clio’s Other Sons
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Clio’s Other Sons
Berossus and Manetho
With an afterword on Demetrius
John Dillery
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © by John Dillery 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dillery, John, 1961–

Clio’s other sons : Berossus and Manetho : with an afterword on
Demetrius / John Dillery.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-472-07227-9 (hardback : alkaline paper)—ISBN 978-0-
472-05227-1 (paperback : alkaline paper)—ISBN 978-0-472-12045-1
(e-book)
1. Berosus, the Chaldean—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Manetho—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Berosus, the
Chaldean. Babyloniaka. 4. Manetho. Aegyptiaca. 5. Babylonia—
Historiography. 6. Egypt—Historiography. 7. Historiography—
Greece—History—To 1500. 8. Greek literature—History and
criticism. I. Title.
PA3944.B3D55 2014
For
Ludwig Koenen
Preface
Berossus and Manetho—

Who Were They?
This seems a fitting place to consider why I have written this book. To state my
case, I need first to introduce my subjects. I will then move on to a discussion,
under several heads, of why they make worthwhile topics for a monograph.
There is not much to go on, in truth, but it is all we have.1 In the earliest
years of the Hellenistic Age (the first quarter of the third century BC), in Se-
leucid Babylon and Ptolemaic Egypt, two men set down to write histories from
the foundation of civilized life to contemporary or near-contemporary times.
Berossus (Gk. rendering of Bel-re’u-shunu, “Bel (the Lord) is their shepherd”),
a Babylonian, was a priest of Bel-Marduk; Manetho (meaning not known for
certain, but possibly “Shepherd (i.e.) guardian of the temple”), an Egyptian,
was also a priest, residing at Heliopolis in the Delta, a little less than fifty kilo-
meters north of Memphis.2 It is curious that the element “shepherd” may occur
in both their names. Both saw the world and its past chiefly through the lenses
of their own cultures—indeed, primarily as human history centered on their
respective priestly localities. Berossus’ work was called the Babyloniaca (or pos-
sibly Chaldaïca), Manetho’s the Aegyptiaca. As their titles suggest, both works,
though histories of their native lands, remarkably were written in the Greek
language. Furthermore, while each work covered human history from its earli-
est periods as conceived of within the frameworks of Babylonian and Egyptian
civilization—cultures that were literally millennia old by the start of the third
century BC—each history contained a mere three books.3
1. For the scarcity of verifiable information about Berossus and Manetho, see, e.g., for Beros-
sus, Burstein (1978) 5 and Kuhrt (1987a) 33 and 36–37; for Manetho, Redford (1986) 203–4 and
Gozzoli (2006) 191.
2. For the name of Berossus, see de Breucker (2010) ad T 1; for that of Manetho, Moyer (2011)
85 n.5
3. So did the world history of the fourth-century Aristotelian Dicaearchus of Messana (Suda
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
Josephus, who knew the writing of both men well, characterized them as fol-
lows: “Manetho was by birth an Egyptian, a man possessed of Hellenic paideia,
as is clear from the following fact: he has written in Greek the native history of
his land from sacred records” (Jos. Ap. 1.73 = T 7a); Berossus was “a Chaldaean
man by birth, but one well known to those versed in paideia, since he brought
to the Greeks writings concerning astronomy and Babylonian wisdom” (Ap.
1.129 = T 3).4 As Alfred von Gutschmid noted long ago, the closeness in phras-
ing suggests that Josephus viewed the men similarly:5 they were, to borrow the
coinage of W. W. Tarn, both “culture G reeks,”6 non-Greeks who were yet also
full participants in Greek culture (paideia). It is true that the description of Ber-
ossus says more about his reception among learned Greek circles, but I think
that the fundamental point remains: Josephus saw both men as non-Greek by
birth and yet as writers whose work was somehow deeply implicated in the
world of Hellenic learning.
Plutarch provides us with a more useful piece of testimony, but only con-
cerning Manetho. In his treatise On Isis and Osiris, Plutarch reports that Ptol-
emy I Soter had a dream vision of what, in the event, turned out to be the colos-
sal statue of Pluto at Sinope on the Black Sea. In the dream, the statue spoke to
the king and told him that it had to be transported to Alexandria. Not knowing
where the statue was located, the king reported his dream to his “friends” (i.e.,
his courtiers), and a widely traveled man named Sosibius then stated that he
had seen such a colossal statue in Sinope. Two men were charged with going
to Sinope, stealing the statue, and bringing it back to the Ptolemaic capital. On
their return, yet another pair of men, “Timotheus the exegete and Manetho
of Sebennytus” (Plut. Mor. 362 A = T 3), perhaps the heads of two boards of
experts,7 examined the statue. Having determined that it was indeed a statue of
s.v. Dicaearchus = Mirhady [2001] F 2)—which, despite its name, the Life of Greece, was “a history
of civilization” in the broadest sense (see Jacoby [1949] 142)—and also, famously, the world history
of Cornelius Nepos (as we learn from Catullus 1.5–7).
4. Cf. the translation of de Breucker (2010) ad T 3: “Berossos, a Chaldaean by birth, but famed
among those who are engaged in learning.”
5. Gutschmid (1893) 491 ad Jos. Ap. 1.129.
6. Tarn (1961) 160–61.
7. The wording of the Greek—συμβαλόντες οἱ περὶ Τιμόθεον τὸν ἐξηγητὴν καὶ Μανέθωνα
τὸν Σεβεννύτην—is ambiguous. The locution οἱ περί + accusative nominis proprii can, in fact, be a
periphrasis for the proper noun itself, and this periphrasis is even more common when two accusa-
tive nomina are dependent on the preposition περί, an idiom that first appears in Polybius. Yet there
are instances of the phrase οἱ περὶ Χ καὶ Υ when the locution clearly means “X and those around
him and Y and those around him,” even in Plutarch: e.g., Dion 42.3 (οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἀρχωνίδην καὶ τὸν
Ἑλλάνικον), Mor. 334 D (οἱ περὶ Θέτταλον καὶ Ἀθηνόδωρον), and Marius 44.9 (οἱ περὶ Κίνναν καὶ
Σερτώριον). See Dubuisson (1977) esp. 1.103–16, on Plutarch; also the important expansions of
Radt (1980) and (1988) and R. Gorman (2001) and (2003). Arguing in favor of the interpretation
“Timotheus and Manetho” in our passage is that both nomina propria are expanded by phrases set
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Pluto, they convinced Ptolemy that the image was of the god Sarapis. A similar
story is told by the Roman historian Tacitus, who makes it clear that a board
of experts was involved in the case of Manetho, though he does not actually
name him (Tac. Hist. 4.83.2).8 This testimony is important because, if trans-
mitting authentic information, it would suggest, in no uncertain terms, that
Manetho was an influential member of the early Ptolemaic court, consulted by
Soter himself on the foundation of the Sarapis cult.9 No corresponding piece
of testimony for Berossus’ standing at the Seleucid court is anywhere near as
detailed. The best we can do is a late testimonium from Tatian (a Christian
philosopher of the third century AD, though, importantly, a Mesopotamian):
“Berossus, a Babylonian man, a priest of their [i.e., the Babylonians] god Bel, a
contemporary of Alexander, assembled the history of the Chaldaeans in three
books for Antiochus, the third after him,” that is, for Antiochus I, the third
ruler of Babylon after Alexander the Great, counting inclusively (Tatian Or.
Graec. 36 = T 2; cf. Euseb. PE 10.11.8).10 A lot obviously rides on the preposi-
tion “for” here, simply indicated in the Greek by the dative case of “Antiochus.”
But perhaps this means that Berossus wrote his history under the patronage
or even because of the commission of Antiochus I. A similar claim is made for
off by the article that further identify the men in question. Cf. Griffiths (1970) 161: “Timotheus the
interpreter and Manetho the Sebennyte concluded that it was an image of Pluto.”
8. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.247; Griffiths (1970) 397.
9. The papyrus document P. Hibeh I 72 4ff. (= T 4) would confirm this view of Manetho.
It mentions one Manetho who is obviously a highly placed Egyptian priest. However, the date
of the papyrus (241/0 BC) seems to rule out the historian Manetho, who would have had to be
extremely old to be the same man as the historian writing under Philadelphus. T 5 (CIL 8.1007)
is an inscription from a Sarapis sanctuary at Carthage, on a sculptural plinth bearing simply the
name ΜΑΝΕΘΩΝ. It is considerably later than Manetho’s own lifetime and speaks to his fame as
an important figure in the start of the Sarapis cult.
It is sometimes argued that Manetho and Timotheus did not, strictly speaking, help with the
foundation of the Sarapis cult, because a form of it already existed among the Hellenomemphites
in the worship of Osor-Hapi, the deified Apis bull, as demonstrated by UPZ 1 (“the curse of Arte-
misia”): see Griffiths (1970) 394. But most resist the complete identification of the two gods: see
Fraser (1972) 1.253–54. Note also Thompson (1988/2012) 197–98. More recently, Bourgeaud and
Volokhine (2000) have questioned the historicity of the entire foundation episode reported in Taci-
tus and Plutarch, judging it to be a fiction akin to a Königsnovelle; see also Moyer (2011) 150–51.
10. Βηρωσὸς ἀνὴρ Βαβυλώνιος, ἱερεὺς τοῦ παρ’ αὐτοῖς Βήλου, κατ᾿ Ἀλέξανδρον γεγονώς,
Ὰντιόχῳ τῷ μετ᾿αὐτὸν τρίτῳ τὴν Χαλδαίων ἱστορίαν ἐν τρισὶ βιβλίοις κατατάξας. Note that there
is a problem with the phrase κατ᾿ Ἀλέξανδρον γεγονώς: the perfect participle γεγονώς is ambigu-
ous, rendered here as “contemporary with,” in the sense “alive” (cf. Eusebius’ parallel passage: κατ᾿
Ἀλέξανδρον γενόμενος). But if an adult roughly contemporary with Alexander (dead at thirty-two
in 323), he would have had to have been in his seventies at least to be writing up the Babylo-
niaca under Antiochus, which, while not impossible, is not likely. The participle may instead mean
“born” sometime during the rule of Alexander: see Dillery (2003b) 384 n.4 and the bibliography
cited there. De Breucker (2010) ad loc. notes that the third ruler after Alexander was technically
Seleucus I, for Philip III Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV came in between, but they are conveniently
forgotten here.
x Preface and Acknowledgments
Manetho: namely, that his history was written “for Ptolemy Philadelphus” (T
11c = Syncellus Chron. 17 M).11 The “friends” of the Macedonian kings of the
Hellenistic period were not often drawn from the local, native elite, but that
circumstance was not unheard of by any means.
This is the appropriate place to note, if only briefly, the considerable prob-
lems that attend the transmission of the histories of both Berossus and Ma-
netho. Who they were and what they wrote are both matters that depend on
what the ancients knew or thought they knew of their writing. This question
is deeply problematic. The story is similar, if not identical, for both historians:
one channel for their work consisted of Christian authorities, who were inter-
ested chiefly in their chronologies and such narrative (in the case of Berossus
specifically) that seemed to corroborate biblical accounts or, at least, in what
they took to be commentary on similar events (Creation, the Flood); the other
main conduit was Josephus, who excerpted the narratives of both Berossus and
Manetho for much the same purpose, as well as some chronographic structure
(in the case of Manetho only).
To the best of our knowledge, Berossus’ Babyloniaca was summarized in the
first half of the first century BC by the Greek polymath Cornelius Alexander
Polyhistor in Rome, during the last decades of the Roman Republic.12 His sum-
mary was used by all later writers on whom we depend, directly or indirectly:
Josephus, Abydenus, Julius Africanus, and Eusebius. The two main figures re-
sponsible for the transmission of material from Berossus/Polyhistor were Jo-
sephus and Eusebius. Josephus cites Berossus extensively in his Against Apion
and in scattered places in his Antiquitates Judaicae. The Greek church father
Eusebius of Caesarea (third to fourth century AD) quotes Berossus in his own
work, the Chronica, now lost in its original form but preserved in an Armenian
translation13 and extensively excerpted by the later churchman George Syn-
cellus, who composed his own Ecloga Chronographica from AD 809 to 810.14
Two even more shadowy figures need also to be mentioned, one pagan and one
Christian, in connection with Polyhistor and Eusebius. Not only was Berossus
summarized by Polyhistor, but one Abydenus, relying on Polyhistor, also made
use of him in the second century AD. Eusebius quotes both Polyhistor and
Abydenus, with significant overlaps between the two, but with major differ-
ences too. Eusebius’ chronography was obviously dependent, to some extent,
11. τὰ περὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτιακῶν δυναστειῶν ὑπὸ Μανεθῶ τοῦ Σεβεννύτου πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον τὸν
Φιλάδελφον συγγεγραμμένα (the matters pertaining to the Egyptian dynasties written up by Ma-
netho for Ptolemy Philadelphus).
12. Schnabel (1923) 164–67; Burstein (1978) 6 and n.11; de Breucker (2012).
13. See Mosshammer (1979) esp. 59–60.
14. Adler and Tuffin (2002) xxx–vi; Wallraff (2007) xlii.
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
on the earlier work of Julius Africanus, the “father of Christian chronography.”15

While Eusebius was much more willing to make use of non-Christian chro-
nographies than Africanus, there is evidence that Africanus knew the work of
Berossus too, possibly quite well (F 34.14; cf. F 15.9 Wallraff).16
The transmission of Manetho is arguably even more vexed because of
the complications surrounding Josephus’ knowledge and use of his work. In
Against Apion, Josephus quotes Manetho more extensively than any other au-
thor, providing us with our three best and longest narratives of the Aegyptiaca
that survive. However, there is a methodological problem in connection with
Josephus’ quotations of Manetho: Josephus takes two very different views to-
ward Manetho. Early in Against Apion, he cites Manetho positively and seems
to be familiar with Manetho’s narratives in their original settings within the
chronographic armature of the Aegyptiaca (the Sethos and Harmais “novella”
and Hyksos I). Later, when Josephus turns to the story of Amenophis the king
and the prophecy of Amenophis the seer (Hyksos II), Josephus is very critical
toward Manetho, arguing that the material making up the story of the lepers
was derived from “legends and oral report” (Jos. Ap. 1.229: τὰ μυθευόμενα καὶ
λεγόμενα) and that Amenophis was an “interpolated” or even “intrusive” king
(Ap. 1.232: ἐμβόλιμον βασιλέα) in Manetho’s scheme of succession of pharaohs;
indeed, earlier in the same section, Josephus even claims that the name of the
king Amenophis is “false” because no reign length in years was given by Ma-
netho for him in his list, unlike his practice for every other monarch of Egypt
(Ap. 1.230)—a detail that Manetho did in fact provide and that Josephus even
quoted earlier, not once, but twice (Ap. 1.79, 94). Crucially, at one point in his
treatment of Manetho, Josephus seems to claim that he had two different ver-
sions of the Aegyptiaca before him. At Apion 1.83, in the course of explaining
the term Hyksos, Josephus offers an alternative etymology for the word from
the one he has been discussing, on the basis of something that is stated “in
another copy” (ἄλλῳ ἀντιγράφῳ), presumably meaning “another copy of Ma-
netho.” This is an enormously vexed issue that I will discuss below, but if we
here take Josephus at his word (and not assume Ap. 1.83 to be an interpolation),
it appears, as August Boeckh recognized long ago, that two distinct redactions
of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca were in circulation in Josephus’ lifetime.17 When con-
fronted by contradictions such as we see when Josephus reports regnal years
for Amenophis yet elsewhere assert that none were assigned to him, scholars
have been tempted to place the more problematic text—in this case, the claim
15. Gelzer (1885/1888) 1.1; cf. Wallraff (2007) xxi.

16. Adler and Tuffin (2002) xxxii–iv; Wallraff (2007) 25 n.8.
17. Boeckh (1845) 120–21. Cf. Armayor (1985) 7.
xii Preface and Acknowledgments
of no years for Amenophis—in Josephus’ mysterious “other copy” of Manetho

mentioned at Ap. 1.83.18
In addition to Josephus, who transmitted the most extensive narratives of
Manetho we possess, together with some of their chronographic framework,
there is also the same tradition of Christian authorities as we saw for Berossus,
for whom Manetho’s chronography was especially important—indeed, even
more so than what Berossus produced. Thus we know that both Africanus and
Eusebius provided king lists that were derived from Manetho. It is clear that
both Africanus and Eusebius included Manetho’s earliest dynasties, first of the
gods and then of the demigods, to which Syncellus objected later.19 It is highly
significant that Manetho’s list not only included reign lengths for individual
pharaohs but organized them into dynasties, with the total reign lengths pro-
vided for each group. In this regard and in the inclusion of divine and semidi-
vine rulers, Manetho’s list is precisely parallel to the most important pharaonic
documentary king list, the so-called Turin Canon.20 It is also important to note
that several of the entries in Manetho’s king list contained, in addition to reg-
nal years, brief narrative statements or chronicle “bits,” much like what we can
find in another—indeed, the oldest—documentary king list from pharaonic
Egypt, the Palermo Stone. I argue below that these “narrative tags” represent
ideal places where Manetho may have attached separately transmitted stories
concerning specific rulers of Egypt.
Given that the history of how the work of both Berossus and Manetho was
preserved in antiquity is so fraught with difficulty and complexity, it should
come as no surprise that a great deal of false, arcane lore and pseudonymous
work became attached to their names. Berossus, who made much of sage figures
in his own Babyloniaca (significantly also known as the Chaldaïca), became a
prophet/sage himself for later ages: Pliny the Elder reports that the Athenians
put up a statue of Berossus, complete with a golden tongue, “on account of his
marvelous predictions” (Plin. NH 7.123 = T 6: ob divinas praedictiones), and
Pausanias refers to Berossus as the father of the Hebrew Sibyl (Paus. 10.12.9 =
T 7a), a statement repeated in the Suda and Pseudo-Justin (TT 7b and c).21 It
is a vexed question whether the so-called astronomical fragments of Berossus
are genuinely his or belong to a “Pseudo-Berossus of Cos,” but in either case,
that his name became associated with Chaldaean wisdom and astronomy is
certain. For his part, several titles are attributed to Manetho besides the Aegyp-
18. Cf. Meyer (1904) 77; also Barclay (2007) 133 n.803 ad Jos. Ap. 1.230.
19. Wallraff (2007) xliii, 95 n.1.
20. See esp. Laqueur (1928) 1096–97; Helck (1956); Ryholt (1997). As will be seen below, Ry-
holt prefers to call this document the Turin “List,” not “Canon.”
21. Cf. Kuhrt (1987a) 37; Potter (1994) 75–77, 190–91; Lightfoot (2007) 215 n.40.
Preface and Acknowledgments xiii
tiaca, including The Sacred Book, On the Making of Kyphi, and The Book of So-
this.22 A late author even groups him with other writers of works on medicine:
Asclepius, Hermes Trismegistus, Nectanebo, and Queen Cleopatra (T 13). Of
particular note here is a dedicatory letter to Ptolemy II Philadelphus, which
Syncellus preserves, that allegedly accompanied Manetho’s Book of Sothis (Syn-
cellus Chron. 41 M = Waddell app. I). It is addressed to “the great King Ptolemy
Philadelphus Augustus,” identifies Manetho as “a high priest and scribe of the
sacred shrines of Egypt,”23 and speaks of the wisdom contained in the accom-
panying volume as written by Hermes Trismegistus. Much in the letter is sheer
nonsense,24 but that its author styled Manetho a friend and advisor of Ptolemy
II is testimony perhaps to the historian’s actual standing in the early Ptolemaic
court and to the apparent orientation and purpose of his work. It is a wonder-
ful irony that the later reception of Berossus and Manetho makes them into
paradigmatic representatives of standard views of the Babylonian and Egyptian
elites—Berossus the astrologer sage, and Manetho the priest of a chronologi-
cally obsessed yet timeless culture—and yet both were innovative in terms of
how their cultures chose to control the past.
The few, relatively certain details for both men prompt an enormously im-
portant pair of interrelated questions: why did Berossus and Manetho write
native histories of their lands in the Greek language, and for whom were they
writing? At one level, the answer to this two-part question is fundamentally his-
torical. We can establish what sort of historiography was practiced before Ber-
ossus and Manetho in both Babylon and Egypt and, more generally, in the na-
tive scholarly cultures both men inhabited. We can also look at both the Greek
models for writing history that they had before them and can even make out
the possible motives they had for writing history at the early Hellenistic courts.
These are the aims that have guided my discussion in the subsequent chapters,
with particular emphasis on not only how both Berossus and Manetho can be
seen to have been working within their traditional scholarly idioms but also
how they were innovative, inspired by their knowledge of and engagement with
earlier Greek historical writing on their lands. It is imperative also to consider,
at a more theoretical level, why these histories were written when and in the
form they were. For this purpose, I believe that it is important to canvass here a
number of possible approaches to Berossus and Manetho.
22. Cf. Laqueur (1928) 1099–1101.

23. Βασιλεῖ μεγάλῳ Πτολεμαίῳ Φιλαδέλφῳ σεβαστῷ Μανεθῶ ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ γραμματεὺς τῶν
κατ’ Αἴγυπτον ἱερῶν ἀδύτων.
24. “Augustus” (σεβαστῷ) is a bit of a giveaway—a title used of Roman emperors, never Ptol-
emies.
xiv Preface and Acknowledgments
Nationalism and Colonialism,

Collaboration or Resistance?
The histories of Berossus and Manetho must be considered against the au-
thors’ backgrounds. But the very enterprise of trying to read the Babyloniaca
and Aegyptiaca against the backdrop of the political histories of Babylon and
Egypt in the early Hellenistic period becomes almost immediately implicated
in a contemporary ideological discussion regarding the complicity of native
elites in foreign rule. It would be naive of me to think that my own attempt to
evaluate the work of Berossus and Manetho can be separated from this ongoing
debate. We may place the work of Peter Green at one extreme. Responding to
Amélie Kuhrt’s magisterial article of 1987 on Berossus, in which she attempted
to sketch out the intermediate position that he and Manetho held at their re-
spective courts, Green wrote that they did not really contribute much to the
early Seleucids and Ptolemies in the establishment of their rules; more impor-
tant, Green also characterized them as “sedulous imperial bootlick[ers].”25 For
Green, then, Berossus and Manetho were unambiguous figures, aspiring collab-
orators who penned the ancient equivalents of “area studies” that were meant to
facilitate the foreign domination of their lands (even if they failed to have any
effect).26 As such, their histories, if not thoroughgoing Greek treatments, were
profoundly Hellenized and Hellenizing, written with only a Greco-Macedonian
audience in mind. At the other end of the spectrum, we encounter the portrait
of Manetho offered by Ian Moyer, according to whom the Aegyptiaca “does not
appear to be formally dependent on Greek historiography in any clear way”
but, rather, “was an indigenous attempt to make explicit the proper historical
role of the Egyptian pharaoh, and also to teach the Ptolemies and other Greeks
at court to read Egyptian history in an Egyptian fashion.”27 For Moyer, other
than the fact that the Aegyptiaca was written in Greek, Greek historiography es-
sentially has no bearing at all on the composition of Manetho’s history of Egypt.
I would like to map out another way of looking at these historians, one that
will, by default, position them in a middle ground somewhere between Green’s
“imperial bootlickers” and Moyer’s indigenous advocates wholly independent
from Greek historical writing—not because this course is safer or less objec-
tionable, but because it is simply more inherently plausible. Moreover, as seems
to be a matter lost on Moyer, there is surely a major point of significance in the
fact that the two histories—the Babyloniaca of Berossus and the Aegyptiaca
25. Green (1990) 326.

26. Cf. Redford (1986) 204–6.
27. Moyer (2011) 140–41.
Preface and Acknowledgments xv
of Manetho—were written at almost exactly the same time, in almost identi-

cal circumstances, and with very similar results: national histories composed
by hellenophone priest-historians in three books covering the past from the
beginning of the world to contemporary times.28 If Moyer’s analysis of Mane-
tho is correct, how can one explain the appearance of Berossus’ history at the
same time? It is true that the testimonium in Syncellus reporting that Mane-
tho wrote his history “for Ptolemy Philadelphus” also stated that he did so in
imitation of Berossus (Syncellus Chron. 17 M = Berossus T 10 and Manetho T
11c; see above).29 Hence one could say that Manetho was inspired by the work
of Berossus. The claim of imitation may be true, but one hesitates to accept it
without reservation, because Christian authorities were eager to suggest that
pagan authors regularly filled their works with falsehoods of various sorts and
plagiarized each other—both failings taken as proofs of their moral inferiority
to Christian scholars and alleged by Syncellus in connection with Manetho.30
Dispensing with the possibility that Manetho actually imitated Berossus
(the evidence for which is slight), let us return to considering why the Babylo-
niaca and Aegyptiaca were written at the same time and why they are so similar.
Setting aside the details that both were written in Greek and presumably were
aimed at the new overlords of their lands (see below for more on audience), the
histories of Berossus and Manetho would seem to be only incidentally Greek in
Moyer’s eyes. Yet, to respond to the new imperial presence in their lands at the
same time and in almost identical fashion suggests to me that both Berossus
and Manetho not only were inspired to write by the desire (or perhaps com-
mission) of educating their new rulers they were also, as Maurice Sartre has
recently observed, “situating” the writing of their nations’ pasts “in relation to
Hellenism.”31 Probability would dictate that the appearance of two works of
almost identical character, produced by individuals of similar status, in similar
circumstances and at the same time, was the result either of one being written
in imitation with the other, or that they were both responding to the same ex-
ternal stimulus. Otherwise, both a Berossus and Manetho are still possible of
course, but not at the same time. This response was stimulated by two causes:
28. Indeed, the similarities are so striking that they led a French scholar in the nineteenth cen-
tury to doubt that either Berossus or Manetho were real: see Havet (1873). Berossus’ and Manetho’s
claim to authenticity had not been helped by the fact that forgeries penned by the Dominican friar
Annius of Viterbo had circulated under their names in the Renaissance: see Grafton (1983/1993)
2.77–78; (1991) ch. 3.
29. τὰ . . . συγγεγραμμένα πλήρη ψεύδους καὶ κατὰ μίμησιν Βηρώσσου ([matters] written up
full of falsehood and in imitation of Berossus).
30. Cf. Pearson (1939) 23–24; Fowler (2006) 35. See previous note. De Breucker (2010) ad T
10a is supportive of the possibility that in fact Manetho imitated Berossus.
31. Sartre (2009) 380.
xvi Preface and Acknowledgments
(1) there was the wish to respond to the legacy of Greek historical writing on
their lands—Herodotus in the first instance, of course, but also men who were
nearer to them in time (if not actual contemporaries), men such as Ctesias and
Cleitarchus on Babylon and Hecataeus of Abdera on Egypt; and (2) both Beros-
sus and Manetho were aware of the importance specifically of history writing to
the immediate successors of Alexander the Great—indeed, of the role of Greek
historiography more generally in the Greek world in helping communities and
regions define themselves through their pasts (I offer more on this, too, below).
Both Berossus and Manetho were elite priestly members of societies that
had just experienced the massive political and military upheaval attendant on
the transfer of power from one set of nonnative rulers (the Persians) to another
(the Macedonians and Greeks); indeed, in the case of Berossus, the transfer
of power was further prolonged by extensive fighting among the Macedonian
inheritors of Alexander’s empire (the Antigonids vs. the Seleucids). Although
Egypt had experienced a significant period of autonomy under native rule in
the middle of the fourth century BC, with that (considerable) exception, nei-
ther Babylonia nor Egypt had known extensive periods of independence since
the mid-sixth century BC. Inasmuch as both cultures were, at the highest social
levels to which both men belonged, thoroughly literate and the beneficiaries of
rich and well-documented civilizations extending back millennia, a situation
familiar from other periods in human history thus obtained. As members of
the Babylonian and Egyptian priestly class, Berossus and Manetho were ideally
placed to facilitate the nonnative rule of their lands by lending it legitimacy in
various ways and were also the best equipped to articulate the aspirations and
hostility of their native culture toward the new masters of their lands. While a
colonial or postcolonial dynamic must always be understood to be in the back-
ground of the composition of both the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca, it is im-
portant to be on guard against the reductive views of both Green and Moyer.32
Lurking behind the extreme portraits of both Moyer and Green is the
problem of an overly schematic or simplistic view of “nationalism.” Either
both Berossus and Manetho were nothing better than simpering collaborators
(Green), or they were nationalists shouting from the historiographic barricades
(Moyer).33 But fatal objections can be lodged against both positions. If Green is
correct, it is difficult to reconcile, on the one hand, viewing both histories as es-
sentially how-to manuals for successfully ruling Babylonia and Egypt with, on
the other, the sense both works give of a nationalist pride—or ethnochauven-
32. Note the thoughtful debate one can trace through Will (1985), Bagnall (1997), and Bow-
man (2002); cf. Goff (2005).
33. Cf. Eddy (1961). Compare the approach in, e.g., Fuchs (1938) for “resistance” to Rome.
Preface and Acknowledgments xvii
ism even—that argues for the centrality of both lands in the history of world
civilization, as well as efforts manifest on almost every page to validate those
claims through methods that originate from the indigenous scholarly cultures
of both historians. In short, if you are writing for new Greek-speaking masters
of your homeland, why bother authenticating what you are saying by methods
unintelligible to them?
Alternatively, if Moyer is correct, a parallel set of problems arises in the in-
terpretation of the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca. If these works are intended “to
teach” the successors of Alexander and their courts Babylonian and Egyptian
history in an indigenous “fashion,” one is left to wonder what Berossus and
Manetho hoped to gain by writing history that has so exclusively a nationalist
focus and yet seems, in other ways, to accommodate the new rulers of their
lands: most obviously, both the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca were written in
Greek and are clearly meant to respond to earlier Greek treatments of their na-
tions’ pasts. Why bother doing either one of these things if your main purpose
was only to educate or, better, inculcate a native understanding of Babylon’s
and Egypt’s history? Language choice alone does not account for the bicultural
tonality of both histories, particularly those aspects of the Babyloniaca and Ae-
gyptiaca that are best seen as attempts to engage Greek readers in more sophis-
ticated ways, ones that are responsive to Greek historiographic expectations.
Following Moyer’s reasoning, the motive to educate the new rulers of Egypt and
(by extension)34 Babylon ought to have applied to Persians as well, and there
should be evidence for equivalent histories written in (say) Aramaic during the
period of Persian dominion in Babylon and Egypt. But there is no evidence that
any were ever attempted.
Furthermore, Moyer’s point that, in essence, Manetho’s Aegyptiaca is only
Greek by convenience—that is, in Greek incidentally, because the conquerors
were Greek speakers—runs into serious difficulties if we remember that what
language system one wrote in was a highly significant matter in both Egypt
and Babylonia. Egypt was a culture with three or four different native scripts
during Manetho’s lifetime, with each script being thought of as having a unique
function in conveying certain types of information—“text genres.”35 In a soci-
ety where the different writing systems were so heavily freighted with distinct
meaning, even if they also overlapped significantly, would not even the basic
34. Note that Moyer has now offered a brief comparison of Berossus with Manetho: Moyer
(2013).
35. For a particularly good discussion of this often-made point, see Baines (2007) 46 and table
1: Baines identifies four scripts (hieroglyphic, cursive hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic); “text
genre” is his phrase. Note also Davies (1990) 86–96.
xviii Preface and Acknowledgments
choice to write in Greek have been a massive statement of reorientation? While

it is true that ancient Egypt was unusual in having several different scripts to
represent its language in writing, the complex standing of Sumerian in Babylo-
nia is analogous in some ways. While the language of the scholarly culture was
Akkadian, Sumerian not only persisted but was prized as an archaic writing
system of authority, and much effort was expended on deploying it in mean-
ingful and often polyvalent ways: at a most fundamental level, Babylonian elite,
scholarly culture was deeply informed by its “Zweisprachigkeit”—its bilingual-
ism in Akkadian and Sumerian.36 Thus, in ancient societies where script choice
and language choice contributed substantially to the production of meaning—
providing, as they did, the essential registers of what was expected to be pre-
sented and discussed in their texts—writing in Greek will have taken on mas-
sive significance, at least for the author and for his peers among the native elite.
The Aegyptiaca and the Babyloniaca could never just have been incidentally in
Greek.
Writing off, as ultimately unimportant and not explicative, one or the other
world in which both Berossus and Manetho had to work, both the native and
nonnative, strikes me as highly problematic. Correspondingly, I want to take
up a more complex understanding of “nation” and “nationalism” in the ancient
world of the Hellenistic period. With the likes of Veïsse and Manning in the case
of Egypt or McEwan in the case of Babylon, it is important to recognize that
the engagement with nonnative rule in the Hellenistic period was significantly
shaped by the priestly classes in both societies—especially through raising the
possibility that the new rulers were impious and hence illegitimate—and so
could perhaps be seen (wrongly, I think) to be limited to those classes. But with
McGing, I do not want to dispense with the concept of “nationalism” altogether,
simply because the idea of “nation” has been felt by some (echoing the views
of Ernest Gellner) to be only a modern concept and because it is allegedly dif-
ficult to make out a popular component to nonnative rule for the period in
question.37 It is good to remember in this connection, with Jean Bingen, who
is otherwise quite skeptical of significant interplay between Greco-Macedonian
ruling culture and that of the indigenous elite, the perspectives one sees in the
synodal decree of priests at Memphis of 27 March 196 early in the reign of
Ptolemy V, preserved on the famous Rosetta Stone: found there are evidence of
36. Von Soden (1960); Veldhuis (2011) 82–83. Cf. Oppenheim (1977) 237–39.
37. See Veïsse (2004) 151, 245 (without knowledge of Gellner); Manning (2003) 165–66, 228;
id. (2010) 90–91, 121 and n.15 (with reference to Gellner); McGing’s thoughtful responses: McGing
(2006) 60–63 (2007) 161, and now esp. (2012). Cf. Gellner (1983); note also the critique of Woolf
(1990) 46–47. The work of J. Z. Smith also implies most strongly at least a latent sense of nation
among the literate elite. Cf. Heinen (2006).
Preface and Acknowledgments xix
popular unrest, expressions of priestly approval of Ptolemy IV’s victory over re-
bellious forces, and evidence of royal concessions granted to the priestly class.38
Approaches and Analogues: Exposing Methodology
The Intended Reader: Language Choice and the

Identification of “Target Audiences”
I believe that much is to be gained by thinking hard about who was meant to
read the Babyloniaca and the Aegyptiaca—that is, who constituted the intended
or “target audience” or “audiences” of both works. It might well be asked how
we can know who made up “the public which” Berossus and Manetho “wished
to address”39 and, further, why this information is useful? As to the first part of
this question, a short answer could be “the apparent dedicatees” of the Babylo-
niaca and Aegyptiaca, for as we have just seen above, there is ancient testimony
(if also slender) suggesting that Berossus and Manetho wrote their histories
for the new Macedonian rulers of their lands, the sons and successors to the
generals who took possession of Babylon and Egypt after the death of Alex-
ander the Great: Antiochus I in the case of Berossus, Ptolemy II for Manetho.
But as noted, the evidence is slender, and we need to canvass other possibili-
ties. There are distinct clues in both texts. First and foremost, since both were
written in Greek, we have to assume a literate, hellenophone reader for both.
It is essential not to confuse “hellenophone” with “Hellenic”—that is, to think
“hellenophone” means only Greek and Macedonian readers. There were strong
motivations for the native elites of both regions, Babylonia and Egypt, to learn
Greek in the Hellenistic period from early on; our evidence that they did so is
much better for Ptolemaic Egypt, but one can imagine a similar scenario of the
acquisition of Greek in Seleucid Babylonia, if significantly less widespread and
intense.40 In any case, in the “target audience” of both Berossus and Manetho,
38. Bingen (2007) 262–65. For the evidence of the Rosetta Stone, see Simpson (1996) 263 (sev-
eral references to the rebellion after Raphia); 267–71 (approbation of the priests); 261, 265 (royal
grants and favors to local temples, cult, and priesthoods).
39. Iser (1978) 33, on the seminal views of Wolff (1971). See also Freund (1987) esp. 7, on the
various ways that the “reader” has been identified by different literary critics.
40. For Egypt, see esp. Clarysse (1993); Thompson (1994). Unfortunately, our best evidence for
the acquisition of Greek by the Babylonian elite early in the Hellenistic period is Berossus himself:
see, e.g., Oelsner (1986) 48; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 148. It is difficult to know what to
make of the unusual “Graeco-Babyloniaca” tablets, with cuneiform and Aramaic texts transcribed
into Greek script: see esp. Sollberger (1962); Black and Sherwin-White (1984); Oelsner (1986) 239–
42; Maul (1991); Westenholz (2007). Cf. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 160.
xx Preface and Acknowledgments
we ought to include fellow elite members of the priestly and scribal classes, as
well as other Babylonian and Egyptian bilinguals. At this point, it might well
be queried why a Babylonian or Egyptian of any class would want to commu-
nicate with a compatriot when other, local languages were obviously available.
It is useful here to think of Greek as a “prestige language,”41 one that would
have been associated with the “domains” of learning and power after the Greco-
Macedonian conquest, and hence as an appropriate tool for communication
even among elite groups whose shared, primary language was different from
the prestige language, thus permitting elaborate linguistic scenarios of code-
switching, depending on the subject matter and other social circumstances:
both Seleucid Babylonia and Ptolemaic Egypt were areas that can be under-
stood as constituting zones susceptible to the analysis of “contact linguistics.”42
This leads me to another set of clues. Beyond language choice, the Babylo-
niaca and Aegyptiaca also contain specialized topics and procedures of textual
presentation that argue strongly for specific audiences for both works. To take
up a particularly illustrative case from Berossus that will be dealt with in detail
below, Berossus has two sections toward the start of the Babyloniaca that seem
to anticipate two very different, distinct readerships for his history. In one, Ber-
ossus describes the physical realities and flora and fauna of Babylonia, even
including a Greek gloss on a Babylonian term for a plant. Such a section would
seem to be aimed at a nonnative, Greek readership, in two ways. On the positive
side of the ledger, Greek histories and related works often included geographic
and ethnographic sections as introductory material,43 so what Berossus wrote
could be seen as following Greek practice and for the benefit of Greek readers
accustomed to reading such material at that point in historical texts—in any
case, the sort of information he offered in this section would be of greatest help
to those unfamiliar with the terrain and natural setting of Babylonia. Relatedly,
on the negative side, why would Babylonians need to be told these things, in-
cluding what a native plant is called in their own language? By contrast, though,
just a little further after this geographical and ecological material (at least, as it
is now found in Jacoby), Berossus reports that in the earliest stage of human ex-
istence, an extraordinary creature emerged out of the sea “near Babylonia”—a
sage figure, half man and half fish, named Oannes—who proceeded to tell the
first humans the great Babylonian epic of the world’s beginning. Evidently, both
41. Kahane (1986) esp. 497; in general, see also Romaine (1994) 89–91. Cf. Dillery (2007b) 229.
42. See the papers in Goebl et al. eds. (1996) on “contact linguistics,” esp. by Madera (1996),
Ehlich (1996), and Laroussi and Marcellesi (1996).
43. See, e.g., Trüdinger (1918); also Murray (1970) and (1972), on the defining role of Herodo-
tus for later historians in this regard.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxi
Oannes’ treatment of this topic and the other civilizing lessons he imparted
on subsequent visits were so thorough that “from that time nothing more was
discovered” ever: all human history was, in essence, transacted in those first
exchanges of divine information. This remarkable sequence of narrative and
inset narrative has no precedent in the Greek world, but the mythical figure
and what he tells are perfectly comprehensible from an indigenous, Babylonian
point of view. Furthermore, the remark Berossus makes in connection with the
authoritative nature of the instruction of Oannes can be seen as a way to insure
authority for his own narrative of Babylon’s past, a procedure that is fully in
accord with Babylonian practices of textual authentication and legitimization
through the creation of a physical, textual “trace” back to the beginning of time.
To nonnative readers, such a set of details—Oannes and the characterization of
his instruction—would by no means be unintelligible but would presumably
have been alienating, if not utterly mysterious;44 but for a native Babylonian au-
dience, these same features would have been fully in accord with their expecta-
tions of a text that claimed to be, in some sense, a careful treatment of Babylon’s
past. Not surprisingly, I think, both the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca must be
understood as having at least two audiences: a nonnative Greco-Macedonian
one and a native Babylonian or Egyptian one, the latter comprised, for the most
part, by fellow elite priests and scribes.
Obviously, I think that language choice is a difficult matter that does not
presuppose exclusively an audience in whose native tongue a work was written.
Peter Parsons eloquently describes the bilingual world Manetho inhabited, and
he speaks of the Egyptian priest-historian “attempt[ing] . . . to bridge the di-
vide” between Greeks and Egyptians.45 But in the same discussion, he brings up
such texts as the Dream of Nectanebo and the Oracle of the Potter. These works
were originally composed in Egyptian and translated into Greek, unlike (one
assumes) the Aegyptiaca of Manetho, for why would he have composed his his-
44. Oannes does show up in later Greek literature, notably in the writing of the emperor Julian
(Gal. 176 AB), but his presence there is probably to be explained by Julian’s knowledge of such a
figure through Christian authors, who were precisely the ones interested in pagan “witnesses” who
could be seen to vouch independently for biblical subjects and chronology. He may be dimly re-
flected also at Diod. 2.5.1ff. in the figure of “Onnes,” Semiramis’ first husband, but this is extremely
speculative: see Boncquet (1987) 58 and nn.225 and 226, with the cautions of Lenfant (2004) 28
n.124. Some have argued that since Greek myth also features animal-man hybrids, even wise ones
(note esp. the educator of heroes Chiron the centaur), Oannes may not have seemed so strange to a
Greek reader: cf. Tuplin (2013) 186. There is merit to this point, but I would reply that it is one thing
to have a sage centaur teach particular heroes, and quite another to have a merman responsible for
the instruction of all humanity for all time—a true culture hero. That such a responsibility would
have been given to what was in effect a sea monster of sorts seems to me to be not very Hellenic in
conception. See also below ch. 5.
45. Parsons (2007) 43.
xxii Preface and Acknowledgments
tory first in (say) demotic, however dependent he was on Egyptian sources—

indeed, translating them as Josephus maintains (Ap.1.73: μεταφράσας)? But
we might well ask why another Egyptian would translate a document like the
Oracle of the Potter into Greek when its sentiments are so anti-Greek? Parsons
speculates that this text and others like it “have religious or prophetic force”
that “perhaps explains their appeal to a Greek public, however dire the proph-
ecy.” There is some truth to this explanation: there were, no doubt, many incen-
tives for an Egyptian priest or scribe to provide what his Greco-Macedonian
audience expected, namely, Egyptian occult wisdom and prophecy.46At one
level, that Treatise 16 of the Hermetic Corpus opens with an injunction that the
work not be translated into the Greek language (Corp. Herm. 16.2) is patent ab-
surdity, when the order is itself written in Greek;47 but at another level, we can
see in this injunction the desire of a notional Greek audience for contact with
true alterity, the genuine “other” speaking secretly to peers who are similarly
minded but, as it happens, in a language that makes their wisdom intelligible
or even legible to a much a wider audience. This is a fiction, of course, but is
revealing for all that: a text mimicking alterity, it is in fact written for a Hel-
lenic audience. On the other side is the colophon to the Greek Book of Esther
from the Septuagint (Esther 10:3l). In it, three Jewish emissaries from Jerusalem
claim to have brought to their coreligionists of the Diaspora a Greek translation
of an original Hebrew document that they insist “really exists,”48 recounting the
events that are celebrated in Purim. With wonderful clarity, Elias Bickerman
has shown that the translation of Esther into Greek occurred in the context of
the events of III Maccabees—that is, 78–77 BC, when there was violence and
“implacable war between the Maccabees and the Greek cities in Palestine”—
46. Cf. Festugière (1949/1954) 1.85–87; note also Dieleman (2005) esp. 182–83, for the “para-
dox of translation.”
47. ὅσον οὖν δυνατόν ἐστί σοι, βασιλεῦ, πάντα δὲ δύνασαι, τὸν λόγον διατήρησον
ἀνερμήνευτον, ἵνα μήτε εἰς Ἕλληνας ἔλθῃ τοιαῦτα μυστήρια, μήτε ἡ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὑπερήφανος
φράσις καὶ ἐκλελυμένη καὶ ὥσπερ κεκαλλωπισμένη ἐξίτηλον ποιήσῃ τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ στιβαρόν,
καὶ τὴν ἐνεργητικὴν τῶν ὀνομάτων φράσιν. Ἕλληνες γάρ, ὦ βασιλεῦ, λόγους ἔχουσι κενοὺς
ἀποδείξεων ἐνεργητικούς, καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν Ἑλλήνων φιλοσοφία, λόγων ψόφος. ἡμεῖς δὲ οὐ λόγοις
χρώμεθα. ἀλλὰ φωναῖς μεσταῖς τῶν ἔργων
(Therefore, my king, in so far as you have the power (who are all powerful), keep the discourse
uninterpreted, lest mysteries of such greatness come to the Greeks, lest the extravagant, flaccid and
(as it were) dandified Greek idiom extinguish something stately and concise, the energetic idiom
of <Egyptian> usage. For the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what
they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by
contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action) (translation from Copenhaver [1992]
58). See esp. Fowden (1993) 37–38.
48. Bickerman’s translation of the emissary Dositheus’ claim (ὃς ἔφη εἶναι): Bickerman (1944)
362 = (1976/1986) 1.245. One wonders about their insistence and the absence of any part of the
Book of Esther in the Qumran find. Cf. De Troyer (2003) 68 and n.37.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxiii
and was aimed chiefly at helping to codify the account in Esther and therefore
also the circumstances celebrated in the festival of Purim, events at the core
of Jewish identity.49 Yet this document was in Greek, for the consumption of
the Jewish communities of the diaspora. In other words, the Greek language
could include and exclude; a document written in it could be for Greeks while
pretending not to be or could be specifically not for them when written in their
tongue.
Local History
We may also consider the histories of Berossus and Manetho as examples of

“local history”—history written about a specific region of the ancient world.
This might seem an odd or ill-fitting approach, inasmuch as we have just been
viewing the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca through the lenses of both Greek his-
toriographic principles and the methods of “curating the past” that were indig-
enous to Babylonia and Egypt.50 Yet local history in the Greek world could be
said to have had a very similar dynamic. On the one hand, a local Greek history
often articulated the understanding that a given locality (typically a polis, or
urban center, and its chora, or territory) had of itself: it can thus be seen as fo-
cused intensely on matters of local interest, such as the origins of a cult and the
physical structures that came to be associated with it (most notably temples),
and it was almost invariably organized around local ways of reckoning time
(e.g., lists of magistrates or religious officials). On the other hand, local history
in the Greek world craved an international audience as well, often finding ways
of coordinating events of transregional or even universal interest through lo-
cally derived indices: for example, Alexander’s conquest of Asia Minor could
be celebrated and located in a regional past by reference to local building proj-
ects and/or dedications he made to a specific shrine. The locality wanted and
needed to be visible as a place of importance in the wider “settled world”—the
oikoumene.51 As acutely observed by Hans-Joachim Gehrke, this vision of the
past was frequently constructed out of variety of texts, creating an arresting mix
of myth, legend, and detailed recent documentation.52 Relatedly, Jean-Marie
Bertrand has referred to a hallmark of this sort of historiography as the “con-
frontation” of sources, one that features the mutual reinforcement of a variety
49. Bickerman (1944) 361–62 = (1976/1986) 1.244–45.

50. I borrow the concept of “curating the past” from Baines (2011) 54.
51. See esp. Herrmann (1984); Gehrke (1994), (2001), (2003); and now the splendid volume by
Clarke (2008). Cf. Dillery (2005b).
52. Gehrke (2001) 298.
xxiv Preface and Acknowledgments
of materials.53 The resulting picture of a people in the hands of a local historian

would often stress its special qualities and the unique contribution it made to
the history of humanity, as against an imagined “other,” but the image would
also stress connections to other societies and places.
A long time ago now (1911), the eminent scholar of Roman historiography
Hermann Peter noted en passant that Berossus, Manetho, and the Atthidogra-
phers, the local historians of Athens and its region (Attica), were all historians
who were also priests.54 It turns out that this is not completely correct, for some
of the Atthidographers were not priests.55 But Peter’s intuition that something
of significance linked all these figures together is not without merit. Indeed, it
could fairly be claimed that a similar historiographic perspective animated the
work of all them, all roughly contemporary with each other. I am not arguing
that any one local Greek historian or set of them had a direct influence on either
Berossus or Manetho. I am saying that the local Greek historian and Berossus
and Manetho were responding to the same stimulus. The politics and culture of
the early Hellenistic period produced a world in which historical writing mat-
tered: it mattered to the dynasts themselves as they sought to legitimate their
rule and make statements about themselves and the regions they governed, and
it mattered to the places under their control, as they, in turn, sought to protect
and even advocate for their own identities and interests. I am reminded of but
not subscribing to the argument, advanced years ago by Felix Jacoby, that local
Greek historiography grew out of a desire by localities to write themselves into
the master narrative of Greek history, particularly as constructed by Herodo-
tus.56 While Jacoby was certainly factually incorrect—local historiography had
been practiced in the Greek world before and during Herodotus’ period of
activity57—the view he proposed of the reception of Greek historical writing
by communities and its potentially stimulating effect seems distinctly plausible,
at least for the local historiography from later periods. In this book, I see the
53. Bertrand (1992) 25–26. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 515; (2011) 209.
54. Peter (1911) 204; see also below, p. 9.
55. Cleidemus is claimed to be an exegetes (an expounder of sacred law) on the basis of the title
of his work the Exegetikon; Phanodemus does seem to have been an important religious official,
participating in a religious embassy (pythais) to Delphi as lead hieropoios from Athens, as well as
holding an important position at the shrine to Amphiaraus at Oropus; Philochorus wrote several
works with what could be broadly called a “religious” or “cultic” focus and was himself a mantis and
hieroskopos; while several documents attest to Androtion’s political career, we do not know of any
special religious or cultic activity connected with his name. See Dillery (2005b) 508–9.
56. See esp. Jacoby (1949) 201: “The species of the local chronicles came up because each indi-
vidual city endeavoured to secure in Greek history a place for herself, which Great Historiography
did not assign to her.”
57. See the brilliant critique of Jacoby’s argument in Fowler (1996) esp. 62–69; note also Toye’s
important paper: Toye (1995).
Preface and Acknowledgments xxv
response of Berossus and Manetho to the realities of Greco-Macedonian rule

and the culture it fostered, as well as to the legacy of Greek historical writing on
their lands, in terms similar to what local Greek historiography was trying to
achieve at the same time and afterward.58 Babylon and Egypt had to be shown
to be both unique—indeed, the originating centers of civilization—and yet also
relevant to and even intimately connected to the history of all humanity, espe-
cially the Greco-Macedonian world, extending down to the period contempo-
rary with the historians themselves.59
Regime Change and the Culture of Defeat:

National Identity and Strategies of Coping
“History is written by the victors”: this sentiment, attributed to various impor-

tant leaders from the past (e.g., Winston Churchill and Napoleon Bonaparte),
is ubiquitous and endlessly repeated in a variety of media, if not always in these
exact words. But as Wolfgang Schivelbusch has powerfully demonstrated, the
sentiment is also clearly wrong.60 Sometimes, often even, “the losers,” too, get
to write history.61 To be sure, the applicability of the maxim to early Hellenis-
tic Babylonia and Egypt is imperfect, at least as Schivelbusch has conceived
of the phenomenon. He is concerned to account for how defeated “nations”
in the modern era responded to specific, isolable military defeats that did not
involve the wholesale capture and permanent subjugation of their territory un-
der the rule of foreign peoples—his examples are the American South after
the Civil War, France after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and Germany
after World War I. But certain verities do apply: simply put, defeat, broadly
conceived and crucially also containing within it the idea of the loss of true
regional autonomy, ultimately raises “the threat of extinction”62—the threat of
the physical elimination of a people and its culture.
Schivelbusch has shown that societies go through phases in dealing with
this existential threat,63 many of which do not seem to be relevant to the cases
of Berossus’ Babylon under Seleucid rule and Manetho’s Egypt under the first
Ptolemies. But the overriding impression one gets from his analysis of the
58. The contrast implied at Jacoby (1949) 397–98 n.56 between Peter’s thinking and Jacoby’s
has to do more with formal differences than with differences in purpose.
59. Cf. Gruen’s lucid remarks: Gruen (2011) 1.
60. Schivelbusch (2003), entitled The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and
Recovery, translated from the German edition of 2001 with the title Die Kultur der Niederlage.
61. Cf. Dillery (1999) 112.
62. Cf. Schivelbusch (2003) 5.
63. Schivelbusch (2003) 10–35.
xxvi Preface and Acknowledgments
“culture of defeat” does seem to apply: at stake are the health and vitality of
the defeated culture, particularly its identity, leading, among other things, to a
romanticized view of the society’s past—an idealized conceptualization of the
nation freed from foreign domination.64 As such, Schivelbusch comes close to
the position taken by Jan Assmann for Egypt under foreign rule in the Late
Period: Assmann, too, speaks of national “trauma,” of “political messianism,”
and of the overriding need to “reinforce” cultural boundaries in the crucial task
of preserving “national identity” in difficult times by means of stories of the
expulsion of outsiders or unclean persons and the restoration of native rule.65
Both Schivelbusch and Assmann would agree, I think, that when “bad things”
(conquest, foreign rule) happen to “good nations,” those “bad things” have to
be explained in some way without ultimately calling into question the identity
and inherent validity of their societies and cultures as systems of meaning. So
the defeat becomes one that was ordained by the gods or something that was
destined to happened but that would be made right at some point in the future,
when the cleansed and restored nation was reconstituted under native rule.
A number of allied approaches are relevant in this context. Older defeats that
were later overcome in some way obviously take on special significance and
can become patterns. The foreign ruler can be made into an indigenous one.
The centrality of the defeated nation’s culture to the broader history of civilized
humanity can be stressed. I believe this perspective of defeat profoundly shaped
the historical vision of both Berossus and Manetho, even if it is not always ex-
pressed at every turn.
Significantly, as observed by Assmann in the case of Egypt and by Norman
Yoffee for Mesopotamia, the “carriers” of the defeated culture, its advocates and
curators, were first and foremost “priests” and “scribes”—that is, men precisely
like Berossus and Manetho.66 As even Bingen has noted in connection with
Manetho but as might well also be applied to Berossus, “Manetho was an ex-
ceptional answer to the need to have chronologically classified an Egypt which
the Greek had been admiring for generations. It had nothing to do with the
exploited people the immigrants met in their daily activities.”67 It was entrusted
to the indigenous priests and scribes to preserve their nations’ collective identi-
ties by building arcs of continuity to the remote past from a present that was
64. Cf. Schivelbusch (2003) 31.

65. Assmann (2002) 377–408; note his chapter headings for these pages: “The Demotic Chron-
icle and the Political Messianism of the Late Period” and “The Cultural Construction of Otherness:
Trauma and Phobia.”
66. Assmann (2002) 411–20; Yoffee (1988) 64–65 (“carriers” is his term).
67. Bingen (2007) 28.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxvii
compromised by foreign domination.68 Is it any surprise that a salient feature

of their historical writing is a tendency to look at the past synchronically as well
as diachronically—to note how events from long ago, such as the invention of
the arts of civilization or the enduring importance of the cosmic order, play a
vital role in the present?69
An Opportunity: Hellenization and World History
Something obviously very big happened in the history of the world in the Hel-
lenistic period. Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian cultures, each constitut-
ing massive contributions to the achievement of organized human life on our
planet, were brought into an intimate interplay that, while by no means unprec-
edented hitherto, had not occurred on a similar scale before. Greek culture, the
one I know best and with which I am principally concerned, went from be-
ing the possession of a relatively small number of people clustered around the
shores of the Eastern and Central Mediterranean to a tool of communication
and social construction in the hands of many, many more people and in many
other places, some quite far from the central Greek homelands.
A wonderful text that illustrates this development in what we might call
“world history” is the inscription of one Clearchus set up some time in the
first half of the third century BC at Ai Khanum in Bactria (present-day Af-
ghanistan), expertly published by Louis Robert in 1968.70 In it, Clearchus, very
probably the pupil of the philosopher Aristotle, published a list of the Delphic
Maxims—maxims being a favored form of instruction in the late classical and
early Hellenistic periods (pithy and portable bits of wisdom, “culture in a suit-
case”) and often associated with the wisdom of the Seven Sages of the past. He
also provided an explanation of what he had done in the form of an epigram in
elegiac pentameters:
These wise (words) of ancient men are set up, | utterances of famous
men, in holy Pytho. | Whence Clearchus, having copied them carefully, |
set them up, shining from afar, in the sanctuary of Cineas.71
68. See esp. the collected volume edited by Crawford (2007), particularly her own introductory
paper, entitled “Steady States.”
69. Cf. Humphreys (1993) 51–52.
70. Robert (1968) 421–49 = (1969/1990) 5.510–51, (1973) 225–35.
71. Translation from Burstein (1985) 67 no. 49A; cf. Austin (2006) 336–37 no. 186. Clearchus
may have written on the seven Sages, as Demetrius of Phalerum also: Dorandi (2014).
xxviii Preface and Acknowledgments
What could be more exemplary of the process of Hellenization than such a

text? A philosopher brings with him the sacred words of Hellenic wisdom from
the very heart of Old Greece (indeed, its navel: Pytho is another name for the
Oracle at Delphi) and transfers them, shining like a beacon, into the fastness
of the Hindu Kush. Yet there are problems. How is this transfer of knowledge
made accessible or meaningful to the Bactrians themselves? The maxims
and accompanying epigram were put up in the sanctuary of the city founder,
Cineas. The list of sententiae is very much like lists we find elsewhere (e.g., SIG3
1268, Stobaeus 3.1.173 Wachsmuth),72 probably to be connected to the canon-
izing work of another member of Aristotle’s school, Demetrius of Phalerum.73
Would local non-Greeks have been encouraged to read this document there?
Could they read Greek, or were they even literate in any language? The inscrip-
tion creates the impression of a torchbearer of civilization preserving paideia
in the barbaric hinterlands with almost missionary zeal. Perhaps that works if
we see the city at Ai Khanum as an outpost—a sealed off enclave whose Greek
inhabitants and visitors (merchants?) were the sole audience envisioned for the
text. But then how could any meaningful transfer of information take place be-
tween Clearchus’ words and the local non-Greeks? Where is the Hellenization?
Where is the interplay? Who were to profit by the mission of Clearchus if not
only fellow Greeks?
These questions take on special urgency in connection with a document
that came to light years ago and that is of stunning relevance to the Clearchus
text published by Robert. In 1897, Ulrich Wilcken published a small text from
a clay shard or ostrakon found at Deir el-Bahri, the mortuary complex next
to Luxor in Egypt.74 It contains a list of maxims that is written in a hand from
the third century BC (in the same century as Clearchus’ Ai Khanum text and
possibly even contemporary with it) and that is obviously related to the Deme-
trius tradition represented in Stobaeus. The maxims include “Exercise wisdom
with justice,” “Revere alike the gods and your parents,” and so on. The Deir el-
Bahri ostrakon contained the same “Delphic wisdom” as Clearchus’ text. What
is especially important about the document, though, is its header: Ἀμενώτου
ὑποθῆκαι, “The sayings of Amenotes.” The ostrakon comes from a shrine dedi-
cated to Imhotep, or Amenhotep, the Egyptian hero-god of healing and wis-
dom identified with Asclepius in the early Ptolemaic period.75 Of course, the
two possibilities we have to explain the author of this text are (1) a Greek who
72. See the list at SIG3 3.393–94. See now, too, P. Oxy. 4099, with the corrections and bibliogra-
phy of Huys (1996). Note also Barns (1950/1951).
73. Brunck (1883); Fraser (1971) 1.736, 2.954 n.53.
74. Wilcken (1897/1981) = Mertens-Pack 2588.4. See also Cribiore (1996) no. 239.
75. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.684–85, 2.954 n.51; Wildung (1977) 220–34.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxix
has attributed the wisdom of Delphi to an Egyptian deity or (2) a Hellenized

Egyptian who ascribed the sentences of the Seven Sages of the Greeks to one of
his native gods. Either scenario sheds light on the nature of cultural interaction
in the early Hellenistic period, especially as it relates to the Delphic maxims.
In scenario 1, a Greek dedicates a list of familiar gnomai in his own language
but at an Egyptian shrine; moreover, he states that the author of the sententiae is
an Egyptian hero-god; finally, his choice of Egyptian deity is an informed one,
for Imhotep is a figure responsible for wisdom as well as healing. The emblems
of Greek paideia that are shown from the precinct of Cineas in Bactria have
now become the statements of an Egyptian god of healing, at least according to
a Greek (or Macedonian) resident in Egypt; it could be argued that this putative
Greek resident is, in fact, appropriating Imhotep, making him into one of the
Seven Sages. In scenario 2, an Egyptian who is literate in the Greek language
puts up the list of Delphic maxims but ascribes them to one of his own gods.
His choice is not remarkable, for it is reasonable to assume that he knows his
own religion and cult. But he has, at one blow, appropriated Greek tenets and
made them Egyptian. In both scenarios, we see the interaction of two distinct
cultures; in both cases, we see not so much the erasure of one culture by the
other but, rather, the convergence of ideas through assimilation or adaptation
that is not clumsy and ill-considered but meaningful and apt. I should note
here, too, that perhaps the incentive to make use of these gnomai in a contest
for primacy was found within the Greek gnomic tradition itself. Callimachus
could make use of the competitive tensions within the tradition in his story of
Bathycles’ cup from his First Iamb (F 191 Pfeiffer).
Hellenization is unfortunately a vague term that is often used in cavalier
generalizations—for “painting with a big brush,” if you will, but with few facts
or details. Thus, though many (myself included) can speak breezily about how
Greek critical and scholarly principles were taken up by non-Greeks in the Hel-
lenistic period as they looked for ways to give voice to traditions of knowledge
and wisdom that were, in many cases, centuries, if not millennia, older than
what one encounters in the Greek world, can we point to an actual case of this
in the years shortly after the death of Alexander the Great? With the works of
Berossus and Manetho, the answer is yes. With them, we are uniquely placed
to observe the process of Hellenization early on, in great detail, and (crucially)
from the perspective of non-Greeks.
I will here give just one example from each author, only in passing—I treat
both cases at much greater length below. It seems likely that Berossus appended
an apologetic tag to the version of the Babylonian creation epic that he had the
fish-man hero and sage (apkallu) Oannes proclaim to the earliest humans: this
“accounting of nature” (he uses the rare Greek verb physiologeisthai) was told
xxx Preface and Acknowledgments
by Oannes “allegorically” (allegorikos).76 Greek readers of old poetry, especially

dealing with the origins of the world in the conflict of gods, had long been
discomfited by the details and sought interpretative ways out of accepting the
literal truth of such tales—great anthropomorphic deities battling each other
with shocking physicality. In the early Hellenistic period, Greek literary critics
had started to develop methods for dealing with this discomfort, especially by
following the lead of Aristotle and his followers (the Peripatos): the episodes of
physical violence stood for something else; they were to be understood as sym-
bols. If this is a genuine section of the Babyloniaca, Berossus can be seen to be
doing precisely the same thing at roughly the same period of time but in con-
nection with the cosmogony account of his own Mesopotamian culture. This
is Hellenization firsthand and immediate. We are further encouraged in this
view by the fact that none other than a Greek philosopher, Eudemus of Rhodes,
an actual member of the Aristotelian Peripatos, had produced a translation in
Greek of the very same Babylonian epic a generation or so earlier. Yet do not
forget that Berossus attributes the creation story to his merman sage, Oannes.
What sort of allegory could be said to reside in a poem that was told by a figure
who was himself half man and half fish? This situation points to not just the
possibilities for but also the complexities of harvesting the details of Helleniza-
tion from Berossus and Manetho. Berossus used contemporary Greek methods
to explain his nation’s foundation myth, but he still needed his own culture to
validate such an account, so he had to put the story in the mouth of its first and
greatest culture hero, the fish-man apkallu Uan/Oannes.
The example from Manetho that I want to mention briefly has more to do
with time. A fragment from the later epitome of his chronology asserts that
during the reign of the Pharaoh Thyoris, the last ruler of the Nineteenth Dy-
nasty, Ilium was captured. Moreover, he tells us that Thyoris is called “Polybus”
in Homer and that Polybus’ wife was a woman named “Alkandra.” Again, if
genuine, this little snippet of information is freighted with massive significance.
Synchronization was becoming an important tool of Greek “universal histo-
ries” precisely during the era of the fourth and third centuries; by it, the events
from several parts of the known world were coordinated on a single time scale.
Again, it looks like we have evidence for Hellenization in the form of a non-
Greek being sensitive to Greek scholarly methods that were in the air during his
day. This is surely a correct analysis, but it also only partial. By synchronizing
the fall of Troy with the reign of Thyoris, Manetho, in one economical action,
76. See below, pp. 227–35.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxxi
also situated the watershed event of the Greek past, the divider between “myth”
and “history,” on the grid of Egyptian time.
This procedure had a couple interrelated effects. In the first place, most
obviously, it located a (the?) hallmark event of Greek history in the Egyp-
tian past. Secondly and much more important, it showed that Greek time
reckoning—indeed, the Greeks’ concept of the measureable past—was simply
dwarfed by the Egyptian control of human history. Do not forget that in addi-
tion to the explicit synchronism Manetho makes, he also implicitly correlated
the reign of Thyoris with the time of the Trojan War by identifying him by
the Greek name Polybus “from Homer.” While there are a number of figures
named Polybus in Homer (one in the Iliad, four in the Odyssey), it has long
been recognized that the one Manetho had to have in mind was a man, noted
briefly in book 4 of the Odyssey, who, together with his wife, Alkandra, hosted
Menelaus and Helen in Egypt when they were returning from Troy to Greece
after the war (Od. 4.126).77 These details show that Manetho searched out and
located an appropriate and plausible figure from Homer with whom to con-
nect the date of the fall of Troy. Indeed, we could argue that he has forced his
evidence, because the corresponding figure in the king list of Egypt, “Thyo-
ris,” is, in actuality, Twosre, a female ruler, and because Polybus is not, in fact,
identified as a king in Homer.
But the forcing of evidence is telling: Manetho knew the importance of
Homer to the Greeks, as well as, no doubt, to Herodotus, who also wrote about
the sojourn of Menelaus and Helen in Egypt. He perhaps even knew of the
growing interest in the Greek world of building on the legacy of Homer by
finding “holes” in his text where individuals, places, and even items are men-
tioned but left undeveloped—opportunities precisely to build narrative “ad-
denda” that privileged localities otherwise not important in Homer. But the
main point is that with Manetho’s incorporation of Polybus and the fall of Troy
into his king list, we see, at a detailed level, how Hellenization works. As in the
case of Berossus and allegory, however, the term Hellenization tends to obscure
the way in which the native historian has used an admittedly Greek literary or
scholarly interpretative tool to make an important point about his own nation’s
past. We should not let the term Hellenization obscure the privileging of the
indigenous treatment of the past that also or even especially emerges. Through-
out the subsequent pages, I have approached Berossus and Manetho precisely
through the lens of seeing their work as somehow activated by the realities of
77. See below, pp. 105, 106–7.
xxxii Preface and Acknowledgments
Greco-Macedonian rule and stimulated by Greek historiography—and thus as

evidence for “Hellenization”—but still as texts that give voice to fundamentally
non-Greek understandings of the past.
Indeed, puzzling over “Hellenization” leads me to a further point regarding
Berossus and Manetho, one not so much about an approach I have taken but,
rather, in connection with the topic of this book, seen in light of the recent
appeal to examine Greco-Roman antiquity in a broader context than has here-
tofore often been the case. Fergus Millar has written eloquently of the need
to “redraw” the map of the ancient world by rethinking in particular what it
means to study Greek history. He makes the following telling observation:
The fact that the study of the Mediterranean region, as it was in the
last two millennia BC and the first millennium AD, has, since the early
modern period, been a “Western” activity, combined with the primary
educational role of Greek and Latin, has inevitably meant that earlier
Greek history has generally been studied in relative isolation from its
Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean context, and that later Greek
history has been explored first in the context of Macedonian imperial-
ism, and then in that of the Roman Empire.78
He goes on to point out that there is another, equally valid framework for the
study of Greek history that would put it at the western edge of an ancient world
centered on the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean, from the first millennium BC
to the first millennium AD, up to the Islamic conquests. This change of frame-
work would necessitate a corresponding shift in the languages taught: Greek still,
but now Hebrew instead of Latin.79 The advantage of accompanying Millar in his
thought experiment is important and profound. The locating of the vital heart
of the thought world of the early Greeks and their literature would have to be
seen in a new way: no longer exotic outliers to be smoothed away through a dif-
ferent sort of Hellenization, Hesiod and the tantalizing glimpses we get of Near
Eastern mythology in Homer and some of the pre-Socratic philosophers would
become the natural center of archaic Greek literature.80 Moving down in time,
78. Millar (2006a) 505.
79. Millar (2006a) 506; note also Bowersock’s important study: Bowersock (1990).
80. Note Burkert (2004) 3 and n.9, citing, with approval, Dornseiff (1959) 30 (= Dornseiff
[1935] 244): “Yet among classical philologists only Franz Dornseiff, playing the outsider, realized
the new dimensions of the ancient world and proposed giving up the dogma of ‘provincial se-
clusion’ of civilizations in the early Iron Age.” One could cite many names here, but in addition
to Dornseiff and Burkert, pride of place should go to L. Robert, P. Fraser, O. Murray, M. West,
L. Koenen, and, most recently, Lane Fox (2009). Alfred von Gutschmid and Eduard Meyer also
deserve mention here for their broad approach to “ancient history,” as does Fergus Millar for later
Preface and Acknowledgments xxxiii
the significant interplay between Greek and non-Greek in Hellenistic literature

would seem not aberrant but of a piece with what had gone before,81 and Ber-
ossus and Manetho in particular would become less strange and more familiar
figures. Earlier Greek historiography was born and took its first serious steps in
a world dominated by Persian power, and it keenly felt the need to respond to
Persia’s expansion; indeed, we could argue that its true origins are precisely to be
connected to Herodotus and his realization that the growth of the Achaemenid
Empire was the essential fact in the recent history of the world, at least as he knew
it.82 Berossus and Manetho, in their turn, were responding to a world dominated
by Macedonian power and Greek learning, and they, too, formed a view of the
past that accounted for the new political and cultural realities of their day, but in
such a way that drew attention to the unique contributions Babylonia and Egypt
had made to the history of the world and humanity.
Acknowledgments
In going back over the early drafts of the prospectus of this book that still haunt
my hard drive and that remind me how long—too long—I have worked on this
project, I note that my interest in the topic really began with a problem. As I
hope that readers will soon see, Arnaldo Momigliano is one of the scholarly
lights by whom I navigate; he had an unerring sense of where important ques-
tions about antiquity lay. Yet Berossus and Manetho fell into a penumbra of
sorts for him. Momigliano’s great contribution in his book Alien Wisdom was
to show that although “non-Greeks exploited to an unprecedented extent the
opportunity of telling the Greeks in the Greek language something about their
own history,” the Greeks basically were not listening.83 In most instances, the
Greeks chose to hold on to the preconceptions that they had formed of the
non-Greeks they increasingly encountered. They did not learn the languages
of their new, non-Greek subjects. They did not, by and large, read the texts
written by hellenophone non-Greeks. In a very real sense, Momigliano’s great
contribution was to show that Greek culture, though unparalleled in its cultural
achievements, was profoundly monoglot and at times even parochial.
While Momigliano’s analysis is in many ways important and convincing,
periods.
81. See, in particular, the groundbreaking work of Koenen (1993), Selden (1998), and Stephens
(2003), but already in evidence earlier in such scholars as Reitzenstein (1904, 1906) and Norden
(1913).
82. Cf. Fornara (1971b) 26. Note also Momigliano (1977) 25–35.
83. Momigliano (1975a) 7–8; see also (1975c).
xxxiv Preface and Acknowledgments
it also becomes involved in the very problem it isolates: we hear more about
the Greeks’ failure to investigate and learn about wisdom not their own than
about what the non-Greeks were actually attempting to say. Important ques-
tions go unasked and unanswered: Precisely what were the non-Greeks saying?
To whom did they direct their new texts, written in the Greek language but
also informed by the traditions of their own cultures? Were they advocates of
their own cultures or propagandists for the new, Greco-Macedonian regimes?
In this book, I would like to suggest that significant interpenetration of cultures
occurred at a very early stage in the interaction of Greek and non-Greek in the
Hellenistic period and was a complex interpenetration that is not adequately
evaluated in the accounting Momigliano set out almost forty years ago. Ber-
ossus and Manetho could be both advocate and collaborator; they were both
influenced by Greek ways of thought and powerful voices of native tradition.
Above all, I would like to suggest that the advent of Greek power and learning
did indeed help these non-Greeks develop a new way of talking about the pasts
of their lands but that this new historical writing was an amalgam of preexisting
native genres. It is worth noting here that the original title considered for this
book was The Wisdom of the Alien.
It is a matter of considerable regret to me that I have not been able to take
more than passing notice to two important recent treatments of Berossus:
Haubold (2013) and de Breucker (2010). The latter volume came into my hands
only late in the writing of this book and I have done my best to indicate major
points of intersection and difference where possible with my own arguments,
arrived at independently. I would also like to express here my thanks to Bar-
bara Krauss at Harrassowitz and Michael Sharp at Cambridge University Press
for permission to reprint portions of papers published in volumes from their
presses (Dillery [2013a] and [2013b] respectively) in chapters 5 and 6.
I am acutely aware that I owe a lot to a great many people. I am a classicist and
ancient historian by training and can claim knowledge only of Greek and Latin
to any professional standard. I have no competence in the languages of ancient
Egypt and the Near East. I know that I am therefore at a great disadvantage in
writing a book such as this, but I still think it important that someone with my
academic background attempt such a treatment, even with all the shortcom-
ings that must also attend it. It has taken me sixteen years to write, and I have
accordingly incurred a massive number of debts, individual and institutional.
I will begin with the latter, though there is significant overlap in some cases
Preface and Acknowledgments xxxv
between the two categories, due to timely invitations to visit and give papers
and learn.
In the very earliest stages (May 1997), I was invited to New College, Oxford,
to give a series of papers on the core of the project. I really got to grips with
writing the book several years later, thanks to a sesquicentennial leave from
the University of Virginia, which I took at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in the spring
of 2008. In between, I managed to get exploratory reading and thinking done
while an official visitor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in
Paris (spring 2001), where I also gave a series of talks on related matters. I have
given papers that ultimately became parts of this book at a number of academic
institutions and professional meetings over the years: at the universities of Chi-
cago, Cincinnati, Suny Buffalo, Yale, Leeds, Reading, and North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, as well as Oberlin College, and at annual meetings of the APA
and CAMWS. I need to acknowledge here also the support of my wonderful
colleagues in the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia, as well
as those in the History Department, J. E. Lendon and E. Meyer. In particular,
I would like to single out my fellow historiographer A. J. Woodman and my
chair, John Miller. At one point, when I told John I thought of giving up the
book, he encouraged me to continue and has offered me support in countless
other ways.
Indeed, there were not a few times while I was writing this book that I de-
spaired deeply that I would ever finish. In my darker moments, I was convinced
that I would become something like the odious and failed academic of George
Eliot’s Middlemarch, Edward Casaubon (whose surname, significant for clas-
sicists, is not an accident I am sure); he was, after all, writing (and not complet-
ing) a book (Key to All Mythologies) not wholly unlike mine—one of Eliot’s
characters even refers to Casaubon’s interest in none other than “Xisuthrus” at
one point (ch. 8). If I have managed to avoid becoming entirely like Mr. Casau-
bon, it is thanks, in no small part, to a number of people—none of whom is in
any way responsible for the many problems and shortcomings that, no doubt,
still remain in this book.
It was in conversation with David Potter that I first glimpsed the outlines of
this project. He has helped me in so many ways—with comments on early ver-
sions, advice, and bibliographic help. Without his energy and stimulus and sup-
port of my views, I do not think I would have ever found my way through. Ellen
Bauerle of the University of Michigan Press offered me a provisional contract
long ago, when I really had nothing substantial to show her. She has shown me
extraordinary patience, kindness, and attention in the fostering of this volume.
Both David and Ellen are models for me of loyal and generous friends.
xxxvi Preface and Acknowledgments
The initial invitation to come to Oxford came from Robin Lane Fox, and
while I was there, Professor (now Sir) Fergus Millar attended every paper pre-
sentation I made and gave me invaluable help. Robin Lane Fox’s invitation quite
literally rescued me when I was facing a very grim time, and I still am staggered
by the amount of learning he put at my disposal, despite his very busy schedule.
Fergus Millar and, at a later stage, Denis Feeney have shown continued interest
in my project—for no very good reason, since they had no professional or insti-
tutional requirement or obligation to do so. It was out of their sheer generosity
and kindness that they now and again sent me encouraging, if also probing,
e-mails asking about the state of things and wrote me letters of support. I can
only say that they are not only very great scholars but also very kind men. I
must also mention the hospitality shown to me by François Hartog and Vincent
Azoulay during my stay in Paris; Vincent really was under no obligation to help
me but did in countless ways. Several scholars at Cambridge, including other
visiting fellows at Clare Hall, also gave me timely help: I think especially of
Paul Cartledge and Richard Hunter, as well as Ted Evergates and our lunchtime
conversations at Clare Hall. I must also list here a number of other scholars who
provided advice or insight, sent me offprints, or just gave an encouraging word
at key points: Stanley Burstein, Howard Jacobson, Richard Jasnow, Kim Ry-
holt, Stephanie Dalley, Philippe Borgeaud, Dorothy Thompson, Jan Stronk, Ian
Rutherford, David Wray, Lutz Popko, Erich Gruen, and Christopher Woods.
The readers for the University of Michigan Press were also very helpful, as was
my copyediting coordinator Mary Hashman.
I leave to the end my more personal debts. My parents, Edward and Marita
Dillery, have always provided support and timely prodding, as have my in-laws,
Joel and Birthe Myers. My wonderful wife, Sara Myers, and my dear sons, Pe-
ter and Nikolas, have had to deal with a distracted husband and father who
was not always all “there” when he should have been. Sara has encouraged and
supported me through all these years, while still managing to write her own
scholarship, teach, and run our household. That this book was written is thanks
to her more than to any other person.
This book is dedicated to Ludwig Koenen. The debt I owe him, both of a
scholarly kind and of friendship, is simply too big to express here. I hope, in-
stead, that my study reflects something of his deep learning, his generosity, and
his kindness.
Preface and Acknowledgments xxxvii
A Note Concerning Ancient Names, Citations to Berossus

and Manetho, Translations, and Abbreviations
I have tried to regularize the spelling of names where it has been possible. In not
a few cases, however, ancient authorities provide such a range of different spell-
ings of names that uniformity is not realistic, and I have not tried to apply a single
spelling throughout. There are no doubt other inconsistences still to be found.
Texts of Berossus and Manetho are referred to throughout without their Ja-
coby reference numbers (they are nos. 680 and 609 respectively). In those places
where their texts have come from George Syncellus, I have employed the fol-
lowing formula: “F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 17 M,” which means F 1 will be found
on p.17 of A. Mosshammer’s Teubner edition, Georgius Syncellus Ecloga Chro-
nographica (1984). In the case of Manetho, not only are his texts cited by Jacoby
number, they are cited also by number from Waddell’s Loeb volume of 1940.
I have for the most part translated the main texts of my discussion through-
out. Where I am not responsible for a translation I have tried to indicate who
is. There may be places where I have failed to do this and I apologize in advance
to those whose versions I have not properly signaled. All translations from the
Bible are taken from The New English Bible with the Apocrypha Oxford Study
Edition (New York 1976).
I have tried to follow the abbreviations for ancient authors as they are found
in LSJ and the OLD (there are one or two exceptions). For modern publications,
I have tended to follow the list found in the OCD, with some modifications
that will be obvious. I append below a list of abbreviations specific to this book
(though in many cases no doubt already familiar):
ANET3 = Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. J. B.

Pritchard ed. Third Edition with Supplement. Princeton 1969.
Breasted = J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt. 5 vols. Chicago 1906/1907.
Brosius = M. Brosius, The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I. LAC-
TOR 16. London 2000.
Chaniotis = A. Chaniotis, Historie und Historiker in den griechischen Inschriften.
Stuttgart 1988.
Chronicle = A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Texts from Cu-
neiform Sources 5. Locust Valley, NY 1975.
DB = Bihistun Inscription of Darius I.
Lichtheim = M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley
1973/1980.
LXX = Septuagint
xxxviii Preface and Acknowledgments
Sachs and Hunger = A. J. Sachs, A. J., and H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and
Related Texts from Babylonia. 2 vols. Österreichische Akad. der Wiss., Phil.-
Hist. Klasse 195 and 210. Vienna 1988/1989.
Schoene = A. Schoene, Eusebi Chronicorum Liber Prior. 1875. Repr. Dublin &
Zurich 1967.
Wehrli = F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar. Basel/
Stuttgart 1944–.
Contents
Part 1 History Matters

Chapter 1 Introduction 3
Part 2 The Vectors of History: Time and Space

Chapter 2 Time: Berossus, Manetho, and the
Construction of King Lists 55
Chapter 3 Space: Regional Perspective and
Authentication in Berossus and Manetho 123
Part 3 Narrative History

Chapter 4 The Great Narratives: Introduction 195
Chapter 5 Berossus’ Narratives 220
Chapter 6 Manetho’s Narratives 301
Chapter 7 Conclusion to Narratives 348
After Words
Ending with Demetrius:
Demetrius the Chronographer 357
Bibliography 389
Indexes 443
Index Verborum 443
Index Locorum 445
General Index 457
Part 1
History Matters
Chapter 1
Introduction
Within a couple generations from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC),
histories appeared of both the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, written by
native priests but in the Greek language.1 Within the next one hundred years,
similar national histories would be composed in the Greek language by a Jew in
Egypt and a Roman at Rome. In each case but the last, the cultures involved not
only were fully literate in their own tongue but also possessed elaborate ways of
recording the past in writing—indeed, in some cases, scholarly traditions that
could be traced back two millennia. Yet nothing along the lines of these histo-
ries had so far been produced in these same cultures. This book aims to explain
both why these histories were written when they were and for what purposes.
To explain these histories and their authors, we need to back up and do
our best to take stock of several interlocking issues, for without doing this, the
intelligibility of these histories—indeed, their very readability—is greatly de-
creased. The Babylonian historian Berossus, the Egyptian Manetho, and like
figures from the West Semitic cultures of Judaea and Phoenicia operated at
the crossings of several political, social, and intellectual worlds. They were all
members of native elites under the domination of Macedonian overlords; one
can see items in their writing that seem to suggest not only their collaboration
in the foreign rule of their lands but also their advocacy of their cultures in
opposition to the world of their new masters. Their histories were written in
Greek, betray signs of active engagement with Greek historical writing on their
lands, and themselves contain elements that suggest the adoption of at least
some Greek historiographic principles and interests. At the same time, these
texts are clearly composed from native records, are organized along lines deter-
mined by local systems of time reckoning, and articulate views that are deeply
informed by regional scholarly and wisdom traditions. Charting the interac-
tions of all these features of these historians and their work will constitute the
main task of this volume.
1. Cf. Averintsev (1999b) 6 for the short time it took for these works to appear.
4 Clio’s Other Sons
But other preliminary problems arise before we can come to grips with
these authors. Why did the writing of history—any kind of history, whether of
the sort I am discussing here or any other—matter at the time these historians
wrote, that is, during the early Hellenistic period broadly defined (the hundred
or so years following the death of Alexander)? Another way of framing this
question lies at the back of several of the issues I have already alluded to in
the previous paragraph: for whom were these histories written; who comprised
their intended audience? Because they are written in Greek, the obvious answer
would be Greeks, including the Greek-speaking Macedonians, who together
formed the ruling class of the new Hellenistic monarchies that were now sov-
ereign over the old civilizations that made up Alexander’s empire. This must be
true, but I think it is only a partial answer. Other audiences were also possible,
I think; in fact, to judge by the transmission of these texts to later ages, it is
positively demonstrable that there were other, non-Greek audiences for these
histories.
Indeed, before venturing further, I think it is important to consider the sta-
tus of historiography in the ancient Greek world at this period, an examination
that will entail the marginalization of Babylonian and Egyptian contexts, that
is, the very worlds from which the subjects of this book came. While there most
certainly were documentary and even narrative traditions for preserving the
past in both Babylon and Egypt that predated Berossus and Manetho, the sort
of comprehensive narrative history of their lands that they produced had no
native antecedents, and this fact must be explained by the influence of Greek
historical writing. We will return to those traditions later in this introduction,
in another context that will help to foreground the worlds from which they
came, namely, the impact of Persian rule and its removal on their respective
cultures.
Part 1
Greek Historians in the Time of

Alexander and the Diadochs
The writing of history meant a lot to Alexander the Great and his commanders.
It has been argued, with considerable persuasiveness, that Alexander’s planned
conquest of Arabia (which he never realized), specifically his desire to establish
Introduction 5
himself as the Arabs’ “third god,” must ultimately derive from his reading of
Herodotus, for only there can one read of two gods worshipped by the people
of Arabia (Arrian An. 7.20.1; cf. Hdt. 3.8.3).2 Correspondingly, it has also been
suggested that one of Alexander’s first military actions was partly inspired by
his reading of Herodotus: namely, his assembly of army and fleet at the island
of Peuce on the Danube, where Darius I similarly encamped (Arrian An. 1.2.2;
cf. Hdt. 4.89ff.).3
The cases where Herodotus very plausibly inspired Alexander to specific
action can be multiplied. But even if we do not want to accept the specifics of
these arguments, it nonetheless remains that, even accounting for the debt that
the Alexander historians may have independently owed to Herodotus in their
presentations of Alexander’s conquests, Alexander himself was profoundly in-
fluenced by Herodotus conceptually, in framing for himself and others what he
was trying to achieve through his actions. Although pride of place should go to
Homer in shaping Alexander’s view of the world and his own heroic place in it
(cf. esp. Plut. Alex. 8.2), second in line must have been Herodotus’ accounting
of the conflict of East and West.4 As has been suggested by several scholars,
Herodotus was a powerful inspiration for Alexander’s own campaign. While
Alexander could doubtless draw on much current propaganda from the League
of Corinth at virtually any point during his campaign in Asia, when he sent
the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton back to Athens (Arrian An. 3.16.7,
7.19.2), Xerxes’ sack of the Acropolis must have been in the background, too,
in defining for Alexander the historical wrongs of the Persians, and these were
chiefly found in Herodotus. In addition to the motive of revenge, Herodotus’
account of the deeds of the Achaemenid kings also provided benchmarks for
Alexander to surpass, as we saw in the instance of the island of Peuce. If Plu-
tarch’s accounting, although anecdotal, can be relied on, Alexander knew his
Herodotus so well that the former could quote the latter at suitable moments.5
Of course, Alexander did not just read history; he “made” it, and he was
careful to ensure that historians accompanied him on his campaigns. Callis-
2. Högemann (1985) ch. 5; Bowersock (1989) 410–11 = (1994b) 348–49. Cf. Lane Fox (1973)
448–50.
3. Green (1991) 127–28.
4. Xenophon and the Ten Thousand Cyreans of the Anabasis were obviously also important,
especially if Alexander’s remark at Arrian An. 2.7.8 is authentic: while not indisputably from Al-
exander’s own mouth, that Arrian bothers to report that Alexander is said to have mentioned “Xe-
nophon and the Ten Thousand” lends authenticity to the claim. The notice is not an ornament
from directly recorded speech. See Brunt (1976/1983) 1.147 n.4: “Al[exander] is likely to have read
Xenophon.” See also Due (1993). Though contrast now McGroarty (2006).
5. Alexander seems to quote Herodotus at Plut. Alex. 21.10: see Hamilton (1969) 56 ad loc.; cf.
Lane Fox (1973) 52 and n. on p. 509 “Herodotus.”
thenes, the kinsman of Aristotle, stands out here, but he was far from the only
one. Indeed, Cicero famously observed that a veritable crowd of historians fol-
lowed Alexander on his marches.6 While some may question the quality of the
historiography associated with Alexander and his deeds,7 it is safe to say that
no other individual attracted anything like the attention Alexander received
from the writers of history. In addition to Callisthenes, there were Onesicritus,
Nearchus, Aristobulus, and others.8 To be sure, some of these men will not have
gone on the march as historians, but some, such as Callisthenes, evidently were
retained to record the deeds of Alexander.9 Of particular note among those
who wrote up their history of Alexander after his death was Ptolemy, son of
Lagus, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. In him, we see chronicler
and ruler united, insofar as he was a historian in his own right, publishing his
history of Alexander probably at a time when, as king, he was trying to present
himself as a true “successor” of Alexander—probably nearer to his assump-
tion of the crowns of Egypt in 305 than later.10 It is certainly the case that later
historians, notably Arrian, viewed Ptolemy as a king who wrote history, not a
historian who later became a king (cf. Arrian An. preface 2). According to Poly-
bius, Ptolemy was not alone: “after the death of Alexander, having fought over
the many parts of the inhabited world, [his lieutenants] made their own glory
something to be handed down in many memoirs” (Plb. 8.10.11).11
If anything, the uniting in one and the same figure of king and historian
should be testimony enough of the importance placed on historiography in
the early Hellenistic period. As regards the historians closely attached to Hel-
lenistic courts, practically nothing remains of their work, and what does re-
main is mostly comprised of just names (for the Ptolemies, FGrH 160–61; for
the Seleucids, FGrH 162–66; for Macedon and Pergamon, FGrH 167–72). As
Jane Hornblower, following Jacoby, has remarked, the obvious “eulogistic and,
no doubt, parochial character of such works” explains why virtually nothing
6. Cic. Pro Archia 24 = FGrH 153 T 1: quam multos scriptores rerum suarum magnus ille Al-
exander secum habuisse dicitur.
7. Cf. Finley (1959) 15.
8. See, e.g., Badian (1971) 37–41; Pédech (1984); Zambrini (2007). Note also Robinson (1953),
a convenient collection in translation of the historians of Alexander preserved only in fragments.
9. For recent work on Callisthenes, see Zahrnt (2006); Simons (2011).
10. I follow Badian (1961) 665–66 = (1964) 258. Pearson (1960) 193, representing the majority
view, dates the composition of Ptolemy’s history to later in his life, perhaps even his last years. Cf.
Seibert (1969) 1–7. I do not consider here the question of the Ephemerides and other alleged docu-
mentary sources for Alexander’s rule; see Badian (1961) 667 = (1964) 259–60.
11. See Walbank (1957/1979) 2.85 ad loc. Note that Walbank argues that the phrase “in many
memoirs” (ἐν πλείστοις ὑπομνήμασιν) ought to be understood here as “in numerous histories.”
I note, too, that Polybius is clearly balancing “the many memoirs” with “the many parts” (τῶν
πλείστων μερῶν) of the inhabited world just before.
Introduction 7
of this historical writing survives even to later Greek authors of the Roman
imperial period, such as Plutarch and Pausanias;12 indeed, for the latter, the
historians “of Attalus and of Ptolemy” were essentially lost, though Pausanias
speaks of them as “men who resided with the kings, for the purpose of writing
up their deeds” (Paus. 1.6.1: οἱ συγγενομενοι τοῖς βασιλεῦσιν ἐπὶ συγγραφῇ
τῶν ἔργων). In other words, Pausanias assumes that this brand of historiogra-
phy was closely connected to royal courts. Indeed, later in the same section of
book 1 of his Periegesis, he says that association with a king forces a historian
to write history biased in their favor (Paus. 1.13.9). In any case, that there were
such figures is put beyond doubt by the narratives of the Hellenistic period by
Polybius and Appian, who relied on them to varying degrees.13
“Intentional History”: Clio at Work
Hornblower is right to stress that local Greek historical writing represented

“the main stream of Greek historiography” for our period.14 While insightful
and most useful in explaining his later collection of the fragments of the Greek
historians, Jacoby’s epochal article of 1909 on the development of Greek histo-
riography created an organic and evolutionary model that does not adequately
represent the pluriform nature of Greek historical writing at virtually all peri-
ods of antiquity—from its inception as a literary form all the way to the end of
the ancient world.15 Local history was practiced in the fifth century BC along-
side the titanic figures of Herodotus and Thucydides and continued throughout
the late classical and Hellenistic periods and beyond.16
Inscriptions have a great deal to tell us regarding the individuals who en-
gaged in this form of historical writing. Throughout the Greek world, in the
Hellenistic period in particular, historians were composing histories of their
city-states and regions that were, in essence, not just vehicles of local pride but
also channels that communicated and thereby also promoted the claims and as-
pirations of these communities in the larger world. H.-J. Gehrke has called this
type of historical writing “intentional history,” that is, a mixture of “myth” and
“history” that springs from a community’s understanding of itself—its “self-
12. Hornblower (1981) 183–85 and n.12 (quote from 184–85). Cf. Jacoby Comm. II B 588.
13. Hornblower (1981) 184.
14. Hornblower (1981) 185–86.
15. Jacoby (1909) = (1956a) 16–60.
16. For criticism of Jacoby’s view of the development of Greek historiography, see esp. Humphreys
(1997); Marincola (1999). See also Porciani (2001); Schepens (2007); Rood (2007). Note the papers in
Ampolo ed. (2006), together with Fornara’s review (2007) of the volume. Also Dillery (2011).
categorization”; as such, it is often a “back projection” of the group’s current

identity into the past.17 Seen in this way, “intentional history” was a powerful
tool in regional advocacy, furnishing communities with claims and rights—for
instance, to disputed border areas (thus famously the dossier of inscriptions
from Priene)18 or to the establishment of new panhellenic games (as in the case
of Magnesia on the Maeander). I should hasten to add here that Gehrke eschews
using terms denoting deliberate falsehood in connection with “intentional his-
tory”; such terms as forgery or fictive history do not capture the attitude of, say,
the Magnesians who did invent the mythological pedigree for their festival to
Artemis Leukophryene but believed it nonetheless.19
While “intentional history” emerges with unmistakable clarity in epigraphic
dossiers such as in the cases of Magnesia and nearby Priene, individual local
historians were animated by a similar point of view. A few examples of such fig-
ures will have to speak for many. In the second half of the fourth century, a local
historian of Athens, Phanodemus, composed a history of his native city that
incorporated a massive amount of “mythical prehistory”20—indeed, stories and
legends that normally belonged elsewhere in the Greek world.21 His aims were
fully in accord with those of the political leadership of Athens at the time, par-
ticularly those of the epimeletes, or chief overseer, of the city, Lycurgus. Gehrke’s
“intentional history” can be spied in several of Phanodemus’ fragments that
touch on matters that were of concern also to Lycurgus.22 Moreover, we know
17. See esp. Gehrke (1994), (2001), and (2003). Note the important earlier paper by Herrmann
(1984) along the same lines; also Veyne (1988) 17–18 and n.30, citing Kroll (1924/1964) 308–15.
Cf. Dillery (2005b); Christesen (2007) 72 and n.56. See also now Clarke (2008) and the papers in
the volume of Foxhall et al. eds. (2010).
18. I. Priene 37 = Ager nos. 26 and 74. Cf. Ager (1996) 208–9; Dillery (2005b) 521.
19. Gehrke (2001) 298 and n.59; cf. Dillery (2005b) 507; see below, p. 186.
20. We do not know how many books his Atthis contained altogether. By book 9, he had only
reached either the assassination of Hipparchus in 514 or the creation of the ten tribes by Cleis-
thenes in 508/7 (F 8): cf. Jacoby FGrH IIIb Supp. 1.183. We do know, thanks to an unplaceable
fragment (F 23), that he covered Athenian history at least down to the death of Cimon in 450/49
(see Harding [1994] 30).
21. Phanodemus makes Athens the mother city for Troy (F 13) and Sais in Egypt (F 25), as well
as for the land of the Hyperboreans (F 29). Similarly, Attica becomes the venue for famous mythi-
cal crimes against maidens normally situated elsewhere: the Rape of Persephone (F 27) and the
sacrifice of Iphigeneia (F 14). Finally, the myth of Admetus does not elsewhere have anything to do
with Athens, but in Phanodemus, the hero Theseus rescues him from exile and settles him and his
family in Attica (F 26). Cf. Dillery (2005b) 509–10.
22. Although we have very few fragments of Phanodemus’ Atthis, the correspondence, both
direct and indirect, with the extant oratory of Lycurgus is striking. As for the direct links, from an
entry in Harpocration (s.v. Ἑκάτης νῆσος, “The Island of Hecate”), we learn that both Lycurgus
(Conomis F 14.8) and Phanodemus (FGrH325 F 1) had occasion to mention this same small island
near Delos. Most significantly, Lycurgus and Phanodemus both drew notice to the daughters of
Erechtheus (Ag. Leocrates 98–100; FGrH 325 F 4). Of course, the story as told by Euripides is im-
portant for Lycurgus because it illustrates the nobility of the mother Praxithea and her patriotism,
in contrast to the cowardice of Leocrates (see esp. 101). It was the sort of moral exemplum that
Introduction 9
from several inscriptions from the Lycurgan period that Phanodemus himself
acted as a religious official and advisor on cult matters.23 We will see below that
this profile of a historian who is also a religious official and advisor to those in
power precisely fits several of the early non-Greek historians who wrote Greek
national histories and who had aims similar to Phanodemus.24
A particularly good portrait of a historian practicing “intentional his-
tory” (though unfortunately without a name, due to the preservation of the
text) comes from a third-century inscription from Amphipolis in the Thracian
Chersonnese (Chaniotis E 6 = BE 1979.271; SEG 28.534):
while resident [here?

and educating well [
he examined and brought [together the things
written up about our city in the ancient historians [and poets
and held public lectures about them [. . . in which
he also had won distinction, and he compiled [a book
also regarding the goddess (Artemis) Tauropolos . . .
Several points are worth drawing out here. It is important that the historian,
whether a native son or not (in this case, I think παρεπιδημῶ[ν argues against
an indigenous figure—for why mention his stay among the Amphipolitans
otherwise?),25 be resident in the city that is both the subject of the history and
the community honoring the historian. Note, further, that this man “educates”
(παιδεύων), in some specific or more general sense, through his endeavors
there.
Perhaps most illuminating is the description of the historian’s research ac-
tivity and the publication of his work. First, he examined historical and (pos-
doubtless helped to inspire the concept of the tragedians as themselves great artifacts of Athens’
storied past and teachers of moral excellence. It seems clear that the tenor of Phanodemus’ treat-
ment was similar, for we are told that he bears witness to an alternative name for the girls (“Hya-
cinthides”) and did so in the fourth book of his Atthis, where he “makes mention of their honor”
(μεμνημένος τῆς τιμῆς αὐτῶν), meaning the cult that is given to them, a physical reminder (statue,
sanctuary), or both. The term “Hyacinthides” is worth noting, for we are told in a fragment of Lyc-
urgus that the orator also referred to the daughters of Erechtheus by this name (Conomis F 10.10).
23. IG II2 223 A + B refers to a dedication to Hephaestus by the Boule in which Phanodemus is
publicly thanked; IG VII 4252 and 4254 tell us that Phanodemus was the leadman in the Athenian
restoration of the sanctuary of Amphiaraus at Oropus; SIG3 296 tells us that he served as first hiero-
poios in Athens’ official mission to Delphi (the Pythais) in around 330.
24. Cf. Peter (1911) 204; also preface above, p. xxiv.
25. Often the historians thanked in inscriptions for writing local histories and performing
them publicly are not native to the cities that are celebrated in the accounts but are from neighbor-
ing communities: see Robert and Robert (1971); for further bibliography, consult Dillery (2005b)
521 n.63.
sibly) poetic texts concerning Amphipolis,26 ones that are described as ancient
(τοῖς ἀρχαίοις), and then “brought them together” (συνα[γαγὼν]); he then held
public lectures or recitations of his findings, perhaps several.27 Finally (?), he
composed a book about the tutelary deity of Amphipolis, Artemis Tauropo-
los. It is admittedly difficult to discern the relationship between the historian’s
lectures and this volume on Artemis; the text seems to suggest that the compi-
lation of the book was something done in addition to the public lectures and
therefore perhaps on a different topic—though other parallel texts suggest one
and the same topic for both.
Hallmarks of a distinctly Hellenistic orientation are evident in the histo-
rian’s efforts and methods: the research is text based, not from autopsy, and it
required examination and arrangement of what were thought to be the oldest
and therefore, no doubt, the most authoritative writings. J.-M. Bertrand has
noted this concern for the “confrontation of sources” as a uniquely Hellenistic
phenomenon.28 It helps to account for the mania for collecting and, despite the
language implying sorting and choosing material carefully, the accumulation
of a kind of hodgepodge of materials that are thought to mutually reinforce
each other. The past is preserved not by the authoritative reasoning and origi-
nal research of the historian but through his careful and laborious handling of
already written materials—his work is chiefly archival. The “facts” of his history
are already out there; they just need organizing and presentation. An honor-
ary inscription from Delos (SIG3 382) from the beginning of the third century
(290–80) concerning one Demoteles of Andros offers a good parallel for both
the industry of the local chronicler and the nature of his materials: “being a
poet, he has carefully chronicled (πεπραγμ[ά]|τευται) the temple and city of the
Delians and has written up the local mythoi.”29
Indeed, while argument will continue to rage concerning the “publication”
or even “performance” of the great narrative of Herodotus, not to mention the
possible venues of transmission for the texts of Thucydides and Xenophon, our
text from Amphipolis makes clear that at least some of the work was heard as
public lectures (ἀκροάσεις) in the city.30 It is perhaps in this regard that we best
26. Chaniotis prints [καὶ ποιηταῖς γεγραμ]μένα.

27. Chaniotis prints πλείονας ἐποιή]σατο ἀκροάσεις.
28. Bertrand (1992) 25–26.
29. Cf. Robert and Robert (1959). For the meaning of πεπραγεμάτευται, see LSJ s.v. II.3 and 4.
I think it means here not “simply write, treat” (LSJ) but, rather, to do so with care. Cf. mentions at
Plb. 1.4.3 of historians who treat events “systematically” and at Plb 5.33.5 of οἱ πραγματευόμενοι,
“systematic historians.”
30. On public recitations, see esp. Robert (1946) 35–36. See also Chaniotis (1988) 365–82;
id. (2009) 259–62; Boffo (1988); the bibliography listed at Dillery (2005b) 521 n.63. Recall Thuc.
1.22.4: his work will not “appear more pleasing for recitation” (ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν . . . ἀτερπέστερον
φανεῖται). This means not just “to the ear” but actual recitation, to judge by later usage of akroasis.
Introduction 11
see the “intentional historical” aspect of this kind of historiography. One can
just imagine the Amphipolitans gathered at a suitable place (there was a temple
to Clio there!)31 to hear their own history told to them—or, rather, retold, as
much was doubtless familiar, though some perhaps was not. Although only
founded relatively recently (in 437/36), writings from the “ancient” historians
and poets furnished the material for our historian. Indeed, in the word ἀρχαίοις
of our text, we can glimpse an argument for antiquity that the Amphipolitans
must have been eager to advance (as did the Magnesians for their festival of Ar-
temis Leukophryene). These recitations were obviously public and constituted
the articulation of the Amphipolitans’ understanding of themselves and their
historical importance in the world. The historian won fame for himself 32 and
the thanks of the people of Amphipolis—theirs was, in other words, a recipro-
cal relationship of mutual benefit, I think. The historian produced a history of
Amphipolis that the Amphipolitans thought brought credit to their polis and
for which the historian was thanked.
If we had more of this inscription, we would doubtless be able to learn more
about the book (βιβλίον) that the historian also compiled about Artemis Tauro-
polos. Note that in this case, the historian “compiled” (συνετ[άξατο); he did not
“write” or “author” (ἔγραψε vel sim.) the work. Another third-century inscrip-
tion, similar to the text from Amphipolis, makes even clearer the connection of
the local god to the historian’s research. In IOSPE I 184 (= IOSPE I2 344; FGrH
807 T 1; Chaniotis E 7), one Syriscus, son of Heracleidas, from Chersonesos on
the Black Sea is thanked for his local history:33
Heracleidas son of Parmenon proposed: since Syriscus son of Hera-

cleidas, having carefully written up the Epiphanies of the Maiden and
read them out, and set out in detail the matters relating to the kings
of the Bosporus, and recorded generously for the people (of Chersone-
sos) their existing friendly relations toward the cities, in order that (the
people of Chersonesos) receive suitable honors, it has seemed best to
the Council and the people to praise him for these things, and for the
magistrates to crown him with a golden crown on the twenty-first of
Dionysia (?), and that there be a proclamation: the people crown Syris-
31. Lazarides (1976) 52.

32. Note the phrase ἐν αἷς εὐδοκιμήκει: see parallels at Robert and Robert (1958).
33. Archibald (2004) 8 raises the possibility that Syriscus was from Tanais, making him a
neighbor who wrote up the history of Chersonesos and read it publicly and making the local histo-
rian not a native son. This practice is indeed well attested, as shown by the Roberts and others. But
in this case, that the name of the proposer of the honorary decree is the same as Syriscus’ father,
though not indicative of identity by any means, does suggest the same family (a son or nephew of
elder Heracleidas?) and hence Syriscus a citizen of Chersonesos.
cus son of Heracleidas, because he wrote the Epiphanies of the Maiden

and recorded truthfully and generously for the city (of Chersonesos) the
existing friendly relations (of the city) toward the (other) cities (of the
region) and the kings.
In many ways, this is a model text for illustrating “intentional history” and
the historians who wrote it. We are confronted again with the difficulty that
it is hard to make out from the inscription whether Syriscus wrote a number
of works or only one that is being described in different ways. But even on a
minimal interpretation that assumes that the different subject types represent
different works, Syriscus’ whole oeuvre is being celebrated together in the text,
and his authorship of them is recognized and thanked. For starters, he wrote an
“Epiphanies of the Maiden,” a work that probably looked much like the epipha-
nies section of the famous Lindian Chronicle: appearances of the local tutelary
god during times of crisis in the city’s past are narrated, and connections to
the cult of the god are stressed—dedications, that is, that commemorate the
epiphany and the individuals who made offerings at the shrine of the deity.34
Often, the dedications were booty taken in war and thereby helped to keep pre-
vious victories in the “cultural memory” of the community at Lindos.35 It is not
as clear exactly what the “matters relating to the kings of the Bosporus” and the
“existing friendly relations toward the cities” were. It has been plausibly argued
that these phrases allude to the diplomatic network set up by Chersonesos with
its neighbors to help meet the threat of barbarian attack in the second half of
the third century.36
But the larger point to register is that Syriscus’ historiography was not only
written to “set out in detail” Chersonesos’ place in the Pontus region; it was also
meant to ensure that his community receive “suitable honors”—that its role in
helping to manage the N. Pontus region be recognized and appreciated. This
most certainly was “intentional history,” historical writing that was profoundly
engaged with the task of regional advocacy. Note, again, that Syriscus’ history
was communicated to the world by him through recitation: he literally read
it out (ἀνέγνω). Further, at least as regards the “Epiphanies of the Maiden,”
composing was a task that required great effort on Syriscus’ part—he wrote it
in a manner that showed his “love of industry” (φιλοπόνως γράψας). While the
concept of “toil” or “effort” is not at all alien to the historiographic enterprise
34. The similarity between Syriscus and the Lindian Chronicle was first pointed out by Ros-
tovtzeff (1919). See also Chaniotis (1988) 54, 309; Higbie (2003) 275–76. For further bibliography
on the connection, see Dillery (2005b) 520 n.59.
35. Chaniotis (2005) 222–23, 234–35.
36. Vindogradov (1997) 56, 95. Cf. Saprykin (1997) 217, 227.
Introduction 13
of the great historians of the Greek tradition37—indeed, recall that Thucydides

speaks in his programmatic statement from book 1 (1.22.3) of tracking down
the facts (ἔργα) of history “with toil” (ἐπιπόνως)–the virtue that is signaled al-
most without fail in the inscriptions relating to “intentional history” is precisely
the effort it took to compile the history in question, not, it should be noted,
accuracy or truthfulness or a unique perspective, that is, the very things that
distinguish Thucydides’ work as he describes it. The adverb φιλοπόνως is the
first modifier found in the inscription, occurring early on, just after the pream-
ble explaining the circumstances of the decree honoring Syriscus; “truthfully”
(ἀλαθινῶς) is found also, but later, in the recap of what Syriscus achieved. Note
also that Thucydides’ ἐπιπόνως denotes a necessary concomitant cost for get-
ting things right in his account,38 whereas Syriscus’ efforts are aided by his posi-
tive love of toil (φιλοπόνως). A distinction of some importance is to be found in
the two prefixes (ἐπι-and φιλο-). Just as with the historian of Amphipolis, the
sense one begins to get from the Chersonesos decree is that Syriscus’ main task
was archival—one of examining, sorting, and then compiling sources. More of-
ten than not, the effort expended by Syriscus’ great forebears in historiography
had to do with autopsy (including Thucydides’ statement above); the historian
bragged about the effort and the time it took to check some fact or pursue a
lead.39 This was primary research, not collecting already treated material.
Information, Communication, and the

Early Hellenistic Courts
I believe that the figures who are my main concern in this book inhabited a
world where historians and historical writing were understood in the ways I
have just sketched above. To prove this point or at least make it seem more
plausible, I need to identify channels of information that could have brought
ideas that influenced local elites in the lands of the new Hellenistic monarchies,
channels that could transmit views about the writing of history fairly rapidly,
inasmuch as the texts I am principally concerned with here were published
about fifty years from the death of Alexander and only about twenty-five from
the establishment of the monarchies themselves.
Why did communication matter? The Hellenistic monarchies were pro-
37. See esp. Marincola (1997) 72, 148–57.

38. Note LSJ s.v. ἐπιπόνως.
39. One thinks of the effort expended by Herodotus in tracking down the various cults of
Heracles (Hdt. 2.44); cf. Waddell (1939) 168 ad 44.1. For Polybius’ criticism of Ephorus’ battle
descriptions and his own implied visits to battlefields to check Ephorus’ accounts, see Plb. 12.25f.5
and Walbank (1957/1979) 2.395 ad loc.
foundly interested in “theatricality” and display, and display is fundamentally

a form of communication, especially of one’s claims and ambitions.40 Several
episodes of interaction between kings come down to us; many are obviously
anecdotal in character and probably fictitious. But they suggest the importance
of interaction between the Hellenistic courts—that the kings were listening to
each other. Perhaps the best evidence for this is the rapidity with which the
other diadochs followed the lead of Antigonus Monophthalmus and Demetrius
Poliorcetes in 306 in adopting the diadem as a symbol of royal power (Plut.
Dem. 17.2–18.1).41 Alternative evidence is the speed with which the image of
Alexander was appropriated by the diadochs in their own portraiture (cf. Plut.
Alex. 4.2).42 But Xenophon already hints in his Hieron at the reason for inter-
court communication. Although the Hieron is late archaic or early classical in
setting, in a way that seems strikingly prescient of Hellenistic practice, Xeno-
phon has his Hieron of Syracuse describe Greece’s strongmen as antagonistai—
“competitors”—vying not for prizes that common men seek (houses, fields,
slaves) but for cities, lands, ports, and fortified akropoleis (Xen. Hier. 4.6–7; see
also Hier. 11.7). Rivalry is a fundamental element in the Greco-Macedonian
world, where there is not one supraregional monarch but several, each compet-
ing against the other, on the field of battle and also in their display.
A few examples will have to suffice. Already in the mid-fourth century,
Theopompus could report a fascinating exchange between two minor poten-
tates, Straton of Sidon and Nicocles of Cyprus. In a fragment transmitted by
Athenaeus and Aelian, Theopompus relates the story that Straton exceeded all
men in his love of pleasure and luxury. Indeed, his excesses were unparalleled.
He lived in this hyperluxury because “he was by nature a slave of his pleasures,
but still more because he was striving in rivalry with Nicocles” (FGrH 115 F
114 = Athen. 531a–d; Aelian VH 7.2).43 Theopompus had his own, idiosyn-
40. See, e.g., Pollitt (1986) 6–7; Bringmann (2000) 184–87. See esp. Chaniotis (1997) 234–42,
244–45; von Hesberg (1999). Müller (2009) 3 and n.15 effectively quotes Fowler and Hekster (2005)
9 for the general principle: “visibility lies at the heart of power. . . . The ability to create and manipu-
late images is itself an indication of power and (arguably) a means to accumulate greater power.” Cf.
Ma (2003a) 179; Haubold (2013) 129.
41. Smith (1988) 37. Note also Ritter (1965) 79–108. Smith observes (37 n.53) that we do not
know the precise dates for the assumption of the diadem by Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus,
though it must have not been longer than a year or so.
42. See esp. Smith (1988). Note that later testimonia states that Alexander tried to control his
image, as though aware that others would attempt to employ it for their own purposes: see Cicero
Ep. Fam. 5.12.7; Horace Ep. 2.1.239–41; Pliny NH 7.125; Apuleius Fl. 7.5–8 (also including the
detail that all artists other than the great three Alexander chose for his portraiture were to be put to
death if they produced an image of him). Cf. Gaisser (2008) 12 and n.46.
43. καὶ 〈αὐτὸς〉 δοῦλος ὢν φύσει τῶν ἡδονῶν, ἔτι δὲ μᾶλλον πρὸς τὸν Νικοκλέα φιλοτιμούμενος.
For a different sense of philotimia, see also below, p. 284 and n. 249.
Introduction 15
cratic reasons for dwelling on the rivalry between Straton and Nicocles: moral
evaluation and especially the illustration of the debilitating effects of a luxuri-
ous lifestyle on monarchs.44 But of interest here is the notion of rivalry itself,
philotimia, and how it was pursued by the dynasts in question. As Theopompus
continues, the two kings kept tabs on each other, each finding out from visi-
tors how extravagant the other was living and then trying his best to outdo his
rival. To be sure, we are clearly not dealing here with literary matters, let alone
historiography; rather, it was a contest of flute girls and lavish sacrifices. But
this fragment of Theopompus does provide early evidence for another feature
of court life that will be important in the Hellenistic period: the use of what we
might call “cultural display” in the contestation of supremacy. Hellenistic mon-
archs obviously spent a good deal of their time thinking about how to make
statements to their rivals, while at the same time gathering information about
what the other dynasts were doing in the cultural sphere.
This is amply demonstrated by the recent work of Peter Fraser focused on
a list in the Alexander Romance of cities allegedly founded by Alexander the
Great.45 He has argued that the ancient lists of cities founded by Alexander
seem to derive from a Ptolemaic book composed between 281 and 221 that
was part of a propaganda effort aimed at minimizing the Seleucid contribu-
tion toward the Hellenization of Asia through attributing city foundations to
Alexander the Great. If Fraser is right, one of the conclusions that must be
drawn is that the Hellenistic kings paid a lot of attention to communicating
to their competitors their claims to authority and legitimacy.46 This mania for
communicating and “one-upping” each other is further reflected in the text of
the Romance, where we see a number of exchanges between Alexander and his
royal enemies carried on by letter (e.g., Ps.-Callisth. 1.36, 38, 40: Darius and
Alexander before Issus).47
This royal need to communicate with other monarchs is borne out by sev-
eral ancient texts, but perhaps none as clearly as Diodorus 19.92.5, a section of
44. Cf. Flower (1994) 68–69.

45. Fraser (1996). Cf. Jones (1940) 5–6.
46. Cf. G. Reger’s review of Fraser’s book in BMCR, posted on 97.4.25: “In Fraser’s reconstruc-
tion, this Liber served the war of propaganda between the Ptolemaic and Seleukid dynasties by
claiming Seleukid foundations or metonymies as foundations of Alexander the Great, thus under-
mining Seleukid claims to authority that were propped up by their great colonizing enterprises.”
See also M. M. Austin’s review, CR 49 (1999) 167–68, and that of D. Thompson, JHS 118 (1998)
238–39.
47. One could add to this particular exchange Ps.-Callisth. 1.39, the letter of Darius to his
satraps. In general, consult Stoneman (2007–) 1.553–58.
narrative that probably derives from Hieronymus of Cardia.48 There we learn

that Seleucus I actually wrote a letter to Ptolemy I “and his other friends” about
his own achievements. Though Seleucus was not yet a king himself and was
dependent on the power of Ptolemy to secure his own position, it is perhaps
not surprising that he felt the need to communicate with his ally. Nonetheless,
the letter captures something of the urgency dynasts felt to “package” them-
selves before the eyes of their peers: Seleucus “was already in possession of a
king’s stature and a reputation worthy of royal power” (ἔχων ἤδη βασιλικὸν
ἀνάστημα καὶ δόξαν ἀξίαν ἡγεμονίας). The diadoch had to wait for a military
triumph (or an event that could be styled as such) to declare his kingship: thus
there is a gap of five years between the end of the Argead house in 310 and the
proclamation of kingship by the diadochs in 305. While this fact tells us that
military power was central in establishing the successor kings, it also shows
that projecting and legitimating that power were crucial.49
Another passage worth considering in this connection is from Polybius.
At 30.25.1, transmitted by Athenaeus (5.194c), we learn about Antiochus IV’s
famous procession and games at Daphne in 166; we are told that he was mo-
tivated by a desire specifically to “one-up” (ὑπερᾶραι) Aemilius Paullus, either
in “liberality” or “magnificence.”50 Modern scholars have naturally also seen an
attempt to rival Ptolemy Philadelphus’ great pompe a little more than a century
before.51 Moreover, as a celebration likely aimed at characterizing the recent
war in Egypt as a great victory, Antiochus’ procession may have been meant to
resemble a Roman triumph. If this last point is true, we would have a case of ri-
valry, imitation, and the legitimation of power.52 Indeed, there is evidence from
a Babylonian astronomical diary that the same victory was celebrated in Baby-
lon, in an entry containing (significantly) Akkadian translations of the Greek
words pompe and politai, “procession” and “citizens”: “in that month I heard
as follows: ‘King Antiochus went victoriously into the cities of Meluhha (i.e.,
Egypt), the politai [performed?] a pompe and ritual acts according to Greek
custom’” (Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 2.471 no. 168 A Obv. 14–15, Linssen
trans. [2004] 120).
In terms of communication through the projection of power and the display
48. Cf. Hornblower (1981) 17, 35, 39–49. Note also Knoepfler’s cautions: Knoepfler (2001)
38–39.
49. Will (1979/1982) 1.74–77. Note also the excellent observation of Gruen (1985) 262: thanks
to the changes brought about by Antigonus Monophthalmus, legitimacy had to be claimed “on the
basis of personal achievement and dynastic promise.”
50. μεγαλοδωρίᾳ/-εᾷ and μεγαλοεργίᾳ are the readings; Walbank (1957/1979) 3.449 ad loc.
argues for the former. In general, consult Edmondson (1999).
51. So, e.g., Green (1990) 432.
52. See again Walbank ad loc.
Introduction 17
of cultural patronage, none were more adept than the Ptolemies. Let us turn
to the best known case, Ptolemy Philadelphus’ foundation of the Library and
Museum at Alexandria. The plans for these institutions were probably drawn
up by Soter and shaped by the advice of Demetrius of Phalerum.53 Their main
purpose is signaled from a passage in Seneca the Younger. In his De tranquil-
litate animi, Seneca decries excess in compiling vast libraries. He notes that no
less than forty thousand books were destroyed when the Library at Alexandria
was burned; he adds that Livy praised the institution, no doubt giving away the
source for his knowledge on the subject.54 For Seneca, however, the Library
was not really for learning but for display: non in studium sed in spectaculum
comparaverant [Ptolemaei] (De tran. an. 9.5). Ptolemy III’s theft of the copies
of the Attic tragedians is the most noteworthy instance of this tendency.55 Of
course, these texts were available, in the first place, because the tragedians had
earlier been made into “classics” or even “sacred texts” by Lycurgus, who spent
a great deal of time codifying much of Athenian culture in his effort to redefine
his city’s preeminence during the period of his leadership (338–325), from a
military power to the cultural hub of Hellas: paideia became compensation for
the loss of arche.56
Seneca speaks of the “Ptolemies,” not just Philadelphus, having compiled
the Library, suggesting that this type of predatory collection and display did
not stop with Ptolemy II and Ptolemy III. It has recently been suggested that
this passage shows that the Ptolemies were like modern literati who buy and
display books but do not really read them: the texts themselves were symbols
of culture.57 While I would not argue with this observation, I would put more
emphasis on a broader interpretation, one that also takes into account that this
demonstration of cultural authority was linked to the political and military am-
bitions of the Ptolemies. The “spectaculum” was meant not merely to impress
but to legitimate claims to power. One thinks in this connection especially of
Philadelphus’ famous pompe (mentioned above) recorded by Callixeinus and
transmitted by Athenaeus (FGrH 627 F 2), which was very much a demonstra-
tion of military might, featuring exotic animals, religious floats, and other eye-
catching elements, including women representing the cities once ruled by the
53. More on Demetrius and the Library below. For his role in shaping the institutions in ques-
tion, see Pfeiffer (1968) 100–102; Fraser (1972) 1.315. The chief evidence is the difficult Letter of
Aristeas.
54. Fraser (1972) 2.493 n.224. Cf. Delia (1992) 1457.
55. On the “official copies” of the tragedians taken by Ptolemy III, see Galen CMG V.10.2.1; cf.
Pfeiffer (1968) 82, 192.
56. Cf. Badian (1995) for a different emphasis on fourth-century Athens’ recollection of its
fifth-century status as an imperial power.
57. T. Morgan (1998) 112.
Persians in Ionia, Asia, and the Greek islands (Athen. 201d).58 It was surely in-
tended for both a domestic and foreign audience, for theoroi in Alexandria were
to report back to their home authorities on the great power of Ptolemy (SIG3
390; ISE 2.75).59 Indeed, elsewhere in Callixeinus’ description, there is mention
of an area set aside in Alexandria for “the soldiers, craftsmen, and visitors from
abroad” (τῆς τῶν στρατιωτῶν καὶ τεχνιτῶν καὶ παρεπιδήμων ὑποδοχῆς), sepa-
rate from Philadelphus’ equally spectacular symposion (Athen. 196a).60
The passage from Seneca is admittedly very late for the present discus-
sion. Perhaps of greater relevance is the first reference we have to the Museum
(as distinct from the Library) in extant Greek literature.61 In the First Mime
of Herodas, contemporary with Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the old nurse and
matchmaker Gyllis provides a list of the riches found in Egypt, likely respon-
sible for keeping a husband away from home:
For everything in the world that exists and is produced is in Egypt:

wealth, wrestling schools, power, tranquility, fame, spectacles, philoso-
phers, gold, youths, the sanctuary of the sibling gods, the King excellent,
the Museum, wine, every good thing he (Mandaris, the absent husband)
could desire. (Herodas 1.26–31, Cunningham trans.)62
This passage is very significant. In the first place, we have a good idea as to its
date: it must be post-272/1, because of the reference to the deified theoi adel-
phoi, but is probably only shortly afterward.63 Secondly, its rhetoric is telling,
for this catalogue of Egypt’s attributes is borrowed from similar lists found in
Attic Old Comedy that detail the good things that are to be found in Athens: the
best example is from the Phormophoroi of Hermippus (K-A V F 63). The topos
of the list of goods is also found in praises of Athens as a military power (e.g.,
Thuc. 2.38.2; [Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.7) and was an important element in defining
Athens’ preeminence in the Greek world in the fifth century.64 This tradition
58. Walbank (1996), discussing both the pompai of Ptolemy II and Antiochus IV. See also
Festugière (1977) 51–57; Rice (1983); Thompson (2000). On pompai in general, see Köhler (1996).
59. See esp. Walbank (1996) 123–24 and n.29 = (2002) 83–84; Thompson (2000). See also
Dunand (1981); Stewart (1993) 258 and (1998) 282; Hazzard (2000) 66–75; Goukowsky (2000). Cf.
Dillery (2004b) 270–74.
60. Cf. Studniczka (1914).
61. See Cunningham (1971) 66–67 ad 1.31. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.315 and 320, noting that the
Library is not mentioned in Herodas’ list. According to Fraser, the earliest testimonium for the
Library is the Letter of Aristeas.
62. Κεῖ δ’ ἐστὶν οἶκος τῆς θεοῦ· τὰ γὰρ πάντα, | ὄσσ’ ἔστι κου καὶ γίνετ’, ἔστ’ ἐν Αἰγύπτωι· |
πλοῦτος, παλαίστρη, δύναμι[ς], εὐδίη, δόξα, | θέαι, φιλόσοφοι, χρυσίον, νεηνίσκοι, | θεῶν ἀδελφῶν
τέμενος, ὀ βασιλεὺς χρηστός, | Μουσῆιον, οἶνος, ἀγαθὰ πάντ’ ὄσ’ ἂν χρήιζηι.
63. Cunningham (1971) 2, 66 ad 1.30.
64. Habicht (1994) 231, on Thuc. 2.41.1 (Athens as the paideusis of Greece), argues that the
Introduction 19
had been reworked by Athenians in the fourth century in an attempt to redefine

their city’s place in the Greek world, from an imperial to a cultural hegemon.65
In Herodas, then, we have an extraordinarily comprehensive catalogue of
the indices of Greek culture: the wrestling school (which raises in one’s mind
the gymnasium too), spectacles (perhaps meaning festivals), philosophers,66 a
sacred precinct, the Museum itself. Of course, there are real differences with
the earlier praises of Athens from which it is obviously descended: there were
no institutions of scholarship at Athens until the fourth century, and there cer-
tainly were not precincts dedicated to divinized rulers.67 But the same point is
made. The Athens of the fifth century and the Ptolemaic Egypt of the third were
places of great military and cultural power. Both Seneca and (more important)
Herodas have caught the spirit of Philadelphus’ great foundations: the Library
and Museum were key elements in his attempt to project the superiority of
Ptolemaic strength—indeed, note the mention of dynamis, “power,” in Hero-
das’ list.68
A perspective similar to Herodas is also found in Theocritus’ Idyll 17. In
this famous encomium of Philadelphus, one reads, among other things, that
“in riches he could outweigh all other kings, so much from every quarter comes
daily to his wealthy halls, and in peace his people ply their trades” (Id. 17.95–97,
Gow trans.).69 Later in the same poem, Theocritus draws particular notice to
Philadelphus’ patronage of poets (17.112–17). A much later verse Encomium
Alexandreae, from the second century AD, is quite similar in spirit (P. Gron. Inv.
66); particularly noteworthy there is the compound adjective πολυβιβλογενῆ,
meaning “producing (or produced by) many books” (line 11).70 “Books” have
become a measure of the importance of a polis.
One senses the element of competition when one turns to some reactions
to the Ptolemies’ cultural initiatives. In an important section from his life of
claim does not, in the first instance, apply to the intellectual world; it is strictly political and mili-
tary. Cf. Hornblower (1991/2008) 1.308 ad Thuc. 2.41.1 and his review in BMCR of Boedeker and
Raaflaub eds. (1998), posted on 99.5.24. In the latter, he cites the editors’ introductory observa-
tion “that throughout the fifth century and beyond the Athenians’ pride in their accomplishments
rested more on military victories and imperial power than on culture and arts” (8).
65. Isocrates’ De Pace and Xenophon’s Poroi come to mind, both datable to after Athens’ Social
War (357–355). Cf. Davidson (1990); Dillery (1993).
66. One recalls the remarks of Hippias of Elis in Plato’s Protagoras 337D, speaking of Athens as
the “the capital of wisdom” (τὸ πρυτανεῖον τῆς σοφίας), a passage sometimes adduced in connec-
tion with the texts cited in the previous note.
67. Instructive also is comparison with Xen. Hier. 11.2: “the entire city fitted out with walls,
temples, colonnades, markets, and ports”—no obvious and special places of learning—will provide
the ruler with more kosmos than a beautifully adorned palace.
68. See esp. Erskine (1995).
69. ὄλβῳ μὲν πάντας κε καταβρίθοι βασιλῆας· | τόσσον ἐπ’ ἆμαρ ἕκαστον ἐς ἀφνεὸν ἔρχεται
οἶκον | πάντοθε.
70. Hendriks et al. (1981).
Aratus, Plutarch details Antigonus Gonatas’ response to the Sicyonian states-

man’s trip to visit the aged Philadelphus in Egypt in 249. In a reported speech,
Antigonus comments on what Aratus no doubt learned:
formerly (Aratus) was inclined to overlook us, fixing his hopes else-
where, and he admired the wealth of Egypt, hearing tales of its elephants,
and fleets, and palaces; but now that he has been behind the scenes and
seen that everything in Egypt is play-acting and painted scenery, he has
come entirely over to us. (Plut. Arat. 15.3, Perrin trans.)71
Although it is difficult to establish precisely Plutarch’s source for this remark,

the most likely candidates are all contemporary with the events;72 and in any
case, the thinking behind the passage is what is crucial. Antigonus is making
Aratus’ journey out to be something akin to a spying mission; indeed, we are
not that far from the sort of eavesdropping through visitors that we saw in con-
nection with Straton and Nicocles. According to Antigonus’ wishful thinking,
the grandeur of Philadelphus’ Egypt is merely a sham, and Aratus has seen it as
such and has come over to his side. But whatever one is to make of Antigonus’
remarks, we see here a fundamental recognition that display is important in the
legitimation of power in the Hellenistic period, even if the display fails in this
instance. The items cited as piquing Aratus’ interest are also telling: elephants
and fleets have obvious military importance, but the reference to “palaces” is
significant, for it suggests the showcasing of Ptolemaic wealth. It is good to
remember, in this connection, Strabo’s report that fully one-fourth or even
one-third of Alexandria contained royal palaces (Str. 17.1.8). Antigonus’ com-
ments provide a clue as to how Hellenistic monarch’s projected their power.
When a dignitary came to your realm, you demonstrated to him your military
power, to be sure, but you also showed him your palaces and other buildings, to
impress upon him your cultural accomplishments. It is surely also important,
again according to Plutarch, that when Aratus was preparing to sail for Egypt,
he employed his good artistic sense in selecting drawings and paintings that he
71. πρότερον γὰρ ἡμᾶς ὑπερεώρα, ταῖς ἐλπίσιν ἔξω βλέπων, καὶ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον ἐθαύμαζε
πλοῦτον, ἐλέφαντας καὶ στόλους καὶ αὐλὰς ἀκούων, νυνὶ δ’ ὑπὸ σκηνὴν ἑωρακὼς πάντα τὰ ἐκεῖ
πράγματα τραγῳδίαν ὄντα καὶ σκηνογραφίαν, ὅλος ἡμῖν προσκεχώρηκεν.
72. Porter (1937) xv, lists Aratus’ own Hypomnemata, as well as Phylarchus and Deinias. On p.
xvii he asserts that for chapters 1–23, with the exception of chapter 17, Aratus is the only source.
One wonders, however, what place a speech of Antigonus, from which Aratus was himself absent,
would have had in Aratus’ memoirs; of course, this is not impossible, but perhaps one of the other
two candidates should be seriously considered too.
Introduction 21
had sent ahead to Philadelphus (Plut. Arat. 12.6). In a very real sense, Aratus
was himself adept in artistic matters, and art paved the way for his diplomacy.73
Historians as Royal “Friends”
The stories just discussed and others like them only get us so far. In attempt-
ing to lay out how information of a more precise sort, particularly relating to
historical writing, may have been exchanged in the early Hellenistic period, I
follow the lead of J. K. Davies in an illuminating article from 2002.74 He speaks
of “competing vectors interacting on a single surface,” that is, of different ways
of looking at the same realities of the Hellenistic world, where “a huge gulf had
opened up between, on the one hand, the dominant political realities of a gigan-
tic military monarchy and its successors, and on the other a kaleidoscopic set of
entities”—quasi-independent principalities, temple-states, and Greek poleis.75
Looked at from the perspective of the new kings, there were four key groups
with whom they had to have effective channels of communication: the other
Hellenistic sovereigns, their own armies, their “friends” or members of court,
and the indigenous elites. As we shall see especially in connection with Mane-
tho, an individual could occasionally be counted in both the last two groups.76
Davies is right to stress the importance for information exchange of these
royal “friends” or philoi, following the seminal work of C. Habicht and others:77
“they were the human hinges of Hellenism, not just channels of communica-
tion but basic load-bearing components of the [royal] system.”78 In particular,
it is worth tracking down those friends of the early Hellenistic kings who were
also historians or had close connections to the writing of history. Both the early
Ptolemaic and Seleucid courts could boast such figures.
Before turning to these men, however, it is important to see how the general
class of “friends” functioned and how their activities can be seen to overlap
with the activities of individuals who can be positively identified as historians.
In particular, it is useful to see how philoi could act as intermediaries between
monarch and community, or as advisors to the king, facilitating the transfer of
73. Cf. Tarn (1913) 369; Walbank (1933) 39.

74. Davies (2002). See also his chapter from CAH 72 (1984). Cf. Ma (2003b).
75. Davies (2002) 4.
76. On being native elite and philos of the king, see the bibliography listed at Dillery (1999) 109
n.54. This combination will be treated in much more detail below.
77. Habicht (1958) = (2006) 26–40 (in Eng. trans.), with later bibliography and reactions (290).
78. Davies (2002) 11. Note also Sonnabend (1996) esp. 215–51; cf. Chaniotis (2009) 262–65.
“imperial” knowledge. Davies mentions prominently in his discussion Callias

of Sphettus, an Athenian aristocrat who was honored by the Athenian demos
in a decree of 270/69. During Athens’ revolt from Demetrius Poliorcetes in
287 or 286, Callias took part in the fighting but also acted as diplomatic liai-
son with a representative from Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and he later became
a Ptolemaic mercenary commander in Halicarnassus.79 In one section of the
decree, the narrative speaks of Callias’ trip to Alexandria as part of an Athe-
nian delegation sent to participate in the inaugural celebration of the Ptolemaia
festival held in honor of Philadelphus’ father, Ptolemy I Soter, and notewor-
thy for its games and procession.80 While there, we are told, Callias took the
opportunity to bring up a matter of importance with Philadelphus regarding
the celebration of the Panathenaia back in Athens—another religious festival
with a famous procession (pompe): “[Callias] conversed with the king about
the ropes which it was necessary to prepare for the peplos, and the king having
donated them to the city, he endeavored to see that they be as fine as possible
for the Goddess and that the delegates elected with him bring [the ropes back
here] at once” (Shear trans. [1978] 6, lines 66–70).81 Callias further proposed
that Ptolemy give a set of ropes (for pulling the cart on which the peplos and
statue of Athena were borne) in the third year of each Olympiad.82 As Fergus
Millar has remarked, the text is unparalleled for showing the complex dynamic
between a community (Athens) that saw itself as an independent democracy
and a dynast (Ptolemy II) who offered it timely military assistance and con-
tinued protection.83 It is also worth stressing how this friend of the Ptolemaic
court helped to create a moment of euergetism for Ptolemy II toward Athens
by alerting him to the need for the upkeep of local cult, and this came from a
monarch who clearly knew the importance of religious pompai (recall Philadel-
phus’ own great pompe reported by Callixeinus).84 There is real piquancy here:
Callias is basically assisting Ptolemy in improving an “old Greek” procession,
while the monarch is himself fashioning his new realm and its ceremony along
lines that were articulated for him by the earlier history of the Greek city-states,
particularly Athens.85
A similar message can often be detected in the historiography of the period.
79. Shear (1978).

80. Cf. Koenen (1977).
81. See also Shear’s historical commentary: Shear (1978) 39–44.
82. Cf. Hazzard (2000) 53 and n.30.
83. Millar (1983a) 99–100 = (2002) 53. For the general question of the relation of notionally
“free” city-states and Hellenistic dynasts, see esp. Ma (2000) and now Carlsson (2010).
84. Cf. Müller (2009) 178 and n.140.
85. Cf. Robert (1977).
Introduction 23
Again, the Lindian Chronicle comes to mind, where we see not just narratives
but also an extensive list of votives for the temple of Athena Lindia, the two ele-
ments (narrative and list) working together to show the historical importance
of supporting the cult of Athena at Lindos.86 In a nutshell, the exchange of in-
formation between Callias and Ptolemy about the ropes needed for the convey-
ance of Athena’s peplos at Athens involves the transfer of highly specific local
knowledge to a distant center of power. While not intentional history exactly,
it illuminates the channels of information exchange—namely, through well-
placed philoi of the king. The case of Callias is echoed by myriad examples for
other regions and periods in the Hellenistic era, and the parallels only continue
to increase.87
But, of course, Callias of Sphettos was not a historian. We need to look at
philoi who were also writers of history in order to build the case for the trans-
mission of ideas about Greek historical writing to the courts of the early Hel-
lenistic period. We have two excellent candidates for the Ptolemies and one for
the Seleucids.
Hecataeus of Abdera (FGrH 264)
The testimony concerning Hecataeus provides us with tantalizing pieces of in-

formation but is otherwise sketchy and even, at times, contradictory. Some an-
cient authorities say that he was an “Abderite,” others that he came from Teos.
It is claimed that he received philosophical training from the skeptic Pyrrho (T
3a). The most informative but not necessarily most reliable details about him
come from Diodorus Siculus and Josephus, who both clearly made use of his
work and thus seemed to have known it well. In book 1 of his own universal
history, Diodorus speaks of various Egyptian and Greek authorities who men-
tion the number of royal tombs in Egypt that survived to later times: the Egyp-
tian priests “but also many of the Greeks who came to Thebes during the time
of Ptolemy son of Lagus, and who compiled histories of Egypt [συνταξαμένων
δὲ τὰς Αἰγυπτιακὰς ἰστορίας], among whom was also Hecataeus” (T 4 = Diod.
1.46.8). For his part, Josephus reports that “Hecataeus of Abdera, a scholar and
at the same time a highly competent man of affairs [ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος ἅμα καὶ
περὶ τὰς πράξεις ἱκανώτατος], flourished during the lifetime of Alexander and
was a contemporary of Ptolemy son of Lagus” (T 7a = Jos. Ap. 1.183). These
passages, taken together, offer us a picture of a Greek man of learning who
86. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 516.

87. Cf. Davies (2002) 11: “the list [of philoi] lengthens yearly.”
came to Egypt and wrote a history of Egyptian civilization; inasmuch as he

flourished under Alexander the Great and then was obviously resident in Egypt
under Ptolemy, it is tempting to see Hecataeus as an older contemporary of
the king, writing when he was still “Ptolemy son of Lagus,” that is, “satrap” of
Egypt and not king.88 The precise date of Hecataeus’ Aegyptiaca is not known.89
But it is arguably the case that Hecataeus was the first truly Hellenistic writer:
as Oswyn Murray has put it, he was “the first author to write for and under the
patronage of one of the Diadochoi.”90 Obviously, Hecataeus traveled extensively
in Egypt, making it as far south as Thebes; his description of the Ramesseum
in particular suggests autopsy of the place.91 In addition to his date and area of
writing, both Diodorus and Josephus connect Hecataeus to Ptolemy, and Jose-
phus adds that he was not only a man of letters but also a particular important
man of affairs—he was, in other words, one of Ptolemy’s more important philoi.
This is not the place to examine in detail the fragments of Hecataeus’ his-
torical writing; I will return to him in chapter 6, when I look at Manetho’s nar-
ratives. But it does bear pointing out here that Hecataeus is an ideal candidate
for one of the main channels for the dissemination of ideas concerning Greek
historiographic practices to the non-Greek native elite of Egypt, men such as
Manetho. In the fragments that come to us by way of Diodorus,92 Hecataeus re-
fers often to communicating directly with Egyptian priests; indeed, several sec-
tions in indirect speech that are preserved in Diodorus presumably represent
the statements of Egyptian priests made to Hecataeus.93 Moreover, Hecataeus
clearly set himself up as a critic of Herodotus,94 seeing himself as correcting the
older historian’s treatment of Egypt from a greater command of native sources,
and he provided his history with a clearer organization than Herodotus’ some-
times wandering account: so we read in Diodorus (1.69.7),
Now as for the stories invented by Herodotus and certain writers on

Egyptian affairs, who deliberately preferred to the truth the telling of
marvelous tales and the invention of myths for the delectation of their
88. The Suda (T 1) adds, more generally, that Hecataeus lived during the time of the “diado-
choi” or successors of Alexander. Cf. Murray (1970) 143. On “satrap” from the “Satrap Stela,” see
Lloyd (2011) 84.
89. On dating, see Fraser (1972) 1.496; Murray (1970) 143, (1972) 207, and (1973). Cf. Dillery
(1998) 256 and n.4.
90. Murray (1972) 207; cf. (1970) 144.
91. Burstein (1992) 46 and the bibliography cited there; Dillery (1998) 271 n.69.
92. The portrait of Diodorus as little more than an excerptor of earlier historical texts, despite
the vigorous arguments of such scholars as Spoerri (1959), Burton (1972) and Sacks (1990), does
not seem to require change. On Diodorus’ book 1 in particular, see esp. Murray (1975), a review of
Burton. Cf. also Cole (1990) 174–92; Dillery (1998) 256 n.4.
93. Murray (1970) 151.
94. Note esp. Murray (1972) 207; Burstein (1992); Lightfoot (2003) 210.
Introduction 25
readers, these we shall omit, and we shall set forth only what appears in
the written records of the priests of Egypt and has passed our careful
scrutiny. (Oldfather trans. [1933] 240)
This passage very likely comes virtually intact from Hecataeus’ Aegyptiaca.95
Clearly, Hecataeus was deeply knowledgeable about Herodotus’ history of
Egypt and could provide a model to others, including hellenophone Egyptian
priests, on how to go about correcting, expanding, or otherwise improving
on Herodotus’ work. That Hecataeus materially improved Greek knowledge
regarding Egypt, on the basis of native information or otherwise, is widely
doubted; but his activities in Egypt, conceived of as a riposte to Herodotus,
would have been a powerful stimulus to others.96 In other ways, too, he would
have been influential. When Hecataeus wrote that the great legendary Pharaoh
Sesoosis (Sesostris) went into parts of Asia not visited even by Alexander the
Great (Diod. 1.55.3), I am sure Manetho will have taken note.97
Demetrius of Phalerum (FGrH 228)
Although there are reasons to suspect Diodorus’ claim that several Greek his-
torians made their way to Egypt and particularly to Thebes,98 another who cer-
tainly did, though after Ptolemy I’s assumption of the crowns of Egypt, was
Demetrius of Phalerum. While much of what he wrote was not, strictly speak-
ing, history, a handful of important historical works can be attached to him.
Indeed, in Diogenes Laertius’ life of Demetrius, where the variety of his work
is noted, his historical works are mentioned first (T 1 = D.L. 5.80):99 “of these
books some are historical, some political, some on poets, and some rhetorical.”
The historical works included the following titles: On the Ten Years (probably
of his own rule of Athens), On the Ionians, On Lawgiving at Athens and On the
Constitutions of Athens, a Historical Proem, and a Record of (Athenian) Archons.
Curiously, he even wrote a work entitled Ptolemy, though evidently this was a
dialogue. What impresses about this list is, for its relatively small number of
works, the range of historiography that seems to be indicated: from contem-
porary (or near-contemporary) history to remote and mythical periods. But
95. See esp. Murray (1970) 151 and n.2; (1972) 205. See also next note.
96. Cf. Gozzoli (2006) 193–95.
97. Cf. Posener (1934) 78.
98. Jacoby Comm. III A 76, and, following him, Murray (1970) 145 n.1 observed that the men-
tion of “several historians” comes immediately before Diodorus’ description of the Ramesseum,
which he attributes to Hecataeus (1.47.1), as though he was trying to obscure his dependence on
Hecataeus alone; note that Diodorus claims at the end of the same description that the whole of the
theological and historical sections of his own account are to be attributed to Egyptian informants.
99. This corresponds to Wehrli (1968a) F 24 and Stork et al. (2000) F 1.
more important here than the listing of his historical works are the numerous
references that the testimonia concerning him make to his position at the court
of Ptolemy I Soter. Plutarch put it best, in On Exile 7, 601 F (T6a = W 61, SOD
35): “[Demetrius of Athens] lived in Alexandria after his exile, first among the
friends of Ptolemy [πρῶτος . . . τῶν Πτολεμαίου φίλων], not only enjoying
abundance himself, but even sending gifts to the Athenians.” To believe Plu-
tarch, then, Demetrius, much like Callias of Sphettos, was a friend to a Ptolemy
and yet still a representative of his native city’s interests while resident in Egypt
(and, in Demetrius’ case, despite being exiled from Athens). If we can only just
glimpse Hecataeus’ apparently close connection to Ptolemy I while we have a
good sense of his historical writing, the opposite is the case with Demetrius:
his historiographic contribution is sketchy, but his role as a philos to Soter is
relatively clear and impressive.
Indeed, it is as a philos that Demetrius is most helpful in demonstrating
how a man who was at least partly a historian could communicate views about
historical matters to dynasts. That he was an especially close advisor to Ptolemy
I is suggested by his later expulsion from Egypt by Ptolemy II. Evidently, Deme-
trius backed the claims not of Ptolemy I’s son by Berenice but, rather, of the son
born of Eurydice, so that when the former succeeded to the throne, his first act
was to banish his father’s trusted vizier (T 1 = D.L. 5.78–79).100 A man whose
views were sought by Ptolemy I on the succession to his throne must have been
very highly placed indeed at the royal court. The intimacy of Demetrius’ con-
nection to Ptolemy I is thus made certain. But what, beyond who should be the
next king, was he talking to Ptolemy I about?
Here we must rely on a notoriously difficult text, the Letter of Aristeas to
Philocrates (T 6e).101 This document, which purports to be a letter written by
one of Ptolemy II’s Gentile courtiers to his brother, was in fact composed by a
Jew, probably from Alexandria, sometime in the second century BC. It tells the
story of the translation of the Jewish Law (Torah) into Greek. Toward the begin-
ning of the letter, we learn that Demetrius was the instigator of the translation
in his capacity as the head of the royal library. As has often been pointed out,
since we know that Demetrius was expelled by Ptolemy II on his succession
to the throne for his support of Ptolemy’s half brother, it is extremely unlikely
that we should find him as an advisor to this same monarch at some later pe-
riod. Rather, the author of the letter has slipped and transformed Ptolemy I into
Ptolemy II.102 If, despite the obviously shaky details that the letter provides (the
existence of the Library at Alexandria under Ptolemy I would also be deeply
100. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.321, 2.475 n.112.

101. See, most recently, Honigman (2003); Wasserstein and Wasserstein (2006).
102. See, e.g., Fraser (1972) 1.321; Hadas (1951) 96–97 n.9.
Introduction 27
problematic), we can take what it says of Demetrius’ dealings with Ptolemy II

and see them as ones he had with Ptolemy I, then we get a good sense of how
historiography and royal communication can come together.
As Aristeas presents it, Demetrius was “put in charge of the library of the
king” and given large funds “to bring together, if possible, all the books of the
world” (Let. Arist. 9). When, some time later, he was asked by the king, in the
presence of Aristeas himself, how many books he had so far collected, he re-
plied that there were more than two hundred thousand but that he aimed at
acquiring a total of five hundred thousand and that the Law of the Jews in
particular was worthy to be included in the library’s holdings (10). Later still,
Demetrius gives the king a report on his progress: he notes that the Law is
written in Hebrew and is in need of careful editing, and he reaffirms that it
should be included in the library in a corrected form. He provides the following
reason: “this lawmaking is more philosophical and pure [φιλοσοφωτέραν . . .
ἀκέραιον], inasmuch as it is divine” (31).
I have already noted the historical impossibilities of the Letter of Aristeas.
Much in it is implausible, if not certainly fictitious. But essential elements of the
introductory frame have been accepted: in particular, that Demetrius really did
advise Ptolemy I on the foundation of the great library at Alexandria and very
likely on a number of other matters as well.103 If, furthermore, Demetrius was
concerned with, among other things, communicating to Ptolemy ideas regard-
ing the setting up of a law code and ideal kingship—topics that are prominent
in the Letter of Aristeas and treated elsewhere in related fragments (e.g., Aelian
VH 3.17 = F 65 W; Plut. Mor. 189d = F 63 W)—then part of this advice would
have been fundamentally historical in orientation. A glance at the second book
of Aristotle’s Politics, for example, perhaps reveals the sort of thing Demetrius
was engaged in when he advised Soter: historical examples of various forms
of government and institutions carefully scrutinized and evaluated. According
to Aristeas, when Demetrius upholds the virtues of Jewish law, he cites as his
proof the judgment of Hecataeus of Abdera (31). Like that of Hecataeus, De-
metrius’ presence at the court of Ptolemy Soter must have acted as a powerful
stimulus to others to see the role that Greek learning had in the maintenance
and projection of royal power. In particular, historical writing—the presenta-
tion of the past—must have been regarded as a central feature of Hellenic paid-
eia, and its authors must have been read widely.
103. Fraser proposes advice also on the civil code of Alexandria and the Museum, with De-
metrius drawing heavily on his own Peripatetic background: see Fraser (1972) 1.114–15, 314–15,
689–90; 2.957 n. 74. Note also Green (1990) 85 and Murray (2005) 203, with the cautions of Lane
Fox (2011) 16.
Demodamas of Miletus (FGrH 428)
Pliny the Elder, writing about the peoples at the eastern edge of the known
world, has the following to say about the Sogdians:
The Sogdiani are beyond (the Oxus River) and the town of Panda,
founded on their furthest borders by Alexander the Great. Altars are
there set up by Hercules and Father Liber, and also by Cyrus and Semir-
amis and Alexander. A boundary was drawn here for all of them from
that part of the world, with the Jaxartes River acting as the limit, which
the Scythians call the Silis, and Alexander and his men thought to be the
Tanais. This river Demodamas crossed, a general of Seleucus and Antio-
chus, whom we have followed in particular in these matters, and he set
up altars to Apollo of Didyma. (Pliny NH 6.49 = T 2)
This is a very rich text, for it tells us three very important and interconnected
things about the last figure I want to examine in this section, Demodamas.
First, he was a general under the first two Seleucid kings, Seleucus I and Antio-
chus I, and thus from the very beginning of the third century—an exact con-
temporary of the figures I have already treated above.104 Second, he evidently
wrote a work on the remote parts of the East, because Pliny says that he is fol-
lowing him chiefly in this section of his own Natural History. Finally, the story
about his actions at Alexandria in Scythia is very revealing indeed.105 At this
place were altars set up by Heracles, Dionysus, Cyrus, Semiramis, and Alexan-
der the Great. The implication is clear: all these figures were world conquerors,
and, as Pliny observes, they all found the limit of their campaigns at the Jax-
artes. Earlier, clearly, Alexander had vied with the legacy of Cyrus in founding
cities in this region and took a more aggressive view toward the peoples of the
region.106 Later, it is reported that Megasthenes went out of his way to show
that Heracles was outdone by the Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II in
his conquests (FGrH 715 F 1a = Jos. AJ 10.227, Ap. 1.144; cf. Str. 15.1.5–8). It is
deeply significant, therefore, that likely on the testimony of Demodamas him-
self, this historian-general claims to have crossed the river Jaxartes, probably in
104. Cf. Grainger (1997) 86.

105. There is some confusion about which Alexandria to connect with Demodamas. Some
have argued that it is Alexandria Eschate (“Furthest Alexandria”); Fraser (1996) 33 and n.72 argues
for Alexandria among the Scythians.
106. Cf. Arrian An. 3.27.4–5, 3.28.4, 4.1.3, 4.4.1; Curtius 7.6.13, 7.6.25–27, 7.7.1 (Alexandria
Eschate a new Cyropolis?). Note also Arrian An. 6.24.3 (rivalry with Semiramis and Cyrus in cross-
ing the Gedrosian Desert). In general, see Briant (2002) 745–47.
Introduction 29
the name of his dynasts (for it is at this point that we are told he was a Seleuci
et Antiochi regum dux), and there set up altars in honor of Apollo of Didyma.
Demodamas was going where no man (or hero or god) had gone before, in the
service of the first Seleucids. This was, in a way, enacted history,107 insofar as
Demodamas, who was acknowledging—first in action and later in the words
of his own account—the accomplishments of earlier lords of the East, was then
proclaiming the superiority of the royal house he was serving by surpassing
them through his own efforts.
Note, too, the dedication Demodamas is described as making, for this detail
in the episode conveniently brings us back to the combination of royal philos
and intentional, local historiography. Thanks to two inscriptions from Miletus
dating to 299 (IDidyma 479 and 480), we know a great deal more about De-
modamas’ connections to the Seleucid royal family. In the first, Demodamas
moves that Antiochus I be thanked for the goodwill he has shown, following
the lead of his father, to the sanctuary at Didyma, chiefly in the form of fund-
ing for a new stoa. In the second, Demodamas proposes that Apame, mother
of Antiochus I and wife of Seleucus I, also be thanked, both for earlier help to-
ward Milesians campaigning with Seleucus and for her own benefactions later
toward Didyma. Louis Robert and, following him, Susan Sherwin-White and
Amélie Kuhrt have reconstructed an elaborate court history on the basis of
these documents.108 Apame gave aid to a Milesian detachment during Seleu-
cus’ campaign in Bactria-Sogdiana, Apame’s homeland, in c. 307–305, a unit
with Demodamas evidently serving as commander; Apame then secured her
son Antiochus’ patronage for Miletus when visited by a delegation from that
city some time later; later still, Demodamas proposed the decrees of thanks for
Apame and Antiochus while in Miletus in 300/299; and then we find Demo-
damas again as a military commander in Bactria-Sogdiana during Antiochus’
coregency with Seleucus or in his own reign.109
Clearly, Demodamas was a highly placed “friend” who won support for his
native Miletus through earning the trust and backing of the king’s wife and son.
But the passage from Pliny suggests not only a loyal philos who was taking the
Seleucid banner to new and unrivaled extents;110 he was also bringing renown
to his native shrine and its cult by setting up altars to Didymaean Apollo by the
banks of the Jaxartes.111 To be sure, Didyma was of great importance to the Se-
107. Cf. Davidson (2009) 134 on Polybius, pragmatike historia, and “action history.”
108. Robert (1984) = (1987) 455–60; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 25–27. Cf. Voigtländer
(1975) 29–30.
109. Cf. Zeimal (1983) 237.
110. Holt (1999) 27.
111. Demodamas can be seen as presenting himself as a standard-bearer of Greek paideia in
leucids at all periods and was closely associated with them.112 But Didyma and
the oracular temple of Apollo there had also long been regarded as important
constituents in Miletus’ claims to cultural preeminence—indeed, the two places
were connected by a “Sacred Way” used annually for a procession from Miletus
to Didyma during the festival of Apollo Hebdomaios.113 Demodamas’ act of
loyalty toward both his dynast and his own city and its region accords well with
what we know of his historical writing. In addition to treating his campaigns in
Bactria and Sogdia, Demodamas wrote about Halicarnassus (F 1) and perhaps
also composed an Indica (F 2). Local and imperial history coincide in his work.
We shall see that combination elsewhere in this book.
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt are right to point to the remarkable mobility—
physical and social—of Demodamas: he travels at the highest levels, first in mil-
itary service in Bactria-Sogdiana, then as a go-between for the Seleucid royal
family and his native Miletus, and then back again to military service in remote
areas.114 Such a figure must be thought to act as not only a channel of royal au-
thority to his own polis but also a conduit of information to his rulers regarding
the importance and needs of his own home. Such a person could be easily seen,
I would argue, communicating views of the past to the Seleucid court—about
the East, of course, where he served with such distinction, but also about his
own home—views that would foster an interest in regional advocacy elsewhere
in the Seleucid realm.
I close this section with a thoughtful and provocative observation by Ant-
ony Spawforth. I have sought to show that the historians I have discussed were,
at one level, little different from men like Callias of Sphettus. Spawforth goes
further, airing the following concern:
There is, indeed, a danger of overstating the contemporary significance

of historians qua historians in this period. Insofar as they could act as
influential go-betweens between their cities and the kings, they did so as
well-connected upper-class Greeks—compare Callias of Sphettus, e.g.,
who is not noted as a history-writer, however. . . . [H]istorians, if they
had influence, wielded it chiefly as paid-up members of the polis-and
royal elites, not because they happened also to write some history.115
Were the historians I have discussed different from Callias in any essential way?
the hinterlands of Asia, much along the same lines as Clearchus at Ai Khanum: see Robert (1968)
450 for the similarity.
112. See esp. Haussoullier (1900/1901).
113. V. Gorman (2001) 176–96; Greaves (2002) 109–24; Carlsson (2010) 246.
114. Cf. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 26–27.
115. Spawforth (1996) 209.
Introduction 31
What could they do that he could not? I believe that the writing of history had
a special place in the world of information exchange in the Hellenistic period.
For one thing, kings would not have taken up the historian’s pen in such great
numbers. Just considering the Ptolemies, not only Soter but also Ptolemy III
(FGrH 160) and Ptolemy VIII (FGrH 234) wrote histories of some sort or pre-
sented themselves as chroniclers of the past.116 Plutarch could write of King
Juba of Mauretania that he was “the most historically minded of all the kings”
(Sert. 9.10 = FGrH 275 T 10: τοῦ πάντων ἱστορικωτάτου βασιλέων), a state-
ment that implies that several rulers fell into this class of historiographers, of
whom Juba was only the most historikos. We might add others, notably Aratus
of Sicyon, Julius Caesar, and Herod. More generally, as we saw at the start of
this chapter, historical writing was important to Alexander, and the same held
true for the rulers that followed him. But most important, if Spawforth were
right, I do not think we would have seen the likes of Hecataeus of Abdera or
Demodamas of Miletus—or, for that matter, Hieronymus of Cardia, who, as
Pausanias tells us, wrote “at the pleasure of Antigonus Monophthalmus” (FGrH
154 F 15 = Paus. 1.13.9: τὰ ἐς ἡδονὴν Ἀντιγόνου γράφειν).117
At one level, it is hard to resist the impression that, if they did not write his-
tory, these historians and men like them would still have been philoi to kings,
as Spawforth suggests. But if the writing of history really was incidental to these
men and the communities they lived in, I do not think we would have had the
rise of historiography that was supposed to do things in the world, such as de-
fine communities and promote their interests or, at the individual level, provide
lessons for leaders to follow. In other words, there would not have been the ex-
plosion in “intentional history” that we see in the early Hellenistic period. Fur-
thermore, we would not see the development of pragmatike historia—history
written for men of state to learn from, which began with Thucydides and cul-
minated in Polybius.118 For what would have been the point? Spawforth’s claim
renders impossible a career in action and letters such as we see in the case of
Hieronymus: a “friend” to four and possibly five dynasts,119 his historiography
was integral to what he did, providing him with a platform from which to pro-
mote specific views about the rapidly changing political landscape he lived in
and, to some extent, helped to shape. We might call Hieronymus’ historical
116. Zecchini (1990).
117. See Knoepfler (2001) 37. Note also the testimonium at Jos. Ap. 1.213–14 = FGrH 154
F 6, stating that Hieronymus was a contemporary of Hecataeus of Abdera and that he was made
governor of Syria thanks to his friendship with Antigonus; cf. Hornblower (1981) 245–46. See also
Sonnabend (1996) 219–26; Roisman (2010) and (2012) 9–30.
118. See, in particular, Walbank (1972) ch. 3.
119. See now P. Oxy. 4808 col. i 18–ii 20, with notes by Beresford et al. (2007): Hieronymus may
have been connected to the court of Alexander, in the company of Eumenes. He was certainly a phi-
los under Eumenes, Antigonus Monophthalmus, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and Antigonus Gonatas.
writing “propaganda” or “biased critique,” but whatever else it was, it was also
“engaged” or “committed” history.120
Part 2
Native Priestly Elites in Egypt and Babylon under the

Persians and Earliest Macedonian Rulers
I hope that the foregoing discussion clarifies the importance both of histori-
cal writing and historians at the royal courts of the first Hellenistic monarchs.
I believe that while earlier Greek historiography on both Babylon and Egypt
(esp. Herodotus) would have been known to the priestly elites of both civili-
zations prior to Alexander’s conquest and the subsequent rule of those lands
by his lieutenants, it was the activity of philoi-historians and the importance
placed on Greek history writing in the earliest years of the Hellenistic period
that stimulated men like Berossus and Manetho to write native histories in the
Greek language and that provided them with models, not just of how to write
narrative history in Greek, but also of how to take on earlier Greek historians
such as Herodotus. But such an explanation is only a partial one. Were we to
look at these non-Greek priests and their histories only through Greek lenses,
we would only have half of the picture. In a sense, at this point in the discus-
sion, we have the “how” but not the “why.” Prior questions loom large: why
would a Babylonian or an Egyptian priest want to write a history of their own
civilization in the Greek language? What did they hope to achieve? For whom
were they writing?
To answer these questions, we must consider the role of the elite native priest
under foreign domination in Egypt and Babylon, first under the Persians121 and
then under Alexander and the first Hellenistic monarchs. Far from represent-
ing a radical departure from earlier imperial rule, the conquest of Alexander
and the subsequent rule of non-Greek lands by his lieutenants involved, more
often than not, the continuation of governing practices that were in place under
the Achaemenids,122 though we ought not to press this point too far and view
120. Cf. Hornblower (1981) 5–17.

121. Cf. Kuhrt (2001).
122. For clear statements of this view, see, for Babylon, Sherwin-White (1987) 2 and Kuhrt and
Sherwin-White (1991) 78, 83; for Egypt, Manning (2003) 50, 140.
Introduction 33
Alexander without reservation as the “last of the Achaemenids.”123 The elite

priest in Egypt and Babylon was a major player in this continuing process of
imperial rule. I cannot here hope to cover comprehensively the place of the na-
tive priest in the Achaemenid and early Hellenistic periods, but it is important
to take stock of the worlds in which figures like Berossus and Manetho moved.
Such an examination will help us see that their historical writing can be seen
to fit into a set of activities whereby the native elite priest defined his position
relative to the monarchs ruling his land, sometimes as facilitator of foreign rule
and sometimes as an advocate of his own society and its heritage, particularly
as found in his own region and its cult.124
Case 1: Egypt
In the case of Egypt for the Ptolemaic period, it is difficult to track the function
of the native priestly elite, because much of its activities were centered in the
Delta, where the material preservation of the religious centers is not good—the
loss of papyrus records is acutely felt. Jan Quaegebeur, in an enormously im-
portant article from 1980, was able to reconstruct, from inscriptions on statues,
the genealogy of a priestly family from Memphis that functioned from the end
of the fourth century to some time after 23 BC.125 The texts advertise that the
members of this family were not only high priests at Memphis they also saw
themselves as the “first prophet of any god” and “overseer of the prophets of all
gods and goddesses of Upper and Lower Egypt”; they cast themselves, as Quae-
gebeur has put it, “as head of the Egyptian clergy.”126 These were the Egyptians
who advised Ptolemy Soter and his son Philadelphus. Manetho, though resid-
ing at Heliopolis, would have been such a man.127
As to the specifics of how these high priests functioned, there survive to
us a number of autobiographies (also called “testaments”) written by Egyptian
priests and extending from the years before the Persian conquest of Egypt all
the way down to the time of Ptolemy I and beyond.128 The priestly autobiogra-
123. Note esp. Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1994) esp. 326–27, introducing important limita-
tions to the view that Alexander was the heir of the Achaemeinds. See also the thoughtful essay
by Lane Fox (2007), reacting to Briant (2002) 876; also Smith (1988) 36 on what the title “King of
Asia” meant for Alexander, namely, that there “was a new Greek-Macedonian empire in Asia, not a
simple continuation of the Achaemenid empire.”
124. Cf. Derchain (2000) 15. Note also Smith’s general observations on the priest as native
advocate and imperial go-between: Smith (1975) 135 = id. (1978) 70.
125. Quaegebeur (1980).
126. For the titles quoted, see Quaegebeur (1980) 54, 74 (“head of Egyptian clergy”).
127. For recent treatments, see Huss (1994); Legras (2002); Verhoeven (2005). See Dillery
(1999) 109 with n.54 for older bibliography.
128. The term autobiography is somewhat problematic here: some of the texts are biographies
phy goes back to the Old Kingdom, particularly the Sixth Dynasty,129 though
it seems to have really become an important literary form beginning in the
Second Intermediate Period.130 Baines has noted that nonroyal texts in particu-
lar hold out the possibility of treating “human ideology,” insofar as royal texts
almost inevitably take up the relation between the divine and mortal realms,
mediated by Pharaoh.131 In other words, there is more of a chance for human
history to emerge in nonroyal texts, even if they are also connected to the affairs
of the king. The picture that emerges from examples from the Persian and ear-
liest Hellenistic periods is far from simple: while, on their own testimony, the
men of these texts were far from being wild-eyed leaders of native resistance,
they were not simply collaborators of the foreign masters of their land either.132
Different rulers come and go in their narratives, even different regimes from
different cultures (Persian, Egyptian, Persian again, Macedonian). In several of
these texts, the same priests stay in positions of authority despite these chang-
ing political circumstances. Often, their survival from one period to the next is
elided—with a brief reference to “a time of turmoil,” perhaps even service with
the new king abroad or in Persia, but then a return back to Egypt.
Before taking stock of the autobiographies themselves, though, we need to
take a quick look at the political history of Egypt that is reflected in these texts.133
Egypt fell to Persian dominion after the invasion of the second Achaemenid
king, Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great, in 525 (Hdt. 3.10–16). Although it is
not certain, there may well have been difficulties in the maintenance of direct
royal control already during the accession crisis of Darius I just a few years later
(522–521).134 It is absolutely certain that a full-scale revolt broke out in Egypt
in 486, just before Darius’ death, and lasted into the first year of the reign of his
son, Xerxes (Hdt. 7.1.3, 7.7).135 Again in 460, Inaros, son of Psammetichus, led
a revolt that lasted for six years during the reign of Artaxerxes I (Thuc. 1.104.1,
109.4) and in which the Athenians also participated (much to their regret).
written in the “I” voice. For an excellent recent treatment of the problem, see Derchain (2000) 13–
15; Morenz (2003). Cf. Bresciani (1998) with discussion.
129. Zivie-Coche (2004) 178–80. See also Griffiths (1988).
130. Kubisch (2008) 69–84; note also Baines (1986).
131. Baines (2007) 182; note also Griffiths (1988).
132. Cf. Dunand (2004) 206–10, a section entitled “Reactions of the Priests: The Ptolemaic
Period; An Ambiguous Game of Opposition/Collaboration.” Contrast Lloyd (1982a); Huss (1997).
For an important text before the period of Persian domination, consider the genealogy of the
priestly family of Patjenfy (late seventh century) from Heliopolis: see Leahy and Leahy (1986).
133. For a thorough and systematic study of the Persian rule of Egypt, see Bresciani (1958) =
(1968).
134. Kuhrt (1995) 2.665, 668: inasmuch as the satrap had to be removed, it is probable that
Egypt’s loyalty during this period was in doubt.
135. I here use the term revolt guardedly: Briant (1988) 171 has observed that the word can
be misleading, standing for a variety of political realities, ranging from dynastic competition to a
popular insurrection by a subject population.
Introduction 35
Egypt again attempted to throw off the Persian yoke under Amyrtaeus in about
404/3 and succeeded this time, with the Egyptian pharaoh Nepherites assum-
ing the throne in about 398/7.136 For almost sixty years, Egypt was again ruled
by native kings (six of them after Nepherites), though the Persians made several
efforts at reconquest,137 and Persian cultural interchange did not entirely disap-
pear.138 In 342, Artaxerxes III Ochus finally succeeded in taking back Egypt
after a very difficult campaign, ousting the last native ruler, Nectanebo II.139
The period of this second Persian domination of Egypt was also to be brief.
In 332, Alexander the Great invaded Egypt and, in a rapid and easy campaign,
gained control of the land. Egyptians were made “nomarchs,” but the mili-
tary left behind were all Macedonian.140 By the time of Alexander’s death, one
Cleomenes of Naucratis evidently wielded considerable administrative power
and had also clearly governed in ways that Arrian believed led to numer-
ous wrongs (Arrian An. 7.23.6: πολλὰ ἀδικήματα; cf. 3.5.4). Ptolemy, son of
Lagus, ruled continuously in Egypt from 323 onward, though his official status
changed over time. The great hieroglyphic Satrap Stela is dated to 9 November
311, in the seventh year of Alexander IV, but this son of Alexander the Great
is mentioned only in the dating section at the beginning of the document. The
real authority belongs to the satrap “Ptolemy, the Viceroy,” who would become
king in a matter of six years; indeed, in the course of the text, it is often hard
to know to whom the title “His Majesty” refers.141 The stela reports that when
Ptolemy returned from Syria in 312, he confirmed that the revenues from the
region around Buto belonged to the local priesthood. The relationship between
priest and king was already being defined during Ptolemy’s rule as satrap of
Egypt.142 Taken all together, the two periods of Persian domination and the two
or so generations of independence, the whole running from 525 to 332, were
136. Lloyd (1994) 340. Mention should also be made of Khababash from the Satrap Stela who
resists “Xerxes,” who in fact seems to be Artaxerxes III: see Briant (2002) 1017–18 with bibliogra-
phy.
137. They made no less than four attempts, beginning in 374 and concluding with the suc-
cessful one of 343/42: see Lloyd (1994) 346. Perhaps the most significant episode of Persian and
Egyptian hostility was the campaign of Tachos against the Persians in 362/1, which may have been
coordinated with the so-called Satraps’ Revolt (Diod. 15.90.2–3). See Hornblower (1982) 170–82;
Cartledge (1987) 328–29; Ruzicka (2003/2007).
138. Wasmuth (2010), discussing a stele found at Saqqara that seems to suggest the activity of a
workshop for funerary art that catered to “foreign residents” (i.e., Persians) during the intermediate
years between the two Persian periods of domination.
139. Lloyd (1994) 358. On Nectanebo II, see esp. Ray (2001) 113–29.
140. See esp. Arrian An. 3.1.1–3; Diod. 17.491–92; Curtius 4.7.1–4.
141. Ritner (2003d) 392–93, 394 n.6. Cf. Fraser (1972) 2.11–12 n.28. Ritner’s translation
(2003d) replaces Bevan (1927) 28–32, which is nonetheless still useful.
142. Hölbl (2001) 83; Bingen (2007) 219. Cf. Lloyd (2011) 84. A convenient place to find an
English translation of the Satrap Stela, with excellent discussion, is Ritner (2003d); see also Bevan
(1927) 28–32.
years marked by almost continual political unrest and warfare for Egypt. It is
against this background that we must examine the priestly autobiographies.
The earliest and perhaps most important of these autobiographies belongs
to Udjahorresne.143 He tells his story in hieroglyphs on a green basalt statue
now in the Vatican Museum.144 He reports that he served first as a naval officer
under Amasis and Psammetichus III, the last native rulers before the Persian
invasion. He then describes the Persian invasion, in somewhat oblique terms:
“the Great Chief of all foreign lands, Cambyses came to Egypt . . . When he
had conquered this land in its entirety . . . he was Great Ruler of Egypt and
Great Chief of all foreign lands” (Lichtheim trans. [1973/1980] 3.37).145 When
Cambyses first “came to Egypt”—that is, attacked it—he was a foreign and bar-
barous invader, a servant of the god of turmoil, Seth; but with the help of men
like Udjahorresne, who tells us, in the next section of his autobiography, that he
composed Cambyses’ pharaonic titulature,146 he did become the lawful ruler of
Egypt. Alan Lloyd has argued that an implicit warning is to be found in the dif-
ference in title.147 As long as Cambyses listened to the priests of Egypt and fol-
lowed their advice, particularly on matters of cult, he would remain pharaoh, or
“Great Ruler of Egypt”; but if he should not listen to the priesthood and should
neglect or harm the Egyptian temples and their officials, he would revert to be-
ing “Great Chief of all foreign lands.” We learn, further, that Cambyses made
Udjahorresne chief physician and appointed him to be a “companion and ad-
ministrator of the palace” (section 13). To put it another way, Udjahorresne was
something like a philos to Cambyses. In this role, he made sure that the Persian
king knew about the importance of the shrine of Neith at Sais, even petitioning
Cambyses to have all “foreigners” expelled from it (they had presumably moved
into it in the aftermath of the Persian conquest) and to restore the temple to its
former glory (section 15). Udjahorresne even engineered a visit to the temple
of Neith at Sais by Cambyses, who “made great prostration before her maj-
esty, as every king has done” (section 24). Quite unlike the picture we get from
Herodotus, Cambyses is seen as a ruler who is most attentive to the needs of
the native priesthood and cult.148 The power relationship is clear: Cambyses, no
143. Note esp. Posener (1936) 1–29, 164–75. See, more recently, Baines (1996); Bareš (1999)
31–43. Cline and Graham (2011) 1–3 employ the Udjahorresne statue and text as their exemplary
case for the study of ancient empires.
144. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.36–41.
145. Cf. Briant (2002) 58.
146. Dillery (2003a). I also argue there for the distinct possibility that Manetho was similarly
responsible for Ptolemy I’s titulature. Cf. Funke (2005) 51 and n.27; Moyer (2011) 88 n.11; Weber
(2012) 106 n.39.
147. Lloyd (1982a) esp. 176–77; cf. Dillery (2005a) 402. Briant (2002) 59 is more guarded.
148. A point made abundantly clear by Posener (1936), especially on the basis of Udjahor-
resne’s testimony; cf. Dillery (2005a) for further details and bibliography.
Introduction 37
doubt instructed by Udjahorresne himself as to what was expected of him (note

“as every king has done”), actually does obeisance to an Egyptian deity. In this
regard, Udjahorresne is not that different from the later Hellenistic “friends”
who we have already seen act as conduits of information for the new rulers of
their lands. Toward the end of the text, we are told that Darius sent him back
from “Elam” to Egypt (section 43). We do not know under what circumstances
or for what reasons Udjahorresne was first sent away from Egypt or, more gen-
erally, how he fared in the changeover from Cambyses’ rule to that of Darius,
but he is sent back to Egypt “in order to restore the establishment of the House
of Life”—that is, a temple library, probably at Sais.
Throughout the text, Udjahorresne presents himself as an advocate of the
temple of Neith and the inhabitants at Sais. In particular, during the “turmoil”
that befell the whole land of Egypt, Udjahorresne defended his community “as
a father does his son” (see esp. sections 33–35 and 39–41). This “turmoil” is
the Persian invasion of Cambyses. Of course, Udjahorresne was in a position
to look after the cult and people of Sais precisely because he was also acting as
an advisor to Cambyses–indeed, later becoming his companion (shall we say
“friend”?) and royal physician. It is here that I must part company with Lloyd’s
otherwise superb treatment of Udjahorresne. While it is tempting at points to
see him in this capacity as a “collaborator,” such a term obscures the other side
of his activities: namely, the use of his position to protect the interests of Sais
and the temple community of Neith. At least as Udjahorresne presents it in
his testament, the relationship between him and Cambyses in particular was
contingent on the Persian ruler following the recommendations offered by his
Egyptian priest-advisor. If he did not, as we noted above, the “turmoil” would
return, and Cambyses would find his legitimacy gone.149 Indeed, the case has
been made that while Neith and her temple and staff prospered, other temples
and their gods did not fare so well under Cambyses: passages in the Demotic
Chronicle suggest that Cambyses reorganized the tax structures of many tem-
ple communities in Egypt, making his treatment of Sais and Neith’s temple un-
usual. This change led to hostility toward Cambyses by many in the Egyptian
priestly class and helped to generate the view of Cambyses that we see repre-
sented in Herodotus and, later, in the Coptic Cambyses Romance, where he was
a fanatical enemy of Egypt and its religious scruples—indeed, a man who could
mortally wound the sacred Apis bull (Hdt. 3.29.1).150
The stela of Somtutefnakht, a chief priest of Sekhmet from Hnes (Hera-
cleopolis Magna), tells a story similar to Udjahorresne’s but at the other end
149. Dillery (2005a) 402; (1999) 111.

150. See Olmstead (1948) 91; Dandamayev (1969) 310; Lloyd (1988a) 64–65; Tuplin (1991)
260–61; Dillery (2005a) 402.
of the Persian occupation of Egypt—namely, its conclusion.151 We first hear of

him earning high position with the last native pharaoh of Egypt, Nectanebo II:
he was given access to the palace and reports that “the heart of the Good God
was pleased by my speech.”152 Although certainty is impossible, it seems that he
then witnessed both the reconquest of Egypt by the Persians (“when you turned
your back on Egypt,” addressing the god Harsaphes)153 and, later, Alexander’s
invasion and capture of Egypt:
You protected me in the combat of the Greeks,

When you repulsed those of Asia.
They slew a million at my sides,
And no one raised his arm against me. (Lichtheim trans. [1973/1980] 3.42)
Inasmuch as Somtutefnakht refers to his escape from harm in the wake of Alex-
ander’s victory, it would seem that he witnessed the events in question from the
Persian side; yet he is very clearly quickly taken up by the new rulers of his land
and restored to his priestly position.154 In between the Persian reconquest and
the invasion of Alexander, he tell us that, thanks to his god, he earned high po-
sition with the Persian king (Artaxerxes III); indeed, “you put love of me in the
heart of Asia’s ruler, his courtiers praised god for me. He gave me the office of
the chief priest of Sakhmet” (Lichtheim trans. [1973/1980] 3.42). Comparison
with Udjahorresne is striking. Like the earlier priest of Neith, Somtutefnakht
is actually appointed high priest by the Persian king; but he uses his lofty posi-
tion to encourage the king’s courtiers “to praise god for me,” perhaps meaning
that he obtained royal patronage for his native cult through Persian officials. In
one way, however, Somtutefnakht was different from Udjahorresne: he never
bestows on the Persian king the title of lawful pharaoh, namely, “Great Ruler
of Egypt”; Artaxerxes remains “Asia’s ruler.” Perhaps Somtutefnakht wanted to
avoid the taint of collaboration.155 But note that his position was quite different
from Udjahorresne’s, for he knew that the Persian domination of Egypt came
151. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.41–44.

152. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.43 n.5 (“Good God” = Nectanebo II).
153. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.44 n.6. The notion at work is that hardship for Egypt, here in
the form of the reestablishment of foreign rule, must be ordained by the gods of Egypt, who are
imagined as “turning away” from the land. Cf. also the beginning of the Alexander Romance β (1.3
Bergson): Nectanebo sees the gods directing the enemy forces toward Egypt and concludes that the
end of native rule is at hand (τὰ ἔσχατα τῆς Αἰγύπτου βασιλείας). Cf. Assmann (2002) 242–44, 271;
Dillery (2004a) 241, 250; id. (2007) 227. See also below, pp. 333–35.
154. Cf. Manning (2003) 140 and n.41.
155. Cf. Briant (2002) 860.
Introduction 39
to an end. There was no need to view Artaxerxes as rightful king, for circum-
stances had proved otherwise.
Taking us into the time of Ptolemy I is the tomb complex of Petosiris, high
priest of Thoth.156 This remarkable monument, dating to around 320, was dis-
covered in 1919 in the necropolis of Hermopolis (Tuna el-Gebel). In its en-
trance hall are pictorial reliefs that represent a spectacular fusion of Egyptian
and Greek visual idioms: Hellenizing figures are shown performing Egyptian
cultic tasks, surrounded by hieroglyphs. It has been furthered argued that the
fusion can be extended to some of the texts found in the complex: a possible
link has been detected between an epigram found on the tomb and Greek
wisdom literature.157 In the inner areas of the mortuary complex, the decor
is “in purely Egyptian style.”158 Hieroglyphic biographical inscriptions found
there refer to individuals from five generations of an elite priestly family, from
the grandfather and father of Petosiris, who were active during the last native
dynasty (Nectanebo I and II), to the time of Petosiris’ own son and grandson,
who were adding building and decoration to the structure during the reign of
Ptolemy I.159
Petosiris and his voice dominate the complex. In a particularly revealing
section, he details his early years and his leadership of the temple of Thoth dur-
ing difficult times:
I was on the water of Khmun’s lord [i.e., Thoth] since my birth,

I had all his plans in my heart.
[He] chose me to administer his temple,
Knowing I respected him in my heart.
I spent seven years as controller for this god,
Administering his endowment without fault being found,
While the Ruler-of-foreign-lands was Protector in Egypt,
And nothing was in its former place,
Since fighting had started inside Egypt,
The South being in turmoil, the North in revolt;
The people walked with head turned back,
All temples were without their servants,
156. Lefebvre (1923/1924). See, most recently, Baines (2004) 45–48, whose discussion I follow
closely.
157. Derchain (2000) 32–33, 54–57 (Petosiris no. 56, “Epigram on the death of an infant”). Cf.
Baines (2004) 46; note also Assmann (2005) 7–8.
158. Baines (2004) 46.
159. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.44–54.
The priests fled, not knowing what was happening.

When I became controller for Thoth, lord of Khmun,
I put the temple of Thoth in its former condition.
I caused every rite to be as before,
Every priest [to serve] in his proper time.
(Lichtheim trans. [1973/1980] 3.46)
We have seen much of this before: a time of “turmoil,” disturbance in the land,
followed by restoration of order. But Petosiris’ text contains a subtle yet very
significant difference from the other texts we have been examining. Petosiris
obtains his station through the agency of the god himself, not thanks to the
ruler of the land. Furthermore, Petosiris causes the temple of Thoth and its
rites to be restored; he is not acting as an intermediary for the ruling authority
but is the quasi-royal restorer himself.160 His fashioning of himself as the agent
of action, not as intermediary, is of tremendous importance. Throughout the
first millennium BC and especially in Late Period Egypt (i.e., from the Saite
period through to the establishment of Greco-Macedonian rule), a tendency
has been detected in priestly texts whereby the role of the priest is more and
more privileged while the role of the king correspondingly recedes.161 This de-
velopment makes sense at a number of levels, but most particularly because
of the advent of foreign rule. Foreign rule sped up the process whereby the
center for local religious authority shifted from pharaoh to priest.162 Before,
the pharaoh was responsible for the maintenance of divine Ma’at, or order, in
Egypt through the maintenance of Egyptian cult in all its varieties; in fact, the
pharaoh was technically the only true priest, and he passed his authority down
to other religious officers throughout Egypt.163 In Egypt, “all cult was in a sense
royal cult, since Pharaoh alone was in direct communion with the gods.”164 But
Petosiris’ testimony reveals a different view. It is thanks to him that the temple
of Thoth was put “in its former condition,” that every rite was as it had been
before, that every priest served “in his proper time.” To be sure, we do not want
to overestimate the nature of Petosiris’ power: if he seems almost the “propri-
etor” of the temple of Thoth, he was also a nome administrator subordinate to
160. Baines (2004) 46; note also Bingen (2007) 218: “[a] telling detail: Petosiris recalls that
he restored the temples and their domain when they had been ruined by a foreign invasion” (my
emphasis).
161. See Griffiths (1988) esp. 100–101; Baines (2004) 44–45; Bingen (2007) 218.
162. Cf. Dillery (1999) 108.
163. Blackman (1918) 293 = (1998) 117–18; Onasch (1976) 139 and n.18; Winter (1978) 147–
48; Koenen (1993) 39 and n.35; Sauneron (2000) 34; Dunand (2004) 198.
164. Quirke (1992) 175.
Introduction 41
the king; a royal secretary who doubtless had “the ear of pharaoh,” he was still
only an elite functionary, “a representative of the old religious aristocracy.”165
But the impression one gets from his testament is of a priest who is himself the
guarantor of divine order, of Ma’at. He is the lasting and ever-present authority
in the changing world he describes in his autobiographical statement. No king
is mentioned in his testimony.166
When I turn to Manetho in earnest in the chapters that follow, I shall fur-
ther pursue several of the ideas presented in these texts. But it is worth drawing
out some points here. It is not difficult, I think, to imagine Manetho function-
ing in a world very like the ones we see emerge from the testaments of Udjahor-
resne, Somtutefnakht, and Petosiris.167 While an advisor who owes his position
and priestly office to the king, Manetho is also an advocate of his culture to
the new and alien ruler of his land. Manetho’s historical writing can be seen to
participate in this “two-way” street.168 At one level, it was surely useful to the
first Ptolemies to know more about the land they ruled and, specifically, what
the Egyptians’ expectations were of the lawful pharaoh.169 As such, Manetho’s
Aegyptiaca is, in a sense, an analog of the priest as advisor: both impart “impe-
rial knowledge” to the new rulers of Egypt. But Manetho was simultaneously
preserving (“curating”) Egypt and its past in the pages of his history;170 further,
he was making claims about the importance of certain areas and its cult, about
certain kings from the past, that would have a distinct meaning for native Egyp-
tians. Most important, one could see in his Aegyptiaca that power and legiti-
macy were mutually contingent: as long as the proper order of the universe was
kept up by pharaoh (Ma’at) and as long as the king followed the advice of the
priesthood serving him, all would be well; but when the king did not do these
things, a period of divinely sanctioned “turmoil” would ensue. One can see how
this was a message that was meaningful for the new rulers of Egypt, as well as
for its native population.
Case 2: Babylon
Unfortunately, nothing like these priestly testimonies of Late Period Egypt sur-
vives for us from Babylonia for the equivalent periods. But that does not mean
we do not have good evidence for religious activity at Babylon in the years of
165. Bingen (2007) 217–20 (quotes from 218).

166. Griffths (1988) 101.
167. Note Lloyd (2002) for still more cases.
168. Dillery (1999) 111.
169. Cf. Thompson (1988/2012) 136–43.
170. Cf. Baines (2011) 54.
Persian and early Macedonian rule, implying the presence of priests and even a
central role for them in what was transpiring there. There are clear parallels in
structure and detail between the Egyptian and Babylonian cases for the role of
priests in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, but there are also differenc-
es.171 Just as continuity had been the guiding principle behind their governance
of Egypt, it is clear that the Persians, for the most part, had no interest in dis-
rupting the religious life of Mesopotamia or of Babylon in particular; further, it
is also clear that they knew that the best way to govern was to make use of exist-
ing social institutions and the local elite that administered them.172 Alexander
and the Seleucids were the inheritors of both policies.173 Also as in the case of
Egypt, there were several episodes of political and social upheaval in Babylonia
during the time of Persian domination. It is important here to outline briefly
the history of Babylonia from the Persian conquest to its takeover by Alexander
and the subsequent rule of the Seleucids.
Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, marched into
Babylon on 29 October 539 and so initiated a period of more than two hundred
years of Persian rule of Babylonia. We have chiefly the victor’s view of the con-
quest, according to which Cyrus deposed, in the process, an unpopular king,
Nabonidus, the last ruler of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom.174 Indeed, Berossus
asserts that Nabonidus had come to power thanks to a group of conspirators
who had murdered the child-king Labashi-Marduk (F 9a = Jos. Ap. 1.148–49).
Furthermore, a Babylonian text (the Nabonidus Chronicle) composed after
the Persian conquest reports that Nabonidus had chosen for several years not
to live in Babylon and that the Akitu, or Babylonian New Year’s Festival, cus-
tomarily held twice a year in the central temple to Bel-Marduk (the Esagila),
was not observed for those same years.175 This last item was a matter of some
significance. The New Year’s Festival involved, among other things, the ritual
171. In general, consult McEwan (1981) 196–201; note also Dandamayev (1982). The term
priest is problematic when applied to Babylonia. See Kuhrt (1995) 2.620–21 and (1990a) 136–38,
150–51, whose list I follow here: the upper echelons of temple communities were staffed by “ad-
ministrative officials”; there were also “cultic personnel and ritual experts,” as well as “lamentation-
singers, liturgy-singers,” “exorcists, and possibly, though the evidence is entirely inferential, as-
tronomers, diviners and omen-experts”; the temple staff included cooks, bakers, gatekeepers, and
so on. For the related problem of the term priest in the Greek world, see esp. Henrichs (2008).
172. Cf. Jursa (2007).
173. Cf. McEwan (1981) 190.
174. Young (1988) 38.
175. Grayson (1975a) Chronicle 7.ii.12–18. For discussion, see esp. Kuhrt (1988) 120 and n.60,
on Nabonidus’ regnal years 7, 9, 10 and 11. Year 8 (548/7) is simply left blank with the exception of
the notation for the year. For the timing of the festival (twice a year), see Thureau-Dangin (1921)
87; George (2001) 103.
Introduction 43
humiliation of the king and his blessing by the urigallu-priest of Bel for the
coming year.176
Hence Cyrus could allege, in a cuneiform document produced shortly after
his takeover of Babylon (the famous Cyrus Cylinder), that he had acted as an
agent of the divine in expelling the impious and ritually illegitimate Naboni-
dus.177 A similar view of Cyrus emerges from the Old Testament: Cyrus was ap-
pointed by God to restore the children of Israel to their homeland (e.g., Isaiah
41:2–4, 45:1–3).178 Clearly, Cyrus was eager to propagate the view that he was a
fully legitimate ruler—indeed, a divinely appointed one. But it is unlikely that
Nabonidus was as unpopular as the propaganda of Cyrus makes him out to be;
indeed, the Babylonian forces under his control fought with great determina-
tion at Opis, a defeat for Babylon that led to the siege and capitulation of the
city (Grayson [1975a] Chronicle 7 iii.12–15; Berossus F 9a = Jos. Ap. 1.151).179
Such a program of propaganda implies the assistance of the Babylonian learned
and priestly elite, I think. In relying on this sector of Babylonian society, Cyrus
176. According to ANET3 334, a remarkable text, the priest removes the king’s symbols of royal
power (scepter, circle, and sword) and places them before a cult statue of Bel; he then strikes the king’s
cheek and leads him into the presence of Bel, where the king recites a list of sins of omission, chiefly
regarding the maintenance of cult; the priest then states, “the god Bel will listen to your prayer . . .
he will magnify your lordship . . . he will exalt your kingship. . . . The god Bel will bless you forever.
He will destroy your enemy, fell your adversary.” Note that there is no evidence that any Persian
king participated personally in the New Year’s Festival, though its connection to the authority of the
king is clear: cf. Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) 73–76. There is evidence that Cambyses, when
crown prince, did partake in the ceremony; his participation in the rite emphasizes Cyrus’ interest in
fostering his legitimacy at Babylon, but Cambyses’ clearly subordinate position also stresses Persian
mastery over Babylonia. See George (1996) 379–81. Cf. San Nicolò (1941) 51–64; Peat (1989); Kuhrt
(1987b) 51; id. (1997) 300–301. The tablets on which the instructions for the festival are found are
dated to the Seleucid period—a matter of tremendous significance. Note also the excellent discussion
of Smith (1975) 138–39 = Smith (1978) 72–73. See also below, n.214 and 226 n.25.
177. ANET3 315–16: “the worship of Marduk, the king of the gods, he (i.e Nabonidus) changed
into abomination, daily he used to do evil against his (i.e., Marduk’s) city. . . . (Marduk) scanned and
looked through all the countries, searching for a righteous ruler willing to lead him (i.e., Marduk)
in the annual procession. Then he pronounced the name of Cyrus, king of Anshan, declared him to
become the ruler of all the world. . . . He made him (Cyrus) set out on the road to Babylon going at
his side like a real friend. . . . When I entered Babylon as a friend . . . I was daily endeavoring to wor-
ship (Marduk). . . . Marduk, the great lord, was well pleased with my deeds and sent friendly bless-
ings to myself, Cyrus, the king who worships him, to Cambyses, my son . . . as well as my troops.”
Cf. Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) 73; Kuhrt (1988) 124; id. (1990b); Briant (2002) 40–44. The
narrative of the Cyrus Cylinder is supported by passages from the Persian Verse Account (ANET3
312–15). For a detailed treatment of the inscriptions of Nabonidus and Cyrus, see Schaudig (2001),
in particular his K2.1, pp. 550–56, for his translation of the Cyrus Cylinder. We now know that the
cylinder was meant to be a proclamation, thanks to BM 47176, which provides text missing in the
cylinder and also identifies the scribe as Qishti-Marduk (information obtained from the traveling
exhibit The Cyrus Cylinder, Washington, DC, March 2013).
178. Bickerman (1946) 265–68; id. (1976/1986) 1.94–103; Mitchell (1991a) 426–27; Briant
(2002) 43, 46. Cf. Dillery (2005a) 389 and n.12.
179. Kuhrt (1995) 2.602–603; Briant (2002) 41–44; Jursa (2007) 75.
could be seen to be following a policy that went back at least to the Neo-Assyrian
court, where scholarly priests were common.180 It strikes me as most important
that the colophon to Chronicle 1 of the Babylonian Chronicle Series dates the
composition of the text to the twenty-second year of Darius I (Grayson [1975a]
Chronicle 1 iv.41–43):181 under the Achaemenids, the priestly and scribal elite
were actively preserving their nation’s past, particularly the impact the Persians
had on it. This fact is worth bearing in mind, for Berossus could be said to be
doing the same thing in the time of the first Seleucids.
Despite the success of the first two Achaemenids in securing their control
over Babylonia, the Persian dominion of the region would be challenged at
several points in the last quarter of the sixth century and the first half of the
fifth. From the mid-fifth century to the conquest of Alexander, Babylonia did
not experience the sort of turmoil that Egypt did. But before that, it was a very
different story. According to the great inscription of Darius at Bisitun, dur-
ing Cambyses’ long absence in Egypt, Cambyses’ brother Bardiya seized the
throne in March 522 (DB 11). At this juncture, Babylonia evidently did not
revolt, which suggests that Bardiya’s rule was accepted at Babylon. Shortly after
Bardiya’s death at the hands of Darius and his fellow conspirators in September
of the same year, however, Babylonia did revolt, under two successive leaders
who both claimed to be “Nebuchadrezzar, son of Nabonidus”: first Nidintu-Bel
(DB 16), probably in northern Babylonia, and then Arakha (DB 49), whose
base was Ur in the South.182 Darius crushed both uprisings, in circumstances
quite different from what is reported by Herodotus (3.150–59). Two more re-
volts took place under Xerxes, the first led by Bel-shimanni, probably in 481,
and the second by Shamash-eriba just a couple of years later (in 479?).183 It
is presumably thanks to one of these insurrections that we owe the story of
Xerxes’ destruction of Babylonian temples. Herodotus reports that Xerxes car-
ried away a golden statue (andrias) of a man that was placed in the Esagila in
Babylon (Hdt. 1.183.3). Later Greek authors expanded the story and made Xe-
rxes’ action the wholesale destruction of the Babylonian temples, particularly
the Esagila, referred to as the temple or tomb of Bel (Arrian An. 3.16.4, 7.17.2;
Diod. 17.112.3; Strabo 16.1.5). Herodotus’ story speaks only of the removal of a
statue, specifically an andrias, or image of a human (not a god: that would be an
agalma). Furthermore, the later accounts of temple destructions are all brought
up in the context of Alexander the Great’s restoration of temple structures. Xe-
180. Kuhrt (1995) 2.524.

181. Cf. Grayson (1975a) 17.
182. Kuhrt (1988) 129–30, whose narrative of events I follow closely.
183. Briant (1992) and (2002) 525, 535 (whose dating I follow); cf. Kuhrt (1988) 134 and (1995)
2.670–71; also Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) 70.
Introduction 45
rxes’ alleged crimes against Babylonian shrines and, by implication, Babylonian

religion have now been shown to be a fiction, to be connected precisely to Alex-
ander’s own activities in the city: as elsewhere (notably Athens), he was aiming
to draw a sharp contrast with the Persian king of 480, the notorious temple de-
stroyer.184 Xerxes evidently made some changes to his titulature in Babylonian
documents, including (allegedly) the removal of the title “King of Babylon,”
but they were not as sweeping or as permanent as once thought.185 It seems he
did reorganize the region, splitting the satrapy into two parts: Babylonia (mod-
ern Iraq and Syria to the Euphrates) and “Beyond-the-River” (Syria-Palestine
west of the Euphrates).186 Xerxes seems also to have systematically replaced the
old ruling Babylonian elite with less prominent individuals, even employing
Iranian and West Semitic families in some cases.187 With the exception of the
successful coup in 425/4 by Darius II Ochus, who probably used Babylon as
his base, and the failed coup of Cyrus the Younger, who fell in battle at Cunaxa
near Babylon in the summer of 401, fighting his brother Artaxerxes II (Xen.
An. 1.8.27), Babylonia did not witness political unrest again until Alexander
occupied the city in October 331, and even that episode was evidently bloodless
(Arrian An. 3.16.3–4; Diod. 17.64.3–4; Curtius 5.1.17–23, 45), thanks to Darius
III’s defeat at Gaugamela and subsequent flight to Arbela and Media.188
Suffice it here to say that the Achaemenids pursued the same religious pol-
icy in connection with Babylon as was followed elsewhere in their empire:189
native cult was to be supported, and connections to the native clergy were to
be fostered.190 We should not assume, however, that the treatment was uniform
for every temple, and some have argued that the Achaemenids eagerly sought
the wealth of the Babylonian temples in such a way as to minimize the religious
scruples of the Babylonians (note the parallel with Udjahorresne and Sais as ex-
ception, rather than rule, in Egypt, discussed above).191 In the case of Babylon,
184. See esp. Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) and Kuhrt (1990a); also Briant (2002) 544–45.
Recently restated and defended in Kuhrt (2010). Note that this view has been countered by George
(2010) in the same volume, citing other dissenters.
185. Stolper (1994) 235; note also Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1987) 72–73.
186. Stolper (1989); Kuhrt (1995) 2.670.
187. Jursa (2007).
188. Stolper (1994) 238, 240–41, 260.
189. See esp. Dalley (1998b) 35; Dalley and Reyes (1998) 107.
190. This is perhaps best seen in the letter of Darius to Gadatas (SIG3 22, ML 12, Brosius no.
198), in which the king threatens Gadatas with punishment for levying a tax on sacred garden-
ers of Apollo at Magnesia on the Maeander, contrary to his specific “arrangement” (lines 17–18:
διάθεσιν) and the policy (literally “mind”) of his forbears toward the god (lines 26–28: ἐμῶν
προγονων εἰς τὸν θεὸν [ν]οῦν). See Schmitt (1996). Cf. Robert (1977) 85 = (1987) 43; Bowersock
(1990) 2–3 and n.6; Briant (2002) 401–2, 491–92. In an important article, Briant (2003) argues
that the letter is in fact a forgery to be dated to the Roman period; cf. Briant (2002) xviii n.15.
But see now Tuplin (2009).
191. See esp. Dandamayev (1969) for this view.
however, we seem to have two instances of Persian intervention that contradict

this more general pattern. At F 2 (= Athen. 14.639c; cf. FGrH 688 F 4: Ctesias
= Lenfant [2004] F 4), Berossus tells us that the Babylonians celebrate a festival
called the Sacaea, in which masters are ruled by slaves. It can be argued that
the institution by a dominant outsider of a rite that included the temporary
reversal of power relationships facilitates imperial rule: to borrow Bakhtin’s for-
mulation, “abuse is followed by praise”—rule is strengthened by such “carnival”
procedures as the Sacaea.192 But insofar as this festival is elsewhere understood
to be a Persian one, it seems that the Babylonians simply adopted a Persian rite,
which was later (to trust Athenaeus) regarded as a native Babylonian rite, for
Berossus does not identify it as Persian.193 Hence the introduction of the Sacaea
can scarcely be understood as the Persians imposing their religious practices on
the Babylonians. Indeed, it may have blended relatively seamlessly into Babylo-
nian religious life, given that other rituals involving the replacement of the king
by a scapegoat were well known.194 But we should not lose sight of the notice
in Athenaeus that “Ctesias also mentions the festival in the second book of his
Persica.” We cannot tell of course, but it is tempting to speculate that Berossus’
notice of the festival was driven in part by a desire to engage with Ctesias, and
that the rite was really Persian in origin. Perhaps Berossus’ erasure of the Per-
sian origin of the festival was therefore deliberate and intended, in a final move
of inversion, to remove entirely the vestiges of Persian rule in Babylon.
Less ambiguously, at F 11, we have Clement of Alexandria’s late notice of
Berossus reporting that Artaxerxes II introduced the worship of the Persian
goddess Anahita to Babylon and other imperial cities throughout the empire
(Clem. Al. Protr. 5.65.3).195 For years, modern scholars treated this passage as
proof that the Achaemenids sought to impose their religion on the native in-
habitants of Babylonia. More recently, it has been argued (rightly) that Artax-
erxes was attempting to enforce worship at only the Persian court in Babylon
and other satrapal centers; his efforts were targeted only at Iranians, in an at-
tempt to tie the regional courts more closely to the imperial center.196 These
two instances of apparent hostility toward Babylonian religion turn out not to
be that at all.
192. Bakhtin (1984) 198.

193. Cf. Langdon (1924); Lane Fox (1973) 459, 548; Briant (2002) 726; Linssen (2004) 120
n.743; Lenfant (2004) 251 n.332.
194. Cf. Lenfant (2004) 251 n.332. Briant (2002) 726 doubts that the festival was Persian and
prefers to believe the implication of Berossus’ text, namely, that the Sacaea was Babylonian.
195. Cf. F 12 = Agathias Hist. 2.24; Cameron (1969/1970) 96.
196. Kuhrt (1995) 2.674; Briant (2002) 676–77, 679–80, 1000–1001. Cf. Robert (1975) 316
and n.31.
Introduction 47
It is worth paying particular attention to the story of Alexander’s seizure

of Babylon, for the Babylonian priesthood is clearly in evidence and clearly
viewed as a “guiding hand” for Alexander’s treatment of the city. Greek sources
are unanimous in stressing the popularity with the local inhabitants of Alexan-
der’s takeover of Babylon. According to Arrian, when Alexander approached
the city, “the Babylonians, in one mass, came to meet him together with their
priests and magistrates [ἱερεῦσί τε σφῶν καὶ ἄρχουσι], each group bringing gifts
and surrendering their city, acropolis, and possessions” (Arrian An. 3.16.3).
On his arrival, Alexander paid particular attention to the temples, chiefly the
temple of Bel, instructing the Babylonians to rebuild (ἀνοικοδομεῖν) the sa-
cred places that Xerxes had destroyed (3.16.4).197 We are also told by Arrian,
by way of conclusion, that Alexander “met with the Chaldaeans” (i.e., Babylo-
nian priests) and “did however many things seemed best to them regarding the
temples in Babylon, both in other matters, and in particular he sacrificed to Bel
in the manner they instructed” (3.16.5). Diodorus (17.112.2–3) states that the
idea for rebuilding the temples came from Babylonian priests (again, “Chaldae-
ans”), who proposed the idea to Alexander through Nearchus just months be-
fore Alexander’s death in 323. Like Arrian, Curtius places the initiative in 331,
and he provides much more detail regarding the dignitaries who approached
Alexander, which included “Bagophanes, guardian of the citadel and royal
treasury,” and several different classes of religious officials—magi, Chaldaeans,
seers (vates), and, finally, musicians, whose job it was to sing praises of the
kings (Curtius 5.1.20, 22). Curtius has been thought to have preserved authen-
tic details in connection with this episode, perhaps even relying on eyewitness
accounts that were then used by Cleitarchus.198
While the transfer of rule from the last of the Achaemenid rulers to Alexan-
der was relatively peaceful at Babylon, the same cannot be said for the period
between the death of Alexander in the city in 323 and the final establishment
of Seleucus’ rule in Babylonia. In the great division of Alexander’s empire at
Triparadeisos in 320, Seleucus was given the satrapy of Babylon (Heidelberg
Epitome, FGrH 155 F 1.4; Diod. 18.39.6; Arrian FGrH 156 F 9.35), probably for
his role in the murder of Perdiccas in 321.199 For subsequent events, we have to
rely almost exclusively on another cuneiform document, the Chronicle of the
Diadochoi (Grayson [1975a] 10), which gives “a Babylonian-centered view of
197. Cf. Bosworth (1980–) 1.314 ad 3.16.4. Note also Kuhrt (2010) 494: “Arrian presents the
Babylonian priests anxious to induct Alexander, on his entry in 331, into the intricacies of the cor-
rect cult of Babylon’s supreme god.”
198. Bosworth (1980–) 1.313–14.
199. Errington (1970) 70 and n.145; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 10. I follow the latter
narrative of events closely.
the world” that does not question the legitimacy of Seleucus’ rule.200 It refers to
the tremendous upheaval and destruction brought by Antigonus Monophthal-
mus, who drove Seleucus from Babylon in 315 and was responsible for further
devastation in 311/10–308.201 In the chronicle, Seleucus is made out to be the
restorer of Babylon, and Antigonus is a brutal invader, thanks to whom there
is “weeping and mourning in the land.”202 Furthermore, in the Babylonian as-
tronomical diaries, Seleucus is consistently listed as “general” under the king
Alexander IV, son of Alexander the Great.203 Later, during the coregency of
Seleucus and Antiochus, there are references, in the same corpus of material,
to “the reconstruction of the Esa[gila]” (Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 1.347
no. 273 Rev. 38). Relatedly, in a Babylonian king list of the early Hellenistic
period, Antigonus’ period of supremacy in Mesopotamia is styled as “kingless”
years, and he is correspondingly called not “king” but “chief of the army.”204 In
308, Seleucus finally won lasting control over Babylonia. The Chronicle of the
Diadochoi makes it clear that Antigonus, not Seleucus, was responsible for the
destruction of Babylon and that the foundation of nearby Seleucia could be
seen as a matter of necessity, not imperial fiat aimed at humbling Babylon.205
The earliest cuneiform document from Seleucid Babylonia so far known dates
to the eighth year of Seleucus I (16 April 304).206 Suffice it to say that the Se-
leucids attempted largely to foster good relations with the temples and priests
of Babylonia.207 The echoes of the Antigonid wars in Babylonia were felt for a
long time. A Sumerian text, the “Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and
Ur,” originally composed in c. 2100 BC, was recopied in 287/86 BC, exactly
contemporary with Berossus. Jonathan Z. Smith notes that this recopying was
200. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 10. See also Errington (1977) esp. 481; Momigliano
(1932). Wheatley (2002) notes the dearth of Greek information regarding Antigonus in Babylonia
in 310–308.
201. Note Boiy’s revision of the chronology for the period, dating many of the signal events as
slightly earlier: Boiy (2004) 133; see also id. (2010) for the events of 317/16. In general, consult van
der Spek (1992) 243–49.
202. Grayson (1975a) 118 Chronicle 10 Rev. 26–29: “there was weeping and mourning in the
land. The south wind [. . .] went out from Babylon. He plundered city and countryside. The prop-
erty [. . .] On the second day he went up to Cuthah and the plunder of [. . .] and the people re-
treated.” Cf. the Babylonian astronomical diaries, in Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.231, no. 309
Obv. 14: “. . .] the troops of Antigonus fought in [. . . .” The hostile view of Antigonus is also reflected
in Hieronymus of Cardia: see Hornblower (1981) 213–14. Cf. Geller (1990) 6 and n.25, arguing that
not Alexander but Antigonus is being described in the Dynastic Prophecy.
203. Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.231 no. 309 Rev. 11 and Upper Edge 1, 1.233 no. 308
Obv. 1 and 1.239 Rev. 17 and Upper Edge 1: “Year X of king Alexander, son of Alexander; Seleucus
was general.” See also van der Spek (1992) 249–50.
204. Sachs and Wiseman (1954) esp. 204; cf. ANET3 566–67. Note also Oelsner (1986) 270–71
and n.c; Boiy (2000) 116–17, 119–20; id. (2002) 249; Wheatley (2002).
205. See Hornblower (1981) 114 for the characterization of Seleucus and Antigonus in the
chronicle, as well as the foundation of Seleucia.
206. McEwan (1985).
207. Note, e.g., Sarkisian (1969) 314–15.
Introduction 49
meant to “bewail the destructive acts of . . . Antigonus” and that the same text
was thereby simultaneously “a Sumerian ‘original’ religious expression” and a
“Hellenistic Babylonian” one.208
Greek testimony for this period is very slender indeed. Diodorus does refer
to the support for Seleucus from “most of the native people” (οἱ πλείους τῶν
ἐγχωρίων), who, as years before with Alexander, went out to meet him on his
approach in 312 and offer him their help (Diod. 19.91.1). Diodorus explains
that while satrap of the region for four years, Seleucus “had treated all well
[πᾶσι προσενήνεκτο καλῶς], earning the goodwill of the people and procuring
for himself well in advance the ones who would help him [τοὺς συμπράξοντας],
if the opportunity was given to him, to vie for imperial rule [ἀμφισβητεῖν
ἡγεμονίας]” (Diod. 19.91.2). Though scanty, the Greek evidence, such as it is,
confirms the view we get in the Chronicle of the Diadochoi.
If Greek sources are uniform in characterizing Alexander’s capture of Baby-
lon as popular with the Babylonians themselves, a native account, the Dynastic
Prophecy, preserves a very different view. This cuneiform text from Babylon
tells the story of the rise of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom and the overthrow of
the Assyrian Empire in column I,209 the last two Neo-Babylonian kings (Neri-
glissar and Nabonidus) and the conquest of Cyrus in column II, and the last
two Achaemenid kings (Arses and Darius III) in column IV (column III is
missing). Then follows an extraordinary passage in column V: lines 9–19 pre-
dict, first, the victory of Alexander’s army (called “the Hanaeans”) over Darius
III at Gaugamela210 and, then, Darius’ recovery and victory over Alexander
with the help of the Babylonian gods Enlil, Shamash, and Marduk. The end of
the same column speaks of the delight of the people, presumably of Babylon, at
these events: they “who had [experienced] misfortune / [will enjoy] well being
/ The mood of the land [will be a happy one] / Tax exemption . . .” [text breaks
off] (Sherwin-White [1987] 13). I should hasten to add here that not everyone
accepts this interpretation of these lines.211 But I believe that Sherwin-White,
following Ringren, is right:212 insofar as two other reigns were mentioned af-
208. Smith (1975) 136–37 and n.1 = (1978) 70–71 and n.14
209. I follow the translation and text organization of Sherwin-White (1987) 10–14. Cf. Gray-
son (1975b) 24–37; Shahbazi (2003) 17–18.
210. On the term, see Grayson (1975b) 26–27; Briant (2002) 863. Geller (1990) 6 notes a paral-
lel from the astronomical diaries, in Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.191, no. 328 Obv. Rev. Left
edge 1: “year 8 of Alexander, the king who is from the land of Hani.” Geller does not, however,
support the view that Alexander is described in the Dynastic Prophecy.
211. See Stolper (1994) 241 n.24, following Geller (1990) 5–6. Wiseman (1985) 116 translates
the crucial line differently: Alexander “will (grant) a rest/respite for the Hanaean/Greek army.” Cf.
Boiy (2004) 107, urging caution in interpreting the text; also id. (2010) 8.
212. Sherwin-White (1987) 11 (cf. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt [1993] 8–9; Kuhrt and Sherwin-
White [1994] 324); Ringren (1983). Briant (2002) 1050 discusses the various interpretations of the
text and comes down in favor of Sherwin-White; cf. Briant’s own discussion (863–64).
ter the “defeat” of Alexander in column VI, the point of the text was not just
to criticize Alexander but, more important, to show troubled rule followed by
good rule as a continuing process. The prophecy was almost surely composed
in the early years of the Seleucid era and may have constituted an appeal for
moderate rule by Seleucus I himself after the devastation brought to Babylo-
nia by Antigonus. Far from showing that the prophetic narrative was actually
composed after Granicus and Issus and before Gaugamela, Darius’ “defeat” of
Alexander, followed by other reigns,213 shows that lasting political power was
a contingent thing—dependent on, among other matters, the goodwill of the
native elite from whom the Dynastic Prophecy no doubt emanated.
It will be noticed that, with the exception of the welcoming of Alexander to
the city, priests have not been explicitly mentioned in my discussion of Baby-
lon. Surely they can be assumed in connection with Cyrus’ takeover of Babylon
and the devotion he expresses in Babylonian texts for Bel-Marduk and the New
Year’s Festival. Similarly, when, during his years as satrap, Seleucus cultivated
the elite of Babylon, those who would later help him acquire hegemony (Diod.
19.91.2), we must surely understand their involvement as well. Indeed, the text
laying out the liturgy for the Akitu New Year’s Festival, at which the Enuma
Elish was read aloud and the king was ritually abused by the high priest of
Bel-Marduk, is Seleucid in date (ANET3 331),214 and there is also documentary
evidence for the continued celebration of the Akitu festival during the Seleucid
period: the first incontrovertible case dates to year 88 of the Seleucid Era (224/3
BC),215 but the celebrations no doubt extended back earlier as well. Jonathan
Z. Smith has even speculated that the festival had its origins during the period
of the Assyrian domination of Babylon and was then “reapplied” under the
Seleucids—a suggestion that would be made problematic if Cambyses did par-
ticipate while crown prince (see above, n.176). However that may be, Smith’s
larger point is important: the rite seems to become a “festival for the rectifica-
tion of the foreign king.”216 But the truth of the matter is that we do not have the
sort of direct testimony for the activities of priests such as we see in Egypt. With
that caveat in mind, if the interpretation of the Dynastic Prophecy advanced
just above is correct, we can venture some observations with which to conclude
this chapter.
Compared with Egypt, Babylon had known relative stability under Persian
rule, with the exception of the revolts under Darius I and Xerxes. There were
never any periods of independence such as we see for Egypt in the first half
213. Pace Neujahr (2005).

214. Cf. Thureau-Dangin (1921) 1. See also above, p. 43 n.176; below p. 226 n.25.
215. Grayson (1975a) 283–84 Chronicle 13b; see esp. Sherwin-White (1983b).
216. Smith (1976) 8.
Introduction 51
of the fourth century. Like Egypt, though, the transition to Macedonian rule
under Alexander was, on the whole, bloodless. We see difference again in the
establishment of Seleucid rule, for it was fraught with trouble for Babylon; the
early Ptolemaic rule of Egypt did not see the sort of disturbance that came in
the wake of the dispute over Babylonia between Antigonus and Seleucus. The
priestly scribe who wrote the Dynastic Prophecy yearned for political and social
stability. Although he did not lodge an implicit threat in quite the way that Ud-
jahorresne did during the early years of the Achaemenid rule of Egypt, he, like
the Egyptian priests under Persian and Macedonian rule, saw royal power as a
contingent thing. The “phoney prediction” that reverses Darius’ defeat at Gau-
gamela by means of a subsequent victory over the “Hanaeans” reveals precisely
this orientation:217 the epoch-making battle that destroyed Persian power and
established Macedonian authority in the region is shown, in the pseudo-event,
to be not epoch-making at all. The cycle of the rise and fall of regimes continues
into the future. Thus, by implication, the only thing that remains constant is the
will of the gods who supervise these comings and goings of rulers (it is the gods
of Babylon—Enlil, Shamash, and Marduk—who help Darius “defeat” Alexan-
der). Implied in this “fact” is, I think, the activity of the Babylonian priesthood,
which oversaw the installation of both Cyrus and Alexander as rightful kings of
Babylon. Indeed, just as Xerxes was unfairly styled the destroyer of Babylonian
temples, the removal of whose remote heir by Alexander thus became an act
supported by the gods and therefore by the priests of Babylon, so Nabonidus
was likely not as bad as he was made out to be in cuneiform documents such as
the Cyrus Cylinder: the fact of his defeat demonstrated the legitimacy of Cyrus’
rule, for the gods must have made it so.218 Berossus is representative precisely of
the elite Babylonian priesthood that was central in articulating the native reac-
tion to foreign domination, both Persian and Macedonian.219
217. “Phoney prediction” is from Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 8; cf. Sherwin-White
(1987) 11.
218. Precisely the point urged by Kuhrt (1990b) 143.
219. Cf. Oelsner (1978) 113–14.
Part 2
The Vectors of History

Time and Space
Chapter 2
Time
Berossus, Manetho, and the

Construction of King Lists
Time seems as though it is a universal concept. At a basic level, as the aware-

ness of the coming and going of seasons and events and persons, it surely is.
Yet the marking of time—its role in the shaping of a “curated” past—is often
highly specific to the cultures whose pasts it articulates. As of the present writ-
ing (mid-May 2013), it can be claimed that most people on our planet will
recognize the date and specifically the year 2013. But this numeral represents a
calendar year, the 2,013th one, since the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a common-
place to observe now that the reckoning is incorrect and has itself undergone
significant reform (the most important one under Pope Gregory XIII).1 More
important, it can also be pointed out that even if the designation “2013” is rec-
ognized worldwide today, it is not universal in another sense. A quick glance at
Wikipedia shows quite a different numeral in almost thirty other calendars. In
the Hebrew calendar, for instance, the same year is 5773–74 (after Creation); in
the Islamic, it is 1434–35 (from the time when the Prophet Mohammed and his
followers went to Medina); and in something called UNIX time, defined as the
number of seconds that have elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal
Time (UTC), 1 January 1970, it is 1356998400–1388534399. In other words,
the designation “2013,” while a functional unit of annual measurement for vir-
tually the entire globe, is, in the first instance, the 2,013th year in the “Western,”
Christian calendar. Note also that the dashes in the figures derived from the
other time-reckoning systems reveal that the coordination of 2013 with the
dates in these other calendars is imperfect—for they each delimit the year in
different ways.
1. Readers familiar with the wonderful 2007 book by Denis Feeney (esp. pp. 12–16, 139–42)
will recognize the spirit of my opening gambit. See also Lane Fox (2009) 13.
55
At some level, this exercise is obvious and a little silly. But it does bring
home the fact that while time is very real, the way human societies measure it
is arbitrary when viewed as a set of systems. It would be a mistake, however, to
view these markers of time as arbitrary for the people who observe them. In-
deed, situating your present by the time elapsed since the day when you believe
the world was created or when a charismatic religious founder was born or be-
gan his divine mission could be said to be central to your identity as a member
of a community that defines, at least in part, who you are. How communities
reckon time is a way for them to construct who they are and to legitimate that
construction by siting it in the past. They reinforce their concept of time by
making the very measurement of the past dependent on persons and events
that are themselves intimately connected to those communities.2
Hence it is possible to use time reckoning as a way into discerning what an-
cient societies thought was important. In particular, in the case of Berossus and
Manetho, we will see the issues of continuity and rupture very much brought to
the fore through their methods of articulating the past. The chief tool at their
disposal in the charting of past time was the listing of kings.
King Lists
Making lists in general, not just chronographic lists, is at the very core of an-
cient scribal traditions. As Jonathan Smith has put it, “[t]he essence of scribal
knowledge was its character as Listenwissenschaft, to use A. Alt’s useful term. It
depends upon catalogues and classifications; it progresses by establishing prec-
edents, by observing patterns, similarities and conjunctions and by noting their
repetitions.”3 Jacoby recognized long ago that the essential form of the histo-
ries of both Berossus and Manetho was the chronicle, on which was elaborated
their narratives derived from official anagraphai and other texts.4 The particu-
lar type of chronology employed by both Berossus and Manetho was the king
list, quite literally a listing of names of kings in chronological order, together
with lengths of reign. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, the documentary tra-
dition for lists of rulers goes back to the third millennium BC (the Sumerian
King List for Mesopotamia, the Palermo Stone for Egypt). It is very clear that
2. I am thinking here especially of Clarke’s groundbreaking 2008 study.

3. Smith (1975) 135–36 = Smith (1978) 70–71, referring to Alt (1951). The concept, though,
goes back to von Soden (1936). See, more recently, Schretter (2004); note also the limits of the view
set out by Rochberg (2004) 5–6.
4. Jacoby (1909) 91 = (1956a) 29.
Time 57
both Berossus and Manetho relied heavily on this type of text in making their
own lists. But it would be a mistake to assume that they “copied” a preexisting
master or canonical list of rulers for their lands, into which they then inserted
narratives of various sorts. Rather, every time a king list was constructed, the
compiler not only consulted an existing text or texts but also established his list
for reasons, conscious or not, that were specific to his particular time and place.
This holds true for Berossus and Manetho as well.5
King lists have a powerful allure when viewed as elements of historiog-
raphy: they seem to give us a picture, albeit skeletal, of the “real” past. Here
is history unadorned, even pure, minus all the dangers of narrative that can
be twisted and misinterpreted. Such lists seem to constitute a point of access
even to remote periods of human history. As David Henige has observed, “the
desire to give time to the timeless by calculating dates for events that are un-
datable has always been a favourite activity of historians, beginning with the
compilers of the Sumerian King List at the end of the third millennium BC.”6
Yet, as Henige in particular has shown (1974 and 1982), seeking history from
such lists is “chimerical”: as can be seen in connection with Herodotus’ de-
scription of the room of piromis statues (2.143), even in highly documentary
cultures, strategies that distort the past more typical of oral cultures are very
much in evidence. Piotr Michalowski, in an extremely insightful essay (1983),
has laid bare the problems of king lists through his analysis of the Sumerian
King List tradition. There was no one standard version, as many earlier scholars
assumed;7 although Berossus and one important subgroup of texts do provide
kings before the Flood, it seems that listing antediluvian rulers was a later or
separate tradition.8 Even those lists that do provide pre-Flood kings are not at
all uniform: as Finkelstein observed, there was not a “canonical” version of the
antediluvian list but, rather, “a loose tradition with greater or lesser variation
in every detail.”9 Kraus demonstrated some time ago (1952) that the Sumerian
King List was constructed “to give the false impression that only one dynasty at
a time was legitimate.”10 Any given king list will not tell “real” history through
5. Cf. Finkelstein (1963a) 51; also Klotchkoff (1982) and, following him, Yoffee (2005) 159.
6. Henige (1982) 97.
7. Thus, e.g., Jacobsen (1939). However, note already Kraus (1952) 45–46, recognizing the
problems of Jacobsen’s views.
8. Jacobsen (1939) 63. Civil (1969) 139 notes that “[t]he original short form of the Sumerian
King List may or may not have contained an opening reference to the flood, but it certainly included
no antediluvian kings.” Cf. Hallo (1963a) 56 on the “Nippurian King List tradition” that omits ante-
diluvian rulers. Cf. also Michalowski (1983) 237, 239–40; Davila (1995) 201. On Berossus and the
lists that do have pre-Flood rulers, see esp. Finkelstein (1963a).
9. Finkelstein (1963a) 50–51.
10. Kraus (1952) 46–49. The quote comes from Lambert (1972) 71, citing Kraus in support.
stories in connected prose. Rather, in Michalowski’s formulation, “the meaning

of the text is not revealed by any narrative episodes but through the cumulative
effect of the structure of the composition,” that is, the particular way that it has
organized the past: which kings are there and which are not, what is the length
of their reigns, what cities are listed as their capitals and in what order both
rulers and cities occur.11 In other words, the very organization of a list contains
an argument and conveys a perspective, often specific to a particular region at
a particular time: who the first kings were, where civilization was first brought
forth, how hegemony passed from one city to the next.
Berossus
The transmission of Berossus is, frankly, a mess, and we feel the difficulties of
this fact no more acutely than when we try to get a sense of his chronography.
We have to operate at several removes from his original work. As it is found in
Jacoby, Berossus’ Babyloniaca seems to have begun with a statement of sources,
followed by a brief introduction to the geography and ethnography of Baby-
lon12 and then an account of the appearance out of the Red Sea of a fish-man
sage, Oannes, who gives to humanity the arts of civilization and delivers a ver-
sion of the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish (FGrH 680 F 1 = Syncel-
lus Chron. 28–29 M).13 This material is described by the Christian transmitter
of the text, the monk George Syncellus of the late eighth or early ninth century
AD,14 as coming directly from the work of the historian Alexander Polyhistor
of the first century BC, who was, in turn, taking his material from Berossus
(Syncellus Chron. 28 M).15 Syncellus states that Polyhistor reported that Beros-
sus “was treating these matters in his first book” (Chron. 30 M).16 In the next
section of his own Ecloga Chronographica, Syncellus states that Berossus dealt
with “in his second book the ten kings of the Chaldaeans and the time of their
reign, 120 saroi, that is 432,000 years, until the Deluge.”17 Certainly, Berossus
11. Michalowski (1983) 243; cf. Finkelstein (1963a) 51.
12. See below, pp. 134–36, 220–21.
13. Kuhrt (1987a) 46.
14. Cf. Adler (1989) 15–42, 132–58.
15. ἐκ τοῦ ᾿Αλεξανδρου του Πολυιστορος περὶ τῶν πρὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ βασιλευσάντων ι΄
βασιλέων τῶν Χαλδαίων καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ . . . ὡς τῷ Βηρώσσῳ γεγραμμένα.
16. ταῦτά φησιν ὁ Πολυίστωρ ᾿Αλέξανδρος τὸν Βήρωσσον ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ φάσκειν.
17. Strictly speaking, no subject is expressed in the statement, but Syncellus does not alert us
to a change in subject from the previous statement where Berossus was subject, and “the second
book” that is mentioned must, in the context, follow “the first” of Berossus’ Babyloniaca: ἐν δὲ τῇ
δευτέρᾳ τοὺς ι΄ βασιλεῖς τῶν Χαλδαιων καὶ τὸν χρόνον τῆς βασιλείας αὐτῶν, σάρους ρκ΄, ἤτοι
ἐτῶν μυριάδας μγ΄ καὶ ͵β΄, ἕως τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ.
Time 59
had at least one postdiluvian sage, whom Josephus identified as “Abraham”

while noting that Berossus did not actually name him (F 6 = Jos. AJ 1.158): he
was “a just and great man and knowledgeable in heavenly matters” (δίκαιος
ἀνὴρ καὶ μέγας καὶ τὰ οὐράνια ἔμπειρος).18 Although the evidence is slender
in the extreme, it seems that Berossus must have included some postdiluvian
kings as well: although Syncellus does report the subsequent kings after the
Flood, he mentions them only in connection with Polyhistor; in the Armenian
translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, however, this same period is described as
coming from Berossus (F 5a and b = Syncellus Chron. 88 M; Euseb. [Arm.]
Chron. Schoene [1875] 23–25) and continues down to Tiglath-pileser III (745–
27 BC: Euseb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoene [1875] 26). As we shall see below, there
are enormous problems trying to reconstruct Berossus’ middle years of his
chronology. Berossus began his third book with the reign of Sennacherib (704–
681 BC: F 7a and c = Jos. AJ 10.20; Euseb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoene [1875] 26)
and went all the way down to recent times, maybe even the reigns of the first
two Seleucids with whom he was contemporary, Seleucus I and Antiochus I.
Perhaps the most useful excerpt for helping us understand Berossus’ chro-
nography, especially for the earliest periods, also comes from Syncellus. But
according to him, by way of Apollodorus of Athens, this attribution is undoubt-
edly mistaken, and we are again dealing with an excerpt from Polyhistor.19 I
translate the passage here in full:
In addition to these [authors] Apollodorus, speaking marvels just as

they, reports the following. These things Berossus recorded: that first
was king Aloros a Chaldaean from Babylon. He ruled 10 saroi. Next
ruled Alaparos and Amelon from Pautibiblon. Then Ammenon the
Chaldaean, during whose reign he says the loathsome Oannes appeared,
the Annedotos, out of the Red Sea. This event Alexander [Polyhistor]
has predated and reported that it happened in the first year, but this au-
thor [i.e., Berossus] after 40 saroi, and Abydenus states that the second
Annedotos appeared after 26 saroi. Next was Megalaros from the city
Pautibiblon; he ruled 18 saroi. After this man Daonos, a shepherd from
Pautibiblon, ruled for 10 saroi. During the rule of this king again [Ber-
ossus] says a fourth Annedotos appeared out of the Red Sea having the
same appearance as those before [᾿Αννήδωτον δ΄ τὴν αὐτὴν τοῖς ἄνω
ἔχοντα διάθεσιν]—the mixture of fish and man. Then ruled Euedoran-
18. Burstein (1978) 21 n.60. Cf. Vermes (1961/1973) 81.

19. Ps.-Apollod. FGrH 244 F 83 = Berossus F 3b. See esp. Adler and Tuffin (2002) 53 n.1.
chos of Pautibiblon, and he was king for 18 saroi. During this man’s rule
[Berossus] says another one appeared from the Red Sea similarly mixed
of fish and man, to whom was the name Odakon. [Berossus] says that
all these explained in part [κατὰ μέρος] what was spoken summarily
[κεφαλαιωδῶς] by Oannes. Regarding this one Abydenus said nothing.
Then ruled Amempsinos a Chaldaean from Laranchon; he, the eighth,
was king for 10 saroi. Then was Otiartes, a Chaldaean from Laranchon,
and he ruled for 8 saroi. When Otiartes died, his son Xisouthros ruled
for 18 saroi. During his reign [Berossus] says occurred the great cata-
clysm. Thus there were altogether 10 kings and 120 saroi. (Syncellus
Chron. 40 M; cf. FGrH 680 F 3b, 685 F 2)
The Abydenus that is mentioned here is yet another excerptor of Berossus (late
first to early second century BC), though mediated first by Polyhistor, whose
own parallel list of antediluvian kings Syncellus offers just a few lines before
his quotation from Apollodorus’ quotation of Berossus (Syncellus Chron. 39
M = FGrH 685 F 2b).20 It is substantially the same, but with a few telling differ-
ences. During the reign of the third king, “Amillaros” (cf. Amelon), a second
“Annedotos” came out of the sea similar to Oannes. Note that in Syncellus at
least, Abydenus does not report the appearance of the first Annedotos. Perhaps
most spectacularly, no less than four fish-man sages appeared during the reign
of Daos (cf. Daonos), and they are all named: Euedokos, Eneugamos, Eneubou-
los, and Anementos. Finally, under the rule of the ninth king, Euedoreschos (cf.
Otiartes), a final sage appeared, one Anodaphos.
We can tell from his own remarks in the handling of the material from Apol-
lodorus that Syncellus saw that the greatest differences between the lists occur
in connection with the appearances of the fish-man sages: Syncellus claims that
Polyhistor took the first fish-man sage, who appeared at forty saroi from Cre-
ation in Berossus/Apollodorus,21 and backdated him to the beginning under
King Aloros, while Abydenus has his second Annedotos appear at twenty-six
saroi from Creation, implying one earlier appearance. Berossus/Apollodorus’
fourth Annedotos under Daonos becomes four separate and named sages in
Abydenus. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if Berossus/Apollodorus’ fourth
Annedotos is the fourth, for the alphabetic cardinal numeral “four” (Gk. δ΄)
might be a scribal error for the Greek particle δέ. But against this suggestion
20. Cf. Adler (1989) 28.

21. For the present discussion, I use “Berossus/Apollodorus” to refer to the list as it is found
reported in Syncellus and attributed to Ps.-Apollodorus’ handling of Berossus, as opposed to the
actual text found originally in Berossus.
Time 61
is the phrase “like the ones [pl.] before” which requires, even for Apollodorus’
version of Berossus’ list, that more than Oannes occur as sage before the one
who appeared under Daonos. Also, it is not unusual for alphabetic cardinal
numerals to function as ordinals in Syncellus (and elsewhere),22 as in the case
of Amempsinos, the “eighth” (literally “eight”) king. Note, finally, that Syncellus
reports that Abydenus did not know Berossus/Apollodorus’ Odakon at all but
did have one Anodaphos, who appeared under the ninth king. It is crucial that
we try to sort out what precisely Berossus’ list looked like regarding the appear-
ances of the fish-man sages, for on that rest matters of tremendous importance.
I will deal with the substance of Oannes’ revelations elsewhere, but it is im-
portant to point out a few details here as we try to reconstruct Berossus’ king
list. It is difficult to resist the idea that Oannes appeared “in the first year”; his
gifts to humanity and his story of Creation fit at the beginning of human his-
tory. But placing Oannes at the beginning of the world runs directly counter to
what Syncellus says: Polyhistor took Oannes from the reign of Berossus/Apol-
lodorus’ fourth antediluvian king and backdated him. If Syncellus is correct
that Oannes appeared under the fourth king, one problem would be cleared
up, but others would be created: we are not told how the humans to whom
Oannes gave the arts of civilization in F 1 of Berossus came into being, but this
is explained if they had already been around for four successive kings. By the
same token, many of the arts of civilization were presumably already in practice
if Oannes appeared under the fourth king, so that his gift of them to early hu-
mans seems unnecessary at that point. The later appearance of Oannes, under
the fourth pre-Flood king, is also perhaps supported by the role of Oannes as
a narrator of early cosmic history. We know from F 1 that he tells the story of
divine creation, a story related to the Enuma Elish, to the first humans; what if,
in fact, he gave this knowledge to the humans under the fourth antediluvian
king and also revealed to them the origins of writing, religion, law, and city
foundation, topics of sacred knowledge that were later misunderstood to be the
actual gifts Oannes gave to primitive humanity?
Certainty is impossible, but I venture the following reconstruction. I believe
that we have to place Oannes under the first king, Aloros, despite Syncellus’
explicit testimony to the contrary. Recall that in Apollodorus’ version, in con-
nection with the sage Odakon, we are told that Oannes revealed “summarily,”
but presumably also comprehensively, all matters important to early humanity,
as well as that later fish-man sages revealed the same knowledge only “in part,”
22. Cf. Tod (1950) 132; also Dow (1956) 104B no. 348c.
though presumably in more detail than Oannes did originally.23 This accords
well with a figure who appears earlier—indeed, first—in time, rather than later.
Such a view of Oannes—as the sage who paints “the big picture,” as it were, and
leaves it to later sages to fill in the details—coheres well with the summary of
Oannes’ activities in F 1 (= Syncellus Chron. 29 M), that “in general he was giv-
ing to humanity all the things relating to civilizing of life, and from that time
nothing else in addition has been discovered” (καὶ συνόλως πάντα τὰ πρὸς
ἡμέρωσιν ἀνήκοντα βίου παραδιδόναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου
ἐκείνου οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισσὸν εὑρεθῆναι).24 I also believe that Berossus/Apol-
lodorus’ report of a “fourth” sage appearing under Daonos is an error: both the
“fourth” sage and the Oannes appearing under the fourth king, Ammenon, are
called “Annedotos,” suggesting a doublet. Furthermore, the “fourth” sage is sup-
posed to be like the “ones” (pl.), not the “one,” that went before. Accordingly, I
think the fourth sage, who may have been identified as an Annedotos, appeared
under the fourth king, where “Oannes the Annedotos” now sits in Berossus/
Apollodorus.25 This arrangement would then suggest that the other fish-man
sages who preceded him were paired with a king: Oannes under the first, one
more each under the next two, and another “Annedotos” under Ammenon.
Abydenus or some later reader of him misunderstood the ordinal use of the
numeral δ΄,26 and the four names were invented to account for the four sag-
es.27 Note that multiple appearances of different sages under one king occur
nowhere else in the list. I believe, finally, that Odakon, who appears under Ber-
ossus/Apollodorus’ seventh king, Euedoranchos, was also the last to appear in
Berossus’ list. In favor of this view are four points. First, the observation that
all knowledge was first revealed by Oannes in summary form occurs at this
juncture, in association with Odakon. This is the sort of statement that makes
sense in connection with the last sage figure, summarizing the sages activities
23. Cf. Davila (1995) 200.

24. The phrase “nothing more in addition” (οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισσὸν) is crucial in this context:
the term περισσόν suggests that the essentials of all knowledge were transacted by Oannes. Here it
seems to mean “nothing more than would be in essence inessential”: cf. LSJ s.v. A.II.
25. Inasmuch as Oannes can be called “the Annedotos,” it seems that “Annedotos” can be both
a title and a name. The Sumerian form of the name is U’an(na); sometimes with Adapa, a title and,
later, name. Cf. Lambert (1962) 74; Hallo (1963b) 176 n.79; Schaudig (2001) 107; Rochberg (2010)
217.
26. Note that Jacoby prints Gutschmid’s emendation: τετράδα. Another reading has the ordinal
τέταρτον. See Jacoby’s apparatus ad loc.
27. The names of the sages—Euedokos, Eneugamos, Eneuboulos, Anementos—look very much
like Greek pseudocalques. While the eu- element is found in Berossus/Apollodorus’ Euedoran-
chos, the rest of that name is meaningless in Greek. But to take just two examples, -eugamos and
-euboulos look like attempts to render the concepts of “well-married” and “of good counsel,” and eu
+ dokos (removing the middle e) looks like “well-thought-of ” or “the approved one.”
Time 63
and drawing notice to the foundational authority of Oannes. Odakon is thus

a “double” or “twin” of Oannes.28 Second, the ninth king, Eudoreschos, under
whom the last sage appears in Abydenus’ list, looks suspiciously like Beros-
sus/Apollodorus’ seventh king, Euedoranchos, under whom Odakon appears,
suggesting another doublet. Further, the name of Abydenus’ last sage, Anoda-
phus, may be a Greek reworking (Anodaphus, perhaps Greek for “eater” or “de-
vourer”) of the name of Odakon (“biter”),29 in much the same spirit as the four
probably invented names of sages under Abydenus’ Daos. It has been pointed
out that the names in Berossus’ text are in some sense all problematic, having
undergone potential deformation at the hands of Greek intermediaries.30 Third,
if Odakon were the last sage to appear, we could then suppose seven sages in
total (cf. the Greek sages) appearing with each of the first seven kings before
the Flood, in keeping with the pattern I raised in connection with the “fourth”
sage under the fourth king. This suggestion is extremely important for reasons
I will turn to immediately below. Finally, Amempsinos is identified uniquely in
Berossus/Apollodorus by place in the sequence of rulers: he is the “eighth” king.
This suggests that a break is to be felt at this point in the list, as though there
was some qualitative difference between the seventh and eighth kings, and that
the first seven and last three rulers form two distinct groupings. This issue, too,
bears directly on the connection of the seventh and last sage with the seventh
king in the list. Table 2.1 shows my reconstruction of the first ten kings as they
would have appeared in Berossus, together with the listing of sages, based on
Apollodorus’ excerpt and Abydenus’ list as found in Syncellus.
Meager though it is, my table represents the extent of our knowledge of
the first part of Berossus’ king list on the basis of Greek texts transmitted to us
from antiquity through the work of the later Christian scholars Eusebius and
George Syncellus, though mediated first by the likes of Alexander Polyhistor,
Abydenus, and Julius Africanus.31 But that is not the whole story. Documentary
king lists from Mesopotamia have been known for a long time, the oldest texts
dating to Sumerian times.32 Comparison with Berossus has yielded important
results. Most fundamentally, we see that Berossus was following the main-
stream in including the antediluvian kings, though the incorporation of the
pre-Flood kings was not universal, and their presence in the list of kings was
28. Kvanvig (2011) 115.

29. See s.v. δάκνω and δάπτω, respectively (with the addition to the latter of the prefix ἀνω-
“high” or “above”), Chantraine (1983/1984) 1.249, 252; Beekes (2010) 1.299, 303. Note also the adv.
ὀδάξ “with the teeth”: see Chantraine (1983/1984) 2.773; Beekes (2010) 2.1046.
30. Kvanvig (2011) 108.
31. See esp. Gelzer (1885/1888); Adler (1989) 28–71.
32. Jacobsen (1939). Cf. Wilcke (2001).
probably a later development (see above). Further, Berossus’ king during the
Flood, Xisouthros, whose name is the Greek rendering of the Sumerian name
Ziusudra, was a point of major difference, as was Berossus’ overall number of
antediluvian kings at ten. In his basic details—that is (following the lead of J.
J. Finkelstein), in the names and sequence of cities and in the number, names,
and sequence of kings and their length of reigns—Berossus was very close to
the texts WB 62 and UCBC 9–1819: his total of 432,000 years (120 saroi) for
the pre-Flood period was close to WB 62’s 456,000. Correspondingly, the totals
from the main representatives of the Sumerian King List usually run about half
those figures (241,200 years).33 Moreover, there are a total of five cities found
before the Flood and eight kings in the Sumerian King List (ANET3 265). Re-
markably, in the biblical book of Genesis, the total years of antediluvian patri-
archs is 1,656 years, or 86,400 weeks, a figure we also see in 432,000 (i.e., 86,400
× 5, five years being sixty months), suggesting to some that a common chrono-
logical scheme lay behind both.34 In any case, Berossus’ total number of antedi-
luvian kings (10), with Ziusudra being the last, is also without parallel, with the
exception of WB 62,35 while UCBC 9–1819 confirms some of Berossus’ reign
Table 2.1. Berossus’/Apollodorus’ List on the Basis of Syncellus Chron. 40 M

Kings Sages
1. Aloros of Babylon, 10 saroi (36,000 1. Oannes
years)
2. Alaparos of Pautibiblon, ? saroi 2. ?
3. Amelon of Pautibiblon, ? saroi 3. ?
4. Ammenon the Chaldaean, ? saroi 4. The “fourth” Annedotos, “after 40 saroi”?
5. Megalaros of Pautibiblon, 18 saroi 5. ?
6. Daonos, shepherd of Pautibiblon, 6. ?
10 saroi
7. Euedoranchos of Pautibiblon, 7. Odakon; summary regarding fish-man
18 saroi sages
8. Amempsinos, “eighth” king,
Chaldaean of Laranchon, 10 saroi
9. Otiartes, Chaldaean of Laranchon,
8 saroi
10. Xisouthros, son of Otiartes, 18 saroi,
Flood
33. Jacobsen (1939) 70–76; see esp. Finkelstein (1963a) 46. Note also Finkel (1980) 71–72;
Kuhrt (1987a) 46 (following Finkel).
34. Dalley (2000) 6 and n.5, citing Oppert (1906) 66–67.
35. Jacobsen (1939) 76 n.34; Finkelstein (1963a) 43–44. Note that Ziusudra appears in the
Dynastic Chronicle as the second ruler of Shuruppak (after his father, Ubartutu) and is followed by
two more unnamed kings: see Grayson (1975a) Chronicle 18 i A.11–13.
Time 65
lengths and names. Furthermore, it would appear that Berossus was following,
at least in part, Late Babylonian recensions of the texts in question that were
bilingual, reporting earliest history in both Akkadian and Sumerian36—recall
that Berossus’ Flood hero is the Sumerian Ziusudra.
But even set next to the documentary lists that were closest to him, it is
clear that Berossus was something of an “outlier.” Berossus reports three cities
as capitals of the first ten kings: Babylon, Pautibiblon, and Laranchon, with the
last two standing for Bad-tibira and Larak. This is a remarkable list. Babylon
has replaced Eridu, which is always found in cuneiform lists, while Babylon is
not; and Bad-tibira and Larak, antediluvian foundations but of no significance
in the first millenium BC, have replaced the truly important Sippar and Shur-
uppak.37 Several details are worth comment here. Babylon was not a pre-Flood
city, so its presence in Berossus’ list is completely without precedent. The omis-
sion of Sippar is also unusual, not only because it was commonly understood as
antediluvian—indeed, thought to have survived the Flood38—but also because
the city is prominently mentioned by Berossus elsewhere, as the place where all
antediluvian knowledge was buried before the Flood and then later rescued,39
and because it figured, together with Babylon, as an important site for the Neo-
Babylonian past that is so important to Berossus.40 Further, the presence of
Bad-tibira and Larak is arresting, for these were names that showed up on Su-
merian lists, and they thus suggest that Berossus was both innovating and yet
also archaizing:41 he innovated by including Babylon, but he compensated for
this by listing Bad-tibira and Larak. Such a move is perhaps analogous to his
use of the Sumerian figure Ziusudra as his Flood hero, instead of the more
usual Utnapishtim or Atra-hasis.42
Most important of all, in the context of all known Mesopotamian king lists,
Berossus is absolutely unique in incorporating into his king list a list of sages.43
While there is an apparently comparable case of such a fusion in the so-called
Synchronistic Chronicle (ANET3 272), that late text connects viziers (umma-
nus) to Neo-Assyrian leaders (e.g., Sennacherib), not fish-man sages (apkallus)
to the first kings in Mesopotamia.44 The Bible does have ten patriarchs before
36. Finkel (1980) 72.
37. Lambert and Millard (1969) 137; Komoroczy (1973) 136; Burstein (1978) 18 and n.29; Van
Seters (1983) 72; George (1992) 252–53. In general, see esp. Hallo (1970/1971), particularly 63.
38. In the myth Erra and Ishum, it is clearly stated that “Sippar, the eternal city, . . . the Lord of
Lands did not allow the Flood to overwhelm” (Dalley [2000] 305, remarks on 6).
39. Finkelstein (1963a) 45–46; cf. Lambert and Millard (1969) 137.
40. Cf. Beaulieu (2003) 6*.
41. Kormoroczy (1973) 136.
42. Cf. Kvanvig (2011) 66.
43. Schnabel (1923) 180; Lambert and Millard (1969) 20.
44. Cf. Klotchkoff (1982) 150; also Kuhrt (1995) 2.524. In general on the listing of ummanus,
see Brinkman (1968) 27 and n.122.
the Flood (note esp. Gen. 5), with these figures representing in themselves a
fusion of king and sage.45 But despite this parallel, it is very clear that the Meso-
potamian tradition of the apkallus, usually seven in number, is separate from
that of the early kings.46 Correspondingly, there is no evidence for “sages” at the
court of Neo-Babylonian rulers, though it is perhaps to be assumed that some
were there.47 By joining king and sage, Berossus may have been tacitly recom-
mending the elevation of men such as himself to positions of authority within
the Seleucid court.
In 1962, the understanding of Berossus’ relationship to the documentary
tradition of the Mesopotamian king list changed spectacularly. In that year,
Jan van Dijk published a list from Uruk (W 20030.7) that contained both the
antediluvian kings and the sages. In telling details, it confirmed Berossus’ list
on several points. Crucially, it is also Seleucid in date.48 In table 2.2, I print its
contents as they bear on Berossus’ list of the first seven rulers, derived from
Syncellus, which I repeat for the purposes of comparison.
W 20030.7 also contains nine or ten postdiluvian scholars (ummanus) who
are paired with later kings. In this regard, clearly, the Uruk text is different from
Berossus. But like Berossus, W 20030.7 does indicate a break after the seventh
position in the list: a double line is cut into the text, dividing apkallus from um-
Table 2.2. Berossus and W 20030.7 Compared1

Berossus’ first seven kings and sages First seven kings and sages in W 20030.7
Kings Sages Kings Sages
1. Aloros 1. Oannes 1. Aialu 1. U’Anadapa
2. Alaparos 2. ? 2. Alalgar 2. U’Anduga
3. Amelon 3. ? 3. Ammelu-Anna 3. Enmeduga
4. Ammenon 4. “fourth Anne 4. Ammegal-Anna 4. Enmegalamma
dotos”
5. Megalaros 5. ? 5. Enme-Ushumgal- 5. Enmebulugga
Anna
6. Daonos 6. ? 6. Dumuzi 6. Anenlilda
7. Euedoranchos 7. Odakon 7. Enmeduranki 7. Utuabzu
1
Kvanvig (1988) 192 fills in the names missing from Berossus’ list of sages with the names pre-
served in Abydenus and quoted by Eusebius. In his comparison of Berossus and W 20030.7 (191),
Kvanvig also includes the list discussed in Reiner (1961) and Borger (1974) = (1994), the Bit Miseri.
45. Cf. Borger (1974) 185 = (1994) 227; Dalley (2000) 6.

46. Reiner (1961) esp. 6–7; cf. Güterbock (1934/1938) 7–9.
47. Kuhrt (1995) 2.622 n.7.
48. Van Dijk (1962). See esp. Lambert (1962) 74; Borger (1974) 184 = (1994) 226; Burstein
(1978) 8–9; Kuhrt (1987a) 46.
Time 67
manus.49 This recalls the identification in Berossus’ list of Amempsinos as the

“eighth” king, as though separating him and subsequent rulers from the first
seven kings. Indeed, it was thanks to W 20030.7 that the term umannu was
seen not just as the common noun for “scholar” but also as the name Umannu,
with Adapa as epithet, confirming Berossus’ choice of “Oannes” as the first sage
figure.50
W 20030.7 would seem to show that there is an almost precise documentary
parallel for Berossus’ list of antediluvian rulers and sages. But there is a com-
plicating factor: the date of the text’s compilation is between 250 and 165 BC,
with many preferring a date in 165, when we know that the tablet was actually
inscribed.51 While no one has, to my knowledge, actually argued for any sort
of direct dependence on Berossus by the compiler of the Uruk list, they both
come from the same social and political milieu (southern Seleucid Mesopota-
mia), separated by about a century in time.52 Rather than see this as a problem,
which it surely would be if we used the Uruk text as a completely independent
witness to a set of ideas also found in Berossus, it is important to see the cor-
respondences as presenting us with an important interpretative opportunity.
The details of the composition and cultural context of W 20030.7 are well
known, thanks to the text itself and related documents from Seleucid Uruk.
The colophon of W 20030.7 states that on the tenth of Aiaru (a Babylonian
month name) in the year 147 of the Seleucid Era, when Antiochus IV was king
(i.e., in 165 BC), a kalu-priest from Uruk named Anu-belsunu, son of Nidintu-
Anu, a descendant of Sin-liqi-unninni, wrote the list “with his own hand.” Anu-
belsunu is well attested in a number of texts and was a highly placed Seleucid
official and priest: he combined the worlds of religious scholarship, governance,
and business.53 Unusually, it is also claimed in the colophon of W 20030.7 that
the tablet was written “according to its ancient original” or perhaps “collated
with it.”54 Line 21 of the list mentions one “Nicarchus.” Thanks to an inscrip-
tion from the Bit Res temple complex of Anu and Antum at Uruk (YOS 1.52),
we know that this man must be one Anu-uballit, the saknu, or governor, of
49. Klotchkoff (1982) 152.
50. Lambert (1962) 74. Cf. Colless (1970) 121.
51. Cf. Hallo (1963b) 174; Klotchkoff (1982) 150; Kvanvig (1988) 192–93, 196–97; Rochberg
(2004) 182 n.54; Yoffee (2005) 159.
52. Cf. Klotchkoff (1982) 151: “Apparently, Berossus and the compiler [of W 20030.7] wrote
their works independently, though both of them leaned upon the same tradition.” But note that
Klotchkoff ’s chief point of difference between the two lists—namely, the four apkallus in the time of
Daonos/Dumuzi in Berossus (Klotchkoff [1982] 151 n.16)—is probably an error due to Abydenus
or some other intermediary figure. See main discussion just above in text.
53. Pearce and Doty (2000). See also Rochberg (2004) 41, 230; Funck (1984) 206–7.
54. Klotchkoff (1982) 149. For much of what follows, including the translations, I am entirely
dependent on Klotchkoff.
Uruk who was given the Greek name Nicarchus in 244 BC by Seleucus II. We
are told, in the same text, that he completely rebuilt the Bit Res,55 though the
funding came from the Seleucid court.56 Indeed, the cult of Anu at Uruk was
vigorously promoted by the Achaemenids and continued to receive a great deal
of patronage under the Seleucids (the Res temple was rebuilt twice).57 It seems
that Anu-belsunu is Anu-uballit’s descendant and that he was actually trying
“to save from oblivion the knowledge about the glorious Babylonian past ‘be-
fore Nicarchus,’” that is, before his own forebear.58 As a matter of fact, there
seems to have been a concerted effort at Uruk to copy ancient texts from sev-
eral Mesopotamian centers of learning.59 Other personal connections emerge.
From a brick inscription of Nicarchus, the same temple in Uruk is called “the
Res shrine that Oannes-Adapa built of old”: in other words, the first sage on
Anu-belsunu’s list was thought actually to have built the shrine that his own an-
cestor Anu-uballit later rebuilt.60 Further, in his list of later ummanus, we find
none other than Sin-liqi-unninni, who we know is the author of the Akkadian
version of the Gilgamesh epic, listed as himself a contemporary of Gilgamesh:61
this is, of course, both Anu-belsunu’s and Anu-uballit/Nicarchus’ own notional
Stammvater. It was routine in Babylonia for priestly and scribal descent to be
traced back to the very earliest times.62 If there is worry that whatever may have
been the cultural climate in Seleucid Uruk could shed little light on the Baby-
lonian world of Berossus, it is important to note that it was precisely during the
Seleucid period that the scholarly priesthood of Uruk saw itself in close rivalry
with Babylon, both seeking to promote its god Anu as a rival to the Babylonian
Marduk and also relying on Babylonian religious texts to do so.63 Society in
early Seleucid Uruk is extremely complex: while we have the evidently Hel-
lenized Anu-uballit Nicarchus and Anu-uballit Kephalon, or at least men who
aspired to political rank under foreign rulers, evidence of deep Hellenization at
Uruk is extremely thin, and there is very little firm evidence for a Greek com-
munity there.64
The presence of Sin-liqi-unninni in the Uruk list is very important in-
55. For all the details as well as a translation, see, most recently, Rochberg (2004) 232. See also
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 150–51.
56. Yoffee (2005) 157.
57. Beaulieu (1992); George (1995) 194. Cf. Doty (1977) 25.
58. Klotchkoff (1982) 154.
59. Cf. George (1995) 194.
60. This text is restored by van Dijk; cf. Lambert (1962) 74. Note also Downey (1988) 44.
61. Læssøe (1956) 96 and n.16.
62. Lambert (1957). Cf. Lambert (1962). See also Denning-Bolle (1987) 218.
63. Beaulieu (1992) 56; George (1995) 194.
64. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 150–55; Petrie (2002) esp. 105–7.
Time 69
deed. First, it demonstrates the personal–in fact, biological—link between this

scholar from the past and the text of Anu-belsunu. The remote past is quite
close through, in this case, family connection. This nearness helps to bring au-
thority to the contemporary text, for Anu-belsunu identifies himself as Sin-liqi-
unninni’s descendant in the colophon of W 20030.7. Furthermore, although
the connection between Sin-liqi-unninni is chronologically impossible, it is not
a silly or meaningless one. Sin-liqi-unninni was the author credited with the
first Akkadian version of the originally Sumerian story of Gilgamesh.65 Abu-
belsunu’s list converts the first Akkadian author of the epic into the hero’s advi-
sor: the list begins with a known bibliographic fact and makes it into a histori-
cal fact. The three sage names containing “en-me” have also been identified as
significant, all having to do with the “cosmic ordinances” (Sumerian me).66 W.
W. Hallo goes further and speculates that the names of all the early sages in W
20030.7 may turn out to be names of a series of cuneiform texts or their incipits:
the “UD” element can be interpreted to mean “when,” a common beginning
to Near Eastern texts; and the name Utuabzu, designating the seventh and last
sage of the Uruk list, means “born of the deep” and is thus “strangely reminis-
cent of Adapa again,”67 as though a recapitulation of the first delivery of primor-
dial wisdom. This recalls the statement in Berossus/Apollodorus regarding the
last fish-man sage in that list, Odakon: that all the later apkallus simply spoke
in part what Oannes revealed in its entirety, if also summarily. As Hallo notes,
classicists long suspected that Berossus’ list of sages is similar: what we perhaps
have in Berossus’ list of sages is a review of authoritative Sumerian texts that
have been converted into sages;68 Berossus’ list is, as it were, a living catalogue
of famous Near Eastern wisdom texts. Certainly, beginning some time at the
end of the second millennium BC, the major literary compositions of Meso-
potamia, heretofore anonymous, were attributed to legendary scribes for the
first time, and some texts were even thought to have divine authors.69 But it was
in the Neo-Babylonian period at Babylon and Uruk that literary texts began
regularly to have colophons identifying the scribal tradition behind the text, a
practice that was subsequently observed “at least until the First Century BC.”70
It is tempting to extend the temporal orientation and personal claims of
W 20030.7 and apply them also to Berossus’ list. In this way, we gain at least a
65. Hallo (1963b) 175; cf. Klotchkoff (1982) 153.

66. Kvanvig (2011) 109–10.
67. Hallo (1963b) 175–76. Cf. George (2003) 1.152–54.
68. Hallo (1963b) 176 and n.88, citing Gelzer (1885/1888) and Schnabel (1923) 27, 175.
69. Michalowski (1996) 186. Cf. Lambert (1962) esp. 73–74 on the author Oannes-Adapa;
Rochberg-Halton (1984) 136; Beaulieu (1989) 215 n.47.
70. Wiseman (1985) 86.
partial insight into the purpose of Berossus’ Babyloniaca. In general, what we

get by reading Berossus through the Uruk list is the sense that the remote past
was in fact immediate and also a means for lending authority to the work of
the contemporary scholar. We also get the sense that the recording of the past
was a very local matter and, for Anu-belsunu, who connected his work to that
of his more recent and distant forebears, a very personal one. I will discuss
Berossus’ narrative of the Flood in detail elsewhere, but it is useful to bring
up certain features of his account here in relation to W 20030.7. In his Flood
story, the hero, King Xisouthros, is ordered by Kronos “to dig a hole, and then
to place in it the beginnings, middles, and ends of all writings in the city of
the Sun, Sippar” (F 4b = Syncellus Chron. 30–31 M: τὸν Κρόνον . . . κελεῦσαι
οὖν γραμμάτων πάντων ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὰς ὀρύξαντα θεῖναι ἐν πόλει
ἡλίου Σισπάροις), which he does. When the Flood subsides, the same king and
his family are taken up into heaven, but he commands those who survived with
him in his boat “to recover, as it had been decreed, the writings from Sippar,
and distribute them to human kind” (F 4b = Syncellus Chron. 31 M: ὡς εἵμαρται
αὐτοῖς Σισπάρων ἀνελομένοις τὰ γράμματα διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρωποις). Inas-
much as Berossus himself tells the story of the Flood, we can conclude that
his own account must derive, at some point, from the very tablets that he as-
serts were buried by Xisouthros in Sippar and that contained “the beginnings,
middles, and ends of all writing,” that is, of all antediluvian knowledge. Sig-
nificantly, the very phrase “beginnings, middles, and ends” can be paralleled
precisely in cuneiform texts.71 I would argue that what Berossus says here im-
plicitly is very much like what Anu-belsunu states explicitly in W 20030.7 when
he says that his list has been “written according to” or “collated with” its ancient
original: that Berossus’ text is a direct “descendant” of the tablets buried at Sip-
par. As with Anu-belsunu, Berossus sees himself as preserving ancient knowl-
edge, and his connection to this ancient knowledge is personal and immediate.
Finally, note that both Oannes and the Flood survivors perform almost exactly
the same action in relation to antediluvian knowledge: they “pass it on” or “dis-
tribute” it (παραδοῦναι/διαδοῦναι).72
The most important connection between Berossus and W 20030.7 is the
emphasis both place on the sages. Igor Klotchkoff argued that “it is evident”
from the structure of the Uruk list that “the author was primarily interested
in the sages and scholars; he needed the royal names only to convey a sort
71. The point is made by Lambert and Millard (1969) 137; note also Rochberg (2010) 74–75.
Cf. Dillery (2007b) 223.
72. See below, pp. 144, 221–22.
Time 71
of ‘chronological perspective’ to his list.”73 Although we do not have much of

Berossus’ narrative from his first book, it is nonetheless illuminating, in this
context, to note the tremendous importance Oannes plays in the early sections
as they are preserved by Syncellus and, correspondingly, the complete absence
of the king with whom he is paired in the list of Berossus/Apollodorus, Aloros:
where is Aloros in the narrative? He is not there because, as Klotchkoff would
say, Berossus was not really interested in him; rather, his focus was on Oannes
and his revelation of all primordial wisdom. Of course, there is an early king
who is important in Berossus’ narrative of early events: Xisouthros, the central
figure in the story of the Flood, as we have seen. But at this point in Beros-
sus’ list of antediluvian kings, there were no fish-man apkallus to pair with the
rulers. It is important, though, to recall that there is evidence that Berossus
had at least one postdiluvian sage figure, knowledgeable especially in “heavenly
matters” (F 6 = Jos. AJ 1.158). In any case, Xisouthros the king is himself the
hero and sage during the Deluge. This connection between Berossus and the
Uruk list—that is, their emphasis on the sages to the detriment of the kings—is
important for reasons that go beyond simply trying to understand the details
of both texts. Indeed, I find it very significant that both these late texts from
around the same period combine two distinct traditional subjects, the kings
and the sages. If, as Klotchkoff asserts,74 the texts are independent of each other,
why do both, separated from each other by around one hundred years, attempt
to do something that had not been done for over two thousand years in Near
Eastern scholarly literature? Although the tradition of sage and royal patron
was ancient in the Near East, it took a Hellenized priest at the courts of the
Seleucids to present us with its first comprehensive and canonical formation.75
This remarkable and vitally important fact is eloquent testimony to the need for
and power of archaic native wisdom in the hands of hellenophone priests in the
early Hellenistic period.
The association of king and advisor (ummanu) seems to begin with the Syn-
chronistic Chronicle, that is, during the period of the so-called Neo-Assyrian
rule of Babylonia that began in the eighth century BC with Tiglath-pileser
III, extending (with periods of interruption) down to the start of the Neo-
Babylonian era and Nabopolassar (ruled 626–605).76 It is tempting to attribute
73. Klotchkoff (1982) 150.

74. See above, n.52.
75. Cf. Dalley (1998a) 16: “At the heart of Mesopotamian traditions about the origins of writing
and the arts of civilized life lies the story of the Seven Sages. Briefly recounted by Berossos in the
Hellenistic period for the benefit of a royal patron, confirmed in passing allusions in late cuneiform
texts, the tale was fundamental to ancient belief about Babylonian origins.” Cf. Reiner (1961).
76. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.523–25.
the rise in importance of the scholar/sage precisely to the advent of the for-
eign rule of Babylonia. Correspondingly, Francesca Rochberg has argued that
“[s]omehow, between the Neo-Assyrian and the Seleucid periods, a shift in
the locus of astronomical activity from the palace to the temple occurred”77—
that, in a sense, this ancient form of Babylonian wisdom shifted from a king-
centered to a priest-and scholar-centered context, though no doubt aided by
the fact that keeping archives in temples was an extremely old practice, going
back to the Sumerian period.78 This process would have continued through
the period of Achaemenid domination and into the Seleucid era. Certainly, the
priests at Uruk kept a large temple library during the period of Seleucid rule.79
But in this very regard, we immediately confront a major difficulty in our com-
parison of Berossus with the Uruk list.
Remember that Berossus’ list of sages and kings and the list in W 20030.7
are dissimilar in two important ways. First, the Uruk list continues with umma-
nus, or “viziers,” under later rulers, but no sages or comparable figures are to be
found in Berossus after the seventh king of his list. Certainty about why is im-
possible of course, and pat answers are almost surely wrong, but it is tempting
to speculate that Berossus may have viewed any knowledge or sage subsequent
to the last apkallu under his seventh king as in some way compromised. Both
in his description of Odakon and, more generally, in the nature of Oannes’ ini-
tial revelation, he stresses that every aspect of human wisdom was thenceforth
known and that nothing more needed to be discovered: “in general [Oannes]
was giving to humanity all the things relating to civilizing of life, and from
that time nothing else in addition has been discovered.” Indeed, recall that the
whole of the first book of Berossus’ Babyloniaca was devoted precisely to the
first revelations of Oannes and related events, at least according to Syncellus;
only in the second book did he get around to the first kings of Babylonia. In
terms of his own scale, then, Berossus spent about as much time on the first
year or so of human history as he spent on the next 432,000 years.
What, in essence, are the events treated in Year One of Berossus? Events
is not quite the right word, for, to judge by what we are told in Syncellus, the
bulk of material treated there was from a well-known, very old, and authorita-
tive Near Eastern narrative: the story of Creation (the Enuma Elish). In this
case, history is actually text. Berossus’ beginning is not the “natural” one of the
77. Rochberg (2004) 118; see also 219–36.

78. Invernizzi (1968/1969) 75–76, noting the continuity of the practice from Sumerian to Se-
leucid times.
79. Weidner (1925) 347–48, followed by Tarn (1961) 129. Note also Oelsner (1986) 143–46,
264; Dalley (1998b) 41, together with the cautionary remarks of George (2001) 103. Grayson
(1991b) 227 points to the continuity in the support of libraries in Mesopotamia.
Time 73
physical origin of the world but an “artificial” one that is constituted by the text
Oannes tells: origin (i.e., of the “natural world”) and start (i.e., of a text) are
fused into one.80
With Berossus’ textual beginning of the world, we are not that far from the
world of the local historians of Athens, the so-called Atthidographers. Just fifty
years or so before Berossus, Phanodemus (FGrH 325) could conceive of Athens
as the mother city of Troy (F 13) and the Hyperboreans (F 29) and of Attica as
the site of the rape of Persephone (F 27) and the sacrifice of Iphigenia (F 14). To
be sure, he was compensating for Athens’ relative unimportance in the Greek
mythical past, but he was also appropriating for his native city a place in the
Greek literary past—the world of the great epic narratives of heroes.81 Babylon
was relatively unimportant, too, in the traditional stories of Mesopotamia: for
starters, it was widely thought of as postdiluvian. Alternatively, we may want
to think about the Lindian Chronicle and Berossus. As Carolyn Higbie has so
expertly shown, the world of the early votives inscribed in the chronicle is a
mythical and heroic one that is profoundly indebted to the epic past. Thus, at
B 62–68, we hear of a dedication by Menelaus: “Menelaos, a leather cap. On
which is inscribed | ‘Menelas, the [leather cap] of Alexander’” (Higbie trans.
[2003] 25). The cap is, of course, the one that remained in Menelaus’ hand when
he tried to pull his enemy Paris by it to the Greek lines and that he then threw to
his friends in Homer’s Iliad (3.369–78). Homer does not tell us what Menelaus’
friends did with this cap, but the Lindian Chronicle fills in the “hole” in narra-
tive, for it is clear that Menelaus later took possession of this helmet and, later
still, dedicated it to Athena Lindia on Rhodes. Higbie notes that even the differ-
ent spelling of Menelaus’ name in the text is telling: the inscription on the cap
itself is in Doric (Menelaus’ dialect), but where the item is listed as coming from
the hero, his name is in epic form.82 Might this be a trace of where the dedica-
tion came from? Examples of this epic “hole filling” in the Lindian Chronicle
could be multiplied.83 Admittedly, we do not have a retelling here of the Iliad,
but I would argue that the past as reified text is in evidence, just as in the case
of Berossus. Remember that Berossus assures us (though via Syncellus), in lan-
guage quite Herodotean, that the statue of Oannes has been preserved “even
still now” (680 F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 29 M: τὴν δὲ εἰκόνα αὐτοῦ ἔτι καὶ νῦν
80. Cf. Leander (2008) esp. 26–27 on the distinctions between “start” and “origin” and between
“natural” and “artificial” beginnings.
81. See esp. Jacoby FGrH III b (Supp.) 1.172–73. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 510 and n.23. See also
above, p. 8 and n.21.
82. Higbie (2003) 169.
83. See, in general, Higbie (2001) 112–14 and (2003) 93, 205, 222–27; also already Wiseman
(1979) 147. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 515.
διαφυλάσσεσθαι).84 To be sure, one reason to tell us this is to remove doubt

regarding the physical form of the sage, a combination of fish and human. But
another reason is to give a palpable connection to the literary past that Oannes
narrates.
It is perhaps best to look, at this point, at the revelation of Oannes, if only
preliminarily—I will treat the substance of it in chapter 5. Syncellus actually
tells us a great deal about the very beginnings of the world, “year one,” in which
the remarkable Oannes features prominently:
In the first year there appeared out of the Red Sea at the place border-
ing Babylonia a sentient [ἔμφρον; Syncellus ἄφρενον] creature by the
name Oannes . . . having a body entirely like a fish, but underneath his
head another head which had grown under the head of the fish, and feet
similarly of a man which had grown out from the tail of the fish; it pos-
sessed a human voice, and the image of him still even now has survived.
He [Berossus] says that this creature passed the days with the humans,
not taking any food, but giving to the humans knowledge of writing and
learning and crafts of all sorts; and he was teaching also the founding of
cities, the building of temples, the introduction of laws and geometry;
he was revealing planting and the harvesting of crops, and in sum all
the matters that pertain to the amelioration of life he was handing over
to men. From that time nothing more in addition has been discovered.
When the sun was setting, this creature Oannes went back into the sea,
and the nights he was spending in the salt water; for he was amphibious.
Later also other creatures like this one appeared, about whom he says
Berossus says he will make clear in the record of the kings. And Oannes
wrote about genea and government and handed this logos over to hu-
man kind. “There was a time,” he says, “in which all was darkness.” (F 1
= Syncellus Chron. 29 M)
This is a wonderful text for many reasons, not the least being the description
of Oannes himself. The Christian Syncellus finds him “silly” or, more liter-
ally, “mindless” (ἄφρενον), akin to the “loathsome” from the king list passage,
though the text as Berossus wrote it probably read “sentient” or “rational”
(ἔμφρον).85 Indeed, the merman Oannes of Berossus is not at all unusual by
84. Cf. Lightfoot (2003) 355 n.17.

85. Cf. Adler and Tuffin (2002) 38 n.2. The formation of the term aphrenos is highly problem-
atic; standard Greek has the perfectly acceptable term aphron, whereas aphrenos would seem to
have something to do with the phren, that is, the “midriff ” or “heart,” thus the “mind.” See LSJ s.v.
Time 75
Babylonian standards; he is but a mythical incarnation of a Babylonian holy

sage—the piradu fish-man, images of whom are common. This is probably why
Berossus can say that the eikon of Oannes still survives in his own time (I take
it that this is the observation of Berossus’, not of Syncellus or some intermedi-
ary). A recent study of seal impressions from Hellenistic Uruk has even dem-
onstrated that there was a marked return in this period toward older Mesopo-
tamian images, including figures of apkallus.86 But what does this passage tell
us about time, and how does it relate to the king list?
A number of temporal details emerge. First, as we have seen, Berossus is
eager to point out that the image of Oannes survives to his own day; that is,
there is a direct, physical link between Berossus’ own time and the first moment
when Oannes came out of the Red Sea. This detail, so common in Herodotus,87
proves nothing, of course. But that there is a representation of Oannes helps
to “normalize” him; it makes him plausible (cf. Herodotus on the phoenix of
Egypt: Hdt. 2.73.1). It bears noting, in this connection, that Posidonius seems
to have dealt with a similar figure in his own history, written some two hun-
dred years later (FGrH 87 F 66 = Str. 16.2.17).88 By the same token, it was not
unusual for kings in Babylonia to stress that ancient figurines and other im-
ages were found with foundation inscriptions; the figurines and images helped
to authenticate what purported, in some cases, to be very early texts, or they
aided rulers in reconstructing lost cult images.89 This sort of “visual antiquari-
anism” would have been familiar to Berossus from his own culture and not only
something he encountered in Greek historiography. Further, Oannes’ teaching
occurs “in the first year.” The beginning of time itself is not precisely marked
in the standard account of the Babylonian Genesis, the Enuma Elish, which
begins in Akkadian with the words “When on high the heaven had not been
named, firm ground below had not been called by name, naught but primordial
Apsu . . . and Mummu Tiamat . . .” (ANET3 60). The precision of Berossus’ text
reflects the fact that we are in human time, despite Oannes’ exotic appearance.
This accounts for why humans are there in the first place to receive Oannes’
instruction, even though we are not told how they came into being. Note, too,
Scaliger recognized the difficulty, as did others: Grafton (1983/1993) 2.711. ἔμφρον is Gutschmid’s
emendation: see Jacoby FGrH 680 F 1 ad loc. in apparatus (p. 369); also Mosshammer ad loc. (p.
29). De Breucker (2010) ad F 1b notes aphrenos is a “later addition.” It may mean “torso-less.” I
thank Michael Reeve and Richard Hunter for help in making me see the impossibility of aphrenos.
86. Wallenfels (1994) 39–41; cf. 151. See also Green (1984); Dalley (2000) 182; Kuhrt (2006)
472. Cf. Colless (1970) 133.
87. See below, pp. 139, 185.
88. Clarke (1999) 178.
89. Winter (2000) 1790–91. Note also Beaulieu (1994); Woods (2004). See also below, pp. 140–
43.
that Oannes goes on, after the description of him I have just quoted, to deliver,
in his own voice, a modified version of the Enuma Elish itself. The divine cre-
ation takes place outside of human time, through the recitation of Oannes of
the Babylonian Genesis to the first humans.
Second, another attempt to naturalize Oannes—this time by providing rea-
sonable and exact detail for something otherwise fantastic nature in the in-
struction of Oannes—is Berossus’ concern to tell us that Oannes came several
times out of the sea and during the day to give his teaching. Something similar
is going on, I think, with the mention of the image of Oannes—that it can still
be seen. Further, insofar as Oannes is himself biform, he is a physical link to the
text he recites, for at the beginning of divine time in his own Genesis account
are found a number of mixed creatures: for example, men with two or four
wings and two faces, one body but two heads, and two sets of genitalia (male
and female); hippocentaurs; and dog-headed horses.
But it is the last two temporal details that are the really important ones. The
third is really an absence: the king list makes clear that the fish-man sages ap-
peared in the reign of kings; indeed, despite what Syncellus asserts, seven sages
were paired with the first seven rulers in the Babyloniaca. In the instruction
account of Oannes (i.e., “in the first year”), where is the first king, King Aloros?
Should not the episode be taking place at a time described as “in the first year
of Aloros” or something similar?90 It is important, at this point, to note what
Berossus evidently said in connection with the other sages that were to appear
after Oannes: “Later also other creatures like this one appeared, about whom
Berossus says he will make clear in the record of the kings” (ἐν τῇ τῶν βασιλέων
ἀναγραφῇ φησι δηλώσειν). This statement suggests pretty clearly that “the re-
cord of the kings” is not in the same section as the teachings of Oannes but,
rather, comes later.91 As we have seen, it comes a full book later. First came
Oannes’ teaching “in the first year,” and then came the chronicle proper in
which the succession of kings was to be found, beginning with Aloros, during
whose reign we learn, retrospectively, took place the transfer of the civilizing
arts. This is a most crucial detail, allowing us to summarize Berossus’ view of
earliest time as follows: the divine time of the creation epic, followed by the
mysterious “first year” of Oannes, and then royal or consecutive time. I thus
disagree with Schnabel:92 the “first year” cannot be the “first year of Aloros,”
for the organizing principle of book 1 was not the king list but, rather, Oannes’
telling of the foundation texts of Babylonia.
90. Cf. Schnabel (1923) 91.

91. Cf. Kuhrt (1987a) 47.
92. Schnabel (1923) 91. See also Burstein (1978) 13 n.6.
Time 77
Note that in the “first year,” since the original teaching of Oannes, “nothing
else in addition has been discovered.” We already know about the teachings
of the other sages who appeared after Oannes: “[Berossus] says that all these
explained in part [κατὰ μέρος] what was spoken summarily [κεφαλαιωδῶς] by
Oannes.” As I have already discussed, I take this to mean that Oannes told the
first humans everything they needed to know, comprehensively, if also in sum-
mary, leaving it to later sages to fill in the details, though not in such a way as
to alter fundamentally what Oannes initially taught. But in a larger sense, what
can it have meant for Berossus to claim that since Oannes’ teachings, “nothing
else in addition has been discovered”? Oannes’ wisdom has been carefully lo-
cated in time and yet, in a sense, is timeless. This basic contradiction gives us a
crucial insight into the intellectual and social context of Berossus’ time making.
Although the fragmentary state of Akkadian literature prevents certainty
in the matter, none of those texts that are allied to the Oannes story—that is,
narratives having to do with heroic civilizing figures—begins with a temporal
framing remark such as “in the first year.” Thus the opening of the popular story
of Adapa, although fragmentary, seems to start in a “fairy-tale fashion,” without
mention of a particular past time (ANET3 101).93 Similarly, there is the begin-
ning of the myth of Etana: “The great Anunnaki, who decree the fate, sat down,
taking counsel about the land” (ANET3 114). There is no dating here, because
it was not needed. Even more relevant, the beginning of Atrahasis, the Baby-
lonian Flood account, was not at all dated. To be sure, the story of the Deluge
was literally epochal for the Babylonians: the essence of the story is to provide
a boundary marking antediluvian and postdiluvian humanity. But it was never
specifically dated.94 By contrast, the biblical flood is fixed at a distinct point in
time: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seven-
teenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep
broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Gen. 7:11).95 There is a
Neo-Babylonian theogony that contains several datings of a mythical event,96
but this text and Berossus’ dating of the Flood are clear outliers.
The fourth significant temporal detail, then, is that Berossus does date the
Flood: “Kronos” appears in a dream to Berossus’ Flood hero, Xisouthros, to
warn him of the inundation that will destroy humanity “on the fifteenth of the
month Daisios.” Daisios is a month name from the Macedonian calendar used
93. Cf. Liverani (2004) 6: the story is deliberately told from a nonrealistic, fairy-tale mode.
94. Lambert and Millard (1969) 136–37. Cf. Tubach (1998) 114: Berossus’ exact dating “die
einst nach babylonischer Überlieferung über die Erde hereinbrach.”
95. Dalley (2000) 6.
96. BM 74329 Obv. 20, 24, 32, 36: see Lambert and Walcot (1965) 65–66.
by the Seleucids,97 and therein is the point: the mythical is made historical by
putting the Deluge on the grid of Greek–or, rather, Macedonian—time. No year
date for the Flood is provided—the event is still remote in time, occurring as it
does sometime in the vast reign of Xisouthros—but it does have a month date
that is taken from the time-reckoning system of Berossus’ new overlords. The
month of Daisios was an especially important one in the Macedonian calendar,
which was full of sacred days. The Macedonian kings “were not accustomed”
to campaign during Daisios (Plut. Alex. 16.2), no doubt due to religious scru-
ple.98 It happens also to be the month in which Alexander the Great died, on 29
Aiaru (Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 1.207 no. 322 B Obv. 8: “The 29th, the
king died; clouds [. . . .]”) or 28 Daisios (Plut. Alex. 76.9).99 Berossus also uses
a Macedonian month name (Loos) to date the Sacaea festival (F 2), which was
probably Persian in origin.100 Note that Berossus locates it in the religious year
with a term derived from a nonnative time-reckoning system, in all likelihood
because the festival was not Babylonian. Some have reasonably assumed that
Berossus employed the Seleucid era’s dating system throughout his history.101
However that may be, Berossus’ dating of the Flood is in itself extraordinary. A
scholar has recently suggested that the fixing of the eighteen-year “Saros Canon
cycle” that took place during the Seleucid period was in all likelihood not due
to “Hellenization or Hellenistic culture” and that the Seleucid rulers deferred to
their Babylonian advisors on this matter because, though notionally “kings of
Babylon,” they “did not consider themselves, as Greeks, sufficiently Babylonian
to dictate how the Babylonian calendar should be reckoned.”102 If this sugges-
tion is true, Berossus’ dating of the Flood by the Seleucid calendar would stand
out even more as a significant concession to the new overlords of his land and
their ways of organizing the past. I hasten to add that Manetho takes precisely
the opposite tack: he takes a benchmark event from the Greek past, the Fall of
Troy, and finds a place for it in Egyptian time (more on this below).
It may also be the case that Berossus has plotted the date of the Flood be-
cause he believes that there will be another flood at some later end-time, or
eschaton; Seneca reports that Berossus assigns a specific date to the “Confla-
gration” and the “Flood” (F 21 = Sen. Nat. 3.29.1). But this is not the place to
97. Burstein (1978) 20 n.52. Cf. Bikerman (1938) 205; Bickerman (1968) 20, 38. Note that
Berossus also uses a Macedonian month name (“Loos”) to locate the Sacaea festival (F 2); see above,
p. 46.
98. Edmunds (1979) 112–13; Hammond and Griffith (1979) 267.
99. Cf. Samuel (1972) 141; Brunt (1976/1983) 2.296 n.1.
100. See above, p. 46.
101. Mosshammer (1979) 262.
102. Stern (2012) 114.
Time 79
discuss the possibility of a cyclical view of history in Berossus, akin to Stoic

ekpyrosis (on this highly controversial argument, see below, ch. 5). Setting this
interpretation to the side, it seems fair, in any case, to say that something simi-
lar is happening in connection with the story of the appearance and instruc-
tions of Oannes and the dating of the Flood. Oannes’ teachings are themselves
timeless—“nothing more has been discovered”—but the actual moment these
matters are transacted is dated to “the first year.” Berossus needs an illud tem-
pus, but he needs to provide it with a historical frame.
Beyond its missing kings, the second way in which Berossus’ list of early
sages and kings differs from that found in W 20030.7 is, of course, that Ber-
ossus’ list is in Greek while the Uruk text is in Akkadian. It is certainly not
the case that the compiler of W 20030.7, Anu-belsunu, constructed his list as
though other nonnative peoples simply did not exist. For one thing, some of his
later sages evidently could be international. Thus, as I have already noted, line
21 of the text mentions “Nicarchus,” none other than the Greek name of Anu-
uballit, the forebear of Anu-belsunu himself. Further, just before the notice of
Nicarchus, we read the following in lines 19–20: “in the reign of Esarhaddon—
ummanu Aba-enlil-dari, whom the Aramaeans call Ahiqar” (Klotchkoff trans.
[1982] 153). Much has been made of this identification. Klotchkoff thought
that the reference to Ahiqar looked like a gloss on Aba-enlil-dari, as though the
Akkadian reader of the text would know of the sage Ahiqar who was linked in
Near Eastern folklore with Esarhaddon in Aramaic texts, rather than his own
Aba-enlil-dari.103 This may be the case. It seems more likely to me that a legend-
ary sage figure already linked with Esarhaddon has simply been historicized, as
was Sin-liqi-unninni, the sage connected to Gilgamesh. What makes Ahiqar
unusual is that he was a sage figure who was widely known throughout the Near
East in a number of different cultural traditions.104
The larger point to register here is that while Anu-belsunu most certainly
knew of wisdom traditions that competed with the Babylonian one and knew
firsthand also of the presence and power of the Seleucids who gave his own
ancestor a Greek name, he chose to write his list in Akkadian. I do think we
have to imagine that he had a choice, for Anu-belsunu came from a thoroughly
Hellenized and elite priestly family with several members bearing both Baby-
lonian and Greek names: there was not only Anu-uballit/Nicarchus but also
103. Klotchkoff (1982) 153.

104. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.524. On the influence of “Ahiqar” and the Ahiqar Romance, see Lin-
denberger (1985) 483–84, 490–92. See also Delcor (1989) 476–77; Wilsdorf (1991); Haslam (1986)
150; Hansen (1998) 108–9; Konstantakos (2009) 100–105. Note that Ahiqar is also connected to
Democritus and Theophrastus (D.L. 5.50; Clement Strom. 1.15.69). Consult Momigliano (1975a) 9.
Anu-uballit/Kephalon, as well as others.105 So why did Anu-belsunu write in

Akkadian, when a man no doubt very much like him and writing a hundred
years earlier about the Babylonian past in very similar ways—indeed, in one
regard, apparently the only other Babylonian scholar also to combine king list
and sages—wrote in Greek? I have phrased this question in a deliberately pro-
vocative manner, for I think the more natural way to pose the problem is to
ask why Berossus composed his Babyloniaca in Greek, when a scholar from
virtually the same cultural tradition and context wrote a very similar text in the
native scholarly tongue a century later. I cannot hope to answer this question
adequately here,106 but suffice it to say that given the construction and contents
of Berossus’ early chronography, his choice of language suddenly looks radical
and completely without parallel when set beside W 20030.7, suggesting that
circumstances unique to him, his particular time and place—early Seleucid
Babylon—played a key role in shaping his historical vision.
To get a handle on the middle years of Berossus’ chronography—his king
list between the Flood and the reign of the last Babylonian king before the ad-
vent of Neo-Assyrian rule (Nabû-nasir, who ruled from 747 to 734 BC)—we
need to turn to F 5a and F 16a and, therein, a major difficulty. F 5a comes from
the Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, where we are given a list that
takes us from the first kings after the Flood and goes down to the reign of Sen-
nacherib. The list is extremely sketchy. We are told that the first kings after the
Flood were Euechoios and, after him, his son Chomasbelos. Overall, though,
the Armenian translation of Eusebius states that “from Xisouthros and the
Flood to the Medes’ [read “Gutian”]107 capture of Babylon, Polyhistor counts
in total eighty-six kings. He mentions each by name, having gotten them from
Berossus’ books. He totals their reign altogether as 33,091 years.” Eight named
Gutian kings follow, ruling for 244 years. Next come eleven other sovereigns
without dynastic attribution, who rule for only a combined twenty-eight years;
forty-nine Chaldaean kings, who rule for a total of 458 years; and nine Ara-
bians, who rule for 245. Then comes the famous reign of Queen Semiramis,
followed by forty-five kings who are “named only”—that is, they also have no
dynastic affiliation—and rule altogether for 526 years. Listed last are Tiglath-
105. Bowman (1939); Doty (1988). Cf. also Doty (1977) 23–25; id. (1978); Wallenfels (1994)
151. Note that Boiy (2004) 289 observes that there are many more cases of persons bearing both
Babylonian and Greek names at Uruk than at Babylon proper. On double names in Seleucid Baby-
lon, see, in general, Sherwin-White (1983a); Boiy (2005).
106. See pp. xix–xxi, xxiii–xxv, xxix–xxx, 217–19, 263–64, 351–53, 382–85.
107. “Mede” is an error for “Gutian”: see Schnabel (1923) 192–94; cf. Verbrugghe and Wicker-
sham (1996) 52 nn.25, 27.
Time 81
pileser III and Sennacherib.108 All that we can tell for certain from this fragment
is that Polyhistor, following Berossus, came up with a list of 211 kings down to
Tiglath-pileser, totaling 34,592 years (omitting reigns of the first two named
kings and Semiramis, the length of whose rule is not given), though only 1,501
of these years are broken down into particular periods. It seems that Berossus
grouped some but not all the kings, by dynasty—that is, by ethnic affiliation.
Further, he was able (or willing) to name some kings but not others. Indeed, it
appears that kings who fell into a recognizable ethnic group were not named.
Clearly, the second section of Berossus’ king list was much less extensive and
detailed the antediluvian and Flood portions. No doubt, there were some nar-
rative elements at key points, such as the reign of Queen Semiramis. Indeed, we
know, from another fragment, that Berossus criticized Greek authors for attrib-
uting to her the foundation of Babylon (F 8a = Jos. Ap. 1.142),109 something that
implies argumentation, I think, and therefore substantial sections of continu-
ous prose. From that same fragment (F 8a), we learn that Berossus’ treatment
of Semiramis occurred in the third book of the Babyloniaca.
F 16a explains why Berossus’ king list became so sketchy for the kings fol-
lowing the Flood. Noting that both Chaldaean experts and, following them,
Greek ones reckoned dates from the reign of Nabû-nasir, Syncellus explains
(Chron. 245 M):
For, as Alexander [Polyhistor] and Berossus say, who have both in-
cluded Chaldaean archaeologies [οἱ τὰς Χαλδαϊκὰς ἀρχαιολογίας
περιειληφότες], Nabonasaros gathered the deeds of the kings before
him and destroyed them [Ναβονάσαρος συναγαγὼν τὰς πράξεις τῶν
πρὸ αὐτοῦ βασιλέων ἠφάνισεν], so that the enumeration of the Chal-
daean kings begin from him] ὅπως ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἡ καταρίθμησις γίνεται
τῶν Χαλδαίων βασιλέων].
Essentially, the problem with this passage lies in determining whether, as both
Syncellus and (evidently) Polyhistor claimed, Berossus himself confessed that
the construction of a king list for the period between the Flood and the last
ruler before the Neo-Assyrians was impossible, as opposed to later authors as-
suming this was the case because of the confused state of Berossus’ chronology
at this point as it had been transmitted to them.110 I endorse the position of
108. I am indebted to Verbrugghe and Wickersham (1996) 52 for this summary.

109. Kuhrt (1987a) 53; Dillery (2007b) 224. See below, p. 156.
110. See Brinkman (1968) 21, 227 with n.1436; also Adler and Tuffin (2002) 301 n.1. Note that
the fragment is found in Jacoby in the section labeled “(Pseudo-) Berossos von Kos.”
Stanley Burstein, who has argued that Syncellus’ statement should be accepted
for precisely what it says: the confusion was one Berossus encountered; it was
not the result of the transmission of his text. Burstein notes that Polyhistor
elsewhere complains that Berossus was sketchy on exactly this period, that the
Babylonian Chronicle Series in fact begins with none other than Nabû-nasir,
and that the detailed recording of Babylonian astronomical observations in di-
ary form date from the reign of the same monarch.111 Although ultimately a
circular argument, Burstein’s interpretation also has the advantage of explain-
ing the original economy of Berossus’ text: if there was confusion for much of
what would have constituted the middle years of his chronology, that would go
a long way toward explaining how he could treat Creation in book 1 and the
antediluvian rulers and the Flood in the book 2 and still manage to get to his
own time by the end of book 3. The middle years were simply omitted or vastly
scaled down in comparison with the rest of his account.
Thus Berossus’ text would have most definitely had an “hourglass” shape,
featuring robust and full information for the early and late periods of Baby-
lonia, with very little in between. In constructing his account in this manner,
he had little choice: the documentation for the period from the Flood to the
advent of permanent Neo-Assyrian rule was very thin.112 These documentary
limitations would have had very important consequences for Berossus’ under-
standing of Babylonian history. He would have been encouraged by the nature
of his sources to view the past as one that featured a glorious start of Babylonia
as the site of Creation, first human civilization, and the establishment of an-
cient knowledge. But then would come, after a long and “dark” hiatus begin-
ning just a few years after the Flood, a succession of foreign rulers of Babylon,
first the Assyrians and then the Persians, interrupted by a period of less than
one hundred years of native rule (the Neo-Babylonians: Nabopolassar [626–
605] to Nabonidus [555–539]). After the Persians, of course, would come the
dominion of yet more outsiders, the Macedonians—first Alexander’s conquest,
then the period of turmoil during the primacy of Antigonus Monophthalmus,
and finally Seleucid rule.
Not surprisingly, given this general outline of the second half of the Baby-
loniaca, the first Neo-Babylonian (or “Chaldaean”) ruler, Nabopolassar, and his
son, Nebuchadnezzar II, really stand out in the remains of Berossus’ text. This
is partly due to the accident of preservation: the source for these rulers is Jo-
sephus, who was, for his own reasons, keenly interested in what Berossus had
111. Burstein (1978) 22 n.66. Cf. Grayson (1975a) 13; Kuhrt (1987a) 43, 46; Rochberg-Halton
(1991b) 109–10; de Breucker (2010) ad F 16a.
112. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.575.
Time 83
to say about matters relating to the history of the Jews. But this fact does not
explain the particular type of praise that both rulers receive. Significantly, each
in his own way surpassed all the earlier rulers of Babylon: Nabopolassar “outdid
in his deeds all those who ruled the Chaldaean and Babylonians before him”
(F 8 = Jos. Ap. 1.133: πάντας δὲ ὑπερβαλόμενον ταῖς πράξεσι τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ
Χαλδαίων καὶ Βαβυλωνίων βεβασιλευκότας), while his son, Nebuchadnezzar,
was “a man more audacious and more fortunate than the kings before him” (F 8
= Jos. AJ 10.219: ἀνὴρ δραστήριος καὶ τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ βασιλέων εὐτυχέστερος).
Hyperbole goes hand in hand with royal praise, to be sure; but no other figures
are awarded preeminence through comparison with other rulers in this way in
Berossus. Local bias and an interest in promoting the importance of the Neo-
Babylonian kings clearly also played a major role in shaping his later narrative
and its structure, and lest we think that Berossus is “elaborating” or making up
his account of the Neo-Babylonian rulers out of whole cloth, Sack has observed
that “[o]f all the lists of Neo-Babylonian monarchs which have survived and
are contained in secondary works, the arrangement of Berossus most closely
corresponds to that of cuneiform documents”:113 Berossus was following an
established chronology.
This is not the place to go into Berossus’ accounts of these rulers.114 Rather,
it is important here to see how chronographic coherence is again in evidence
in the remains of the Babyloniaca from the Neo-Assyrian period onward. Jo-
sephus’ Against Apion (Ap. 1.131–153 = FF 8 + 9a) and brief digests from
the Armenian translation of Eusebius (FF 9b and 10) provide us with a good
picture of the chronology from the last portions of the Babyloniaca, down at
least to the reign of Xerxes “and the later Persian kings,” with no end point
indicated. Inasmuch as elements from king lists are in evidence (names, reg-
nal years, successors), combined with sections describing some of the kings’
deeds, the sections drawn from Josephus are especially useful for giving us an
idea of how the king list and narrative were merged in Berossus (as we shall
see, Josephus is similarly useful for Manetho). But I leave discussing these
texts to chapter 5.
Before moving on to Manetho, however, it is important to think again
about Berossus’ early kings and sages. Calling into mind Herodotus’ encounter
with the priests of Thebes and how that passage suggests not a static process
of recording the past genealogically but, rather, a dynamic and evolving one, I
do not think we can overestimate the significance of Berossus’ innovative ap-
113. Sack (1994) 7.

114. See below, pp. 271–300.
proach to his king list. The merging of kings with sages was unparalleled in the
Near Eastern tradition of time reckoning in which he was working; at least, it
was unparalleled for about a century, until the compilation of the very similar
chronology by Abu-belsunu at Uruk. This fact alone demonstrates that it would
be a mistake to think that Berossus’ decision to compile a king list is evidence of
his unthinking adherence to some putative scholarly ideal, legitimized by years
of observance—a concession, as it were, to a static view of the past. The very
choice to use his list to provide a framework on which to mount the great nar-
ratives of Creation and the Flood was a radical departure. In so doing, Berossus
was attempting to “historicize” these age-old (we might say, timeless) stories.
As we shall see later, other Near Eastern scholars had been similarly motivated,
but none had come up with the particular formulation that Berossus did. He
was pioneering. Power and wisdom had been literally brought into the same
account.
Manetho’s Chronology Part 1:

Manetho and the Turin King List
If anything in this book is already familiar to the reader, it will be the king list
of Manetho, even if his name is not immediately recognizable. Manetho’s list
of pharaohs, together with length of reign and dynastic grouping, forms the
cornerstone of the modern study of ancient Egypt.115 It survived because it was
of tremendous importance to Christian authors seeking a dating method that
could provide an external chronology to events from the Bible. Given that this
is the case, it would be rash of me to think that I could contribute much that
would be new to the interpretation of Manetho’s chronology, and it would be
odious for the reader if I tried to present it comprehensively. Rather, what I will
do here is, first, provide an overview of the king list itself as it appeared in Ma-
netho’s Aegyptiaca and, second, discuss how it relates to the documentary king
lists that have survived from pharaonic Egypt, where it can particularly be seen
to be significantly different from its documentary forerunners. I will then try
to place Manetho’s king list and the temporal orientation it implies in the larger
context of Greek historiographic practice.
115. Note Fraser (1972) 1.510. See, e.g., Weill (1926/1928); Helck (1956); Gardiner (1961b);
Armayor (1985); Redford (1986); Beckerath (1997); most recently, the papers in Hornung, Krauss,
and Warburton eds. (2006). I have learned a great deal from Ryholt (1997), whose treatment of the
all-important Turin List (see below) I view as definitive. Note also Schneider (2008), treating the
impact of Manetho’s periodizations and their influence on modern scholarship.
Time 85
As with Berossus’ chronology, it is important to take stock, first, of exactly

what we have preserved. Although more of Manetho’s chronology survives
than Berossus’, it, too, has a major hole in the middle: out of a total of 337
pharaohs, 136 make up the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties alone (with
sixty and seventy-six rulers, respectively), and none is named; that is roughly
40 percent of the total.116 Add in the remaining unnamed pharaohs from other
dynasties, and the figure is 201, or almost 60 percent of the total number of
rulers, with the bulk of unnamed kings coming from the Tenth, Eleventh, Thir-
teenth, and Fourteenth Dynasties—that is, the First Intermediate Period, the
Middle Kingdom, and the start of the Second Intermediate Period, though not
including the all-important Twelfth and Fifteenth Dynasties, all of whose kings
are named (an important point: see below). Inasmuch as no other dynasty has
anywhere near as many rulers as the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Dynasties,117 it
is difficult not to view these groupings as artificial and little more than place-
holders. In comparison, however, the best documentary king list for the period
(the Turin List) roughly confirms the scope of these groupings, giving at least
fifty-seven rulers for the Thirteenth Dynasty and a minimum of fifty-six for the
Fourteenth Dynasty.118 Egyptian history in this period was marked by turmoil
and lack of long-term central authority, so at least part of the explanation for
the sketchy nature of Manetho’s king list for this crucial epoch is precisely be-
cause, with a few notable exceptions, times were chaotic—there was no simple
succession of kings. But even given that fact, I do not believe that the middle
portion of Manetho’s king list was lacking names of rulers because of the state
of his records, and therein is a significant contrast with Berossus. Manetho may
not have known much about these years of Egyptian history, but I do think he
knew the names of the pharaohs for this period, even if not much more.
Manetho’s king list had the following structure. Each pharaoh is grouped
according to dynasty and is given a reign length; occasionally, a brief notice
is also added, detailing a notable event that took place during the reign of the
relevant king. The first entry as transmitted by Africanus is fairly representa-
tive: “the first royal house numbers eight kings, the first of whom Menes of This
reigned for 62 years. He was torn apart by a hippo and perished” (F 2 = Syncel-
lus Chron. 59 M).119 The presence of such narrative “tags,” minimal though they
are, cannot be overstressed. It is presumably in these places in his chronology
116. Cf. Rowton (1948) 64–67.

117. The nearest is the Tenth Dynasty, with nineteen rulers and no named kings.
118. Ryholt (1997) 72, 97; the numbers are minimums due to the incomplete state of preserva-
tion of the Turin Canon. Note that many of the names for the pharaohs for this period are known
from the Turin Canon: see the tables in Ryholt (1997) 73, 98. Cf. Beckerath (1964) 24.
119. On the remarkable attack on Menes by a hippo, see below, pp. 176–77.
where Manetho’s extended narratives were to be found, but probably not all
these notices are indicators of where larger narrative panels stood originally;
this is not the place to discuss the positioning of his narrative blocks (for that,
see below, chs. 3 and 6). It bears noting in the case of Menes, though, that the
version found in Eusebius adds a very important detail after the introduction
of the king: “Menes . . . the one whom Herodotus called Men” (F 3b = Syncellus
Chron. 61 M: ὅν Ἡρόδοτος Μῆνα ὠνόμασεν). This is a significant detail and
is not the only place where Manetho corrects Herodotus on the proper spell-
ing of a royal name (see also the discussion below on Manetho’s correction of
Herodotus’ “Cheops” to “Souphis”). Indeed, coming here with the first entry
in the king list, it serves as a reminder that Manetho has a superior control to
Herodotus over the essential building blocks of the chronology Egypt, namely,
the actual names of each pharaoh.
Each dynasty is identified by ordinal number, followed by the number of
pharaohs it produced and, finally, the royal capital where it was based; at the
end of the dynastic group, the total number of years for the reigns of the dy-
nasty is totaled, and a running total of all the reign lengths of all the pharaohs
is given for each dynasty through book 1 and at the end of the same book; run-
ning totals are not found in the rest of the dynasties, but one is provided at the
end of book 2; another is found at the end of book 3, but it includes the spurious
Thirty-First Dynasty.
Several documentary king lists survive, covering different periods of Egyp-
tian history. Due to their earlier date and the accidence of preservation, only
Manetho’s list offers a complete list of pharaohs, from the predynastic period
when the gods ruled Egypt, down to the end of the last native rulers of the
Thirtieth Dynasty. The period of the second Persian occupation of Egypt, from
343 to Alexander’s conquest in 332 BC, the so-called Thirty-First Dynasty,
is not part of Manetho’s list, being appended to it at some later point.120 The
documentary king lists most often cited in connection with the study of Ma-
netho are the Palermo Stone, which covers the first five dynasties and dates to
the last pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, Nyuserra (2445–2421 BC); the Table of
Karnak, which dates to the reign of Thutmose III (1479–1425); and three lists
all dating to the Ramessid period—the Table of Abydos (dated to the reign of
Sety I, 1294–1279), the Table of Saqqara (dated to the reign of Ramesses II,
1279–1213), and the all-important Turin Canon (also dated to the reign of
Ramesses II).121 It has been argued that the true “King List Tradition” (i.e., a
120. See esp. Lloyd (1988b); also Gardiner (1961b) 453.

121. See, e.g., Gardiner (1961b) 46–71; Beckerath (1997) 13–23. Note also Redford (1986)
1–24.
Time 87
true listing of kings and regnal years as opposed to chronicles or “daybooks”),

such as we see in the Turin List, is to be connected to the archaizing tendencies
of the Twelfth Dynasty, which was so eager to build legitimating bridges to the
past in other ways.122
The Turin Canon—or, more properly, the Turin King List123—is a papyrus
text written in hieratic. Most significantly, and uniquely for the documentary
lists, it provides year lengths for each reign and also provides totals for groups
of pharaohs, that is, dynastic divisions.124 For only the all-important Twelfth
Dynasty, though, representing the start of the Middle Kingdom and the conclu-
sion of the Old Kingdom, are the Turin List and Manetho in complete agree-
ment, listing seven rulers altogether and about the same number of total reign
lengths. In other groupings, the Turin List is close but not identical to what Ma-
netho produces: the list does not split up the First and Second, Third through
Fifth, Seventh and Eighth, and Ninth and Tenth Manethonian Dynasties; but
the divisions are otherwise the same down to the Sixteenth Dynasty.125 Also,
and this is very significant, outside of the scheme of dynasties, both Manetho
and the Turin List have the gods ruling Egypt in the predynastic period.126 On
the basis of these essential similarities, to which could be added even more de-
tailed ones, it has long been argued that Manetho was drawing on an Egyptian
scholarly king list tradition in the construction of his own table of kings.127 This
circumstance could have been guessed from the thumbnail sketch of Manetho
in Josephus’ Against Apion: Manetho “has written in the Greek tongue his na-
tional history, having translated, as he himself asserts, from sacred tablets [or
perhaps “writings”].”128
While the similarities between Manetho and the Turin List basically prove
his dependence on the same scholarly tradition in Egypt that was responsi-
ble for the documentary king lists, we should not lose sight of the differences.
There are relatively minor ones: Manetho has more dynastic divisions than the
Turin List; he has dynastic capitals, while the Turin List has none; he has some
running totals for several dynasties taken together, while the Turin List does
122. Cf. Redford (1986) 151–63.
123. Ryholt (1997) 9 on the inappropriateness of the term canon in connection with the Turin
List. See below, pp. 93–94, for discussion.
124. Ryholt (1997) 31–33; Baines (2007) 198. Cf. Fraser (1972) 2.735 n.125.
125. Ryholt (2006b) 31.
126. Laqueur (1928) 1096; Helck (1956) 4; Griffiths (1960) 97. Cf. Hdt. 2.144.2 and 2.4.2; Heca-
taeus of Ab. FGrH 264 F25 = Diod. 1.10ff.
127. See above, n.121. Armayor (1985) is a notable exception; he sees the influence of Herodo-
tus on Manetho as paramount.
128. FGrH 609 T 7a = Jos. Ap. 1.73 γέγραφεν γὰρ Ἑλλάδι φωνῇ τὴν πάτριον ἱστορίαν ἐκ
δέλτων ἱερῶν, ὥς φησιν αὐτὸς μεταφράσας . . . NB ἐκ δέλτων ἱερῶν Gutschmid (followed by Wad-
dell in Loeb and Th. Reinach in Budé); ἔκ τε τῶν ἱερῶν 〈γραμμάτων〉 Jacoby: ἔκ τε τῶν ἱερέων MS.
not; there is a consistent discrepancy of one year between Manetho and the
Turin List for the reigns from the Old Kingdom period, probably attributable
to Manetho rounding up “surplus months and days of a reign,” while the Tu-
rin List does not.129 There is, however, one major difference: the treatment of
the Second Intermediate Period, specifically the Hyksos kings of the second
Asiatic ruling house, the Fifteenth Dynasty. Prior to the conquests of Egypt by
the Assyrians in seventh century BC130 and by the Persians under Cambyses in
525 BC,131 the invasion and rule of the Hyksos was the most traumatic event
in Egyptian history; indeed, it became the template for all subsequent periods
of external dominion of Egypt and the chaos that they brought.132 Hence it is
a matter of tremendous importance that only the first four rulers in the Turin
List are styled “Hyksos” kings; the last three, beginning with Khayan, are given
normal pharaonic titulature. As Kim Ryholt has argued, while their “crimes”
against Egypt were undeniable, Khayan did reunite the whole of the country
under one rule and thus became a “legitimate” pharaoh of sorts.133 This dis-
tinction and other evidence that the last of the Hyksos kings were made into
“normal” pharaonic rulers are completely lost in Manetho: for him, they are all
the evil Hyksos.
This could, of course, be simply the weight of tradition pressing on Mane-
tho, for the majority of later documentary lists likewise make no distinction
between the Hyksos kings. But it could also be that Manetho needed to pre-
serve, in a clear and unambiguous manner, the classic example from Egypt’s
past of evil and illegitimate foreign rule, precisely because he himself lived in
similar circumstances under the Ptolemies: as long as the Ptolemies listened
to men like Manetho, they would rule as rightful pharaohs, but if they did
not, they would become the latest iteration of the Hyksos. This is a difficult
point to make if you allow the Fifteenth Dynasty some respectable rulers, as
the Turin List seems to have done. We should remember, in this connection,
that the last period of Persian occupation was not handled by Manetho in
his king list. His list ended with the last native pharaoh, Nectanebo II. I do
not think it is accidental that Ptolemy Soter’s pharaonic titulature included,
as its fourth element, the same name borne by Nectanebo I and Sesostris
I—Kheper-ka-Re: the first Ptolemy was thus linked to one of the last native
pharaohs and to the most important one in Egyptian legend.134 In a sense,
129. O’Mara (1997) esp. 60.
130. See esp. Ryholt (2004).
131. See esp. Posener (1936).
132. Assmann (2002) 197–201, 248–50. Cf. Dillery (2007b) 226–27.
133. Ryholt (1997) 124–25.
134. Dillery (1999) 112 and (2003a). Cf. Sethe (1900) 24; Murray (1970) 163; also Moyer
(2011) 87–88 and n.11, Matthey (2012) 108–9 and n.368.
Time 89
then, Manetho’s list could continue seamlessly from the Thirtieth Dynasty,
omit the Persian Thirty-First Dynasty, and resume with the Ptolemies as the
Thirty-Second Dynasty. Relatedly, I note that in the Eusebian recension of
Manetho’s list, as well as in Africanus’ list as it is preserved in the Excerpta
Barbari, the list of rulers of Egypt in the first Persian dynasty (the Twenty-
Seventh Dynasty) includes either the “Magoi” (Syncellus Chron. 86 M) or
“Serdius” (Wallraff F 73.10, presumably for “Smerdis”). If Manetho really had
“Smerdis” or something similar, this would mean that he adopted the name
from Herodotus, and in either case—whether “Smerdis/Serdius” or simply
“Magoi”—Manetho would have included in his king list the usurpers of the
Achaemenid throne, according, at least, to the propaganda of Darius as evi-
dent in his Bisitun Inscription. The Magi would not have shown up on any
official list of Persian rulers if the Persians themselves were responsible for it.
Thus Manetho’s view of the Twenty-Seventh Dynasty would be anti-Persian,
as revealed through this detail.
A similar situation perhaps obtains in Herodotus. By his own admission,
Herodotus omits some names of pharaohs altogether (2.102.1), but he none-
theless provides the total number of rulers to his own time as given to him by
the priest of Memphis, namely, 330 plus the first ruler, Min (2.100.1); yet else-
where, when reporting Hecataeus’ encounter with Theban priests, he calculated
345 human generations in all (2.143.4), suggesting a significant discrepancy
between the two reckonings. It seems likely that the Memphis list of kings that
Herodotus encountered did not contain any of the Hyksos rulers—perhaps not
surprisingly, inasmuch as he does not identify any of Egypt’s rulers as “men
from Asia” or the like (2.100.1: “18 Ethiopians, one woman a native [Egyptian],
and the rest Egyptians”).135
I have already drawn attention to the characterization of Manetho by Jose-
phus as an author who made his own translation of sacred tablets in the con-
struction of his history. I would like to return to it again and pick up the next
statement Josephus makes: “and [Manetho] convicts Herodotus on many points
of Egyptian history of falsehood through ignorance.”136 Insofar as Josephus
claims that Manetho himself advertised his dependence on “sacred tablets”
and, further, that he also refuted Herodotus on several points of Egyptian his-
tory, it is tempting to see him making this statement about sources in a proem,
alongside, perhaps, a statement about his independence from Herodotus—a
135. Cf. Lloyd (2007) 312 ad Hdt. 2.100.1.

136. FGrH 609 T 7a = Jos. Ap. 1.73 (continued from n.128 above) . . . καὶ πολλὰ τὸν Ἡρόδοτον
ἐλέγχει τῶν Αἰγυκπτιακῶν ὑπ᾿ ἀγνοίας ἐψευσμένον. On the important term agnoia here, see Mag-
netto (2004), esp. 15 for Manetho on Herodotus.
point I will return to.137 Suffice it to say here that Manetho could then be seen to
have managed a true bicultural engagement with both his Egyptian and Greek
historiographic forebears: although noting one’s dependence on earlier author-
ities (sources or anything else) is distinctly un-Greek but is in keeping with the
Egyptian ideas about the authentication of recording the past, the very stance
of declaring one’s difference from earlier writers is indeed a standard aspect of
Greek historiographic polemic.138 Given the importance of sophistic argumen-
tation to Herodotus, as demonstrated recently by Rosalind Thomas,139 the use
of elenchei in Josephus is particularly arresting, but the term may well belong
to Josephus and not Manetho. In any case, Manetho’s correction of Herodotus
for several errors committed through “ignorance” of the Egyptian past conve-
niently raises the topic of Manetho’s relations to the Greek historians who wrote
on Egypt, especially in the area of king lists.
Herodotus’ Egyptian logos is a vast topic that I do not want to enter into
here. We can, with the likes of Hartog, view Herodotus’ treatment of Egypt as
evidence for how the Greeks constructed the “other,” albeit a “special other,”
but an “other” nonetheless; that is, whatever “real” facts Herodotus may have
had to tell us about Egypt take second place to Egypt as “something to think
with.”140 Or, we can, with the likes of Alan Lloyd and others,141 see in Herodotus
a figure who got a lot wrong about Egypt but also got an astonishing amount
right. I incline more toward this view myself. But whatever view one has on
Herodotus and Egypt, one thing is certain: his Egyptian chronology is woe-
ful. Herodotus’ most egregious error is one of incorrect placement in time: he
has the pyramid builders after Sesostris; after Helen, Menelaus, and king Pro-
teus; and after Rhampsinitus. Indeed, he has them just before the Twenty-Fifth
Dynasty of Ethiopian kings—almost two thousand years out of place.142 Just
as noteworthy is Herodotus’ omission of vast stretches of the traditional royal
chronology of Egypt, precisely where the pyramid builders belong, among oth-
ers. When he moves from the ethnographic portion of book 2 to the histori-
cal section, Herodotus begins his chronology of Egypt with the pharaoh Min,
or Menes, just as Manetho does (Hdt. 2.99.2). He then tells us that 330 kings
“whose names the priests recited from a papyrus roll” came after Min (2.100.1).
Herodotus summarizes these generally: eighteen were Ethiopian, one was a
woman, the rest were Egyptians. Nitocris, the queen, gets a paragraph, as does
137. See p. 315; also Dillery (1999) 97–98.

138. Cf. Dillery (1999) 97–98.
139. Thomas (2000). But note already Lateiner (1986); Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.156–70.
140. Hartog (1986), English version (2002).
141. See esp. Lloyd (1975/1988).
142. Cf., e.g., Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.94, 171
Time 91
Moeris, but on the whole, “of the other kings [the priests] related no achieve-
ment of any degree of brilliance” (2.101.1). He then passes onto the reign of the
world-conqueror Sesostris.143 Lloyd, following Erbse, has suggested ingeniously
that the two errors are to be related: Herodotus knew that the pharaohs left no
greater erga than the pyramids, so when the priests told him that no kings after
Min and before Moeris had left behind any physical monuments of note, he
assumed that the pyramid builders had to have come after Moeris.144 That is
as it may be, but Lloyd’s accounting of Herodotus’ errors does not explain why
he permitted himself to omit almost two thousand years of Egyptian history
simply because there were no physical reminders from this vast period worth
discussing. The omission is doubly surprising given the respect that Herodotus
pays to Egyptian chronology at the section of book 2 concerning the piromis
statues, a passage that, as we will see, reveals the chronology of Hecataeus of
Miletus to be woefully inadequate—indeed, downright puny.145 In any case, I
do not think that Herodotus’ Egyptian informants could have said that there
were no monuments worthy of note between Min and Moeris. In this instance,
Herodotus must have simply chosen to omit much of the information that was
reported to him.
Unfortunately, Manetho’s longest and most informative entry for the
pyramid-building pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty is clearly scarred by later in-
terpolation. Nonetheless, it seems as though his entry for Souphis I, the second
ruler of the dynasty, was precisely one of those places where he sought to cor-
rect Herodotus: “Souphis, ruled for 63 years: he raised up the largest pyramid,
which Herodotus says was made by Cheops.”146 If this statement really belongs
to Manetho, it is important to see that he corrected Herodotus in two ways: first,
by rendering as “Souphis” in Greek the all-important fourth name of the sec-
ond pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, Khufu, which would have been “Shufu” in
the late pronunciation of Manetho’s day;147 and second, by placing the pyramid
builders in the right place in the king list, and thereby creating temporal space
where there had been none in Herodotus’ narrative. It could be argued that
143. Herodotus 2.101.1: τῶν δὲ ἄλλων βασιλέων οὐ γὰρ ἔλεγον οὐδεμίαν ἔργων ἀπόδεξιν,
κατ᾿ οὐδὲν εἶναι λαμπρότητος, πλὴν ἑνὸς τοῦ ἐσχάτου αὐτῶν Μοίριος; 2.102.1: παραμειψάμενος
ὦν τούτους τοῦ ἐπὶ τούτοισι γενομένου βασιλέος, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Σέσωστρις, τούτου μνήμην
ποιήσομαι. The interpretation of the phrase κατ᾿ οὐδὲν εἶναι λαμπρότητος is difficult. I follow
Waddell (1939) 213 ad 2.101.
144. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.189; Erbse (1955) 109–17.
145. See below, pp. 119–22.
146. FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 63 M: Σοῦφις ἔτη ξγ΄. ὃς τὴν μεγίστην ἤγειρε πυραμίδα,
ἥν φησιν Ἡρόδοτος ὑπὸ Χέοπος γεγονέναι.
147. Egyptian hw.f-wi pronounced as “Shufu” in the Late Period, see Lloyd (2007) 329 ad Hdt.
2.124.1. Cf. Beckerath (1999) 52.
Manetho literally “made time” where it had been erased by Herodotus. Indeed,
without the reference to Herodotus, we would not know that Manetho was
correcting him, for Manetho placed the Fourth Dynasty where it belongs and
where it always is found in all Egyptian king lists. Thus, on the Palermo Stone,
for the first year of the Shepseskaf, the last pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, we
are told of the selection of a place for his mastaba tomb, to be called “Shelter-
of-Shepseskaf.”148 With the notice that “Cheops” should in fact be “Souphis,”
we see that Manetho’s project is not only one of preserving the Egyptian past, it
is also one of active engagement with Greek historiographic treatments of the
Egyptian past. Manetho similarly corrected Herodotus’ name for the fourth
king of the Fourth Dynasty, from “Mycerinus” to “Menkheres.”149 Once we have
noted these corrections, however, it is important also to observe, with Henige,
that for all his reliance on the documentary tradition when it came to the pyra-
mid builders, Manetho was not completely faithful. While he has them in the
right place, he has grossly exaggerated their lengths of reign, at least as they are
preserved in the Turin List: Manetho gives sixty-three, sixty-six, and sixty-three
years for the builders of the largest pyramids, while the Turin List gives, respec-
tively, twenty-three, eight, and eighteen (maybe twenty-eight). Henige believed
that Manetho was himself responsible for this expansion of time, “presumably
because [he] felt obliged to credit [the pyramid building pharaohs] with reigns
long enough to encompass a period he thought sufficient to construct these
monuments.”150 This explanation is certainly possible and clearly fits in with the
rationale behind the oral preservation of reign lengths that Henige is discuss-
ing. But I wonder if we might not also see here a case of the sort of asymmetri-
cal response to Greek chronological error familiar from other contexts: just as
the priests of Thebes could show Hecataeus of Miletus to be in error regard-
ing his assertion that gods lay only sixteen generations back, but by a factor of
twenty-one, not only were the pyramid builders in the right place in Manetho,
they reigned a really long time—indeed, long enough to make entirely probable
their responsibility for the construction of the pyramids.
To get back to Herodotus, I think that he left out much of the early his-
tory of pharaonic Egypt because he wanted to get to Sesostris, whose impor-
tance as world conqueror and ideal king was manifest in the Egyptian sources
with which Herodotus was engaged.151 In his race to get to this most impor-
148. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.67, no. 151.

149. Syncellus Chron. 63 M. See esp. Legras (2002) 975.
150. Henige (1974) 43.
151. The precise nature of those sources is variously understood: see e.g. Lloyd (1982b) 37–40;
Obsomer (1989); Ivantchik (1999). Cf. Dicaearchus F 58a W, F 59 Mirhady (below p. 103).
Time 93
tant world-conquering pharaoh, the chronology of Old Kingdom and Middle

Kingdom Egypt was basically omitted. Many have observed that Herodotus’
treatment of Sesostris is essentially that of a model of ideal kingship.152 As such,
it is interesting to note how much attention the same pharaoh gets in Heca-
taeus of Abdera’s own Aegyptiaca (where, of course, he is called “Sesoosis”).
Indeed, Hecataeus’ narrative, if we can trust Diodorus, has an even stronger in-
clination toward the idealizing and away from concern for chronology, though
even he managed, like his contemporary Manetho, to correct Herodotus on
several points of dating, despite really being equally misinformed: notably, he
places the pyramid builders in exactly the same period as did Herodotus (Diod.
1.63.2).153 For Manetho, it could be argued, making time was not just a matter
of transmitting the millennia-old tradition of constructing king lists; it was also
partly an ongoing attempt to counter Greek narratives that, driven by their own
objectives, tended to obscure or even minimize the temporal aspect that was
essential to Egyptian conceptions of the past, at least judging by the continuity
and popularity of the king list tradition.
It is important, at this point, to take up Ryholt’s argument that the Turin
King List is different from the other lists that have survived to us, for it has a
direct bearing on the understanding of Manetho’s purpose. As noted above,
Ryholt questions the use of the term canon in connection with the Turin List.
He notes that
[the Turin List] is, in fact, the only known genuine king-list from an-
cient Egypt. As distinct from a canon, the purpose of the Turin King-list
was evidently to establish an objective record of all kings from primeval
times until—or perhaps including part of—the New Kingdom, in their
correct chronological order, and with length of reign noted for each
king.154
Ryholt has put his finger on an important matter: not all Egyptian king lists
have the same purpose. Indeed, it could be argued that only Manetho and the
Turin List are comprehensive king lists sensu stricto.155 Baines has posited that
the succession of kings must have existed in a textual form of some kind, “sepa-
152. Cf. Lloyd (2007) 313 ad Hdt. 2.102–10.

153. Murray (1970) 162, with schematic of Hecataeus’ chronology at 146. On Hecataeus’ cor-
rection of Herodotus and yet his own identical chronological lapses, see esp. Burstein (1992).
154. Ryholt (1997) 9.
155. Cf. Gardiner (1961b) 47: only the Turin Canon is a “genuine chronicle.” See also Beckerath
(1997) 19–23.
rate from the annals” and their ilk,156 though it bears pointing out that only Ma-
netho and the Turin List represent this list tradition. Relatedly, unlike Manetho
and the Turin List, which are the only ones that were written on papyri, all the
other lists are monumental, are carved into stone, and serve representational
and sacral purposes, as well as a documentary one. They are also narrower or
more selective in scope. Thus the Table of Abydos comes from the temple of
Sety I and depicts him and his son, the future Ramesses II, making offerings
to its list of seventy-six kings named in cartouches, beginning with Menes. The
names of some kings and even whole dynasties were deliberately left off by
the priestly compilers as being illegitimate.157 Similarly, the Table of Saqqara is
from a tomb of an overseer of works, Tjuneroy; its list of fifty-seven rulers is to
identify kings, also named in cartouches, honored by Ramesses II.158 The point
of these lists was not historical but, rather, sacral: to facilitate the worship of
royal ancestors. As A. R. David has observed concerning the Table of Abydos,
“it is certain that the lists found within the temples were placed there not simply
as historical records; their main purpose was to represent the Royal Ancestors
in the ritual which was performed on their behalf.”159 The Table of Karnak had a
list containing only sixty-one names, so whatever its purpose(s) may have been,
it, too, was not comprehensive. Suffice it to say here that “lists were works of
‘sacred’ literature,”160 and the king lists were no exception.
The Palermo Stone is altogether different: it was, strictly speaking, an “an-
nal,” a year-by-year record of notable events for each reign on the list; prominent
throughout is the height of the Nile inundation, given last in the entry for each
year.161 It was clearly not a king list in the sense that Manetho and the Turin List
are, for it does not give reign lengths or dynastic groupings but, rather, has only
annual entries. But of all the monumental lists, the Palermo Stone is perhaps
most like Manetho in its brief annual notices. Thus the entry for either Menes
or Atothis of the First Dynasty for “year x + 1,” “Worship of Horus | Birth of
Anubis,” probably means the holding of festivals for those gods. In “year 1” of
the next pharaoh, we get “6 cubits”—referring to the Nile inundation.162 Cam-
156. Baines (1995) 131.

157. Shaw (2000) 6; see also David (1973) 198.
158. Gardiner (1961b) 50
159. David (1973) 198. Cf. Mariette (1880) 28; Lesko (1969); Baines (2011). See also Shaw
(2000) 9 for a general statement; Sauneron (2000) 142.
160. Baines (1988) 132.
161. Gardiner (1961b) 63.
162. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.57–58, nos. 91, 93. The state of preservation of the Palermo Stone
means that we do not know the names of all the pharaohs, especially early in the list; correspond-
ingly, we do not always know when annual entries begin for pharaohs, thus we find the translation
“year x + 1” and so on in Breasted (1906/1907).
Time 95
paigns and building projects, together with the birth of royal children, are also
indicated, as well as other events. The Fourth Dynasty entries are particularly
detailed: “year x + 2” of Sneferu mentions the building of fleets, as well as walls
for a structure called “Houses of Sneferu”; the “hacking up of Nubians” and
capture of seven thousand prisoners and two hundred thousand cattle; and an
inundation of two cubits and two fingers.163 Perhaps most strikingly, for “year x
+ 12” of a king of the First Dynasty, we read that “there was the first occurrence
of ‘Running-of-Apis.’”164 Schäfer noted some time ago that this entry looks a
great deal like that for Kaiechos, the second ruler of the Second Dynasty on
Manetho’s list:165 “Kaiechos [ruled] 39 years: During his reign, the bulls Apis
and Mnevis in Heliopolis and the Mendesian goat were considered [i.e., wor-
shipped] to be gods.”166 The holding of festivals is commonly mentioned on
the Palermo Stone, as was just noted. While Manetho does report campaigns
and other events of the sort that the stone also has, he does not usually indicate
the holding of festivals. But with Apis, Mnevis, and the Mendesian goat, he at
least indicates the inaugural ones at which they were first “worshipped” as gods.
Perhaps this was because of the importance that these particular cults had to
the early Ptolemies, as to the Persians before them: thus there is the famous epi-
sode where the newly crowned Ptolemy I lent money for the burial of an Apis
(Diod. 1.84.8),167 and the royal maintenance of Apis and Mnevis comes in for
special mention at the priestly synods of 238 BC (Canopus Decree, OGIS 56.9 =
Austin [2006] no. 271) and 196 BC (Rosetta Stone, OGIS 90.31 = Austin [2006]
no. 283).168 This one case serves to make the more general point that chronicle
notices, unknown on the lists of the succession of kings but ubiquitous on the
Palermo Stone and other annals, have been taken up by Manetho and put into
his king list, forming a hybrid of list and chronicle.
Thus, as far as we can tell, among all the chronological texts that come to
163. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.65–66, no. 146. Cf. Malek (2000) 107.
164. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.60, no. 114. Cf. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.63 no. 127 for the “sec-
ond occurrence of the Running-of-Apis,” though another also occurs between nos. 114 and 127
(namely, no. 121), so “first occurrence” from the Palermo Stone may simply mean “first occurrence”
under Kaiechos.
165. Schäfer (1902) 21 n.1. Cf. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.60 n.a; Waddell (1940) 35 n.4.
166. FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 60 M: Καιέχως ἔτη λθ΄. ἐφ᾿ οὗ οἱ βόες Ἆπις καὶ Μηνεὺς
ἐν Ἡλιουπόλει καὶ ὁ Μενδήσιος τράγος ἐνομίσθησαν εἶναι θεοί.
167. Thompson (1988/2012) 106.
168. Canopus Decree: “Since King Ptolemy son of Ptolemy [III] . . . and Queen Berenice . . .
show constant care for Apis and Mnevis and all the other famous sacred animals in the country . . .”
(τοῦ τε Ἄπιος καὶ τοῦ Μνηύιος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ἐνλογίμων ἱερῶν ζώιων). Rosetta Stone: “[Ptolemy
V] has bestowed many gifts on Apis and Mnevis and the other sacred animals in Egypt” (τῶι τε
Ἄπει καὶ τῶι Μνεύει πολλὰ ἐδωρήσατο καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἱεροῖς ζώιοις τοῖς ἐν Αἰγύπτωι). See Hölbl
(2001) 107; Austin (2006) 475 n.8. See also Thompson (1988/2012) 106–17; Hazzard (2000) 112.
Cf. Diod. 1.84.4, where all three sacred animals are mentioned.
us from Egypt, Manetho is alone in the information and structure of his king
list. While he can be seen to be participating in a tradition that is indeed very
old, he was aiming at something quite different with his list of kings.169 It was
important, in the first place, that his list be comprehensive: it left no rulers
out because they were regarded as illegitimate (indeed, remember the Hyksos
kings, discussed above). In Manetho’s eyes, the whole of Egypt’s past had to
be calibrated in terms of its succession of rulers, organized by dynasty and re-
gion. With the partial exception of the Turin List, this was an innovative enter-
prise. The very comprehensiveness of Manetho’s list constituted an argument,
a declaration of sorts about the Egyptian past: like the Turin List, his goal was
“to establish an objective record of all kings from primeval times” until the
last native pharaohs of the Thirtieth Dynasty, with no exceptions. The entire
sweep of Egyptian history, which included (crucially) all the periods of foreign
domination except the last, were set down on papyrus as a text to be read and
consulted, presumably often. But it was also important that the king list, with
its regnal organization, borrow the chronicle notices from true year-by-year
annalistic texts such as the Palermo Stone. These are absent from, for example,
the Turin List and the Table of Abydos. The chronicle notices are important in
and of themselves and because they offered natural slots for the incorporation
of longer narrative texts.
In the comprehensiveness of Manetho’s list and in the presence of its chron-
icle notices, we see his innovation of Egyptian scholarly tradition, and it is in
connection with the innovative nature of Manetho’s king list that I think we
sense most acutely the problem with Henige’s elision of oral and literate list
making. While I can see that the objectives of the monumental inscribed Egyp-
tian lists were similar to lists from nonliterate societies, as texts concerned with
the veneration or worship of forebears and with the construction of notional
genealogies of rulers that explain social structures,170 Manetho’s list was differ-
ent. I think, in this context, of Ruth Finnegan’s observation on the role of writ-
ing in the building of genealogies:
But where there is a permanent and unchangeable record in writing,

there is, by that very fact, at least the possibility of a detailed and self-
conscious check on the truth of historical accounts. For the first time,
as it were, people can become aware of verifiable sources detached from
the immediate time and place with which they are concerned. The past
169. Cf. Bowman (2007) 166.

170. Cf. Vansina (1985) 182–85.
Time 97
can become something objective and analyzable, rather than a transmu-

tation or reflection just of the present.171
With his king list, Manetho was aiming at something like what we see here: an
objective, verifiable, and, I would add, comprehensive treatment of Egypt’s past.
The irony, in connection with the quote from Finnegan above, is that he was
motivated to do this precisely because of the circumstances of his immediate
time and place, that is, Egypt under the new dominant power of the Macedo-
nians and Greeks.
Manetho’s Chronology Part 2: Manetho and Synchronism
At this point, we need to ask why Manetho constructed such a king list. It could,
of course, be argued that Manetho was simply expanding on native tradition.
If other lists were partial and had nonhistorical aims, that does not alter the
fact that Manetho was working in a traditional scholarly idiom: he simply took
up the idea of the list and adapted it for related but distinct historiographic
purposes. At some level, this is surely the case, but it is only an incomplete ex-
planation. It does not make clear what Manetho wanted to achieve with his new
and definitive listing of all of Egypt’s rulers. In the first place, I believe that the
all-inclusive royal list provided Manetho a comprehensive accounting for the
entirety of the Egyptian past, as I have argued above, in part 1 of this discussion.
I believe Manetho also required a chronological frame so that he could orga-
nize and place his narrative blocks. Perhaps most crucially, Manetho needed
a way to make linkages between the Egyptian past and the past of the Greeks.
The king list made possible all these projects. The chronology as frame for Ma-
netho’s stories will be dealt with in chapter 6. Here I would like to focus on
Manetho and synchronism, for I think that with synchronism as our focus, we
can see most clearly why establishing a comprehensive king list with chronicle
statements was so important to him. Synchronism, as articulated through his
king list, allowed Manetho to connect not abstract dates but significant events
and people. Episodes and persons from the Egyptian and Greek (and perhaps
Jewish) pasts were correlated and thereby given special meaning,172 especially
171. Finnegan (1988) 21 (emphasis original).

172. I have deliberately modeled my last two sentences on Feeney (2007) 15: “But [the an-
cients] are not connecting numbers; they are connecting significant events and people. In so doing
they are not placing events within a preexisting time frame; they are constructing a time frame
within which the events have meaning.” See also Asheri (1991/1992) 56.
opening up opportunities for commentary about the priority of the Egyptian

past and its centrality in the history of human civilization.
First, some methodological points are in order. I should begin by explaining
what I mean by “synchronism.” It is not my intention to discuss here the “real”
synchronisms that exist between Egypt and the rest of the Eastern Mediter-
ranean region: an entire series has been devoted to this project, launched by
Manfred Bietak, with its first publication in 2000. It is founded on the basic
fact that Egyptian chronology is “crucial” for establishing the timeline of all
ancient societies in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions.173 Most spec-
tacularly, the famous cuneiform letters between Amenhotep III (1390–1352
BC) and several royal courts throughout the Near East found at Amarna per-
mit the modern historian to establish exact and “direct” documentary linkages
between different ancient cultures and Egypt at particular moments in time.174
But as J. Klinger has recently observed, no other “direct synchronisms” before
the so-called Amarna period are yet possible.175 This fact underscores an im-
portant point: it is the serendipity of material finds such as the Amarna letters
that permits us to see the links between events in Egypt and those in other parts
of the ancient world. Only the accident of royal correspondence, the meeting
of states in conflict and diplomacy, perhaps the trade of goods, and so on al-
low us to see links in time between ancient civilizations. To be sure, as David
Asheri observed, “every chronological statement is, in a sense, a synchronism”:
that is, when we read on the Palermo Stone that in the “year x + 2” of the Pha-
raoh Sneferu, the inundation of the Nile reached two cubits and two fingers,
we are really correlating two events, a regnal year of Sneferu and the particular
inundation of the Nile that occurred within that year.176 That is not the kind of
synchronism I mean here. When an event or person from one community is
correlated with an event or person from another, an external synchronism can
be said to have been established. There are no synchronisms of this type in the
extant king lists of Egypt with the exception of Manetho. If we can trust the
transmission of his chronology (and, as we will see, that is a big “if ”), Manetho
did indeed establish explicit linkages between the history of Egypt, on the one
hand, and events and persons from the Greek past, on the other.
It is important to define more particularly what I mean by synchronism
and then discuss the scholarship on the synchronisms in Manetho. Two types
173. Bietak (2000) 12. Note also Lane Fox (2009) 48.
174. For the terminology, see, e.g., Quack (2007) 34. For an introduction to the Amarna letters,
see Moran (1992) xiii–xxxix.
175. Klinger (2006) 312.
176. Asheri (1991/1992) 52; see also Feeney (2007) 12–16.
Time 99
of synchronization appear in Manetho’s king list: internal synchronism, where

an Egyptian figure is identified with a Greek one, making the linkage implicit;
and external synchronism, where a Greek figure or event is said to have lived
or taken place during the reign of a particular Egyptian ruler. There are a total
of nine Egyptian-Greek linkages in the epitome of Manetho’s chronology.177 Of
these, six are identifications; two are real synchronisms sensu stricto; and one
is both an identification and a synchronism together. Easily the most impor-
tant of Manetho’s pure synchronisms concerns Petoubates, the first pharaoh of
the Twenty-Third Dynasty: “Petoubates—ruled 20 years, during whose reign
the Olympic Games were initiated” (F 2 = Syncellus Chrm. 82 M: Πετουβάτης
ἔτη μ΄, ἐφ’ οὗ ὀλυμπιὰς ἤχθη). If authentic, this correlation of the start of the
Olympics with the reign of an Egyptian king would report not just the begin-
ning of the games but also dating by Olympiad as well, and it would thus be
contemporary with the first systematic attempts in the Greek world to date and
synchronize by Olympiads.
Much scholarly debate has centered on the synchronisms found in Ma-
netho. The synchronism that is evident throughout the Hyksos story as con-
necting events from the Second Intermediate Period with the biblical story of
the exodus—most notoriously the identification of the renegade leprous priest
Osarseph with Moses (F 10 = Jos. Ap. 1.250)—has drawn particular criticism.178
But as Jürgen von Beckerath has put it, really all of Manetho’s synchronisms,
the majority of which link the Greek and Egyptian pasts, are to be questioned.
Beckerath is very rightly concerned that the development of the idea of a
“world-chronicle” and, therefore, one of the central tenets underlying the idea
of international synchronism—the connection of events and persons between
not just disparate communities but two different civilizations—develops after
Manetho’s time:179 in essence, synchronisms do not fit in Manetho’s intellectual
context, either from an Egyptian or a Greek perspective. It bears noting, in
this connection, that Jacoby’s presentation of the notice of the first Olympiad
under Petoubates indicates that he doubted the authenticity of the record.180 It
must further be admitted that while Olympiad dating may seem to have been a
177. For my purposes in this chapter, I am not considering the predynastic divine identifica-
tions that are to be found only in the Armenian translation of Eusebius—namely, that the first
pharaoh was the god Hephaestus (Ptah), the second Helios (Ra), then Kronos and, after Osiris,
Typhon (Seth).
178. Cf. Schäfer (1997) 18–21.
179. Beckerath (1994) 53. He also rightly observes (n.312) that the reference to the vocal statue
of Memnon must postdate Manetho’s composition of the Aegyptiaca, even though a reference to it,
as the name implies, is found in Manetho’s identification of the pharaoh Amenophis III with the
hero of Greek myth. See below, p. 111.
180. Jacoby prints the phrase ἐφ’ οὗ ὀλυμπιὰς ἤχθη in small font.
common enough method of time reckoning in the ancient Greek world, it was
not all that common at the end of the fourth century BC and the beginning of
the third. It is true that the compilation of a list of Olympic victors is attributed
to the fifth-century sophist Hippias of Elis (DK 86 B 3) and that Aristotle and
his relative Callisthenes most certainly drew up a similar list for winners at
the Pythian Games at Delphi in the mid-fourth century, as we can tell from an
important inscription (SIG3 275 = FGrH 124 T 23). But those were different
enterprises from dating unrelated events to Olympiads. To put it another way,
Petoubates was not an Olympic victor but, rather, a pharaoh of Egypt.
While it is true that external synchronism does indeed seem not to be
part of Egyptian scholarly practice in Manetho’s world, contemporary Greek
historiography is an altogether different matter. More than a century before,
both Herodotus and Thucydides occasionally reported or constructed their
own synchronisms. At 1.7.2 of Herodotus’ History, we are told that Candaules,
“whom the Greeks call Myrsilus,” was tyrant of Sardis, an identification that
does not really date the episode he is about to tell or provide any other impor-
tant information; it is “external,” however, inasmuch as a Carian figure is being
given a Greek identity, even if erroneously.181 But Herodotus had synchronisms
that went beyond the ornamental too. He famously links the battles of Plataea
and Mycale (9.100.2, 101.2), and he earlier reports the local Sicilian logos that
the battles of Salamis and Himera were fought on the same day (7.166). Both
are examples of “significant synchronism”—a coincidence of events that sug-
gests that the battles in question and, specifically, their outcomes were at least
partly preordained or even shaped by the divine.182 Herodotus also calculates
precisely the time it took the Persian host to reach Athens in 480, then dates the
destruction of the city by Athenian archon (8.51.1)—the only time he uses this
dating in the whole of the History.183 While not, strictly speaking, a synchro-
nism, the calculation and the dating do act to coordinate the battle of Salamis
in both barbarian and Athenian worlds, with Athens marking the episode de-
finitively, registering in Athenian time the greatest victory in the city’s history.
More structurally central to his narrative is Thucydides’ triangulation of
three time-reckoning systems (priestess of Hera at Argos, ephor at Sparta, ar-
chon at Athens) to mark the beginning of the Peloponnesian War and thereby
to render the date of its start as broadly understood as possible (Thuc. 2.2.1).
Similar in function is Thucydides’ quotation of the Thirty-Year Peace treaty
between Athens and Sparta that established the end of the Archidamian phase
181. Asheri (2007b) 80 ad loc.

182. Cf. Asheri (1991/1992) 55–56; Feeney (2007) 44–45.
183. Bowie (2007) 138 ad loc.
Time 101
of the war, with its reference to the Spartan ephor and Athenian archon (Thuc.
5.19.1).184 It needs to be said, however, that with the exception of cross-cultural
identifications of the “Myrsilus” sort in Herodotus,185 we do not see synchro-
nism between Greek and non-Greek worlds. As will be noted below, the non-
Greek chronologies of Egypt and Lydia were of central importance to Herodo-
tus in his attempt to bring coherence to early Greek history,186 but he did not
practice the sort of exact synchronism that we see in the remains of Manetho.
For an example of a Greek who practiced synchronism on a large scale and
who coordinated events from the Greek and non-Greek worlds, specifically by
means of Olympiad dating, we have to turn to Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.
350–c. 260 BC), an exact contemporary of Manetho.187 Thanks to a reference in
Polybius, we know that Timaeus “made comparisons [συγκρίσεις ποιούμενος]
from earliest times of ephors with the kings at Sparta, and the archons at Ath-
ens and priestesses at Argos he was comparing [παραβάλλων] with the Olym-
pic victors” (Plb. 12.11.1 = FGrH 566 T 10).188 We do not know exactly where
he made these synchronisms, though it is widely believed that it was in his
work entitled Olympic Victors or Chronica Praxidika (cf. Suda s.v. Timaeus =
T 1); in any case, his synchronistic attitude was also felt in his more conven-
tional historical work, the Historiai.189 Momigliano has even observed that
Timaeus’ “love of coincidences was notorious.”190 Timaeus managed to take
up Thucydides’ triangulated dating of the start of the Peloponnesian War and
take one crucial step further: the list of Olympic victors brought “continuity,
length, and universality” to his historiography.191 Although this broadening of
Thucydides’ model is sometimes characterized as in step with widely held views
of chronology in the third century BC,192 Timaeus was a pioneer, at least on
184. See esp. Gomme (1945/1980) 1.8 and 2.2 ad loc.; also Feeney (2007) 17–18. Polybius’ nu-
merous synchronisms were inspired by Thucydides, “to mark the beginning and end of campaign-
ing seasons and to ensure that the reader is in the right year” (Walbank [1974] 73 = [1985] 309).
185. Furthermore, several of these identifications occur in Herodotus’ treatment of Egypt, par-
ticularly the Egyptian equivalents of Greek divine names (2.42.5, 2.144.2), but also other terms
(e.g., 2.30.1: see Munson [2005] 37). It needs to be said that none of these identifications performs
a dating function, even indirectly.
186. See below, p. 122.
187. Cf. Rowton (1948) 61, on Manetho and Timaeus.
188. The translation is based on the punctuation “usually adopted” for the text: see Walbank
(1957/1979) 2.348 ad loc.
189. Walbank (1957/1979) 2.348 considers the list of Olympic victors perhaps “a handbook,
serving as a chronological preparation for Timaeus’ general history”; Walbank usefully compares
Callisthenes’ work on Pythian victors (SIG3 275 = FGrH 124 T 23) as preparation for his study of
the Phocian War. See also Walbank (1972) 101. Cf. Brown (1958) 10, 112 n.55.
190. Momigliano (1977) 51.
191. Clarke (2008) 110.
192. Cf. Momigliano (1977) 49–50.
the scale of time reckoning he attempted. For my purposes here, the most im-
portant synchronism Timaeus made was not between items on his Greek lists
but between the list of Olympic Games and the foundations of both Rome and
Carthage. Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports that much confusion surrounds
the foundation of Rome, including what look like multiple settlements.
Timaeus the Sicilian, using what canon I know not, says that the settle-
ment of Rome which was the last, or foundation, or whatever one should
call it, took place at the same time as the foundation of Carthage, and in
the thirty-eighth year before the first Olympic Games. (D.H. A.R. 1.74.1
= FGrH 566 F 60)193
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this synchronism: as Feeney has

observed, with it, Timaeus became the first writer in antiquity that we know of
who gave a year date for the founding of Rome and thus removed the founda-
tion of the city from the mythic world of the epic nostoi.194 For my purposes
here, it is important to see that non-Greek events have been coordinated with a
Greek one, namely, the founding of Rome and Carthage with the first Olympic
Games. This is unambiguously an “international” synchronism.
This is not a book on Timaeus, so I do not want to linger over him, but it is
worthwhile to draw out three additional points. In a few very important ways,
Timaeus was quite like Manetho in his historiographic outlook. In the Polybius
text I quoted just above, Polybius cites Timaeus’ fascination with chronologi-
cal tables as part of a more general critique of him as a historian obsessed with
documents, searching out inscriptions and lists of proxenoi on the backs of
buildings and in the doorjambs of temples (Plb. 12.11.2 = FGrH 566 T 10): in
other words, he practiced a kind of chronological and documentary exactness
or akribeia (even “mania”) with which Polybius was at least partly at odds (cf.
Plb 12.11.3–4).195 The second point to keep in mind is that Timaeus’ synchro-
nisms were part of a larger project in his historical writing that was aimed at
placing Sicily on an equal footing with Greece.196 The same two points, muta-
tis mutandis, could be said of Manetho’s historiographic enterprise. Finally, as
Frank Walbank has shown regarding Timaeus, the synchronism that Timaeus
193. τὸν δὲ τελευταῖον γενόμενον τῆς ῾Ρώμης οἰκισιμὸν ἢ κτίσιν ἢ ὅτι δήποτε χρὴ καλεῖν
Τίμαιος μὲν ὁ Σικελιώτης οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅτῳ κανόνι χρησάμενος ἅμα Καρχηδόνι κτιζομένῃ γενέσθαι
φησὶν ὀγδόῳ καὶ τριακσοτῷ πρότερον τῆς πρώτης ὀλυμπιάδος. See Pearson (1987) 47.
194. Feeney (2007) 92. Cf. Clasen (1883) 30–31; more recently, Asheri (1991/1992) 62.
195. Cf. Meister (1975) 54; Schepens (2007) 51; Vattuone (2007) 199, noting that Polybius
“acknowledged Timaeus’ almost maniacal care for documents.”
196. Feeney (2007) 47–48.
Time 103
established for the battle of Himera was not with Salamis (a Greek victory) but
with Thermopylae (a Greek defeat),197 suggesting that synchronization could
also be competitive and polemical—in this case, with Herodotus, whose syn-
chronism of Himera and Salamis was famous. We know that Manetho criti-
cized Herodotus; perhaps we can see “corrective” synchronism in his work as
well. In the case of his synchronization of the reign of the pharaoh Petoubates
with the first Olympic Games, it could perhaps be argued that since Manetho
nowhere else alludes to Olympiads, this one reference both acknowledges the
Greek system of time reckoning and also rejects it, inasmuch as it never recurs.
This is an argument from silence, of course, and is problematic for that reason.
But what a silence!
It is one thing to point out that synchronization, linking the pasts of differ-
ent parts of the Mediterranean world and Greece, was taking place at exactly
the same time that Manetho lived and wrote; it is quite another to prove that
a particular Greek historian inspired Manetho to construct his own linkages
between Egypt and Hellas. This I cannot do. I could point out that Agathocles,
king of Syracuse, was connected to the house of Ptolemy I by marriage;198 that
relations between Hieron II of Syracuse (275/4–215 BC) and Ptolemaic Egypt
were also good, in exactly the years contemporary with Manetho, implying
continuous commercial and cultural interchange between Egypt and Sicily in
this period;199 and that Sicilian intellectuals such as the Syracusan Theocritus
were even active at the court of Ptolemy II.200 But these facts do not help much.
More significant as a precedent for the Olympiad dating of Manetho is another
Sicilian with an interest in Egypt and synchronization, Dicaearchus of Messene,
who flourished c. 320–c. 300 BC. In a scholium to Apollonius of Rhodes, we
learn the following:
Dicaearchus in his first [book says] that after Or, son of Isis and Osiris,
Sesonchosis became king. There are 2,500 years from Sesonchosis to the
kingship of Nilus, and from the kingship of Nilus to the capture of Troy
7, and from the capture of Troy to the first Olympiad 436, altogether
[totaling] 2,943 years. (F 58a Wehrli, F 59 Mirhady = Schol. vetus Apol-
lon. Rhod. 4.276)201
197. Diod. 11.24.1, following Timaeus. See Walbank (1989/1990) 43 = (2002) 167. See also
Clarke (2008) 102 n.59, Baron (2013) 110–11.
198. Will (1979/1982) 1.118–120; cf. (1984) 107.
199. Huss (1976) 173; see also Hölbl (2001) 133.
200. Griffiths (1979); Hunter (2003).
201. Δικαίαρχος δὲ ἐν αʹ μετὰ τὸν Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος Ὦρον βασιλέα γεγονέναι Σεσόγχωσιν.
γίνεται δὲ ἀπὸ Σεσογχώσεως ἐπὶ τὴν Νείλου βασιλείαν ἔτη ͵βφʹ, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς Νείλου βασιλείας ἐπὶ
Here, very clearly, is a text that predates Manetho’s Aegyptiaca and contains
within it a synchronism keyed to Olympiad that locates Egyptian figures on
a grid of Greek time—or, rather, the other way round: a capsule summary of
Egyptian kings is given, going down to “Nilus,” and it is relative to his reign
that the capture of Troy is calculated and, from there, the first Olympic Games.
Moreover, the passage comes from a text, Dicaearchus’ Life of Greece (Bios
Hellados), that was, despite its name, precisely concerned with what might be
called “world history.”202 Can we assume that the first Olympic Games and, by
implication, Olympiad dating itself were items on Manetho’s radar when they
were only just beginning to be experimented with as units of time reckoning
in the Greek world? I hesitate to press the point, but I do note that in addition
to emphasizing that Dicaearchus was the first to use the Olympiad to date the
fall of Troy, Burkert also observes that “Olympia seems to have loomed large
in Aristotle’s historical studies.”203 Aristotelians—members of the so-called
Peripatos—were important players in the early Hellenistic kingdoms, and the
earliest Ptolemies were no exception. Remember that it was the Aristotelian
Demetrius of Phalerum, himself also a chronographer who authored a work on
the Record of (Athenian) Archons (FGrH 228 FF 1–3),204 who helped to design
and institute the Museum and Library at Alexandria.205 We are left to won-
der why Dicaearchus employed Egyptian kings to help him date what are the
benchmark events of the Greek past. It seems that, much like Herodotus before
him (at least as Burkert has understood him),206 Dicaearchus could conceive of
world history, albeit a very hellenocentric one, but also realized that Greek time
reckoning was simply not up to the task of charting the world’s past. Hence it
was natural for him to appeal to a society whose control over history was ex-
act and measureable, one he would have known (if superficially: the pharaonic
names are problematic) mainly through Greek historical writing.207
Could Manetho have been exposed to “cutting-edge” Greek chronographic
methodology thanks to members of the Peripatos in his midst, others at the
τὴν Ἰλίου ἅλωσιν ζʹ, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς Ἰλίου ἁλώσεως ἐπὶ τὴν αʹ Ὀλυμπιάδα υλϛʹ, ὁμοῦ ͵βϡμγʹ. The supple-
ment is derived from F 58b Wehrli, though there are discrepancies with 58a (“Sesostris” rather than
“Sesonchosis,” a slightly different total, and no mention of Troy). Cf. Ax (2000) 342 n.15; Alonso-
Núñez (1997) 55–56; id. (2002) 91 and n.79; Burton (1972) 186 ad Diod. 1.63.1.
202. Note esp. Alonso-Núñez (1997). See also Jacoby (1949) 142; Cole (1990) 4. Fornara (1983)
43 points out that Ephorus of Cyme (FGrH 70) was really the first to write “universal history”
and that he did so precisely to give Greek culture (paideia) a history in the world of other ancient
cultures.
203. Burkert (1995) 143 = (2001) 226. Cf. Clasen (1883) 29.
205. See ch. 1, pp. 26–27 and n.103.
206. Burkert (1995).
207. Note esp. “Nilus.” For the legendary “Sesonchosis,” see pp. 312–15.
Time 105
court of Soter and Philadelphus, where we know he was active?208 I admit that
this is very speculative, and, in any case, the phrase itself may not be original
to Manetho. It is an arresting thought, however, and one that gains a little sup-
port by the fact that, as we will see immediately below in his identification of
the “pharaoh” Thyoris with Polybus of Egypt from the Odyssey, Manetho seems
almost certainly to have been one of the first writers to use the “holes” left in
Homer—implying an intimate knowledge of Trojan myth. Further, both dat-
ing by Olympiad and the Olympics themselves were perhaps worth Manetho’s
notice partly because they were so important to the early Ptolemies. Dorothy
Thompson has drawn our attention recently to the importance played by the
old panhellenic games at the new Hellenistic courts: as we learn from Posidip-
pus, Soter was celebrated as victor in the chariot at Olympia, as was Philadel-
phus; and the early Ptolemaic queens were at least as successful.209 Further, in
the Nikouria decree of 263, which is about the time Manetho was working on
the Aegyptiaca or a little later, Philadelphus was eager to make the Ptolemaia
in honor of Soter “equal in rank to the Olympics” (literally isolumpios).210 Re-
member, too, that we are only one generation away from the list of Olympic
victors compiled by the Alexandrian scholar Eratosthenes of Cyrene (FGrH
241 FF 4–14), the successor to Apollonius of Rhodes as the head of the great
Library at Alexandria.211 Finally, we should not forget the odd story, reported
by Herodotus, that during the reign of Psammetichus II, an embassy from Elis
came to Egypt seeking learned counsel regarding how best to hold the Olym-
pic Games (2.160). It is no doubt untrue,212 but since Manetho seems to have
known Herodotus well, especially on Egypt, he will have read the story and will
thus have known of the great importance of the games, as well as an imagined
Egyptian advisory role in conducting them.
Though none of these texts or authors except for Herodotus can be in any
way linked directly to Manetho, they suggest that synchronism and further
synchronism with Olympiad dating were not impossibilities in Manetho’s time
in Greek thought. In what follows, I shall defend many (not all) of Manetho’s
synchronisms, and I am fully aware that there are considerable problems at-
tending each one. It is probably best to start with the one example where both
identification and synchronism can be found. This happens also to be a case
208. Cf. Walbank (1993) 124, pondering whether we can imagine Manetho to have read au-
thors like Callimachus.
209. Thompson (2005) 272–74; see also van Bremen (2007) 361–62.
210. The Nikouria decree designates the Ptolemaia as an agon isolumpios (SIG3 390). See
Thompson (2005) 280 and n.64.
211. See esp. Möller (2005).
212. Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.165 ad loc.
where the transmitted text can be attributed to Manetho with greater, if not
absolute, confidence, inasmuch as it occurs in all the versions of the epitome.
Under the last entry for the Nineteenth Dynasty, we find the following:
ς Θούωρις, ὁ παρ’ Ὁμήρῳ καλούμενος Πόλυβος, Ἀλκάνδρας ἀνήρ, ἐφ’

οὗ τὸ᾽ Ἰλιον ἑάλω, ἔτη ζ΄. (Syncellus Chron. 80 M)
[Ruler 6: Thyoris, the one called by Homer Polybus, husband of Alkan-

dre, in whose reign Ilium was captured; [ruled] seven years.]
It is troubling that the regnal period is given after the narrative tag. Manetho’s
normal practice is to give, first, the length of reign after the name of the ruler
and, then, any narrative information he has to relay. But what he does here is
not without parallel elsewhere in the Aegyptiaca.213 It is best to begin with the
identification: “Thyoris, the one called by Homer Polybus.” Several points are
worth making here. First, Thyoris is clearly identified as a male figure, and yet
the corresponding ruler in Egyptian lists is Twosre, a wife of Sety II, who ruled
after her husband’s death, first as regent for the child pharaoh Siptah and then,
for a couple of years, in her own name.214 Gardiner was of the opinion that
Manetho’s “‘Thyoris’ . . . gives in distorted form the name Twosre, though there
misrepresented as a male.”215 A similar confusion arises for Queen Hatshepsut,
who Manetho’s list identifies as “Amensis,” “the fourth [king]” of the Eighteenth
Dynasty. But what of the identification of Thyoris with Polybus? The connec-
tion to Polybus is clearly derived from Homer’s Odyssey (4.126ff.). Although
Polybus is not an uncommon name in Greek myth and occurs even in Homer
several times, referring to different people (one person in the Iliad, four differ-
ent ones in the Odyssey), it is only in these lines of the Odyssey that we find an
Egyptian woman, “Alkandre, wife of Polybus.” It bears noting that, correspond-
ingly, this is the only king in Manetho’s list whose spouse is also named. This
is precisely because Manetho was using, either directly or indirectly, this very
section of the Odyssey, where Homer names Alkandre first and devotes at least
as much attention to her as to her husband. The identification is significant
because we see in it a very early instance of a technique of chronology building
that was to become important in the Hellenistic period: finding the “holes” in
Homer’s text and filling them in.
213. Cf. Sabakon, the first ruler of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty (Syncellus Chron. 83 M).
214. Cf. Beckerath (1962) 72: the seven years given for the reign of Twosre in Manetho include
those when she ruled jointly with the child pharaoh Siptah, whereas the reign of her deceased
husband Sety II was always separate.
215. Gardiner (1958) 20.
Time 107
Remember that Higbie noted that the record of dedications and epiphanies
of Athena Lindia (the Lindian Chronicle) was clearly written with an eye on
Homer: where “holes” were left in the epic narrative—that is, where persons or
objects are mentioned but left undeveloped or elaborated—the local historian
often intervenes, taking up such persons and items with strong local associa-
tions and providing further information relating to these otherwise obscure in-
dividuals and things.216 The effect is to appropriate epic kleos for a local hero or
shrine and, simultaneously, go beyond the epic inheritance by filling in Homer.
This seems to be what Manetho has done in the case of Thyoris/Polybus, except
that he was working two hundred years before the Lindian Chronicle. In this
way, Manetho can be seen as innovative by Greek standards, not to mention his
own Egyptian ones: he is filling narrative holes, and he is dating by Olympiads.
Similarly, what motivates the identification of Thyoris with Polybus is the
synchronism of his reign with the fall of Troy. Manetho clearly wanted to pro-
vide the most important event of the Greek mythical past with an Egyptian
date. He achieved this through the identification of a suitable figure of Homeric
pedigree with a specific pharaoh of approximately correct date. Indeed, we
might query the idea here of “suitable figure.” Scholars have noted that Polybus
and Alkandre are identified in Homer as not a royal couple but merely two
high-status persons, a “lord and lady” who entertained Menelaus and Helen
during their sojourn in Egypt and gave them gifts.217 This discontinuity, com-
bined with the obvious problem that the “real” Twosre was a woman, convinces
me that Manetho has forced his material here, precisely to make use of the op-
portunity presented by Polybus and Alkandre of Odyssey 4.
Some may complain that this particular line of reasoning is forced, but how-
ever one wants to decide the question, this dual identification and synchronism
is the only such case in all of Manetho’s extant chronology, at least when it
comes to connections between the Egyptian and Greek pasts. Is this because
it was the most important link for an Egyptian to make with Greek antiquity?
It seems so. The double synchronism and identification reinforce and support
each other, precisely at this most crucial point in the Greek past. Although it
is somewhat of a frivolous point, I note, finally, that votives—that is, the very
items that constitute the backbone of the temple chronicles in the Greek world
such as we find at Lindos in Rhodes—were not infrequently made by Egyptians
or were in some way connected to Egyptian rulers, beginning already in the
archaic period: the votive of Pedon, son of Amphinneus, from Priene probably
dates to the end of the seventh century; and at the other end of the scale are
216. See above, p. 73 and n.83, and below pp. 183–90.

217. S. West (1988) 202 ad Od. 4.125–27. It is not infrequently assumed, incorrectly, that they
were royal: see the translation of the passage in Fagles (1996) 128, line 141.
references to dedications by Amasis in the Lindian Chronicle.218 Both the idea

of Greeks traveling with gifts from powerful Egyptians and the notion of Egyp-
tians themselves giving votives to Greek sanctuaries were facts of life for Mane-
tho. In this context, perhaps we should remember, too, the presence in Greece
(Athens, Eretria) in the second half of the fourth century of active shrines to
Isis, servicing Egyptian communities to be sure, but no doubt making an im-
pression on the native Greek inhabitants as well.219
The last pure synchronism of Manetho is extremely problematic. We learn
that in the reign of Misphragmouthosis, the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth
Dynasty, “the flood at the time of Deucalion occurred” (F 2 = Syncellus Chron.
78 M: Μισφραγμούθωσις ἔτη κς΄, ἐφ’ οὗ ὁ ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος κατακλυσμός).
Jacoby had strong reservations about this statement, to judge by his editorial
hand in FGrH.220 The problem, I think, is that while the Flood story was ter-
ribly important to the later Christian authors who used Manetho (men such
as Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus), the Flood, while not unattested before
Manetho’s time in the Greek world, was, for all that, a minor myth for the
Greeks.221 References to Deucalion and Pyrrha are found in the Hesiodic Cata-
logue of Women (FF 2–7 Merkelbach-West), Pindar’s Olympian 9 (lines 43–53),
and the fragments of the comic poet Epicharmus (K-A 1 FF 113–20), but they
are few and do not constitute an important set of notices, such as we get to
the Trojan or Theban cycles throughout Greek archaic and classical literature.
Hellanicus of Lesbos did write a work entitled Deukalioneia (FGrH 4 FF 6–
18), but to judge from the testimonia, it was not widely read.222 If the synchro-
nism is genuine and belongs to Manetho,223 I think that we would have a case
that suggested the interaction, in this instance, of not only Greek and Egyptian
thought but also the scholarship of the Near East, for it is in that context that
218. Pedon SEG 37.994. Cf. Vittmann (2003) 203–6 and plate 103. See Briant (2002) 483,
noting that the gifts bestowed on Pedon have both Egyptian and Achaemenid parallels. Pedon
was likely a Greek mercenary who served in Egypt under Pharaoh Psammetichus I or II. See esp.
Masson and Yoyotte (1988); Ampolo and Bresciani (1988); Burkert (2004) 10, 146 n.44. Cf. SEG
39.1266. For Amasis in the Lindian Chronicle, see FGrH 532 F 1, section C 29.
219. SIG3 280 = RO 91, a decree permitting Cypriots from Citium to build a shrine to Aphro-
dite/Ourania in Athens, refers, at the end, to a sanctuary of Isis built by the Egyptians. Rhodes &
Osborne (2003) 465 cite as a parallel to the sanctuary at Athens one at Eretria from about the same
period, following Fraser’s dating: IG XII Supp. 562. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.260, 2.410 n.525. Note also
Brady (1935).
220. The phrase gets double brackets, indicating a later interpolation.
221. Cf. Gantz (1993) 165–66. Note that there are virtually no ancient visual representations of
Deucalion or Pyrrha: see de Bellefonds (1986). Though note Hecataeus of Miletus FGrH 1FF 13–16.
222. Setting aside the citations in Stephanus of Byzantium (ten altogether), there are only three
sources that note the work by name: the scholiast to Apollonius, Athenaeus (once only), and a brief
mention in Clement of Alexandria. But note also FF 117–33. Cf. Jacoby (1912) 114 = (1956b) 267.
223. Note that Josephus, in his review of Gentile authors who treated the Flood, mentions one
Hieronymus “the Egyptian” who wrote an archaeology of Phoenicia (Jos. AJ 1.93 = FGrH 787 F 2).
Time 109
the Flood was indeed important, as in the case of Manetho’s contemporary,

Berossus. This possibility, remote though it is, raises the problem of interac-
tions that go beyond Greece and Egypt in Manetho’s writing. I just note here
that the Flood is doubly dated in Manetho, for it is described as “the cataclysm
that occurred during the time of Deucalion,” which, in turn, happened during
the reign of Misphragmouthosis. It is difficult to see how else Manetho could
have described the Greek account of the Deluge, but it is tempting to speculate
that, insofar as it was epoch-making in the Greek world (as Flood stories always
are), so Manetho permitted it to retain some of that epochal value in his own
chronological account. Much like the episode, reported in Plato’s Timaeus (22
a), where Solon is corrected by Egyptian priests and made to see that the Greeks
are a very young people, despite Solon’s mention of the oldest Greek myths
(τὰ ἀρχαιότατα), including Deucalion and Pyrrha,224 so Deucalion’s flood in
Manetho is shown to be a fairly recent event, by Egyptian standards. Perhaps
we here again have competitive synchronism, as another early watershed mo-
ment for the Greeks, like the first Olympic Games, is found a historical place
in Egyptian time.
I do not consider as genuine to Manetho a statement from the Eusebian
Excerpta Latina Barbari printed by Waddell in his text and translation of Ma-
netho: “Apion the grammarian . . . believed that [the pharaoh] Amusis lived in
the time of Inachus who was king at the founding of Argos.”225 For one thing,
the synchronism works in the wrong direction for a text conceived in Egypt. By
way of comparison, note that it was Troy that fell during the reign of Thyoris,
not Thyoris who reigned when Troy fell. For this excerpt to be genuine, I would
expect it to refer instead to “Amusis, during whose lifetime Inachus was king
of Argos.” It needs to be said that the Latin of this text is badly “mangled” and
corrupt.226 But if this statement or something like it was an authentic notice in
Manetho’s chronology, we see an emphasis on the early history of Argos. This
detail is extremely important, for, as we shall also see below, myths related to
Argos recur in Manetho’s chronography, perhaps because the Ptolemies them-
selves sought a connection to the Argead ruling house of Macedon,227 a family
whose most famous scion, Alexander the Great, vigorously fostered a connec-
tion to the most important Argive of myth, Heracles.228
All the remaining linkages between Egypt and Greece that we find in the
224. Cf. Detienne (1981) 166; also Caneva (2007) 93–98, on the Deucalion myth and Egypt, in
his discussion of Apollonius of Rhodes 3.1085–90.
225. Waddell (1940) F 4, translation and notes ad loc.; cf. Schoene (1875) 215 (app. 6).
226. Waddell (1940) 18 n.4.
227. Fraser (1972) 1.45.
228. See Diod. 17.1.5; Plut. Mor. 334D and Alex. 2.1; Curtius 4.2.3. See, e.g., Lane Fox (1973)
41, 44–45; Green (1991) 5. For Alexander I, cf. Badian (1994).
extant remains of Manetho’s chronology involve not synchronism of unrelated

events sensu stricto but the identification of Egyptian individuals with Greek
ones. That said, the identifications themselves are often complicated statements
whose meanings are problematic if looked at with care. In particular, it is diffi-
cult to know what Manetho means when he states that a certain Egyptian figure
is considered to be an equivalent Greek one; these identifications are always
concerned with legendary or semilegendary heroes. Thus we read that the sec-
ond ruler of the Third Dynasty was “Tosorthros [who ruled] 29 years. During
his reign [lived] Imouthes. This man is considered [νενόμισται] Asclepius by
the Egyptians because of his medical knowledge; he discovered house build-
ing that uses hewn stone, and he also made a study of writing.”229 Obviously,
the Egyptians do not consider Imouthes (aka Imhotep) to be Asclepius—why
would the Egyptians employ a Greek name for one of their own culture heroes?
Indeed, contrast the phrasing from the closing of P. Oxy. 1381, the famous Praise
of Imouthes-Asclepius: “Every Greek tongue will tell thy story, and every Greek
man will worship the son of Ptah, Imouthes” (editors’ translation). Rather, what
Manetho means here is probably that the Egyptians view Imouthes in the same
way the Greeks view Asclepius, namely, as the inventor of medicine.230 Indeed,
we are really not that far away from the sentiment expressed by Herodotus at
the start of book 2 of his history, where he states that he shall report the names
only of the Egyptian gods on the grounds that explaining everything else about
Egyptian belief in the gods was unnecessary, “thinking that all humanity has
equal knowledge concerning them” (2.3.2).231 The wording here in Manetho is
significant. It seems to imply an authority holding forth before a Greek audience
that is being told what “Imouthes” means to the Egyptians. The identification
loses any chronographic significance when seen in this way, because no claims
of exact identity are being made and because the linkage is itself timeless. More
229. FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 62 M + Sethe’s corrections, followed by Waddell:

Τόσορθρος ἔτη κθ΄ 〈ἐφ’ οὗ Ἰμούθης〉. οὗτος Ἀσκληπιὸς 〈παρὰ τοῖς〉 Αἰγυπτίοις κατὰ τὴν ἰατρικὴν
νενόμισται, καὶ τὴν διὰ ξεστῶν λίθων οἰκοδομίαν εὕρατο· ἀλλὰ καὶ γραφῆς ἐπεμελήθη. See Sethe
(1902) 18–19. Cf. Wildung (1977) 88–89; Adler and Tuffin (2002) 79 n.4; Baines (2007) 39 and
n.8, 104. Note that the pharaoh in question is Djoser: Tsr<; Dsr. See Ryholt (2009b) 308. Armayor
(1985) 9 objects to the correction.
230. On Herodotus and the naming of Egyptian gods, cf. Linforth (1926) esp. 10–11 = (1987)
56–57; (1940) esp. 301 = (1987) 73. Note the reservations of Harrison (2000) 251–64.
231. νομίζων πάντας ἀνθρώπους ἴσον περὶ αὐτῶν ἐπίστασθαι. Thomas (2000) 274–75 has, I
think, crucially misunderstood the Greek here. She translates, “I am not keen to describe (or “ex-
pound”) those divine accounts which I heard, except only the names (ounomata), thinking that all
men understand these equally” (my emphasis). Yet, as observed ad loc. in, e.g., Lloyd (2007) 244
and Waddell (1939) 120, the phrase in question refers to the gods themselves and makes Herodo-
tus’ complete thought something like “I will report only the Egyptian gods’ names, on the assump-
tion that all people have the same belief about the gods once their identity is understood”; it makes
no sense for all people to have the same thoughts about the names of the Egyptian gods.
Time 111
important, if the wording is genuine to the Aegyptiaca, Manetho is speaking

almost as a Greek to other Greeks—it is a form of colonial ventriloquism, as it
were. Note that in Herodotus, the Greek term is almost always the norm, and
the non-Greek term requires the gloss.232 This ventriloquism, if authentic, is
remarkable on Manetho’s part, for the Egyptian attitude toward barbarity and
the divine was precisely that the foreigner would “act in a blasphemous way
toward the gods,” who would then abandon Egypt:233 the proper names of the
gods were not replaceable with foreign ones.
At first glance, the identification we see in connection with Amenophis III,
the sixth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, seems similar: “Amenophis [ruled] 31
years. This is the king who is believed to be Memnon and the speaking stone.”234
Since the famous vocal colossus did not start to “speak” until after it was dam-
aged, probably during the earthquake of 26 BC,235 the mention of the “speak-
ing stone” cannot belong to Manetho—though it is worth pointing out here
that, with the exception of Gardiner’s article of 1961,236 few scholars seem to
have noticed this text,237 which, if really Manetho’s, would radically alter our
understanding of the monument. It is even more important to register the use
again of nomizo, here in the form of the present participle νομιζόμενος. Like
νενόμισται of the notice concerning Imouthes, it suggests that the identifica-
tion of Amenophis with Memnon is an ongoing activity. But exactly what is
meant? Since we are not told by whom Amenophis is considered Memnon, it
is hard to interpret νομιζόμενος: it could mean “believed,” in which case the
group doing the believing would presumably be the Greeks; but if it means
“treated” or “considered,” the group involved could just as easily be the Egyp-
tians, for whom Amenophis was their Memnon, as it were.
Yet more unsettling is the wording of the notice for the second ruler of
the Twenty-Third Dynasty: “Osorcho [ruled] 8 years, whom the Egyptians call
Heracles” (F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 82 M: Ὀσορχὼ ἔτη μ΄, ὃν Ἡρακλέα Αἰγύπτιοι
καλοῦσι). This is patently false: presumably, the Egyptians call Osorcho “Osor-
cho.” There is no doubt about the meaning of the Greek in the sentence. Com-
232. Hartog (1988) 241–42. Cf. Munson (2005) 30–31. Note the interesting case of Hdt.
2.144.2, where Apollo is the god whom the Greeks call “Horus,” discussed on next page.
233. Assmann (2002) 396.
234. FGrH 609 F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 80 M: Ἀμένωφις ἔτη λα΄. Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Μέμνων εἶναι
νομιζόμενος καὶ φθεγγόμενος λίθος.
235. Date of “vocal Memnon,” see Bowersock (1984) 25–26 = (1994b) 257–58; Foertmeyer
(1989) 23–24. Cf. Bernand and Bernand (1960) 31; Sijpesteijn (1990).
236. Gardiner (1961a) 98 notes, “If these words had stood in the original Manetho, the damage
done to the statue, as well as the resultant noise, would have gone back as far as the time Ptolemy
Philadelphus.” But Gardiner dismisses the possibility on the next page.
237. Though see Beckerath (1994) 53 n.312 (above, n.179).
pare some telltale parallels from Herodotus, such as his statement that “the
Egyptians call Zeus ‘Amun’” (2.42.5: Ἀμοῦν γὰρ Αἰγύπτιοι καλέουσι τὸν Δία),
where the object of the verb is clearly τὸν Δία (with the article) and where the
predicate is Ἀμοῦν.238 This is the standard formula for Herodotus’ translations
of “foreign” gods into Greek, with the Greek term (“x”) acting as the object
or subject (“x is called y,” or “they call x y”) modified by the foreign term in
the predicate (“y”). Conversely, elsewhere in the same book of Herodotus, we
are told of the rule of Horus, the son of Osiris, the first of “whom the Greeks
name ‘Apollo’” (2.144.2: . . . Ὦρον τὸν Ὀσίριος παῖδα, τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα Ἕλληνες
ὀνομάζουσι). Here we have exactly the same substantive/predicate configura-
tion as we see in Manetho’s statement—relative pronoun acting as object, with
Apollo as predicate.239 But note that Herodotus is asserting that the Greeks
call Horus “Apollo,” not the other way around. What sort of mental gymnas-
tics must we imagine Manetho to have gone through for his identification of
Osorcho to make sense? Expanding the notice, if we understand it to mean
something like “Osorcho—this is what the Egyptians say when they mean Her-
acles,” I think we get close to what Manetho himself might have been attempt-
ing to say.240 Again, a Greek audience (not surprisingly) is the implied one of
such a statement, but the translation interference is considerable. By contrast,
note that Berossus is scrupulous to give the Babylonian name first and then the
Greek equivalent, among others (F 12): thus “Omorka” is the goddess known in
Chaldaean as “Thalath” and “translated into Greek as Thalassa” (F 1 = Syncellus
Chron. 30 M: Ἑλληνιστὶ δὲ μεθερμηνεύεσθαι Θάλασσα), and “Bel” is the god
the Greeks translate as “Zeus” (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 30 M: τὸν δὲ Βῆλον, ὃν
Δία μεθερμηνεύουσι).
Osorcho is not the only Egyptian who is identified as Heracles. After the di-
vine rulers of Egypt are listed, we find the nine demigods who served as kings;
the fourth of these, at least as found in Syncellus as occurring in Manetho’s
archaiologia, is Heracles, who ruled for fifteen years (F 27 = Syncellus Chron. 19
M). It is tempting to see in the two Heracleses of Manetho’s list the two Heracle-
ses that Herodotus speaks of in connection with the Egyptian correction of
Greek mythology (2.43–44): according to Herodotus, the Egyptians thought
Heracles was one of the Twelve Olympians (2.43.1), and Herodotus dates him
to seventeen thousand years before Amasis (Hdt. 2.43.4).241 It is certainly the
case that Manetho took explicit notice of Herodotus elsewhere in the chronol-
238. Burkert (1985) 125–26 = (2007) 165–66. Cf. Griffiths (1955a) 23; Harrison (2000) 255.
239. See also Hdt. 2.42.2: “. . . Osiris, whom they [the Egyptians] say is Dionysus.”
240. See again Linforth, above n.230.
241. Cf. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.186, 2.201–5.
Time 113
ogy, but in those two cases, he did so only to correct misrepresentations of royal
names: he notes that Herodotus called Menes “Men” and that he called the great
pyramid builder “Cheops” instead of “Souphis.”
Before moving on to my conclusion, I want to follow up some of the impli-
cations of Manetho’s handling of the identification of Osorcho with Heracles.
Again, if we can trust the transmission of the text, Manetho, an Egyptian priest,
actually wrote that the Egyptians call Osorcho “Heracles.” To make sense of this
statement, I think it useful to think about Frankfurter’s concept of stereotype
appropriation. To be sure, we do not have in Manetho a figure like Heliodorus’
globe-trotting Kalasiris or the historical Harnouphis, but I think we can see in
him, in nuce, a standpoint of priestly mediation between cultures that Frank-
furter has sketched for us so clearly, though for a much earlier period than he
was treating.242 In the Osorcho notice, Manetho essentially becomes a Greek
explaining Egyptian culture to fellow Greeks; it is from this perspective that his
notice about “Osorcho” can be taken to be the same as saying “this is what the
Egyptians say when they mean Heracles.” Perhaps Jacco Dieleman’s observa-
tions on the “paradox of translation” can help here. Just as there is a patent il-
logicality in having an injunction not to translate into Greek a piece of Egyptian
sacred wisdom in a text that is itself written in Greek, such as Treatise 16 in the
Hermetic Corpus,243 so there is a patent fallacy involved in attributing a Greek
name to Egyptian speakers. It is true that in the case of the Treatise 16 (and the
cases could be multiplied, including material that goes beyond Greco-Roman
Egypt), the injunction is a way to give authority and cache to a secret wisdom
text thought to derive from a non-Greek culture, and such authorization is not
really in question in Manetho’s notice. His authority derives from his position
as a hellenophone Egyptian priest, details that were probably laid out in his
proem. Insofar as it is the Greek language that permits Manetho’s identifica-
tions to be drawn, we seem to be taken far from the world of Herodotus on
Egypt, particularly when he claimed that “nearly all the names of the gods came
to Greece from Egypt” (Hdt. 2.50.1).
It is also worth wondering why Heracles comes in for such attention in
Manetho’s chronology, perhaps making even two appearances.244 Heracles was
242. Frankfurter (1998) esp. 225.
243. Dieleman (2005) esp. 182–3 for “paradox of translation.”
244. Moyer (2011) 108–9 suggests that Heracles is important to Manetho because the hero is
central to Herodotus’ chronology, being synchronized implicitly with the pharaoh Sesostris. This
implicit synchronization rests on the contention that Herodotus dates “both about 900 years before
his own day”; but Herodotus makes this dating only in connection with Heracles (Hdt. 2.145.4).
The citation to Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.171–94 at Moyer (2011) 108 n.82 does not support Moyer’s
claim. In short, it takes a great deal of effort to make out a synchronism between Heracles and Seso-
stris in Herodotus, implicit or otherwise. Explicit synchronisms are rare in Herodotus (cf. Osborne
the prototypical Greek hero, of course, so interest in him is natural. But it is

tempting to wonder if his role as a member of the Argive ruling house is also
important here. We have already noted that Alexander the Great and all Argead
kings of Macedon considered themselves descendants of the royal family of
Argos and that the same connection was also important to the Ptolemies. For
example, Theocritus, in his Idyll 17, prominently stresses the descent from Her-
acles of both Ptolemy I and Alexander (17.26–27).245 Might we not see Mane-
tho responding to this Ptolemaic interest in the Argive connection? The same
royal house comes in for considerable attention with the brothers Sethos and
Harmais, identified as Aegyptus and Danaus, respectively, in one of Josephus’
borrowings from Manetho. Indeed, Josephus tells us that Danaus later went
to Argos (Ap. 1.102–3 F 9);246 in the Eusebian version of Manetho’s chronol-
ogy, we learn that Harmais/Danaus conquered Argos and became the king of
the Argives (Syncellus Chron. 81 M = F 3b)—that is, he founded the line from
which Heracles, Alexander, and the Ptolemies themselves descended (at least
as they liked to think).
To state the obvious, Manetho did not bother coordinating the Egyptian
past with individuals and events from the non-Egyptian past that were not im-
portant.247 When the ruling house of Argos was founded, when Troy fell, when
the Olympic Games were first held—these things mattered to the Greeks. Recall
the fragment of Dicaearchus that coordinated the great pharaohs of Egypt with
the fall of Troy and the Olympic Games. Indeed, some of these matters were of
direct interest to Manetho’s royal patrons, the Ptolemies. These were the stories
that constituted the Greek past, that organized it into eras, and that they told
continuously to themselves in one form or another; these were the items that
were put onto the grid of the Egyptian past by Manetho. In fact, coming back to
Feeney, both Troy and Olympiad dating are connected to the essential task of
earliest Greek historiography: separating myth from history. Crucially, as Fee-
ney demonstrates, the Romans were sensitive to the interest the Greeks showed
in these epochal markers, picked them up, and “transformed [them] creatively
for their own purposes.”248 Precisely these two watersheds find a place in Mane-
[2002] 502), and those that are found are between battles: Artemisium and Thermopylae (8.15),
Plataea and Mycale (9.100.2, 101.2), and Himera and Salamis (7.166, reported).
245. See esp. Hunter (2003) 120 ad loc., 12 and 62 for general statements on the importance of
Heracles as Stammvater to the Ptolemies.
246. Note that Jacoby puts double brackets around the identification in Josephus. I will deal
with this narrative in ch. 6 below.
247. Cf. Rowton (1948) 61: “it is only natural that [Manetho] should have wished to specify the
exact location in Egyptian chronology of the two principal landmarks [fall of Troy and Olympic
Games] in Greek chronology.”
248. Feeney (2007) 81. Cf. Clarke (2008) 121–28 in connection with Diodorus’ universal his-
tory.
Time 115
tho’s chronology. Might we not assume that Manetho was attuned to what the
Greeks were beginning to talk about in the fourth and third centuries, as much
as the Romans would begin to be about half a century later? The same synchro-
nizing tendency has been spectacularly revealed in the recent publication of a
papyrus text now housed in Leipzig and dating to the first half of the second
century AD (P. Lips. Inv. 590 + 1228, 1229, 1231, 1232). It contains a list of pha-
raohs, a list of Babylonian kings, and a list of several events from Greek myth
and history; mentioned there are not only Europa and the Olympic Games but
also the Great Flood and the Lamb of Bocchoris.249
It is tempting to speculate that if the notices in the chronology represent
places where narratives may have been slotted in the original form of the Ae-
gyptiaca, Egyptian readings of Greek stories might have been inserted some-
how into Manetho’s Aegyptiaca where we find his Greek synchronisms and
identifications now in the epitome. Manetho knew his Herodotus well, for we
are told by Josephus that the former corrected the latter on several points. What
if, for instance, under the heading for Thyoris he appended not just a rework-
ing of Homer’s Odyssey and the story of Menelaus’ sojourn in Egypt but also
Herodotus’ version of the Helen story that had her reside in Egypt for the dura-
tion of the Trojan War, a story Herodotus attributes to Egyptian priests (Hdt.
2.113.1)? This is speculation of course, but it is arresting to think of the re-
sulting historiographic interplay that would have been in evidence: Herodotus
had cited Egyptian authorities to correct his Greek forebears—Hecataeus and
Homer—when he compiled his history of Egypt; Manetho could have deployed
elements from these Greek stories, with their Herodotean critical overlay, in
his own account, with suitable expansions of his own that took up Herodotus’
critique and then went further.
It is important, finally, to think about the purpose behind Manetho’s syn-
chronisms, if they are in fact his. Our best parallels for what Manetho may
have done come from the Greek and Roman worlds. Indeed, Timaeus, the first
systematic practitioner of synchronization, had a very specific aim with his
synchronisms: he wanted to put the western Greek world on the same level as
the traditional centers of prestige and power back in mainland Greece and Asia
Minor. But Manetho’s case is different. Synchronism between two separate na-
tional pasts always implies, I think, a power relationship of some kind. Consid-
erable effort was expended by the Romans to link important events from their
past to events that were important in the Greek world: around three hundred
Fabii were thought to have perished at Cremera in around 480 BC, of course,
just as three hundred Spartans perished in the same year at Thermopylae. The
249. Colomo et al. (2010). See also Luppe (2010) and Burgess (2012).
Romans sought this connection; the Greeks did not, at least not initially. Ma-
netho’s synchronisms are not like this, strictly speaking. He made the linkages,
but not as a member of a less sophisticated and perhaps younger culture as-
piring to a connection with one whose cultural legacy he admired; rather, his
was the learned older culture, and he made note of those places where Greek
mythological events and people, as well as some historical ones, found a place
on the temporal grid of the Egyptian past. It is significant that two of the events
he chose, the Trojan War and the first Olympic Games, were important to the
Greeks precisely because they helped to define epochs and to separate the
mythical from the historical. In Manetho’s case, the synchronizer’s culture con-
ferred importance and dignity on the synchronized; he did not seek it from
the Greek past. But why did Manetho seek these linkages between the Greek
and Egyptian pasts if they brought no distinction to his own nation’s history?
It must be because the Greeks were interested in synchronism, even “inter-
national” synchronism, and Manetho could reveal through his own participa-
tion in it that the scale of Greek time was smaller than Egyptian time—indeed,
much smaller—and that, by implication, the scale of the achievement of Greek
civilization compared with Egyptian was correspondingly inferior too. Specifi-
cally, through synchronization, Manetho could demonstrate that what consti-
tuted “history” was simply much bigger in the Egyptian past. The effect on the
historical thinking of Hecataeus of Miletus and on Herodotus through their
encounters with the priests of Thebes and their piromis statues comes to mind.
I hesitate to conclude with what is doubtless a set of massive oversimplifica-
tions, but it is important to make a few general observations on synchronism.
Feeney has argued persuasively that while synchronism is something that the
modern Western mind turns easily to, it would have had a very different value
for the ancient Greeks and Romans, for whom time was measured in ways ut-
terly different from the Christian time-reckoning system of BC/AD bequeathed
to the modern era.250 While the Greeks could synchronize events as far back as
Homer,251 it was really only in the late fifth and fourth centuries BC that seri-
ous experimentation with the correlation of unrelated events on a temporal
grid began. In many ways, it was not “natural” to the ancient Greek historical
mind, despite its naturalness to us. But if synchronism was exotic by the stan-
dards of Greek historiographic practice, it was downright unheard of in ancient
Egypt. In a culture that saw the sphere of human habitation as a binary oppo-
sition between Egypt itself at the center and the rest of the world as “deserts”
250. Feeney (2007) 12–14.

251. Scodel (2008). See now Clay (2011).
Time 117
(h3swt), what happened in those wastes will simply not have been important to
the dwellers by the Nile (simply “the River”), unless, of course, those inhabit-
ants of the deserts came from the Red Land to the Black or, conversely, if the
Egyptians went abroad.252 The Egyptians considered themselves, at some level,
the only true “men,” the only people who deserved the title “rome” (cf. piromis
of Hdt. 2.143).253 Consequently, as John Tait has admirably put it, “it is difficult
to find in Egyptian texts any interest in the history of foreign peoples.”254 But
we should not be surprised. Recall that on the Palermo Stone, the one item
that is recorded for every year is the annual inundation of the Nile. This event
of literally cosmic importance suggests the Egypt-centered view of traditional
Egyptian time reckoning. Hence, for Manetho to have included synchronisms
with the Greek world in his timeline of Egyptian history is extremely signifi-
cant. Berossus, by contrast, did not seem to have synchronisms in his Babylo-
niaca, though it could perhaps be argued that the Babylonian worldview was
similarly just as centered on Babylon and its environs. I think that the only way
to explain the presence of synchronisms in Manetho’s chronography is to see
them as part of his engagement with Greek historical writing on Egypt and with
the new Macedonian rulers of his land. Partly taking up the Greek stereotype
of the Egyptian priest as representative of an ancient culture, Manetho noticed
epoch-making Greek events and important mythical figures and plotted them
on the grid of Egyptian time. The net effect of this would have been to make the
Greek past happen as minor footnotes on the pages of the great master narra-
tive that was the Egyptian past.
Broader Implications
In the year 264/3 BC or, perhaps, a little later, a chronicle was set up on the
island of Paros that made use of Athenian kings and archons for its dating
scheme (IG 12.5 444 = FGrH 239, often called the “Parian Marble” or Marmor
Parium).255 At one limit of this list, toward the very start, the compiler wrote of
both the Flood (A, line 4) and Danaus’ departure from Egypt for Greece (A 9).
252. Allen (2000) 21–22. Cf. Tait (2003) 2; Allen (2003); Venturini (2005) 29. See also Wilson
(1951) 8–17; Butzer (1986) 1292–93; Moers (2010).
253. Gardiner (1961b) 37 and n.2.
254. Tait (2003) 6.
255. The text begins by stating that it will start with the kingship of Cecrops at Athens and
conclude with the archonship of Diognetus (= 264/3), hence the terminus post quem, but not by
many, if any, years. See Jacoby FGrH II B 4.666; (1904a) v; (1904b) 80–83, 88. See also Errington
(1977) 481.
At the other end, he wrote of Alexander’s conquests of Egypt and Babylon (B

4, 5); of the assumption of satrapal power in Egypt by Ptolemy, son of Lagus (B
8); and of Ptolemy’s accession to the throne some nineteen years later (B 23).
Seleucus is nowhere to be found.256 Although “international” in the events it
records, its temporal orientation is Athenian—further emphasizing the point
that “Athens” is becoming the byname for “Greek.”257 It is arresting and also
constructive to consider that, just a few years (twenty or so) before, Berossus
and Manetho had written about these same events or ones very like them in
their own chronicles.258 This coincidence acts as a counterbalance, I think, to
the sense that anyone who is at all familiar with mainstream Greek historiog-
raphy gets upon first looking at the remains of Berossus and Manetho: extreme
alterity, “otherness.” We encounter with these authors massive lists made up
of odd names, not just of rulers from long ago, but also, in the case of Beros-
sus, for peculiar–indeed, absurd—units of time combined with impossibly long
reigns (the first king of Babylon ruled for “10 saroi or 36,000 years”!). There are
also fantastic creatures and happenings. While Berossus and Manetho wrote
in Greek, what they wrote was not Greek history.259 They seem to represent a
brand of historical writing where chronology was privileged and where narra-
tive was made to follow.
Another way to characterize the initial reaction one probably gets after
looking into Berossus and Manetho is to say that chronology seems to be the
big point of difference between non-Greek and Greek accounts. Indeed, I think
that chronologies seem to be very much “in-house” for the cultures from which
they come: there seems to be so much assumed or “local” knowledge in play,
such as technical terms for periods of time. Yet I hope to have shown that, while
the reckoning of time can and does most assuredly constitute a major divide
between historiographic traditions, chronology can also link historians and the
cultures they are charting: this occurs explicitly in the form of synchronisms,
when a writer chooses to link two events from two different parts of the world
and claim that “they happened at the same time,” as well as, perhaps, when he
identifies a god or human as the equivalent of one found in another civilization;
it occurs implicitly when a chronology becomes the absolute one on which all
256. There is much Ptolemaic history reported in section B, including the birth of Ptolemy
II Philadelphus on Cos (B 19). This would suggest Paros’ membership in the Nesiotic League, for
which there is otherwise very poor testimony in the third century: see Bagnall (1976) 150.
257. Cf. Grafton and Swerdlow (1988) esp. 27.
258. This basic similarity between the Marmor Parium and Berossus and Manetho was recog-
nized by Pédech (1964) 490. But see now also the world chronicle from the second century AD on
P. Lips. Inv. 590 + 1228, 1229, 1231, 1232: Colomo et al. (2010); important corrections and English
translation in Burgess (2012).
259. Cf. Burstein (1978) 9 and, following him, Adler (1989) 29 and n.66.
Time 119
events of the human past are mapped. At a more profound level, establishing
a chronological system can help a historian move away from the limitations of
his own culture’s view of the past and toward a broader understanding of hu-
man history.
Indeed, it is useful to look at a celebrated passage in Herodotus that will
help to foreground precisely how chronology can work at the crossing points of
cultures. At 2.143, Herodotus writes of the visit of his predecessor Hecataeus of
Miletus to Thebes in Egypt:
Earlier for Hecataeus the prose writer [λογοποιῷ], when at Thebes he

had produced a genealogy for himself and had linked his lineage back
to a god sixteen generations before, the priests of Zeus did for him the
sort of thing they did for me also, though I did not offer a genealogy for
myself. Having brought me into the megaron, which was very large, they
were counting up wooden statues, pointing them out, as many in num-
ber as I said [at 2.142.1].260 For each high priest sets up there during his
life an image of himself. Counting up and pointing out then, the priests
made clear to me that each of them was a son of a father, from the image
of the most recently deceased one going through all of them, until they
had showed me all of them. To Hecataeus, once he made his own gene-
alogy and traced [his lineage] back to a god sixteen generations before,
they “countergenealogized” [ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν] on the basis of their
reckoning,261 not accepting from him that a man came into being from
a god. They countergenealogized in the following way, saying that each
of the statues was a piromis born of a piromis, until they had pointed out
345 statues, and they connected them neither to a god nor to a hero.
“Piromis” is in the Greek language a “gentleman.” (Hdt. 2.143 = FGrH
1 T 4, F 300)
It is impossible to review here the many arguments and interpretations that

have been advanced regarding this passage. Suffice it for me to say that I am in
broad agreement with Ian Moyer’s 2002 analysis,262 which is an elegant restate-
ment of an older point, with an important addition. Whatever else Herodotus
may be understood as doing with this passage, and regardless of whether either
260. At 2.142.1, we are given the total number of kings from Menes to Sethos as 341. The dis-
crepancy between that figure and the 345 arrived at here is explained by Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.108 ad
loc., despite the critique of West (1991) 148 and n.27; see also Moyer (2002) 75–78.
261. For ἐπὶ τῇ ἀριθμήσι. See Waddell (1939) 241 ad loc.
262. Revised = Moyer (2011) ch. 1.
he or Hecataeus ever really went to Egypt (though I believe that both must
have), it is clear that Herodotus is employing what he thinks to be a non-Greek
chronology to show that an authoritative Greek view of the human past is woe-
fully inadequate in terms of its scale. A major aspect of Egyptian alterity, the
massive length of human history that evidently could be documented there, is
made to correct what is accepted in Greek culture, at least as far as Hecataeus
is representative of Greek views of the past. But the claim that Hecataeus was
representative of mainstream Greek thinking is itself also highly problematic,
as what is probably the opening of his work Genealogies famously demon-
strates: after giving his name to his history, Hecataeus asserts that “the logoi of
the Greeks are many and laughable, at least as they seem to me” (FGrH 1 F 1 =
[Demetrius] De Eloc. 12). Like Herodotus later, Hecataeus clearly defined his
work against a notionally standard Greek view, stepping out of his own culture,
probably also with the aid of chronological lenses provided by another society’s
time-reckoning system.263 Indeed, going back to Herodotus, inasmuch as he
goes on to discuss the dates of the various gods of the Greek pantheon—that is,
which are earlier and which are later (Hdt. 2.145–46)—he can be seen to sub-
ordinate divine Greek time to human Egyptian time.264 This was a profoundly
radical move that involved the deployment, at the center of the Greek thought
world, of a non-Greek method for charting the past.
To the view that Herodotus’ own understanding of the scale of human his-
tory was shaped fundamentally by his encounter with Egypt and chronological
tradition, Moyer has added that the Egyptians themselves were also in the pro-
cess of shaping their own sense of Egypt’s past. What Herodotus encountered
was not, as is often alleged or assumed, a static picture of Egypt’s history; it was
an evolving one that was responsive to the changing political and social circum-
stances of the Late Period, particularly foreign domination.265 The Egyptian
priests were themselves engaged in defining Egypt as a place of extreme antiq-
uity, one that had also enjoyed imperial rule itself. An ideal of stability, dressed
in archaizing mode, was projected into the past, and its physical analog, so
powerfully in evidence in the scene in Herodotus, is the continuous succession
of Theban priests. But as Moyer has shown, the very ideas of “hereditary suc-
263. See esp. Diels (1887) 436 = (1969) 118; also Drews (1973) 17, 152 n.62; more generally,
Marincola (1997) 107. Cf. Moyer (2002) 83; Dench (2007) 496, 499–500. Bertelli (2001) 81 n.37
rejects the idea that Hecataeus used non-Greek sources. I do not see how Hecataeus could identify
the logoi in question as “of the Greeks” (οἱ . . . ῾Ελλήνων λόγοι) unless he thought that there was
the possibility of logoi from another culture as well: note the astute comments at Drews (1973) 17.
Otherwise he would have stated something like “the logoi of the poets” (he elsewhere criticized
both Homer and Hesiod: FF 13, 18, 19, 25–27; see Bertelli [2001] 81–82 and n.39).
264. Thomas (2000) 277. Cf. Miller (1965) 111–12.
265. Moyer (2002) 78–82.
Time 121
cession” of priests and “extended genealogies” only become common in Egypt

beginning in the Third Intermediate Period (1069–664).266 Hence the massive
span of years that is involved reflects not Herodotus’ fallacious positing of one
generation for every statue but, rather, that of the priests themselves, a process
that David Henige has called “the artificial lengthening of genealogies” and that
he asserts is typical of “periods of foreign domination and with the expressed
purpose of portraying the historians’ peoples in a way at once palliative to their
lost sovereignty and impressive to their new rulers.”267 Such an understanding
of chronology built on genealogy does not allow for two or more individuals
living at the same time or for holders of office who serve for only a short time.
As we have seen, both the Babylonian and Egyptian chronographic traditions
manufactured lists that precisely involved these two errors.
It is illuminating to use Henige’s concepts to interpret Herodotus, the
Theban priests, and the artificially lengthened genealogies they produced,268
because when discussing the ancient historians who generated these sorts of
chronologies, Henige is speaking of the work of Berossus, Manetho, and Jose-
phus. Moreover, he believes that these “flights of genealogical fancy” occur with
“the imposition of some form of foreign control and the often concomitant
introduction of literacy.”269 Henige’s modern parallels have, I think, led him
astray, for of none of the ancient historians he cites can it be said that literacy
was only recently introduced to his society. But the larger point remains. The
building of chronologies is often the work not of a culture in isolation but of
cultures in collision. They are the products not of static societies but dynamic
ones that are continually redefining themselves according to rapidly changing
circumstances. At this point, it is useful to remember the word Herodotus uses
of the Egyptian priests’ reaction to the Greek genealogy of Hecataeus: they en-
gage in ἀντιγενεηλογεῖν, or “make a countergenealogy.” To be sure, Herodotus’
coinage of this term owes much to the contemporary Greek world of the soph-
ists and their “opposed speeches,” their antilogiai,270 but I think it also captures
something of the energy and commitment of the protagonists involved: a lot
was at stake when Hecataeus produced his list of sixteen generations, namely, a
good deal of the Egyptian past as it was conceived by the Theban priesthood, a
266. Moyer (2002) 78.
267. Henige (1974) 6–7.
268. For Henige’s “lengthened genealogy” in connection with Hdt. 2.143, see Thomas (2000)
277 n.8; (2001) 208. Cf. Moyer (2002) 76 n.31.
269. Henige (1974) 6; but note also his remarks on 96: the sort of “manipulation of the past”
he discusses “has not been confined to newly literate societies”; “the antiquity of the past has often
been distorted by literate historians as a means of attempting to preserve sovereignty, or a favoured
position of dependence, or simply to maintain the status quo.”
270. Thus Thomas (2000) 266–67.
past that defined what Egypt and its inhabitants were all about and that would
not exist if Hecataeus was right. It makes sense, correspondingly, that Herodo-
tus animates his source exactly at this point in his narrative, making the priests
of Thebes into players in this minidrama of competing chronologies.271 Chro-
nology making could be a matter of intercultural debate.
Herodotus needed non-Greek chronologies to sort out the Greek past. Wal-
ter Burkert has shown, in a seminal article (1995), that Herodotus’ history is
built on the scaffolding of non-Greek king lists, particularly from Lydia. Burk-
ert demonstrates that Herodotus knew that the traditional Greek dates for the
Trojan War were mere guesswork and completely useless.272 Through a Lydian
tradition that enabled him to say that Heracles lived nine hundred years before
his own time, Herodotus was able to establish a point from which other mythi-
cal events from the Greek tradition could be worked out. But he was encour-
aged to advance his claim on the basis of an understanding of the human past
that he had gained in Egypt, for it is precisely in the context of the refutation
of Hecataeus at 2.143 that he sorts out Heracles’ dates relative to his own time
(Hdt. 2.145.4 bis).273 Hence, paradoxically, Greek history, at least for the period
before the time of Croesus, was opened up and made chartable for Herodotus
at a fundamental level through non-Greek chronology.
The implications of this understanding of Herodotus 2.143 are extremely
important and far-reaching for the present study. First, the most influential
Greek historian on non-Greek lands developed a view of the human past that
owed a great deal to non-Greek chronologies. I think this fact would not have
been lost on those non-Greek historians who engaged with Herodotus’ his-
toriographic legacy later, men such as Berossus and Manetho. Second and,
I think, more important, when the non-Greek context is viewed on its own
terms, we see that the making of chronology is not illustrative of a static society
(one frozen in time and desiring a temporal “snapshot” of itself) but, rather,
the product of a dynamic society that is responding to challenges to its identity
posed by the encounter (violent or otherwise) with another culture not its own.
This point, too, needs to be stressed when we consider the significance of the
chronologies of Berossus and Manetho.
271. Cf. Munson (2001) 35 n.45.

272. See esp. Burkert (1995) 145–46 = (2001) 231–32. See also the important study of Taylor
(2000).
273. Burkert (1995) 141–42 = (2001) 223–24. Cf. Mosshammer (1979) 110; Thomas (2001)
209.
Chapter 3
Space
Regional Perspective and Authentication

in Berossus and Manetho
In the previous chapter, I ended my treatment of Manetho by mentioning the

importance of Egypt as a “space” in the shaping of his historiographic vision.
“Space” can mean a lot of things. Indeed, in this chapter, I will consider space in
connection with Berossus and Manetho in two distinct but interrelated ways:
(1) the sense of place that is implied in the regional perspective of a text and
(2) “space” within an account as the real or imagined site of the production
and preservation of the text itself. By focusing on space, a useful tension will, I
think, emerge. Much that has to do with place in Berossus and Manetho con-
cerns their desire to authenticate their narratives—to suggest their clear docu-
mentary bases, derived from the physical records to which they claim to have
had privileged access, implicitly or explicitly. This is a difficult claim to back
up, especially in the area of earliest human history. The need for authentica-
tion runs squarely into another matter that is tied up with space in the histori-
cal writing of Berossus and Manetho, namely, regional perspective or bias. In
a way, through “space,” we can see the desire for authentication confront the
sometimes dubious claims of regional advocacy.
To appreciate the role of “space” in ancient texts concerned with the recov-
ery and preservation of the past, as well as simultaneously to present useful
parallels for what we will see in Berossus and Manetho, it is important, first, to
consider similar material from the ancient Near Eastern world.
Stories of Authentication from the Near East: Three Repre

sentative Cases (2 Kings 22, Setna I, and Philo of Byblos)
Narratives containing within them accounts of how their sources were pre-
served over time—indeed, often great stretches of time—had been popular in
123
the Near East and Egypt for centuries, if not millennia, by the time of the early
Hellenistic period.1 This was not just a literary activity.2 Indeed, documentary
analogues of “discovery” stories in the material records of ancient societies in-
dicate to us the broad and lasting appeal of such accounts.
Especially deserving of our attention, because it is particularly illustrative
of several themes that recur in similar stories from around the ancient world,
is the celebrated case of the discovery of the “book of the law” found in the Old
Testament at 2 Kings 22:8ff. and repeated, with minor changes, at 2 Chronicles
34:14ff.3 In this account, we are told that in the eighteenth year of the reign of
King Josiah (621 BC), during a major renovation of the Temple, the high priest
Hilkiah “discovered the book of the law” and gave it to the king’s adjutant-
general, Shaphan; Shaphan then read the book out before Josiah, who was over-
whelmed by what he heard (“he rent his clothes”), recognizing instantly that
the book was the authentic word of the Lord, who was angry with Israel; the
authority of the text is confirmed a few sections later, when the prophet Huldah
states that “this is the word of the Lord the God of Israel” (2 Kings 22:15). As-
sured that he would not be punished for the crimes of his forefathers, at least
partly because he recognized the authority of the recently discovered text, Jo-
siah then read the book out to the assembled people and promised a renewed
covenant with the Lord based on this “book of the law.”
It has long been recognized that the “book of the law” that was discovered
during the repairs to the Temple is none other than Deuteronomy.4 It is of-
ten further observed that the “discovery” must be connected to the “great reli-
gious reform” that took place under Josiah, “an emphatic reaffirmation of the
fundamental principles which Moses had long ago insisted on.”5 The discov-
ery and the reform took place just a few years before the subjugation of Judah
by Nebuchadnezzar, whose conquest led eventually to the Babylonian exile.6
The account of the “discovery of the law” under Josiah admirably illustrates
how the themes of place and time become interconnected in stories of the au-
1. These stories have continued until the present day: cf. Speyer (1970), who studies, in ad-
dition to ancient cases, the discovery of the Book of Mormon. Note the title of a recent book by
David Damrosch (2006): The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh.
Insightful also is Genette (1997) esp. 277–80.
2. See now Busine (2012) esp. 242.
3. Cf. the remarks at Smith (1972) 217–18.
4. See, e.g., Driver (1913/1925) 86–87; more recently, Cogan and Tadmor (1988) 294–95.
5. Driver (1913/1925) 89; Mitchell (1991b) 387–88; Kuhrt (1995) 2.422. NB Cogan and Tad-
mor (1988) 298: “the narration of events [at 2 Kings 22–23] by the Deuteronomistic historian
makes Josiah’s every act flow from this discovery.”
6. Cf. Hughes (1990) 175–76 and ch. 5, esp. 223.
Space 125
thentication of a text. The book is found in the Temple during its restoration.
The implication is clear: if the text can be linked physically to the sacred place,
in circumstances that suggest why it was not known there before, these facts
vouch for the authenticity of the tome. In turn, through its apparent antiquity
and legitimacy as the true word of God, the book validates the reforms of Josiah
that are centered on the Temple: the newly discovered ancient code makes the
Temple in Jerusalem the only site for fully sanctioned worship of the Lord, thus
facilitating the suppression of foreign cult throughout Judah (variously under-
stood as Canaanite or Assyrian).
It is of central importance to set the account of Josiah and the discovery of
the book of the law in the larger context of the history of Judah at the end of the
seventh century BC. Although it is a matter of current scholarly debate whether
Josiah met his end resisting Assyrian or Egyptian control of Judah, it is suffi-
ciently clear that Judean politics and culture were being shaped in this period
by the threat and eventual success of foreign domination.7 We shall see that sto-
ries that aim at showing how native scholarly and religious traditions survive,
often miraculously, seem to cluster precisely in periods when national identity
is at risk because of the coercive presence of a nonnative, imperial power.
Scholars have noted that clear antecedents for the story of the discovery of the
book at 2 Kings 22 can be found in both Egyptian and Near Eastern texts: both
regions present us with several examples of documentary texts that tell of how
earlier writings, often sacred in nature, survived to the periods of these later texts,
frequently deposited in the walls or foundations of temples.8 But a later, demotic
tale from Ptolemaic Egypt, the story of Setna Khaemwese and Naneferkaptah, is
of particular importance to the present discussion. Setna I, as it is often styled, is
important precisely because it is so detailed in its narratives of discovery and so
explicit about the broader significance of the tale it has to tell about the power of
newly discovered ancient texts.9 Indeed, it could be fairly claimed that Setna I is
very much a story about finding and possessing sacred texts—in this case, ancient
magical knowledge.10 It is, in the strict sense, pseudepigraphic or a forgery, for
while Ptolemaic in date, it purports to be an authentic tale relating to the activities
7. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.543.
8. Naville (1907); Euringer (1911/1912). Cf. Speyer’s remarks at Smith (1972) 218; also Speyer
(1970), (1971).
9. Cf. Festugière (1949/1954) 1.319 and n.1; Speyer (1970) 87–88; more generally, Quack
(2005) 30–34.
10. “Magic” translates the Egyptian term “heka” (ḥk3); but the term can also be connected to
concepts we associate with “religion” or “cult.” Thus, the knowledge contained in the Book of Thoth
from Setna I is both magical and religious or sacred. In general, consult Ritner (1993) esp. 1–2 and
ch. 1. See also Frankfurter (1998) 211.
of Prince Khaemwese, the fourth son of Ramesses II,11 famous in his own right as
a scholar and antiquarian.12 In the inset story, we learn how a much earlier heroic
figure, Naneferkaptah, sought out a magical book written by the god of writing
and wisdom, Thoth, a volume that contained within it spells that enabled the
employer of them to control the entire cosmos and to see the gods.13 But perhaps
the most revealing sections of the story are the ones dealing with Naneferkaptah’s
walking in the desert near Memphis and his subsequent encounter with an older
priest. In the first scene, Naneferkaptah “read[s] the writings that were in the
tombs of the Pharaohs and on the stelae of the scribes of the House of Life and the
writings that were on [the other monuments, for his zeal] concerning writings
was very great” (Lichtheim [1973/1980] 3.128). During a procession afterward,
when Naneferkaptah went into the temple of Ptah at Memphis and was again
“reading,” this time “the writings on the shrines of the gods,” an old priest laughs
at him. The old man assures Naneferkaptah,
I am not laughing at you. I am laughing because you are reading writ-

ings that have no [importance for anyone]. If you desire to read writings,
come to me and I will have you taken to the place where that book is that
Thoth wrote with his own hand. (Lichtheim [1973/1980] 3.128)
Naneferkaptah’s quest later leads to his theft of the Book of Thoth and to Thoth’s
punishment of Naneferkaptah: the deaths of Naneferkaptah’s son Merib, then
his wife Ahwere, and finally Naneferkaptah himself. This book also forms the
main point of interest in the frame story that involves the later prince Setna
Khaemwese, who takes the volume from the tomb of Naneferkaptah, only to
be punished and made to return the magical text. The idea of written artifact
as fetish is especially evident when Naneferkaptah makes a copy of the Book of
Thoth and then drinks it dissolved in beer (Lichtheim [1973/1980] 3.131)—an
act that conforms to Egyptian magical practice14 but is, for all that, emblematic
of the book as an item that not only is a repository of knowledge but is itself an
object of cultural authority that can literally be consumed and can confer great
power on the one who consumes it.
11. As pseudepigraphy, cf. also the Bentresh and Famine stelae of roughly the same date: see
Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.90–103.
12. Cf. Ray (2001) 85; note that the chapter devoted to Khaemwese is entitled “The First Egyp-
tologist.”
13. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.128–29. Cf. Zauzich (1971) 84; Podemann Sørensen (1992) 170–
71; Ritner (1993) 61, 63–64 and n.289.
14. Ritner (1993) 107–8; Quack (2005) 31–32. Cf. beer and knowledge in the Book of Thoth:
Jasnow and Zauzich (2014) 57–59, nos. 13 and 14.
Space 127
Setna I not only illustrates a world where such tales of the discovery of books
were common;15 it seems veritably obsessed with the issue. Several details im-
press the reader. Especially noteworthy is the narrative’s insistence on space as
the authenticator of sacred knowledge. Naneferkaptah seeks out texts that are
themselves parts of sacred space: writings on the tombs of the Pharaohs, ste-
lae from the House of Life (temple scriptorium/library; see below), and other
monuments. The details concerning these texts are significant, for demotic nar-
ratives are usually very sparing in their descriptions of physical space, noting
objects and place only when “essential or important to their story.”16 The magi-
cal Book of Thoth is housed in a series of strongboxes of different materials,
which, in turn, are stored “in the middle of the water of Coptos” (Lichtheim
[1973/1980] 3.129). But note that the texts Naneferkaptah is studying before the
old priest accosts him do not possess the cosmic power that the Book of Thoth
has; the old priest confronts Naneferkaptah precisely because the younger man
has been laboring under the apparently false belief that the texts housed in tem-
ples are important.17 This is a very significant detail. I do not think that the au-
thor of Setna I wanted to devalue the importance of traditional writings found
inscribed on ancient monuments or stored in temple libraries; indeed, the Book
of Thoth was very likely composed with the scribal class in mind, in close as-
sociation with the House of Life.18 But there are clearly two types of texts in the
world that is imagined in Setna I: the long-known texts, which, for all their ap-
parent authority, are impotent; and the secret and newly revealed one, which is
authored by the god of writing and wisdom himself, possesses great power, and
is of even greater antiquity.19 It may even be the case that the priestly obsession
with maintaining written links with the past through a strong scribal tradition
is being criticized in the older priest’s mocking laughter at the pursuits of the
younger Naneferkaptah and his almost fetishistic archaism, a tendency that ap-
parently was a marked feature of Late Period scholarship.20
15. Cf. Festugière (1949/1954) 1.319 and n.1.

16. Jasnow (2007) 442.
17. Unfortunately, the text is obscure at this point. Cf. Lichtheim’s translation (“writings
that have no [importance for anyone]”) with Griffith (1900) 20 and note to line 11; also Maspero
(1882/2002) 97.
18. Jasnow and Zauzich (2005) 1.74.
19. Note the general comments of Baines (1990): though largely omitting Late Period texts,
he discusses the “hierarchies” of Egyptian knowledge and how these become more elaborate over
time. See also Sauneron (2000) 120–22; Jasnow and Zauzich (2005) 1.76 n.265. Cf. Dillery (1999)
109–10.
20. Note Tait (1987) 108: “Recently, considerable interest has been shown for example in the
conscious preservation and copying of old texts, in copyists’ handling of obsolete grammatical
forms, in the use of glosses, and in the translation of hieratic texts into Demotic script and lan-
guage.” Cf. Derchain (1991).
While apparently at odds with the tenor of the narrative of 2 Kings 22, I
think Setna I actually parallels it in this detail. At 2 Kings 22, the old covenant
between God and his people is renewed by the newly discovered restatement of
the law. The finding of Deuteronomy does not invalidate the rest of the Penta-
teuch or replace it; rather, it is evidence of God’s desire to reestablish a connec-
tion with the people of Judah. In its own way, it is also evidence of the divine
at work in history. At the end of this chapter, in the discussion of the famous
Lindian Chronicle, we shall see how the relics from the Lindos inventory of vo-
tives demonstrate the enduring sanctity of the religious site, while the stories of
epiphany of Athena Lindia that accompany the relics reveal, in detailed narra-
tives, the manifest power of the goddess and her own attachment to her shrine
and the region, acting through history. The votives are important but are only
reminders; the stories show the power of the goddess brought to life, as it were.
Indeed, crucial to all three stories is the detail that human actors in all three
texts acknowledge the manifest power and authority of the divine: the “barbar-
ian” Datis is dumbstruck by the rain miracle in the first epiphany account (Lin-
dian Chronicle D 33); Josiah tears his clothes when he realizes the failings of his
predecessors in comparison with the requirements set forth in the new book of
the law (2 Kings 22:11); the old priest who accosts Naneferkaptah laughs at his
misplaced devotion to the older writings (Lichtheim [1973/1980] 3.128).
Perhaps the best example of this sort of recognition of the power of the
book comes from a Roman-era Greco-Egyptian text of the second century AD,
the introduction of the Praise of Imouthes-Asclepius (P. Oxy. 1381). The last
native pharaoh, Nectanebo II, reads a book newly discovered in a temple and
supplied to him by his “chief judge” (archidikastes) Nechautis: “On reading the
book the king was quite amazed at the divine power in the story” (editors’ trans.
lines 15–17: ἀναγνοὺς δὲ ὁ βασι|[λε]ὺς πανὺ μὲν ἠγάσθη ἐπὶ | τῷ τῆς ἱστορίας
θείῳ).21 The king’s recognition of the “divine power” of the story—(literally his-
toria) is testament to the story’s truth and hence valorizes it for us as well. All
the principal elements that we have been examining are here in nuce: discovery
of the ancient text, the key role of the assistant, and the recognition by the figure
in power, which thus acts as a legitimating force of the text for subsequent ages.
At this point, it is absolutely essential to make note, in general terms, of
the political and cultural contexts for the generation of the texts we have so far
examined in this chapter. All were composed in communities that either were
actually under the domination of a nonnative regime or were threatened with
21. For a reconstruction of the discovery of the text in question, see Grenfell and Hunt (1915)
222.
Space 129
foreign rule. Borrowing the terminology and analysis of Jonathan Z. Smith, I

think that all these texts, even the Lindian Chronicle, reflect something ap-
proaching a “proto-apocalyptic” attitude: when local, native loci of power are
replaced by external ones, corresponding changes occur in the cultures’ schol-
arly traditions.22
Having said that, I do not want to paper over the considerable differences
between these texts. Most notably, both the accounts in Setna I and 2 Kings
verge on being explicitly apocalyptic—both assume a world in which there is an
intimate connection between humans and the divine that is mediated through
sacred and powerful texts, a view that is impossible to extract from the Lin-
dian Chronicle.23 But all three do share some important points of similarity: all
three see divinity acting as a historical agent; all three betray what we might call
a “nostalgic archaism,” looking back from a present compromised by foreign
domination to a time when the native culture was important and independent;
and all three are correspondingly careful to establish strong documentary links
between the present and the past. To return to Smith, when ancient societies
lose their independence, their scholarly traditions require new sites of author-
ity to replace the native royal court. This is the circumstance in which we find
the emergence of discovery narratives of the sort we have been examining—
narratives that can document the historical connection between the commu-
nity concerned and its patron deity.
The last Near Eastern case of authentication through the discovery of books
in temple space concerns the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos, perhaps
the most helpful parallel for what we shall see in connection with Berossus and
Manetho: he wrote a national history in Greek, claimed his sources to be very
old, and composed in a manner that is very clearly related to what Berossus
and Manetho attempted earlier.24 Herennius Philo was probably born around
AD 70 and lived long enough to write about the Emperor Hadrian (ruled AD
117–38; cf. FGrH 790 T 1). He seems to have been an important intellectual
from the Levant who was influential at Rome in the first half of the second
century AD.25 His chief work is entitled ἡ Φοινικὴ Ἱστορία or Φοινικικά and
22. Smith (1975) 134–35, 154–55 = (1978) 70, 85–86. Cf. Podemann Sørensen (1992) esp. 179–
80; also Dillery (1999) 108.
23. I am not unaware of the problems associated with the term apocalyptic, especially result-
ing from the elastic nature of the word in modern scholarship: cf. Webb (1990); Bergman (1983).
24. On Philo as representative of national history in Greek, see esp. Oden (1978); Van Seters
(1983) 206–7; Edwards (1991).
25. Note esp. T 2a (Suda s.v. Ἕρμιππος Βηρύτιος), which speaks of Philo introducing one Her-
mippus of Beirut to Herennius Severus during the reign of Hadrian; also T 2b (id. s.v. Παῦλος
Τύριος), which concerns the orator Paul of Tyre, dated simply as “contemporary with Philo.” For
Philo’s life, such as we can determine the facts, see esp. Baumgarten (1981) 31–39.
purports to be a translation into Greek of a Phoenician cosmogony attributed

to one Sanchuniathon. The fragments that survive to us come by way of Euse-
bius in his Praeparatio Evangelica. Philo was an author of major importance to
Eusebius; insofar as Philo was centrally concerned with proving the priority
and superiority of Phoenician wisdom over Greek, he was especially useful to
Eusebius in his quest to show that the Greeks were dependent on other cultures
for the development of their own paideia.26 As part of his project of challenging
the foundations of Greek learning, Philo constructs for his history an elaborate
genealogy of authority that creates a place for Phoenician wisdom that is well
anterior to the earliest events from the Greek world: Philo’s knowledge of ear-
liest human history is founded on the work of a much earlier scholar named
Sanchuniathon (a contemporary of Queen Semiramis of the “Assyrians” who
lived “before or at the same time as the Trojan War”: F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.21),
and Sanchuniathon’s work is itself dependent on a primeval sage figure named
Taautos (F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.24).27 Indeed, it is the connection between Sanc-
huniathon and Taautos that is important here.
Philo complains that more recent “hierologoi,” by which he means Greek
cosmogonic authors (cf. F 2 = Euseb. PE 1.10.39–41),28 obscured the things that
really happened in the beginning of the world with mysteries, specifically “al-
legories and myths” (F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.26: ἀλληγορίας δὲ καὶ μύθους). These
are important terms, for they reveal the methods of later Greek philosophical
exegesis and pose a problem as well, for Sanchuniathon/Taautos’ wisdom looks
precisely to be influenced profoundly by Greek thought, particularly Euhemer-
ism.29 This is not the place to examine this issue, but it is important to see the
technical vocabulary used, for we shall see the same terms and the problems
they raise in connection with Berossus’ account of Creation (discussed in ch.
5 below). Here, deformed Greek accounts regarding knowledge of primeval
times are contrasted with Sanchuniathon’s:30
And lighting upon the out-of-the-way works found in the adyta, writ-
ten in Ammounean characters, which were not familiar to everyone, he
worked everything out for himself.31
26. Johnson (2006) 64–74.

27. On the complex “chain” of transmission for Philo’s history, see esp. Barr (1974/1975) 33.
28. Cf. Baumgarten (1981) 89 n.89; Troiani (1974) 25–27.
29. See discussion below and n.38.
30. Cf. Bowersock (1994a) 11–12.
31. ὃ δὲ συμβαλὼν τοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν ἀδύτων εὑρεθεῖσιν ἀποκρύφοις, Ἀμμουνέων γράμμασι
συγκειμένοις, ἃ δὴ οὐκ ἦν πᾶσι γνώριμα, τῆν μάθησιν ἁπάντων αὐτὸς ἤσκησε. The translation is
from West (1994) 293.
Space 131
This material that Sanchuniathon found were the writings of Taautos; he sought
them out “because he knew that Taautos, as the first on earth who devised the
art of writing, was the best authority on the earliest events.”32 It is vital to make
note of the characterization of Taautos’ work: in Phoenician to start with and
thus presumably inaccessible to all but men like Philo, the wisdom of Sanc-
huniathon/Taautos is “out-of-the-way,” written in a script that was not widely
known,33 and stored in the inner sanctums of temples (adyta). The three dis-
tancing concepts underscore the recondite but also authoritative nature of the
knowledge in question. Here we have, in the most unmistakable terms, a case
of newly discovered written material that gives authority to a fundamental re-
shaping of history by relying on a heretofore unknown but nonetheless appar-
ently unimpeachable link between recent times and the remote past.34 Indeed,
in Philo’s case, this procedure is performed twice, for he relies on Sanchuni-
athon, who was making use of Taautos.35 It is important also to note that this
arcane knowledge is written in an ancient, non-Greek language and thus helps
to mark this wisdom as not only very old but also not Greek. This detail is
profoundly important and rests uneasily with other features of Philo’s text that
betray a distinct Greek orientation. Indeed, there are moments when Sanchu-
niathon could evidently refer to the Phoenicians as “barbarians,” uncritically
taking up a fully Hellenic perspective.36
The knowledge that Philo translates into Greek from Sanchuniathon’s Phoe-
nician text, itself taken from Taautos’ work hidden in temples, is a cosmogony.
Sanchuniathon was long thought to be a fraud to cover for Philo’s inventions.
But this position began to be seriously challenged after the 1930s discovery at
Ras Shamra of Ugaritic texts that parallel Sanchuniathon/Taautos’ cosmogony
very closely.37 The scholarly consensus has changed again, with many now ar-
32. West (1994) 294; cf. F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.24.

33. There is a considerable controversy surrounding what “Ammounean characters” means
or even if this is the correct spelling of the term. West favors an interpretation that connects “Am-
mounean” to Hebrew ‘ammonim, that is, the Ammonites: see West (1994) 294 and n. 21; cf. id.
(1997) 283. Others prefer to see reference to the Egyptian god Ammon (see Nautin [1949] 262–65;
Baumgarten [1981] 79; Edwards [1991] 215), an interpretation that receives some support from
Philo’s notice, shortly before, that “the Egyptians called [Taautos] Thuoth, the Alexandrians Thoth,
and the Greeks translated [his name] to Hermes” (F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.24). The mention of Hermes
encourages a connection to the Greco-Egyptian Hermetic tradition: see Fowden (1993) 216–17;
Bowersock (1990) 43. Such a connection could then be seen to confirm the suspicion that Sanchu-
niathon is a fraud: see, e.g., Baumgarten (1981) 81. Cf. Ramelli (2007) 887 n.15.
34. See Speyer (1970) 115; Oden (1978) 122–23; West (1994) 294.
35. Cf. Edwards (1991) 217: Taautos’ knowledge is “a jejune double of Philo’s testimony con-
cerning the fate of his more immediate source,” that is, Sanchuniathon.
36. F 1 = Euseb. PE 1.9.29: the Phoenicians and Egyptians constitute the “oldest of the barbar-
ians.” See esp. Troiani (1974) 27–28; Bowersock (1994a) 43.
37. For the history of the scholarly reception of Philo, see esp. Barr (1974/1975) 19–21; Oden
guing that a considerable amount of authentic Phoenician material in Philo

has been significantly adapted by him under the influence of Greek thought,
especially Euhemerism.38
The language of the texts found by Sanchuniathon is worth paying particu-
lar attention to, as is the figure of Taautos. Although it is natural to assume that
the writings found in the adyta of temples by Sanchuniathon were by Taautos
and that Taautos was himself Phoenician, both details are not stated in Phi-
lo.39 Taautos’ system of writing, elsewhere called “sacred characters of letters
he formed” (F 2 = Euseb. PE 1.10.36: διετύπωσεν τοὺς ἱεροὺς τῶν στοιχείων
χαρακτῆρας), seems to bear a striking resemblance to hieroglyphs.40 If this is
an accurate understanding of Taautos’ writing, it would form, along with the
identification of him as Thoth/Hermes, another connection between Philo’s
text and the Hermetic tradition of Greco-Roman Egypt.41 There are, in fact,
strong parallels between Philo’s description of the location of the texts we
might fairly say are Taautos’, as well as the nature of his writing system, and the
picture of sacred texts we get in Euhemerus and later Hermetic writing. Thus
Euhemerus famously claims that in the temple of Zeus “Triphylius” on his
island utopia of Panchaea, the deeds of Ouranos, Kronos, and Zeus are stored,
set down “in writing called sacred by the Egyptians (FGrH 63 F 3 = Diod.
5.46.7: τὰ παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ἱερὰ καλούμενα).42 Additionally, an astronomical
text used to elucidate P. Oxy. 886 provides language that is very similar to
Philo/Sanchuniathon’s description of Taautos’ wisdom: “a book found in He-
liopolis in Egypt, in the temple, in adyta, written in sacred writing” (βίβλος
εὑρεθεῖσα ἐν Ἡλιουπόλει τῆς Αἰγύπτου ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ ἐν ἀδύτοις ἐγγεγραμμένη
ἐν ἱεροῖς γράμμασι).43
As for Taautos himself, we should not lose sight of the point that, according
(1978) 116–17. For the view that the Ugaritic texts vindicate Philo, they cite, in particular, Eissfeldt
(1939), (1952); Albright (1972). See also Nock (1934) 87 = (1972) 1.385: the cosmology of Philo
“contains much that is true Semitic,” yet the tale as a whole is “Euhemeristic.” More cautious and
more concerned with what Philo tells us about contemporary Phoenician beliefs is Teixidor (1977)
38, 46–48. Note also West (1997) 284.
38. Thus see Nautin (1949); Troiani (1974) 42–51; Barr (1974/1975); Teixidor (1977) 48; Oden
(1978); Baumgarten (1981); Clifford (1990); Edwards (1991); Millar (1983b) 64–65 = (2006b) 45–
46; id. (1993) 277–78; West (1994). For an especially Euhemeristic section, see F 1 = Euseb. PE
1.9.29.
39. Well observed by Baumgarten (1981) 69, 77.
40. Baumgarten (1981) 69.
41. See also above, n.33, on the term “Ammounean.”
42. Baumgarten (1981) 80–81. Cf. Dillery (1998) 270–71; Ramelli (2007) 887 n.15.
43. Catal. Codd. Astr. Graec. 7.62 (non vidi), cited by F. Cumont in Grenfell and Hunt (1908)
201 note to lines 2–4. Cf. Baumgarten (1981) 80 and n.61.
Space 133
to Philo/Sanchuniathon, he is “the first of those born under the sun to conceive

the discovery of writing and to begin to write down records” (F 1 = Euseb. PE
1.9.24: τῶν ὑφ’ ἥλιον γεγονότων πρῶτός ἐστι Τάαυτος ὁ τῶν γραμμάτων τὴν
εὕρεσιν ἐπινοήσας καὶ τῆς τῶν ὑπομνημάτων γραφῆς κατάρξας). Taautos is
both the protos heuretes (“first discoverer”) of writing and the first to preserve
the records of the past.44 This situation represents a telling collapse between
the inventor of writing and the recorder and relater of first knowledge (cos-
mogony). As we have seen above (in ch. 2) and I shall explore more below,
Berossus’ Oannes fulfills precisely these functions as well: he is the teacher of
written language to earliest humanity, and he also relates to the first humans
the stories of Creation (again, cosmogony). Note, too, Taautos’ function in the
Phoenician History: he helps Philo/Sanchuniathon organize several different
texts under one authoritative figure at the beginning of human history. As
Martin West has noted, “Sanchuniathon-Philo strings into a continuous tale
several mythical narratives that were originally independent and drawn from
different sources”;45 and this unifying of disparate sources is achieved through
attributing all knowledge to Taautos. The same is true of Berossus: he unites, in
one narrative, what are, in fact, different traditional Babylonian stories (Cre-
ation, the origins of civilization, the Flood), and he uses a sage figure, Oannes,
to transmit at least some of these tales. Indeed, it is time I turned to Berossus
in earnest.
Berossus: Babylon, the Preservation of

Antediluvian Wisdom, and the Model City
In the first section of this chapter, I demonstrated that space was a central con-
cept in shaping the vision of local historical writing. I also showed that space
was crucial in how ancient Near Eastern societies thought about the authen-
tication of the documents and artifacts that formed the basis of their under-
standing of the past. Indeed, details found in three texts, relating to space and
the authentication of records will be found to parallel the situation we will see
in detail at Lindos quite closely at the end of this chapter, even if these Near
Eastern texts are significantly different in other ways. Thus, when we turn to
Berossus and Manetho on the question of space and authentication, we need to
44. Cf. Ribichini (1991). On the protos heuretes, see Kleingünther (1933).
45. West (1997) 284.
have in mind both contemporary Greek concerns relating to place in historical

writing and the ready-made strategies for authenticating texts that we see in 2
Kings, Setna I, and Philo of Byblos.
To judge by the summary of Alexander Polyhistor, as preserved for us in
Syncellus, Berossus’ Babyloniaca would have begun with a statement of sub-
ject and sources that could have been read as historiographically coherent
and traditional from both the Greek and Babylonian perspectives: his history
was based on documents that “contained the records of history relating to the
heaven, sea, first creation, kings and their deeds” (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 28
M: περιέχειν δὲ τὰς ἀναγραφὰς ἱστορίας περὶ τοῦ ουρανοῦ καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ
πρωτογονίας καὶ βασιλέων καὶ τῶν κατ’ αὐτοὺς πράξεων). But then the tone
changed appreciably. What followed must have seemed conceived and com-
posed in a Greek register exclusively:46
And first [Berossus] says that the land of the Babylonians lies between
the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. And it produces wild wheat, barley,
lentils, sesame, and a root growing in the marshes is eaten: it is called
“gongai,” and this root has the same properties as barley. Dates also
grow, and apples, and the rest of the fruits, and fish and birds, both of
the land and water fowl. The regions of it toward Arabia are waterless
and barren, but the regions opposite Arabia are hilly and fertile. And in
Babylon there was a great crowd of men of different races who inhabited
Chaldaea; and they lived in a disorganized manner, just as wild animals.
And in the first year there appeared out of the Red Sea . . . (F 1 = Syncel-
lus Chron. 28 M)
From one perspective, these are unmistakably the words of Greek ethno-
graphic geography. Indeed, a look at Herodotus reveals a number of similari-
ties. Herodotus, too, begins by locating the region (1.178). The first item of note
that Herodotus registers concerning the natural properties of the land is that it
is “by far the best of all the regions we know at producing the fruit of Demeter”
(1.193.2; cf. Hipp. Aër. 12).47 Indeed, so fecund is Babylonia that Herodotus
believes that his account must seem unbelievable to those who have not visited
the land (Hdt. 1.193.4). Many of the same plants come in for special notice in
46. Kuhrt (1987a) 47.

47. Cf. Asheri (2007b) 209 ad loc.; also Cary (1949) 179–80. On Herodotus’ ethnography and
geography of Babylon, see Ravn (1942) 87–90; Baumgartner (1950) 72–73, 78–83; Muñiz Rodrí-
guez (1992). Cf. Rollinger (1993).
Space 135
both Herodotus and Berossus: wheat, barley, sesame, date trees. To be sure,
some of the similarity between Herodotus and Berossus on Babylonia’s location
and quality of land is due to the essential natural (or should we say “agricul-
tural”) realities of the region: they both mention the same plants because they
really are found there.
But we need also to consider the rhetoric of the passages in question, that
is, how they talk about Babylonia. For one thing, although the primary register
of the listing of plants is probably Greek ethnographic, a review of the prices
for a variety of agricultural products (sesame, dates, barley, etc.) is a regular
feature in the Babylonian astronomical diaries—not exactly what Berossus has
done, but not that different either.48 Furthermore, while Herodotus notes that,
save for the date tree, “no attempt at all is made to cultivate the rest of the
fruit-bearing plants—the fig, the vine, or the olive” (1.193.3), Berossus goes
out of his way to stress that in addition to the famous date of Babylon, the
land supports apple trees and, in fact, all manner of fruit-bearing plants.49 I
hesitate to press the claim that Berossus is engaging with Herodotus directly
on this point, though I think that may well be the case, but the larger point
nonetheless remains: at the beginning of the history of his native land, Beros-
sus has provided in nuce a thoroughgoing Greek ethnography. Furthermore,
the fecundity of Babylon, proverbial in Greek circles, has been stressed. Even
the edible root “gongai” (Akkadian kungu or gungu) is glossed for the Greek
reader as “having the same properties as barley.”50 Hecataeus of Abdera had an
elaborate geography and ethnography in his History of Egypt (cf. Diod. 1.30–
41; FGrH 264 F 25) and was himself following the lead of Herodotus.51 In a
sense, Berossus has supplied the knowledge that Herodotus assumed his own
readers lacked.
More subtly and more significantly, the division of the region in Berossus’
text into a southern portion bordering Arabia and a northern “hilly” one “op-
posite Arabia” betrays a Greek orientation: from earliest times down to and
through the early Hellenistic period, contact between Babylonia and the Arabs
of the desert to the southeast was minimal.52 Rather, from a native point of
view, the defining axis of the region was the northwest to southeast flow of the
48. Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.34; van der Spek (1993) 93.
49. Cf. Seeger (1964) 205; also Asheri (2007b) 209 ad Hdt. 1.193.2.
50. Komoróczy (1973) 142 and n.111. Cf. Burstein (1978) 13 n.4; Weitemeyer (1996) 33; de
Breucker (2010) ad F 1b, who also notes the passage’s general affiliation with Greek ethnography.
51. Murray (1970) 146–48; id. (1972) 208–9; cf. Kuhrt (1987a) 47. Note Theophrastus on the
date palm: HP 2.6.2–7.
52. Oppenheim (1977) 60–61. Arabs are first mentioned very late in cuneiform documents,
during the reign of Shalmaneser III (853 BC): see Ebeling (1928) 125. Cf. Donner (1986) 9–10.
rivers down to the Great Alluvium and the Persian Gulf. Greeks such as Xeno-
phon could speak easily of “going through Arabia, holding the Euphrates River
on the right” (Xen. An. 1.5.1), as though the Euphrates and Arabia were close
to each other.53 This was the way to enter the region most easily from the West,
on a trade route that went from the northern Levant across the Syrian Desert,
through Mari, and, following the course of the Euphrates, eventually to Sippar
and points south.54 I note, in passing, that Manetho apparently had no such
corresponding geographical introduction to Egypt.
This accommodation to the Greek reader of the Babyloniaca appears to be
short-lived, however. Right after the geography of Babylon, we move to earli-
est human history, when people lived as wild animals. It is at this point that
we hear of the appearance of the fish-man sage Oannes: “In the first year there
appeared out of the Red Sea at the place bordering Babylon a sentient crea-
ture by the name Oannes” (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 29 M).55 I have discussed
the important phrase “in the first year” above (pp. 74–77), and I will treat the
creation story in detail below, as well as Oannes himself (ch. 5). What interests
me here is the location of Oannes’ appearance out of the Red Sea: “at the place
neighboring Babylonia” (κατὰ τὸν ὁμοροῦντα τόπον τῇ Βαβυλωνίᾳ). This is a
pretty remarkable periphrasis. Although the shoreline of southern Mesopota-
mia has indeed changed from antiquity, shifting further to the south, Babylon
was never near the coast; rather, “Ur and Eridu were probably always the most
southerly of the Mesopotamian cities,”56 with Babylon well over one hundred
kilometers to the north of the coastline. Thus it can be said that Berossus’ state-
ment is misleading in the extreme. Why would he advance such a claim; why
was it so important for him to put Babylon in the vicinity of the sea? Quite
simply, he wanted to connect the city to Oannes and the civilizing of earli-
est humanity.57 To be sure, Berossus does not say here that Babylon actually
existed at this point, for it did not—it was widely known to be a postdiluvian
foundation. But by referring to the “place bordering on Babylonia,” Berossus
occludes this fact and thereby manages to orient earliest human history around
his native city. No passage could demonstrate more emphatically that Berossus’
history was centered on Babylon.
53. Cf. Tuplin (2003) 357. Donner (1986) believes that Xenophon was out of step with other
authors in so designating eastern Mesopotamia as “Arabia”; but he has been refuted by Retsö
(1990). See also Shalit (1954) 66; Lendle (1995) 45 ad loc.; in general, Anderson (2010). Note Ar-
rian’s confusion at An. 2.20.4.
54. Kuhrt (1995) 1.20.
55. Isaac Casaubon was particularly struck by both Berossus’ description of the fecundity of
Babylonia and by Oannes: see Grafton (1983/1993) 2.683.
56. Kuhrt (1995) 1.19. Cf. Brunt (1976/1983) 2.525–27.
57. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.617.
Space 137
It is important also to revisit the sentence Berossus uses to describe earliest

human life:
And in Babylon [ἐν δὲ τῇ Βαβυλῶνι] there was a great crowd of men of

different races who inhabited Chaldaea; and they lived in a disorganized
manner, just as wild animals [ζῆν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἀτάκτως ὥσπερ τὰ θηρία].
Inasmuch as earliest humanity is here being characterized as living in disor-

der, it is difficult to interpret the phrase “in Babylon” to mean “in the city of
Babylon,” rather than “in Babylonia”—though it needs to be pointed out that
“Babylonia” is exactly the word Berossus uses in the very next section of ma-
terial preserved by Syncellus. Komoroczy and other commentators following
him have noted how this description of earliest humanity in the introduction
to Berossus’ history is fully in accord with Mesopotamian texts that portray the
first humans as bestial, an idea that goes all the way back to Sumerian texts of
the late third and early second millennia BC.58 But it is difficult not to see the
influence of Greek thought here as well. At Diodorus 1.8.1, we read:
The humans who came into being at the beginning lived in a disorga-
nized fashion and like wild animals [τοὺς δ’ ἀρχῆς γεννηθέντας τῶν
ἀνθρώπων φασὶν ἐν ἀτάκτῳ καὶ θηριώδει βίῳ καθεστῶτας], going out
in scattered groups and taking for their sustenance the softest of shoots
and the fruits that grew of their own accord from trees.
The language of this passage is especially close to Syncellus’ quote of Berossus

on the first humans (note, in particular, Berossus’ ἀτάκτως ὥσπερ τὰ θηρία and
Diodorus’ ἐν ἀτάκτῳ καὶ θηριώδει βίῳ).59 Inasmuch as this section of Diodorus
is now widely thought to derive from Hecataeus of Abdera’s Aegyptiaca,60 it is
tempting to see Berossus, when describing the conditions of earliest humans,
as following the lead of perhaps the most influential Greek ethnographic his-
tory of the first years of the Hellenistic epoch.61 The only difference was that,
naturally, Berossus placed the site of the first humans near Babylon and not
58. Komoróczy (1973) 140–42. Cf. Burstein (1978) 13 n.5; Kuhrt (1987a) 44 n.33; George
(2003) 1.450. The first text Komoróczy cites dates to the turn of the third and second millennia:
“The people, like the sheep, ate the grass with their mouths.”
59. Note also Critias DK 88 B 25, the first lines of the quote from his Sisyphus: ἦν χρόνος, ὅτ’
ἦν ἄτακτος ἀνθρώπων βίος | καὶ θηριώδης ἰσχύος θ’ ὑπηρέτης . . . Cf. de Breucker (2010) ad F 1b.
60. Cole (1990) 174–92, 208, reviving the arguments of Reinhardt (1912) = (1966) 114–32.
Note also Murray (1970) 169–70. This view of the relationship between Hecataeus of Abdera and
Diodorus is not shared by all: see esp. Spoerri (1959) 162–63; Burton (1972) 47–51.
61. Cf. Trüdinger (1918) 51 n.1.
Egypt. Indeed, as I have already noted above, inclusion of a geography in Ber-

ossus’ history is likely traceable to Hecataeus of Abdera. It seems reasonable
to think that Hecataeus’ influence was continuous throughout this section of
the Babyloniaca. This detail from Berossus regarding the first humans dwelling
near Babylon in a savage state thus has both native Mesopotamian and nonna-
tive Greek antecedents. But the nearness of Berossus’ language with that found
at Diodorus 1.8.1 suggests to me that this was not a coincidence; Berossus must
have seen for himself that ways of talking about earliest human life in Mesopo-
tamian texts bore a striking similarity to contemporary Greek thinking about
the same matter.
To return to the idea of Babylon as the conceptual focus of the Babyloniaca,
it is worth pointing out that Abydenus, who was relying on Berossus, reports
that one of Bel-Marduk’s “first acts of cosmic organization” was to build the
walls of Babylon (FGrH 685 F 1a + b), an understanding of the city’s founda-
tion and first fortification that has a good parallel in Babylonian cuneiform
literature, notably in the Enuma Elish (ANET3 68).62 It is also essential to look
at Berossus’ narrative of the Flood for the centrality of Babylon to his thinking
and for how he constructs documentary links between his own history and the
remote past, particularly the antediluvian past. An examination of these links
will enable us to appreciate how Berossus relies on local ways of authenticating
his own text through connection to ancient ones, as well as to see connections
between Berossus and other narratives I have already treated in this chapter.
The introduction and conclusion to Berossus’ Flood account are of chief
importance here:
When Otiartes died, his son Xisouthros ruled for 18 saroi. During the
reign of this man, a great cataclysm occurred. The account is recorded
as follows [ἀναγεγράφθαι δὲ τὸν λόγον οὕτως]: Kronos, appearing to
him in his sleep, said that on the Fifteenth of Daisios, humanity would
be destroyed by a flood. He therefore bid (that man), having dug a hole,
to deposit in the city of the sun, Sippar, the beginnings, middles, and
ends of all writings [κελεῦσαι οὖν γραμμάτων πάντων ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα
καὶ τελευτὰς ὀρύξαντα θεῖναι ἐν πόλει ἡλίου Σισπάροις]63. . . [After Xi-
southros’ ascension to heaven with his family after the Flood,] a voice
62. George (1992) 248; cf. Schnabel (1923) 256.

63. I follow Jacoby, deleting διά after οὖν. Note that Adler and Tuffin seem to retain it, to judge
by their translation: “the beginnings and the middles and the ends of all knowledge preserved in
writings” (Adler and Tuffin [2002] 40 [my emphasis]). My difficulty with this translation is that I
do not see the warrant for “all knowledge” in that case.
Space 139
was heard out of the air bidding that it was necessary that [the Flood
survivors] be pious. For he, on account of his piety, had gone to dwell
with the gods, and his wife and daughter and the pilot had gotten a share
in this same honor. He said to them that they would go again to Babylon;
and that if it was fated for them, having recovered the writings from
Sippar, to distribute them to humanity [ὡς εἵμαρται αὐτοῖς Σισπάρων
ἀνελομένοις τὰ γράμματα διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις]; and that the
place where they were was Armenia. (F 4b = Syncellus Chron. 30–31 M)
Berossus adds, a few lines later, that a part of the ark that had come to rest in
Armenia “still remained” (τοῦ δὲ πλοίου τούτου κατακλιθέντος. . . ἔτι μέρος
τι . . . διαμένειν) and that the local people removed bits of the ship’s bitumen
sealing and used them for talismans (F 4b = Syncellus Chron. 31 M). This is a
significant passage, for the detail is also mentioned by Josephus, together with
an attribution to Berossus (AJ 1.93), suggesting the fidelity of Alexander Poly-
histor’s digest of Berossus’ work and its reception by Syncellus.64
Most obviously, Berossus is clearly eager to maintain that the ark had sur-
vived, at least in part, down to his own time and that it was thus, in theory, avail-
able to corroborate his narrative of the Flood. We saw a similar “Herodotean”
touch with Berossus’ mention that “even now the image of Oannes has been
preserved.”65 But even more important is the detail embedded within the nar-
rative of the Flood itself, that Xisouthros was charged by Kronos with the burial
at Sippar of “the beginnings, middles, and ends of all writings” (γραμμάτων
πάντων ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὰς). It could be argued that no surviving
sentence or even phrase is more important than this one in gaining an under-
standing of Berossus’ purpose in his Babyloniaca: with it, he was seeking to give
his history of Babylonia unimpeachable authority in the idiom of his native
Babylonian tradition, though in the Greek language.
Lambert and Millard have observed that Berossus’ narrative of the Flood
“departs from all known cuneiform sources in only two respects”: the dating
of it and the burying of all writings at Sippar.66 I have already discussed Beros-
sus’ dating of the Flood above.67 It is important to note here that, although we
will see that this attempt to legitimize his text by establishing a physical link
between it and the remote past is built out of methods of authentication that are
firmly within native scholarly traditions at Babylon, the detail of the burial of all
64. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 27–28.

65. See above, pp. 75–76.
66. Lambert and Millard (1969) 136–37. Cf. Kvanvig (1988) 176.
67. Pp. 77–79.
antediluvian records is itself innovative, just as is Berossus’ dating of the Flood

and, for that matter, his dating of the foundational texts that Oannes reveals to
earliest humans “in the first year.”
In point of fact, the phrase “beginnings, middles, and ends” has been found
by Lambert and Millard to have a close parallel in a Babylonian text that re-
quires the “recitation of prayers twice by saying ‘the beginning of the inscrip-
tion and the end of the inscription shall be recited twice’, . . . meaning ‘from
beginning to end.’”68 “Beginnings, middles, and ends” has been taken to mean,
in essence, “all”; that is, “all the antediluvian records” were to be buried at Sip-
par. If this interpretation is correct, Berossus’ sentence is also redundant, for
we have already been told in the Greek that Kronos was ordering that the “be-
ginnings, middles, and ends of all writings” (γραμμάτων πάντων) be buried at
Sippar. It may well be that this doublet in thought is due to Berossus’ desire to
explain from a Babylonian point of view what “all writings” are; it is a sort of
cultural translation or gloss.
In a larger sense, too, we need to see the instructions of Kronos to Xisouth-
ros in the context of Near Eastern ways of authenticating texts and other arti-
facts that purported to be ancient. Much attention has been paid recently to
what can only be called either the “archaeological” interests of Neo-Babylonian
rulers in the Mesopotamian past or, perhaps, their “antiquarianism.”69 As Irene
Winter has put it:
What is demonstrable is that they, like us, mounted campaigns to ac-

tively recover ancient remains; and that they declared themselves as hav-
ing dug in order to reveal works attributed to the ancients. Finally, they
also, like at least some of us, proclaimed these finds to be the results of a
(divinely directed) research design geared to an empirical and positivist
recovery of “true” traces of the past.70 (emphasis original)
Nabonidus, the last native ruler of Babylon before his expulsion by Cyrus the
Great, was particularly known for his antiquarian interests.71 He “conducted
systematic archeological excavations” and displayed “the finds in what could
be referred to as a museum.”72 It strikes me as significant that scholars have
68. Lambert and Millard (1969) 137, citing JAOS 87, Kh 1932.26. Cf. Burstein (1978) 20 n.53.
69. Cf. Ehrenberg (2007) 95.
70. Winter (2000) 1785.
71. Note, in particular, Beaulieu (1989) esp.137–47; also Michalowski (2003).
72. Woods (2004) 82 and n.292, citing Winter (2000). Note also Beaulieu (1994) 38–39. I regis-
ter here my debt to C. Woods for his generous aid, especially bibliographic. He should not be held
responsible for views not otherwise attributed to him.
Space 141
spoken in similar terms recently about the Greek temples to Athena at Lindos
and to Apollo at Sicyon.73 Indeed, we can push the need for a curated and cre-
dentialed past down to our own time: Umberto Eco has shown how the desire
to “regain contact with the past” through a “faith in fakes” animates contempo-
rary institutions of various sorts (e.g., museums, theme parks, faux castles and
mansions), each ultimately revealing more about the needs of the present than
about the reality of the past.74
Sometime during his reign (556–539 BC), probably earlier rather than
later, Nabonidus restored the Ebabbar, the cult site of the sun god Shamash at
Sippar. As part of this effort, he evidently recovered and restored older docu-
ments and cult images relating to the shrine, buried the documents in the new
foundations of the Ebabbar, and made a new cult image of Shamash. One of
the documents—buried in its own terracotta box together with a label—was
the “Sun-god Tablet of Nabû-apla-iddina,”75 complete with a relief of the god
Shamash seated on his throne before three figures, the middle of whom is the
king Nabû-apla-iddina himself. The inscription (BBSt 36 = BM 91000) records
that Nabû-apla-iddina (887–855 BC) was entrusted by Marduk “to settle cult
centers, | erect shrines, | delineate the cultic designs, | safeguard the cultic of-
fices | and rituals, | establish regular offerings, | (and) make bountiful the food
offerings” (ii.30–iii.6).76 Nabû-apla-iddina was, in other words, engaged in a
policy of cultic revival and preservation. At the end of column III and start of
column IV of this same text, we hear a tale that is, in many ways, remarkably
similar to the story in 2 Kings of Josiah and the discovery of the law during the
restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem. We are told that Shamash, the sun god
of Sippar, had turned away from Akkad in anger but had become reconciled
to it in the reign of Nabû-apla-iddina. Then, “when a relief of his image, | a
fired clay (impression) | of his appearance and attributes, | was found across
the Euphrates—| on the western bank—| Nabû-nadin-sumi, | the sangu priest
of Sippar, the diviner, | (one) among the offspring of Ekur-suma-usarsi, | the
sangu priest of Sippar, the diviner, | showed that relief of the image to Nabû-
apla-iddina, | the king, his lord, and when | Nabû-apla-iddina, | the king of
Babylon | to whom the fashioning of such an image | had been entrusted by (di-
vine) command, | beheld that image, | his countenance brightened, | his spirit
rejoiced” (iii.19–iv.10).77 Just as in the 2 Kings story, we have a priest making
73. Note Shaya (2005); Scheer (1996). Cf. Platt (2011) 164. See, in general, Platt (2010).
74. Eco (1986b) 34 (regaining contact with past); Faith in Fakes is the title of his book (1986a).
75. I follow Woods’ excellent reconstruction and dating of the “Sun-god Tablet” assemblage:
Woods (2004) 35.
76. Woods’ trans. (2004) 84–85; see also Brinkman (1968) 189.
77. Woods’ trans. (2004) 85.
known to his king an important, recently found religious artifact. Indeed, in

the pictorial frieze that is found above the text of the “Sun-god Tablet,” we find
three figures; the first figure is the priest, Nabû-nadin-shumi, and he leads the
second figure, Nabû-apla-iddina, into the presence of Shamash: Nabû-nadin-
shumi literally mediated the space between Nabû-apla-iddina and the god.78 It
is difficult to imagine a more apt representation of the priest as facilitator for
the king’s access to the divine.
Also arresting about this story is that Nabû-apla-iddina appears to have
been engaged in restoration archaeology, just as Nabonidus would be three
hundred years later. There is, in other words, a continuous tradition of archaism
among the Babylonian kings;79 specifically, Nabonidus felt that it was impor-
tant to restore, record, and interr a contemporary account of the earlier efforts
at cultic preservation undertaken by Nabû-apla-iddina. Remember that the box
in which the inscription and relief were housed had a label: “Image of Shamash,
the lord of Sippar, the one who dwells in Ebabbar.”80 In other words, Nabonidus
believed that there was a chance that the repository of Nabû-apla-iddina’s text
would itself be rediscovered again sometime in the future, buried in a founda-
tion for which Nabonidus was himself responsible.
I believe that the scholarly and religious world inhabited by the likes of
Berossus and his fellow priests in the early years of Seleucid rule of Babylon
was not that different from the world of Nabû-apla-iddina and Nabonidus. The
story of the recovery of documents from Sippar after the Flood is not that dif-
ferent from conventional tales of the “discovery” of sacred books.81 The burial
of important documents relating to the past in special locations—as it turns
out in the cases of both Berossus’ Xisouthros and Nabonidus’ tablet of Nabû-
apla-iddina, at Sippar—was not an abstract cultural fantasy but a societal prac-
tice that had been repeatedly observed. It could perhaps be objected that the
two documents in question are quite different: sacred narratives (the grammata
panta of Xisouthros), on the one hand, and Nabû-apla-iddina’s autobiographic
account, on the other. But there is evidence that literary texts were imagined as
being treated in much the same way as Nabû-apla-iddina’s testimony.
Piotr Michalowski has drawn attention to a first-millennium redaction of
the Gilgamesh Epic that contains a much longer beginning to the poem than is
attested in other versions.82 It mentions, among other accomplishments of the
78. See esp. Woods (2004) 49.

79. Cf. Woods (2004) 82.
80. Woods trans. (2004) 25.
81. Speyer (1970) 119.
82. Michalowski (1999) 78–81.
Space 143
eponymous hero, that “Gilgamesh . . . explored throughout the regions, | He

grasped all wisdom from his [search] of the universe, | He learned secrets and
uncovered the hidden, | He brought back a tale from before the Flood.” Just a
few lines later, we find the following instruction: “Find the tablet-box of copper,
| Release its lock of bronze, | Open the secret door, | Then take out the lapis la-
zuli tablet and read it: | How he, Gilgamesh, underwent all manner of suffering,
| He is supreme among kings, illustrious, lordly in stature.”83
As Michalowski has demonstrated, when we reach the end of the story and
find Gilgamesh repeating the opening lines of the epic, we realize that the in-
structions about how to open the lapis lazuli box serve to alert the audience that
the text they are enjoying is the very one that is described in the course of the
poem.84 The story that is related about Gilgamesh is thereby converted from
biography to autobiography; it becomes suddenly recognizable in the narrative
as the very tale that is buried in a box as a foundation deposit in the walls of the
city that Gilgamesh has built. The story of Gilgamesh in this recension has thus
created its own material connection or (to borrow Winter’s formulation above)
“true trace” to the events it purports to relate.
Mutatis mutandis, this is exactly the situation we have in Berossus’ narra-
tive of the Flood. A traditional understanding of the past that contains within
it an unbridgeable divide—quite literally a cataclysmic event in which all the
marks of human achievement, including records, are obliterated—creates a
problem for itself in the retelling: how can the preserver of the past relate in-
formation about the events that happened before the great catastrophe? This
is accomplished by creating a link within the text that establishes a connec-
tion to the antediluvian past and its records. Syncellus reports that Berossus
actually claimed to have found “documents of many [writers] well preserved
at Babylon” (ἀναγραφὰς φυλασσομένας ἐπιμελῶς), covering 150,000 years—
that is, “certain histories [ἱστορίας τινάς] having to do with heaven and earth
and sea, the antiquity of kings and their deeds, and the placement of Babylon”
(Syncellus Chron. 14 M). This looks unmistakably like Syncellus’ description
of the Babyloniaca itself and Berossus’ composition of it (cf. Syncellus Chron.
28 M),85 and it suggests that Berossus claimed his text to be actually derived,
at least in part or in some sense, from those very texts buried by Xisouthros
83. Michalowski trans. (1999) 79.

84. Michalowski (1999) 80.
85. The correspondences are profound: Βήρωσσος . . . φησι . . . ἀναγραφὰς δὲ πολλῶν ἐν
Βαβυλῶνι φυλάσσεσθαι μετὰ πολλῆς ἐπιμελίας . . . τὰς ἀναγραφὰς ἱστορίας περὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ
θαλάσσης καὶ πρωτογονίας καὶ βασιλέων καὶ τῶν κατ’ αὐτοὺς πράξεων. Even the number of years
covered is the same in both passages: 150,000. Cf. Adler and Tuffin (2002) 19 n.3.
at Sippar.86 This passage is, if authentically Berossan, a “tracing.” The line of

transmission of wisdom goes back from Berossus to the Flood survivors, to
Oannes himself: Oannes “passed on” his written wisdom to earliest humanity
(Syncellus Chron. 29 M: παραδοῦναι τόνδε τὸν λόγον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις), and
the voice from heaven instructed the survivors to do very nearly the same thing
(Syncellus Chron. 31 M: τὰ γράμματα διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις): he “handed
over” the wisdom; the others were to “distribute” it.
Similarly, note that among the accomplishments of Gilgamesh is that “He
brought back a tale from before the Flood.” Perhaps closer to the situation we
find in Berossus is what we see in the Third Sibylline Oracle, where the Sibyl
claims kinship with Noah and reports that Noah was himself not only the chief
Flood survivor but also a culture hero or sage, “to whom the first things hap-
pened, and to whom all the last things were revealed” (Or. Sib. 3.827–28). The
Sibyl thereby establishes “her relationship to the one surviving link between an-
tediluvian and postdiluvian worlds,” and thus she also connects knowledge of
those worlds: her words are “true” because they ultimately derive from her priv-
ileged access to antediluvian knowledge (Or. Sib. 3.829: ὥστ’ ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ στόματος
τάδ’ ἀληθινὰ πάντα λελέχθω).87 A similar anxiety about tracing physical con-
tact to records from before the Flood in Jewish literature can be seen in Jose-
phus’ story about the two pillars—one of brick and the other of stone—that
were put up by the descendants of Seth (and hence Adam) as a record of all
antediluvian wisdom (Jos. AJ 1.70–71), a story that is also reflected in Jubilees,
where Cain discovers a stone inscription and “sins” because he transcribes it
(Jubilees 8:3).88
Similarly, through Xisouthros’ burial of “the beginnings, middles, and ends
of all writing” at Sippar, a place that was widely believed to have survived the
Flood,89 Berossus has established a “true trace” for his own account back to
the antediluvian past. It is worth remembering, in this connection, how Beros-
sus introduces the Flood: “the account [of the Flood] is recorded as follows”
(ἀναγεγράφθαι δὲ τὸν λόγον οὕτως). Schnabel recognized long ago that the
86. See esp. van der Horst (2002) 145–46.

87. Lightfoot (2007) 380.
88. Cf. Lightfoot (2007) 380 n.149. The last two parallels (AJ and Jubilees) were pointed out to
me by Matthew Goff.
89. Hallo (1970/1971) 65: “Sippar alone was spared by the Deluge (Irra IV 50) and it was there
that, according to Berossos, the revealed wisdom of the antediluvian sages was buried for safekeep-
ing during the flood”; cf. Burstein (1978) 20 n.54; Dalley (2000) 6. Note also Woods (2005) on other
connections having to do with Sippar: it was a seat of scribal learning that was also known as place
of “cleansing” and “judgment”; it was also a place associated with bitumen, thanks to the Sumerian
rendering of its name and the tarry substance.
Space 145
phrasing here is probably meant to signal that Berossus wants his audience to
understand that he is following a specific written source for his story of the
Flood,90 one that was associated with Sippar in particular.91 It is certainly the
case that in the testimonium from Josephus, which may well capture elements
of Berossus’ own proem, we read that “this Berossus indeed was following the
oldest records” when he wrote his history (T 3 = Ap. 1.130: οὗτος τοίνυν ὁ
Βηρῶσος ταῖς ἀρχαιοτάταις ἐπακολουθῶν ἀναγραφαῖς). Relatedly, it has also
been suggested that Berossus indulged in a sort of etymological play when he
chose Sippar as the repository for antediluvian writings, for “”the name Sippar
can be connected to the concepts of “writing” and “scribe.”92
To the tracing of documents back to earlier eras, we should probably add
the related phenomenon in Mesopotamian culture of scholars tracing their
own descent back to antediluvian ancestors.93 Although not directly related
to what Berossus was doing in stressing Xisouthros’ burial of all antediluvian
knowledge at Sippar, the construction of elaborate scholarly genealogies that
go back to the period before the Flood clearly reflects the same orientation.
Authentication—or perhaps, in this context, we should say “canonicity”—was
determined not just by a text’s material antecedents but also by the family back-
ground of the scholar responsible for the text in question. This background
was often charted in the colophons or formal conclusions of texts,94 where an
individual scribe would identify himself as the “son” of a distinguished forebear
and, not infrequently, an antediluvian sage. Wiseman has observed that one of
the unique characteristics of Babylon that helped to mark it as “the city of learn-
ing” was the use in literary texts of colophons identifying the scribe’s family and
tradition; significantly, this practice began in earnest in the Neo-Babylonian
period and lasted until the first century BC; that is, tracing wisdom was what
was expected in Seleucid Babylon.95 In considering this scholarly practice of
colophons, Lambert has even seen “a conception of canonicity . . . which is
stated plainly by Berossus: that the sum of revealed knowledge was given once
for all by the antediluvian sages.”96 It does not take much to see that this prac-
tice is analogous to the construction of a documentary link with the past. In
a world where priestly and scribal descent was routinely traced back to the
90. Schnabel (1923) 182; cf. Burstein (1978) 19 n.48.

91. Lambert (1967) 127.
92. Knobloch (1985).
93. Note, in particular, Lambert (1957), (1962); also above, ch. 2, p. 68.
94. Cf. Oppenheim (1977) 241.
95. Wiseman (1985) 86.
96. Lambert (1957) 9.
earliest times and where whole scribal guilds formed with common legend-
ary founders,97 Berossus’ historiography, too, had to be connected in a physical
sense to the earliest and definitive formulation of human knowledge.98
However, for all the evidence I have adduced to show that Berossus’ method
for authenticating his pre-Flood account has parallels in the cuneiform texts of
Mesopotamia, I do not want to lose sight of the essential fact that Berossus was
still innovating, even if on the basis of preexisting Babylonian scholarly prac-
tice. Indeed, Martin Hengel has suggested that Berossus, in writing of the burial
of the tablets at Sippar, was very probably the first writer in antiquity to make
clear precisely how antediluvian knowledge survived the Deluge and could thus
form the basis for his own account.99 This is a good place to step back and think
about some of the larger issues associated with Berossus’ account of the Flood,
particularly as they relate to space.
Although they were originally separate episodes in the history of humanity
(to judge by the separate tales concerning them), it is hard to see how a Meso-
potamian narrative history that began with the origins of humanity could not
also include a Flood story; there are cuneiform parallels for what Berossus has
done in uniting the accounts.100 With that said, it is important to look again at
three salient features of Berossus’ Flood story and ask why his version of the
myth features the Sumerian Flood hero Xisouthros instead of Babylonian fig-
ures, either Utnapishtim or Atra-hasis; why Sippar is featured so prominently;
and why Berossus bothers to create a “true trace” for his account back to the
tablets buried by Xisouthros at Sippar. I believe that all three details show Ber-
ossus addressing matters of critical importance to the learned priestly elite of
his own culture. If this interpretation is correct, we have to understand that
Berossus was writing for a native Babylonian audience as well as a nonnative
Greco-Macedonian one.
Burstein has reasonably suggested that Berossus opted to go with Xisouth-
ros/Ziusudra as his Flood hero because he sought to “harmonize” his source
for the Flood with that for his pre-Flood rulers in which Ziusudra was the last
king.101 This may well be. It seems to be the case, though, that with the excep-
tion of Ziusudra, Berossus’ narrative otherwise conforms more closely to the
Babylonian account of the Deluge, as found in the Atrahasis epic, insofar as
an admonitory dream seems an important element in that redaction, whereas
the Sumerian version contains no such detail.102 But I believe that Berossus
97. Cf. Lambert (1957), (1962); also Michalowski (1996) 186.

98. Cf. Dillery (2007b) 223.
99. Hengel (1974) 1.242.
100. Læssøe (1956) 99.
101. Burstein (1978) 20 n.51.
102. Burstein (1978) 20 nn.50 and 51, refuting Komoróczy (1973) 133–35. Cf. also Læssøe
(1956) 93, 96.
Space 147
may be employing the Sumerian name for the Flood hero in order to access
the authority of the Sumerian language and thereby to conceal where he inno-
vates, namely, in making Babylon a pre-Flood city. Recall that he locates earli-
est humanity in Babylon, or, to use his own remarkable periphrasis, in a place
“bordering Babylonia” where Oannes emerged from the Red Sea and revealed
his wisdom.103 Note, too, that the heavenly voice tells the Flood survivors to
return to Babylon (ἐλεύσονται πάλιν εἰς Βαβυλῶνα). Furthermore, Berossus
has these survivors found “again” or “refound” Babylon (Syncellus Chron. 32
M: πάλιν ἐπικτίσαι τὴν Βαβυλῶνα). The site of Sippar as the place where the
tablets are buried by Xisouthros has been explained by some as necessitated
by the fact that no Flood stories were set in Babylon.104 But on the basis of that
reasoning, Berossus could have connected the Flood narrative to any of the
other traditionally recognized antediluvian cities. In any case, it is a mistake to
say that Berossus does not include Babylon in his Flood story, for as I have just
noted, the divine voice tells the survivors to return to Babylon.
I believe that Berossus chose Sippar as the site for the preservation of an-
tediluvian knowledge precisely because of the city’s reputation as the “eternal
city” and because of its associations with ancient wisdom and kingship.105
Furthermore, Sippar, together with Babylon, served as the “epicenter” of the
Neo-Babylonian Empire,106 the precise epoch that constituted the ideal past
for Berossus, when Babylon was a great world power. In an archaizing Babylo-
nian bilingual tablet (K 4364, in Sumerian and Akkadian), dating to the Sec-
ond Dynasty of Isin and probably to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I specifically
(1126–1105), a later king refers to himself as “distant scion of kingship, seed
preserved from before the flood, offspring of [Enmeduranki] king of Sippar”
(lines 8–9), a ruler and sage who figures in Berossus’ own king list as the sev-
enth antediluvian king. Lambert uses this text to demonstrate the utility of Sip-
par for constructing Babylonian ideology: “Babylon’s lack of any really remote
antiquity necessitated that origins be sought elsewhere,” in Sippar, and suggests
that Berossus’ focus on Sippar in his Flood narrative reveals precisely the same
attitude.107 Indeed, Berossus’ emphasis on Sippar may have been a way for him
to halt its decline into obscurity during his own time.108
Whatever the particular historical circumstances, though, it is absolutely
103. See above, p. XXX.

104. E.g., Lambert and Millard (1969) 137.
105. Woods (2005) 29–30; see also above, n.89.
106. Beaulieu (2003) 6*; see also below, ch. 5, pp. 262–63.
107. Lambert (1967) 127.
108. Cf. Downey (1988) 3 on Assur, Nippur, and Sippar and their fall “into obscurity” during
the Seleucid period. On Sippar in particular, note esp. Oelsner (1986) 129–31; also MacGinnis
(2002) 226–27, summarizing the evidence for the reduced occupation of the site. Van der Spek
(1992) 240–43 takes a more moderate position, arguing for the possibility of continued habitation;
he notes (242) Berossus’ mention of Sippar in the Flood narrative.
clear, in the heavenly command to the survivors of the Flood to return to Baby-
lon and also in the detail that it was their fate to rescue the tablets at Sippar and
then to disseminate that knowledge to all mankind (εἵμαρται αὐτοῖς Σισπάρων
ἀνελομένοις τὰ γράμματα διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις), that Berossus attempted
to forge a link between Babylon, as the home of earliest humanity, and Sippar,
as a recognized center of ancient scribal wisdom. Babylon acts as the transmit-
ter of the antediluvian knowledge first preserved at Sippar, and this is all hu-
man knowledge—“the beginnings, middles, and ends” of all wisdom, since the
revelation of which, “nothing further has been discovered.”
All these details would only have been meaningful or even intelligible to
Mesopotamian elite priests and scribes such as Berossus. This is where the
“tracing” of his work back to the tablets buried at Sippar comes in. As we have
seen, it was common practice for texts from Mesopotamia to contain within
them allusions to the location and physical preservation of the writings them-
selves. Berossus has followed this procedure in his Babyloniaca but has also
managed to make this way of authenticating his text work as an element in his
narrative. Like the reader of the late redaction of the Gilgamesh epic discussed
by Michalowski or even Philo of Byblos’ account of the discoveries of Sanchu-
niathon, we are encouraged to see the text we are reading—Berossus’ history of
Babylon—as connected in a literally physical sense to a particular location and
context in the very remote past. In these cases, space actually guarantees the
antiquity and veracity of the writing in question.
This centrality of Babylon to Berossus’ historical vision can be seen not only
in the early history of Babylonia but also in his accounting of much later pe-
riods. The Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle preserves two versions
of a campaign undertaken by the Neo-Assyrian ruler of Babylon Sennacherib
(ruled 704–681) against Cilicia in 696, one attributed to Abydenus and one to
Alexander Polyhistor, and both thought to derive from Berossus’ Babyloniaca.
Abydenus (FGrH 685 F 5) relates that Sennacherib, styled the conqueror of
Babylon, defeated a fleet of “Ionian” warships off the coast of Cilicia.109 Evi-
dently, in commemoration of this victory, he built a “temple of the Athenians”
(better, “of Athena”), put up bronze pillars, “and caused, he said, his great deeds
to be inscribed truthfully.” According to Abydenus, Sennacherib also built the
city Tarson at this time, “according to the plan and model of Babylon so that the
River Cydnus flows through just as the Euphrates flows through Babylon.”110
109. See Parker (2000) and de Breucker (2010) ad F 7c.

110. This and the foregoing quote are from Burstein’ trans. (1978) 24, though note that I have
not followed Burstein’s substitution of “a temple of the Athenians” with “a temple of Sandes who is
Space 149
In Polyhistor’s version (FGrH 685 F 5 section 6; Schoene [1875] 27; cf. FGrH
273 F 79), Sennacherib is described as going to Cilicia to meet the invasion
of the region by “Greeks” and defeating them after a hard-fought land battle.
“As a memorial of his victory he left a statue of himself on the battlefield” and
ordered that his courage and deeds be inscribed “in Chaldaean script” for fu-
ture generations. Polyhistor also reports that “Sennacherib built (so he reports)
Tarson after the model of Babylon, and he gave it the name Tharsin.”111 Burstein
has cogently argued that if the phrase “so he reports” comes from Berossus’ nar-
rative, Berossus will have claimed there to be using a document of Sennacherib
for his treatment of the events of 696.112
While this campaign is not to be found in Chronicle 1, recording the deeds
of the rulers of Babylon from the native king Nabû-nasir (747–34) to the Neo-
Assyrian regent Shamash-shum-ukin (667–48),113 there is a contemporary cu-
neiform text that does seem to treat the same events.114 BM 103000 records that
in 696, a ruler of the city of Illubru, one Kirua, caused the men of Hillaku (Cili-
cia) to revolt, including the cities of Ingirra (Anchiale) and Tarzi (Tarsus), and
that the chief result of the insurrection was that the road to Que was blocked;
Sennacherib then sent a land force to the region, which crushed the rebellion,
sacked Tarsus and other places involved in the revolt, captured Kirua, and had
him and the spoils of the campaign brought back to Nineveh, where Kirua was
brutally executed. Significantly, this document also records that Sennacherib
restored Illubru, resettled the conquered people there, and had an alabaster
stela set up, presumably recording the events of the campaign.115
Looking at all these texts together, several troubling discrepancies emerge.
Was the decisive battle fought on land, as BM 103000 and Polyhistor suggest,
or was it at sea, as we find in Abydenus?116 Did Sennacherib lead the expedition
to crush the Cilician revolt himself, as we find in both Abydenus and Polyhis-
tor, or did he simply send out the force with a deputy in charge, as BM 103000
Heracles”: see Dalley (1999) 73 and n.2; Forsberg (1995) 72–73; Lane Fox (2009) 82 and n.53. See
also discussion below, pp. 155–58.
111. Burstein’ trans. (1978) 24.
112. Burstein (1978) 24 n.79. Cf. Helm (1980) 320–21.
113. Cf. Grayson (1975a) 14; Kuhrt (1995) 2.576.
114. Young (2000) 102 does not believe that the text in question refers to the same campaign.
Cf. Lanfranchi (2000) 26.
115. First published in King (1909) 5; I have consulted Luckenbill (1927) 2.137–38 and Fors-
berg (1995) 58–59. In general, see, accepting the basic historicity of the events involving Tarsus,
Hawkins (1979) 155; Grayson (1991a) 112; Dalley (1999); Lanfranchi (2000) 30–34. See now also
Lane Fox (2009) 81.
116. Momigliano thinks that Abydenus is to be preferred on this point: see Momigliano (1934)
= (1975c) 409–13, followed by Burkert (1992b) 161 n.21. Forsberg (1995) 72 voices difficulties with
accepting this view. Note also Lanfranchi (2000) 25–26.
makes clear?117 The Greek authors’ apparent unanimity on this point, against
the cuneiform text, might suggest that Berossus was responsible for making
Sennacherib direct the campaign personally. This element in the narrative
grows in interest if we also take account of the extraordinary detail, found in
both Greek texts, that Sennacherib either built or rebuilt Tarsus “in the image
of Babylon.” Dalley has suggested that the phrase is a translation from Akka-
dian and can be found in cuneiform texts from the seventh century, noting in
particular the case of Arbela, which Ashurbanipal (grandson of Sennacherib;
ruled 668–631?) celebrated in a hymn as “the image of Babylon.”118 Even grant-
ing that there are good parallels for the phrase, I believe that Stig Forsberg was
correct to wonder what such a detail would be doing in a Neo-Assyrian text
recording the events of Sennacherib’s campaign. He has cogently argued that
the detail that Tarsus was built on the model of Babylon (whatever that means;
see below) was due also to the Babylonian Berossus:119 why would an Assyrian
king want to make a city in Asia Minor look like Babylon rather than, say, his
own capital, Nineveh? If this interpretation is correct, we must again ask why
Berossus would introduce such a detail.
In the first place, whether Berossus introduced the phrase into his account of
the campaign of 696, it has the effect of making Babylon an ideal against which
other cities are measured. The phrase incontrovertibly throws a great deal of
attention on Babylon, making it important in a narrative where the city does
not, strictly speaking, even have a role, such as here in Sennacherib’s Cilician
expedition. It would certainly be consistent with Berossus’ practice elsewhere
to intrude his native city into his history where it really did not have a place—as
we see, with great clarity, in the Flood narrative. But secondly and more specu-
latively, we know, thanks to a proxeny decree from Delphi (FD III.2.208), that
sometime prior to 243/2 or even 258/7, Tarsus was renamed “Antioch on the
Cydnus.”120 It seems likely that it was refounded and hence given a new name
either by Seleucus I or by Antiochus I. We know that Seleucus I founded a Se-
leucia on the Calycadnus, also in Cilicia, after about 295;121 we also know that
117. Note esp. King (1910) 328, sensitive to the difference. BM 103000 makes much of the fact
that Sennacherib’s forces brought Kirua and the spoils of the campaign “into Nineveh into my pres-
ence”: see Luckenbill (1927) 2.138.
118. Dalley (1999) 73–74. The exact phrase reported by Dalley is tamšil ša Babili. Note also de
Breucker (2010) ad F 7c and Tuplin (2013) 188.
119. Forsberg (1995) 75–76.
120. See esp. Cohen (1995) 358–59: a proxeny decree was passed for Stasianax, son of Aristip-
pus, an Ἀντιοχεὺς ἀπὸ (Κ)ύδνου, in the archonship of Dion (dated either to 243/2 or 258/7). See
also Mørkholm (1966) 116–17.
121. Cohen (1995) 358; cf. 369.
Space 151
Antiochus I, unlike his successor Antiochus II, was a very keen city founder.122
If we can assume that Tarsus was refounded during the reign of either the first
Seleucus or Antiochus, Berossus’ statement could be seen to take on a poten-
tially very powerful contemporary valence, but there are significant problems
that stand in the way of such an interpretation.
If, during the period when Berossus was writing his Babyloniaca, one of
the new nonnative rulers of Babylon did refound Tarsus as an imperial city—
Antioch on the Cydnus—does the fact that he most definitely reported the ac-
complishment of an identical act by Sennacherib mean anything, especially
considering that the earlier event (Sennacherib’s refounding of Tarsus) is oth-
erwise not well attested in native sources—indeed, only in BM 103000?123 We
need to keep in mind certain details from Berossus’ narrative before jumping
to any conclusions.
In the first place, it must be remembered that Sennacherib was not a na-
tive Babylonian king but a Neo-Assyrian who had brutally conquered Babylon
in 689, destroyed the city, and brought the region under permanent Assyrian
domination (see Berossus F 7c sections 29–30; also below, pp. 266–68, 276);
later texts refer to his direct rule of Babylonia as a “kingless” period because of
his “neglect of the gods.”124 Drews has shown that Berossus’ narrative of Sen-
nacherib’s conquest of Babylon is particularly close to the treatment of the same
events in the Babylonian Chronicle Series:125 Assyria’s victory over Babylon was
total. Would Berossus have wanted to establish a link between his own liege lord
and such a figure?126 The corresponding section from the Babylonian Chronicle
Series is extremely terse—not surprisingly.127 It is also worth mentioning in this
context that Grayson has drawn notice to a battle between Elamites and the
Assyrians under Sennacherib that is treated as an Assyrian victory in Assyrian
122. Forsberg (1995) 76 and n.293. Cf. Welles (1962) 46.

123. Cf. Burstein (1978) 80: the campaign is “a detail not mentioned by Sennacherib in his
inscriptions.”
124. See Brinkman (1979) 230 and esp. 247 n.115: the “kingless” period is reflective of “the
cultural shock on the Babylonian side” at the “ruthless destruction of their capital city by Sen-
nacherib”; also id. (1973) 94–95. See, further, Beaulieu (1989) 106; Grayson (1991a) 103; Kuhrt
(1995) 2.583–86; Lanfranchi (2000) 33. Beaulieu (1989) 105 notes that the Babylonian Chronicle
Series speaks of Sennacherib carrying off the statue of Marduk to Ashur, where it remained for
twenty-one years, and that it returned only in 648, with the accession of Shamash-shum-ukin.
Kuhrt (1995) 2.585 notes reasons to think that Sennacherib’s devastation of Babylon was not as
extensive as he claimed.
125. Drews (1975) 54, comparing FGrH 680 F 7.29 and Chronicle 1.ii.26–31; Grayson (1975a)
77.
126. Cf. Olmstead (1911) 100: “it was largely as a result of [Sennacherib’s] destruction of Baby-
lon that his memory was so blackened by the priests”; also id. (1908) 174–75.
127. Chronicle 1.iii.22; Grayson (1975a) 80: “On the first day of the month Kislev the city (i.e.
Babylon) was captured”; see Kuhrt (1995) 2.585.
versions but styled an Elamite one in the Babylonian Chronicle Series.128 It has
been further argued that Berossus was basically uninterested in Assyrian his-
tory, except for those kings who ruled over Babylon.129 Finally, it should not be
forgotten that the campaign Berossus reports has a Greek defeat at its center. It
is most difficult to see how such a victory would be something with which an
early Seleucid ruler would wish to be connected.
Interpreting Berossus’ narrative of Sennacherib’s campaign in Cilicia from
the assumption that he sought a positive connection between Sennacherib and
either Seleucus I or Antiochus I may not be correct. In the first place, far from
being laudatory, it may be that the opposite is the case, namely, that Berossus
wished his audience to detect the similarity in order that they see the new rulers
of his land in a negative light, as the latest in a line of foreign rulers of Babylon,
in this case, the newest Neo-Assyrians. It should be pointed out, in this connec-
tion, that there is no doubt that Berossus, while he styled Sennacherib a world
conqueror (F 7a = Jos. AJ 10.20), also reported his ignominious end, murdered
by one of his own sons and succeeded by Esarhaddon (F 7c; cf. Grayson [1975a]
81 Chronicle 1.iii.34–38).130
But this may be going too far in the opposite direction. I think that another
interpretation is possible, one that takes account of the centrality of Babylon in
this story (which otherwise has nothing to do with Berossus’ native city) and
that also pays attention to the Greek reception of the same events. From a num-
ber of Greek authorities, it is clear that Sennacherib’s Cilician campaign of 696,
together with his memorialization of it, underwent significant deformation, es-
pecially in the hands of Alexander historians.131 It is best to start with Arrian’s
account of Alexander’s own activities at Tarsus and its environs in 333. Upon
his arrival in Tarsus, we are told, Alexander became seriously ill after swim-
ming in the Cydnus River (Arrian An. 2.4.7ff). After his recovery, Alexander
moved on to Anchiale after one day’s march (2.5.2). Arrian informs us that An-
chiale was a foundation of Sardanapalus the Assyrian and that “the memorial
of Sardanapalus” was near its walls (2.5.3: τὸ μνῆμα τοῦ Σαρδαναπάλου). Over
this structure stood Sardanapalus himself, that is, his statue, in an attitude that
made him look as though he was about to clap his hands; on the statue was an
epigram written in “Assyrian script” (2.5.3: καὶ ἐπίγραμμα ἐπεγέγραπτο αὐτῷ
Ἀσσύρια γράμματα). Although Arrian cannot vouch for its contents exactly
128. Grayson (1965) 342. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.584; Van De Mieroop (1999) 53.
129. Kuhrt (1987a) 45; note also Bichler (2004) 508.
130. Porter (1993) 23 and n.41; note also Burstein (1978) 24 n.84.
131. Note esp. Meyer (1892) 203–9; Weissbach (1920) 2441–48, 2466; Bosworth (1980–)
1.193–94; Forsberg (1995) 61–69; Lane Fox (2009) 181.
Space 153
and can only cite the Assyrians themselves for the claim that the text was in
verse, he says that the text ran something as follows: “Sardanapalus, the son of
Anacyndararxes, built Anchialus and Tarsus in a single day. But you, stranger,
eat, drink, and play, since the rest of mortal things are not worth this,” mean-
ing, the sound of clapping hands; Arrian adds that the word for “play” in the
text was said to have been a coarser word in the original Assyrian (2.5.4).132
The detail that the inscription was found on a statue at the site is strikingly
reminiscent of Polyhistor’s summary of Berossus (F 7c section 31), where both
a statue and an inscription are also mentioned, though it is not clear if the text
was inscribed on the statue.133
Brunt rated it as probable that this story in Arrian derives ultimately from
Callisthenes, on the basis of an entry in Photius (s.v. Sardanapalus = FGrH 124
F 34), in which virtually identical information is given, if also with some notable
differences, ascribed to Callisthenes.134 Others are less certain: Bosworth sug-
gests Ptolemy I Soter,135 and Jacoby suggests that the accounts of Aristobulus
and the Vulgate tradition were combined in what we read in Arrian.136 Jacoby,
following Eduard Meyer, believed that Hellanicus was the first Greek writer to
describe the tomb of Sardanapalus, possibly following Ctesias; Jacoby placed it
in Nineveh.137 Later, eyewitness authorities who were traveling with Alexander
the Great interpreted the monument they encountered at Anchiale in Cilicia as
the tomb of Sardanapalus. It is certainly the case that it is only on the strength
of Jacoby’s emendation that Hellanicus’ name is connected to the description
of the monument in Photius, resting on the belief that there were two rulers by
the name of Sardanapalus, a notion that is elsewhere attributed to Hellanicus
(FGrH 4 F 63 a + b and apparatus);138 otherwise, all the ancient authorities
who mention the tomb and its famous inscription are historians and “remem-
brancers” of Alexander who were contemporary with him—indeed, members
of his royal staff. We have already encountered Callisthenes and Aristobulus,
132. See n.180.

133. Cf. Helm (1980) 320, though note that Helm misunderstands Berossus’ account, for Ber-
ossus records an Assyrian victory over the Greeks, not a defeat at their hands.
134. Brunt (1976/1983) 1.139 n.2. See also Pearson (1960) 26, 160. Instead of ἔσθιε πῖνε παῖζε,
Photius preserves ἔσθιε πῖνε ὄχευε. Jacoby also emends the text of Photius to include Hellanicus
as another authority for the tomb and inscription. See the discussion in text just below and n.138.
135. Bosworth (1980–) 1.194.
136. Jacoby FGrH II B 511–12.
137. Jacoby FGrH I a 453; cf. Meyer (1892) 204. Consult also Lloyd-Jones and Parsons (1983)
157–58. Note that Herodotus knows about Sardanapalus too (Hdt. 2.150.3) and very likely would
have dealt with him and his tomb in his Assyrian Logoi. See esp. Drews (1970) 185; Burkert (2009).
138. F 63 a = scholia to Aristoph. Birds 1021, stating that Hellanicus said there were two men
named Sardanapalus. Jacoby’s text of Photius (F 63 b) runs as follows: Σαρδαναπάλους· ἐν βʹ
Περσικῶν δύο γεγονέναι ⟨ Ἑλλάνικος, ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ⟩ (?) Καλλισθένης . . .
but there was also the “bematist” Amyntas (FGrH 122 F 2) and the court poet
Choerilus of Iasus (SH 335). The description was definitely a celebrated one: in
addition to the authors who cite the Alexander writers (Diodorus, Strabo, Ath-
enaeus), we also find the account in Polybius (8.10.3) and Cicero (Tusc. 5.101).
Given this rich testimony suggesting the considerable interest in the monu-
ment of Sardanapalus at Anchiale on the part of writers who were charged,
more or less officially, with chronicling Alexander’s activities,139 it is tempting
to see Berossus’ treatment of Sennacherib’s Cilician campaign of 696 as a reflec-
tion of his desire to correct the errors of these Greek accounts: it was Sennach-
erib, not Sardanapalus, who was responsible for the monument; the structure
was at Tarsus, not Anchiale; the building and decorative elements did not form
the ruler’s tomb but were a memorial of a victory—and not just any victory,
but one over Greek forces;140 the inscription testifying to this fact had nothing
to do with a maxim about “seizing the day” but was, rather, an account of the
campaign.141 Seen in this way, the Greek interpretation of the image of “Sar-
danapalus” looks all too much like a Monument-novelle or instance of “iconat-
rophy,” meant to explain an image of the Assyrian king making a gesture that
looked to Greek observers like a clap of his hands.142 Elsewhere, Greeks find
pithy bromides, wholly Greek in reality, in non-Greek inscriptions associated
with monumental royal statues, reflecting the Greek fondness for this sort of
lesson (note “Sethos” at Hdt. 2.141.6).143 That Berossus sought to correct the
Greeks must be true, especially in light of the celebrity of the monument as a
place that was widely thought to have been visited by Alexander the Great, but
this is also an incomplete explanation. Berossus was seeking not only to correct
but also to propagate his own views through his narrative of the events of 696,
and these views had to do with promoting his own city of Babylon.
To understand Berossus’ treatment of Sennacherib’s campaign, to the extent
that we are able, we have to take up all the elements I have so far discussed and
focus particularly on those details that he seems to have introduced into the
story or perhaps embellished or expanded. First, we should never lose sight
of the essential fact that while, to judge by its relative unimportance in the na-
tive records of Assyria, the episode in Cilicia was evidently a sideshow in Sen-
139. Cf. Burkert (2009). The story of Alexander falling ill after the swimming in the Cydnus,
an event just prior to his viewing of the tomb of Sardanapalus, was obviously very popular: see the
Alexander Romance, Ps. Callisth. 1.41 and 2.8.
140. Cf. Lanfranchi (2000) 33; Levy (1949/1950) 115.
141. Note esp. Burstein (1978) 24 n.80.
142. Cf. Meyer (1892) 204; Forsberg (1995) 67–68. On “iconatrophy,” or when a monument
becomes the subject of stories that attempt to explain its details, see esp. Vansina (1985) 10; Luraghi
(2006) 78 and n.9.
143. Griffith (1900) 12; Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.105 ad loc.
Space 155
nacherib’s much larger and better-documented military campaigns (southern

Babylonia, Egypt, Palestine), it was the first time in the historical record that
Greeks encountered people from Mesopotamia, and the Greeks were defeat-
ed.144 This first encounter, with the Greeks emerging as the vanquished party
and the Mesopotamians as the victors, must have impressed Berossus deeply.
Second, if we can trust Polyhistor’s version rather than Abydenus’, Berossus
was claiming to follow an account that had been composed by Sennacherib
himself “in Chaldaean script for future times.” This is important because he
seems to have intruded this minor campaign into the facts of Sennacherib’s
reign that are found in the main tradition of the Babylonian Chronicle Series
and because he refers to the type of writing as “Chaldaean.” Normally, when
Greeks referred to cuneiform or any Near Eastern writing system, it was as
“Assyrian letters” (assyria grammata).145 Conversely, “Chaldaean” was routinely
used by Greek authors to designate the people of Babylonia and specifically
their priestly class or caste;146 it was never used of their system of writing.147
What can it have meant, then, for Berossus to have insisted (trusting Polyhi-
stor) that Sennacherib’s testimony regarding the Cilician campaign was in-
scribed in Chaldaean script? Berossus may be implying that our knowledge of
the events relating to this first encounter between Greek and Mesopotamian is,
in some sense, to be connected to Babylon and its apparatus for record keep-
ing, even though, strictly speaking, such an implication is misleading. More
securely, by stating that Sennacherib’s inscription was in Chaldaean script, Ber-
ossos literally renders as “Babylonian” the deeds of perhaps the greatest of the
Neo-Assyrian rulers. But one is also reminded of the authority given to Sanc-
huniathon/Taautos’ work because it was written in “Ammounean” characters.
“Chaldaean” connected the text to Babylon, but it also lent the text authority
because it resonated with the lore and knowledge that Berossus knew was con-
nected to this term in Greek eyes.
Third and perhaps most important, we need also to remember Berossus’
claim that “Sennacherib built (so he reports) the city of Tarson after the model
of Babylon.” Abydenus’ version makes the additional point that “the River Cyd-
144. Cf. Parker (2000).

145. Thus, e.g., Hdt. 4.87.2 (cuneiform); Thuc. 4.50.2 (Aramaic). See esp. Nylander (1968)
122 and n.16; Schmitt (1992). Cf. Dalley (1999) 76. See also Corcella (2007) 644; Hornblower
(1991/2008) 2.207 ad loc.
146. Edzard (1977) 296–97. See also Asheri (2007b) 202 ad Hdt. 1.181.5; Briant (2002) 722.
Note that, unusually, Xenophon also names a people living in Armenia “Chaldaeans” (An. 4.3.4).
Cf. Strabo 12.3.19. See Dillery (2001) 312–13 n.19.
147. Note that the one exception where we find “Chaldaean writing” is Amyntas’ version of
Sardanapalus’ monument (FGrH 122 F 2 = Athen. 12.529f). See also Plut. Marius 42.8, mentioning
a diagramma Chaldaïkon, or astronomical chart.
nus flows through [the city] just as the Euphrates flows through Babylon,” as
though this was the main factor in making the two places similar.148 Even if, as
Dalley has shown, there are good native parallels for the thought involved, why
would Berossus have intruded this detail, for he surely was the one responsible
for this odd fact? It emphasizes Babylon, as I have already noted, but I believe
it also responds, in particular, to Greek historical writing on Babylon and Tar-
sus and, more generally, to the Greek notion of localities taking their identities
from the rivers that bisect them.
Herodotus famously had Cyrus capture Babylon through an elaborate scheme
that involved the diversion of the Euphrates River into a marsh and the storm-
ing of the city through the channel of the river thus made passable (1.191.4).
Herodotus also reports that Babylon was so large that the people in the interior of
the city, who were distracted by the celebration of a festival, did not know that the
outskirts were taken until it was too late (1.191.6). This last detail is important,
because it was picked up later by Aristotle (Pol. 1276a), who may or may not have
known the story directly from Herodotus149 but whose characterization of the
event shows that it was a well-known story in Greek circles. It should probably
be added, in this connection, that the construction of Babylon’s brick walls also
attracted Herodotus’ minute attention (1.178–79), and this description, too, was
picked up by later authors, namely, Aristophanes in his Birds of 414 (lines 552,
1125–41).150 Perhaps even more important for the present discussion is the fact
that the construction of Babylon’s walls—the nature of the bricks, the height of
the walls—was of great importance to historians of Alexander, particularly Cleit-
archus (FGrH 137 F 10 = Diod. 2.7.3–4). Greek authors often asserted that the
walls and many of the city’s other marvels were built by the legendary queen
Semiramis, a point that Berossus was keen to dismiss (F 8 = Jos. Ap. 1.142).151
Cleitarchus, too, accepted the standard view that Semiramis was the builder of
the walls of Babylon, perhaps deliberately rejecting Berossus’ authority, which, if
true, would make Cleitarchus’ notice the first external testimonium to Berossus’
Babyloniaca.152 Cleitarchus seems also to have rejected Bel as the one responsible
for Babylon’s walls (cf. Curt. 5.1.24, following Cleitarchus), a claim that Beros-
sus does not make, though he has the city present at the beginning of time (F
148. Cf. Rawlinson (1870) 2.175–76 n.1; Boardman (1965) 11–12.

149. Direct knowledge seems unlikely given that Aristotle preserves the detail that the inhabit-
ants of the city did not know of its capture even three days later, something that is not in Herodotus.
150. Wells (1923/1970) 178–79; Fornara (1971a) 28–30; Dunbar (1995) 374 and 595 ad loc. For
a recent discussion of an Aristophanic parody of Herodotus on the building of Babylon’s walls, see
Hornblower (2006) 307 and n.10. For doubts, see Asheri (2007b) 51; (2007a) 199 ad Hdt. 1.179.1.
151. Cf. Baumgartner (1950) 73.
152. Cf. Pearson (1960) 230–31.
Space 157
1 = Syncellus Chron. 29 M) and (as I have already noted) has the survivors of
the Flood refound it later (F 4 = Syncellus Chron. 32 M). Whatever Cleitarchus
may have said, Babylon’s walls and their bituminous bricks were of great interest
to Greek authors, from Herodotus onward, including the historians who treated
Alexander’s conquest of the city.153
Asheri is right to note that Herodotus’ “main purpose is didactic” in his
narrative of the fall of Babylon, namely, to show that attempts by humans to
safeguard their interests often fail spectacularly in the end.154 Interestingly, Xe-
nophon attempts to inculcate a similar lesson with the fall of Mantinea to the
Spartans in 385. King Agesilaus had dammed up the river that flowed through
Mantinea, and when the rising waters ultimately brought that city’s fortifica-
tions down in ruins, it was forced to capitulate. At the conclusion of his treat-
ment of the siege, Xenophon makes the rather sour comment that “in this way
at least men became wiser: not to let a river run through your walls” (Hell.
5.2.7).155 Pausanias, who admittedly provides details at variance with Xeno-
phon, nonetheless states directly that this siege of Mantinea was an imitation
of an earlier one—that of Eion on the Strymon by Cimon in 476—and that
Cimon’s diversion of the Strymon was often copied (Paus. 8.8.9).156 Mention of
Xenophon also calls to mind the famous passage from the Anabasis where his
miniature shrine to Artemis Ephesia at Scillus in the northwest Peloponnese is
likened to the great one at Ephesus in Asia Minor, chiefly on the strength of the
fact that rivers by the name of “Selinus” flow by each place and that each river
was blessed with abundant fish and mussels (An. 5.3.8). Tuplin recently showed
that the two places must have had relatively trivial similarities and consider-
able differences, which suggests that Xenophon was reaching when he said that
his sanctuary at Scillus was like the temple at Ephesus.157 But the similarity
that Xenophon perceived is all the more valuable for the point I am trying to
make here: that he could both literally and figuratively build this fantasy of a
miniature temple of Artemis Ephesia because of the rivers in question suggests
153. See Van De Mieroop (2003) esp. 265; also Sack (1982) 114–15.
154. Asheri (2007b) 208 ad Hdt. 1.191.3.
155. σοφωτέρων γενομένων ταύτῃ γε τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ μὴ διὰ τειχῶν ποταμὸν ποιεῖσθαι. The
attribution “sour comment” comes from Cawkwell (1979) 259–60n. Büchsenschütz (1891/1905)
2.17–18 ad loc. notes that Mantinea was reconstructed with the river running next to, not through,
the city, which thus gives additional force to Xenophon’s remarks, for later authors seem to know
of the city with the river next to, not running through, the city and to assume that it was diverted
against the city walls (Diod. 15.12.1–2; Paus. 8.8.7). See, further, Cawkwell ad loc.; also Stylianou
(1998) 189 ad Diod. 15.12.1.
156. Although this siege is reported by several ancient authorities (Hdt. 7.107; Thuc. 1.98.1;
Aeschines 3.184; Plut. Cim. 7.1–3; Polyaenus 7.24), none mentions a diversion of the Strymon: see
Moggi and Osanna (2003) 328 ad loc.
157. Tuplin (2004) esp. 261–63.
that the associative power of such topography (supported, in this case, by hom-
onymity) was significant and not unheard of in the Greek world.
All of these passages suggest that cities with rivers bisecting them or flow-
ing next to their walls were remarkable in the Greek imagination. They were
furthermore thought to be especially vulnerable to attack precisely because of
their rivers, and different sieges effected by some sort of manipulation of the
water in the riverbeds were linked together, with Cyrus’ capture of Babylon
being an especially celebrated instance of this stratagem. More generally, it ap-
pears that the Greeks could imagine distant localities as being similar—indeed,
virtually identical—if rivers that were in some way similar ran through or near
them. To these general observations can be added the fact that the bisection of
Tarsus by the river Cydnus was noted by several authors throughout antiquity,
one of whom happens to predate Berossus (Xenophon again: An. 1.2.23).158
Hence, when Berossus makes his comment that Sennacherib “built Tarson
according to the plan and model of Babylon so that the River Cydnus flows
through just as the Euphrates flows through Babylon,” we ought not to view
the statement only as reflecting a Near Eastern perspective on cities and their
connections to one another. We need to entertain seriously the possibility that
he was taking up Greek views on this same matter as well. But why would he
do so?159 I believe that the answer to this question is bound up with Berossus’
wish to confront Greek misconceptions about Babylon and, specifically, Cyrus’
siege. To appreciate this point, we need to move on to two fragments from the
Babyloniaca that concern later, Neo-Babylonian rulers: the first relates to the
building program of Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled 604–562), and the second con-
cerns Nabonidus, the last native ruler of Babylon (555–539). These narratives
are very important in their own right, and I will return to a detailed discussion
of them in the next chapter, but certain points need to me made here.
In his Against Apion, Josephus quotes a long section of Berossus’ Babylo-
niaca on the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Nebuchadnezzar’s building activities at
Babylon draw particular notice. We are told that shortly after assuming the
throne he inherited from his father, Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar launched
an ambitious building campaign:
But [Nebuchadnezzar II] eagerly beautified the temple of Bel and the
rest of the temples from the spoils of war, and the preexisting city he
158. Note also, e.g., Strabo 14.5.12; Pomponius Mela 1.70; Pliny NH 5.92; Arrian 2.4.7. See
Ruge (1924) 1124 for a complete list, and cf. Ruge (1932) 2438; consult also Forsberg (1995) 76
and n.294.
159. It would have been good to have, by way of comparison, the Babylonian campaign against
eastern Cilicia in 557/6: see Wiseman (1961) 37–40. If Berossus did treat this campaign, Josephus
does not report it (cf. Ap. 1.147–49).
Space 159
further benefited [by building] another city outside it, and, feeling the
necessity (?) for it no longer to be possible for besiegers, by diverting the
river against the city, to gain access to it, he put up three circuit walls for
the inner city and three for the outer city, the former of baked brick and
bitumen and the latter of brick alone. (F 8a = Jos. Ap. 1.139)160
This is an admittedly very garbled text, but it is sufficiently clear that, accord-
ing to Josephus, who is allegedly quoting Berossus directly here (Ap. 1.134),161
Berossus actually attributed the improvement of Babylon’s defenses to Ne-
buchadnezzar precisely because Nebuchadnezzar saw that it was open to at-
tack through the diversion of the Euphrates. To this fragment must be added
Berossus’ narrative of the fall of Babylon years later to Cyrus, also preserved
in the same section of Josephus’ Against Apion. After reporting the accession
of Nabonidus to the throne of Babylon, engineered by those who had assas-
sinated his immediate predecessor, the child-king “Laborosoardoch” (Labashi-
Marduk), Josephus, still quoting Berossus verbatim (F 9a = Jos. Ap. 1.149, 152),
states that “in [Nabonidus’] reign the walls along the river [τὰ περὶ τὸν ποταμὸν
τείχη] of the city of Babylon were constructed out of baked brick and tar” and,
few lines later, that when Cyrus captured the city, he gave orders “to destroy
[κατασκάψαι] the outer walls of the city because it seemed to him to be too for-
midable and difficult to capture [διὰ τὸ λίαν αὐτῷ πραγματικὴν καὶ δυσάλωτον
φανῆναι τὴν πόλιν].”162 As George has noted, the fortifications of Babylon, as
undertaken by Nebuchadnezzar II in particular, were “renowned,” and Beros-
sus clearly made much of them in the Babyloniaca.163 In this connection, it is
good to remember that, following the mythical traditions of his land, Berossus
viewed the god Bel-Marduk as the builder of Babylon’s first walls.164
Indeed, I believe that all these passages form a consistent argument by Ber-
160. Jacoby’s text, which I have followed here, runs as follows: αὐτὸς δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ
πολέμου λαφύρων τό τε Βήλου ἱερὸν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ κοσμήσας φιλοτίμως, τήν τε ὑπάρχουσαν ἐξ
ἀρχῆς πόλιν καὶ ἑτέραν ἔξωθεν προσχαρισάμενος, καὶ †ἀναγκάσας πρὸς τὸ μηκέτι δύνασθαι τοὺς
πολιορκοῦντας τὸν ποταμὸν ἀναστρέφοντας ἐπὶ τὴν πόλιν κατασκευάζειν, περιεβάλετο τρεῖς μὲν
τῆς ἔνδον πόλεως περιβόλους, τρεῖς δὲ ἔξω, τούτων ⟨δὲ⟩ τοὺς μὲν ἐξ ὀπτῆς πλίνθου καὶ ἀσφάλτου,
τοὺς δὲ ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς πλίνθου. προσχαρισάμενος seems very problematic, as does ἀναγκάσας. I
have followed Jacoby’s interpretation of κατασκευάζειν to mean here something like “to approach
the city” or even gain access to it, such as we see in the Latin and Armenian translations of Josephus:
ad civitatem accedere and “to approach the city.” See Jacoby’s apparatus ad loc. It is tempting to spec-
ulate that Reinach (1930) 28 apparatus ad loc. may be right and that we should read κατασκάπτειν
instead of κατασκευάζειν; note the passage discussed immediately below having to do with Cyrus’
capture of Babylon and his desire that the walls be destroyed (Ap 1.152: κατασκάψαι).
161. “I shall put down the very words of Berossus, having this manner” (αὐτὰ δὲ παραθήσομαι
τὰ τοῦ Βηρώσου τοῦτον ἔχοντα τὸν τρόπον). Cf. Bichler (2004) 514.
162. On πραγματική meaning “formidable” here, cf. LSJ s.v. V.
163. George (1992) 348.
164. See above, p. 138.
ossus and, taken together, are meant to demonstrate that Herodotus’ account of
the fall of Babylon to the Persians was in error.165 In the first place, according to
Berossus, the very stratagem that Herodotus says Cyrus employed was antici-
pated by Nebuchadnezzar some sixty years before.166 Indeed, the detail that only
Babylon’s outer walls were made from baked brick and bitumen suggests that
Berossus viewed them as designed to be waterproof, the bitumen being used as
a mortar, especially in the lower courses of the wall.167 Secondly, the passages
relating to Nabonidus assert that the impregnability of Babylon where its walls
met the Euphrates was still a fact during the Persian siege and that Cyrus rec-
ognized this in his desire to destroy the city’s fortifications with a view toward
maintaining permanent control over it. This is where the detail having to do
with Tarsus being built on the model of Babylon, especially in relation to their
rivers, comes in. This item from Berossus’ narrative of the Cilician campaign
of Sennacherib shows that he understood Babylon to have been bisected by the
Euphrates and that, despite this fact and the apparently widespread Greek belief
that such a situation was perilous for cities, Babylon was not taken due to this
disposition of the city relative to its river. Although it is sometimes claimed that
Sennacherib captured Babylon by undermining its walls with water (and could
thus be a historical forerunner for the mythical future destruction of the wall
of the Achaeans predicted in the Iliad; West [1995a] 213–14, [1997] 377–80),
Robin Lane Fox has argued convincingly that the Babylonian text in question
mentions only Sennacherib’s disposal of already destroyed buildings in Baby-
lon’s canals (Lane Fox [2009] 333 and n.14). In my interpretation of the passage,
when writing on Sennacherib’s expedition to Cilicia, Berossus also had his eye
on the later siege of Babylon by the Persians. Although unrelated to the events
of 696, the siege of his native city loomed large in Berossus’ mind and prompted
him to digress on the similarity of Tarsus to Babylon. No better testimony can
be found to show the centrality of Babylon to Berossus’ historical vision.
Manetho: Writing History in the House of Life
As we turn to Manetho and space, we shall see some points of comparison with
Berossus when it comes to the centrality of a particular region—in Manetho’s
165. Cf. Bichler (2004) 514. Note that Dalley (1996) 528 believes that the chronicle records and
Herodotus’ account of the fall of Babylon are not irreconcilable.
166. I do not want to press the point, but I note, in passing, that Nebuchadnezzar’s worries
about the vulnerability of the walls of Babylon thanks to the Euphrates, Cyrus’ desire to destroy
Babylon’s walls, and even Xenophon’s musings on the folly of building a city bisected by a river are
all expressed with long phrases featuring the articular infinitive.
167. Forbes (1936) 67–73; (1955) 59. Cf. Wilson (2006) 942; George (1992) 356.
Space 161
case, Egypt. The concept of space is especially important for Manetho in help-
ing to define the scholarly world he inhabited and thus the underpinnings of his
historiographic outlook. But I need to begin with some definitions and caveats.
I will be arguing here that we need to see Manetho’s historical writing as
being composed within the orbit of the House of Life—what may loosely be
described here as a temple library (for a more precise definition, see below,
pp. 162–64). There is no evidence, however, that Manetho was a member of the
“staff of the House of Life” or a “scribe of the god’s book” (represented in Greek
by ἱερογραμματεύς and πτεροφόρας, respectively).168 The most we can glean
from the admittedly poor testimonia about Manetho is that he is several times
identified as a “chief priest” or “high priest” (ἀρχιερεύς: T 1 = Suda M 142, T 11
a + b = Syncellus Chron. 41 and 18 M),169 which is an inexact translation, given
that the pharaoh was technically the only “true” priest, while others below him
were religious “officiants.”170 There was a fantastic array of types of priests and
religious officials in Egypt,171 and it is reckless to think that they were inter-
changeable and that identifying Manetho as a “priest” is really another way of
saying that he was a “scribe” in the temple library. However, Josephus consis-
tently represents Manetho as constructing his history out of sacred writings,172
and the pseudonymous letter of Manetho to Ptolemy Philadelphus preserved
in Syncellus has Manetho style himself in his greeting to the king as “Manetho,
high priest and scribe of the sacred Egyptian shrines” (Syncellus Chron. 41 M:
Μανεθῶ ἀρχιερεὺς καὶ γραμματεὺς τῶν κατ’ Αἴγυπτον ἱερῶν ἀδύτων). But, it
must be confessed, this testimony does not amount to much.
We need to step back and imagine, at the most basic level, who Manetho
was and what he did when he wrote his history of Egypt, and doing so will no
doubt reveal some working assumptions that are open to question. Manetho
168. For ἱερογραμματεῖς for “staffs of the House of Life” and πτεροφόραι for “scribes of the
god’s book,” see esp. the synodal decrees: Canopus Decree (248 BC), OGIS 56.5–6 (καὶ πτεροφόραι
καὶ ἱερογραμματεῖς καὶ | οἱ ἄλλοι ἱερεῖς); Memphis Decree, i.e., Rosetta Stone (196), OGIS 90.8 (καὶ
πτεροφόραι καὶ ἱερογραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ἱερεῖς πάντες). Cf. Thissen (1966) 12, 48–49, for a
reconstruction of the relevant Greek section of the Raphia Decree. See esp. Ryholt (1998b) 168. See
also Posener (1936) 23–24; Dieleman (2005) 206–7, 220. For a general statement of the different
priestly classes on the decrees, see Onasch (1976) 140 and n.24, 148.
169. Cf. Otto (1905/1908) 2.215 n.3; Griffiths (1970) 398 and n.2; Fraser (1972) 1.506.
170. See above p. 40 and n.163. For the concept of the king as “sole titular officiant,” with the
priests as substitutes, see, e.g., Sauneron (2000) 34; cf. Zivie-Coche (2004) 100.
171. See esp. Sauneron (2000) 136–37 on the domains of sacred knowledge in Egypt and
priestly specialization. Sauneron cites Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.4.35.3–37.3) as evidence.
See also Frankfurter (1998) 239–40.
172. T 7a = Jos. Ap. 1.73: γέγραφε γὰρ Ἑλλάδι φωνῇ τὴν πάτριον ἱστορίαν ἐκ δέλτων ἱερῶν; T 7b
= Jos. Ap. 1.228: τὴν Αἰγυπτιακὴν ἱστορίαν ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων μεθερμηνεύειν ὑπεσχημένος.
In the first passage (T 7a), δέλτων ἱερῶν is an emendation by Gutschmid for the manuscript read-
ing τε τῶν ἱερῶν; Jacoby has τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων. While we might not have “tablets” here, it is
clear that some sort of sacred writing can be surmised.
was a priest, probably a highly placed one, if he had access to the early Ptol-
emaic court—something that is implied by the story of the establishment of
the Sarapis cult (T 3 = Plut. Mor. 362A)173 and, more generally, by the fact that
he wrote a history of Egypt either at the behest of or at least with an eye on
the new rulers of his land. As a high-ranking religious official, he must have
known well the workings of the Egyptian temple and must also have known
of both the House of Books and the House of Life. Even if not officially at-
tached to either institution, it is not difficult to see Manetho making use of the
materials stored in the House of Books and the House of Life at Heliopolis (if
that is where we need to locate him), not only a site important as a center of
priestly learning, but also the place of origin for the theology of divine king-
ship in Egypt (the Ennead and Horus), the oldest Egyptian cosmogony and
“cratogony,” or “origin of (royal) power.”174 Recall, too, that Herodotus could
say of the priests there that “the Heliopolitans are said to be the most learned
of the Egyptians” (Hdt. 2.3.1).175 It strikes me as perverse to accept the alterna-
tive scenario: that though a priest and historian from a community renowned
for its maintenance of sacred knowledge, he would have either not known
or refused to make use of the repositories for scholarly and priestly learning
that were available to him. While probably not a hierogrammateus himself,
Manetho will have worked extensively in the House of Life, and the officials
who worked there will have been his models for assembling and communicat-
ing scribal knowledge, as well as his immediate helpers in this task. Indeed,
as Jacco Dieleman has stressed in discussing the officials of the House of Life,
the “lector priests” or “scribes of the divine book” (as the synodal decrees style
them) “played in all likelihood a major role in the transfer and translation of
temple knowledge.”176 Thus we can say that Manetho’s Aegyptiaca was com-
posed in the world of the House of Life.177
The House of Life (pr-‘nh) was an institution found in most important tem-
ple complexes in Egypt and was responsible for the composition, copying, and
preservation of cultic, religious, scholarly, and even medical knowledge.178 We
173. E.g., Dillery (1999) 109 and n.54; (2007b) 225.
174. See, e.g., Baines and Málek (1980) 173–74; Allen (2000) 144. On the Heliopolitan theol-
ogy, which was co-opted by the Memphites, see Assmann (2002) 346–48.
175. Cf. Lloyd (1975/1988) 2.16–17. Note also the example cited above (p. 132) of sacred texts
found in the adyta of temples at Heliopolis.
176. Dieleman (2005) 220.
177. Cf. Redford (1986) 227–28.
178. For a good definition, see Weber (1979) 954. See also Finnestad (1997) 228; Smith (2009)
26. Note Allen (2000) 56, though Allen speaks there only of “libraries” attached to temples; see,
similarly, Sauneron (2000) 166. Fundamental still are Gardiner (1938); Volten (1942) 17–44; Der-
chain (1965a); Ghalioungui (1973) esp. 65. Frankfurter (1998) ch. 6 is of crucial importance to
what I argue here. Redford (1986) 91 n.72 proposes that the House of Life was not a real institution
Space 163
know that “Houses of Life” were located at Memphis,179 Amarna, Akhmim,

Abydos, Coptos, Deir el-Medina, Edfu, and Esna, though only the ones at Am-
arna and Deir el-Medina have been located by archaeologists.180 It is assumed
that they were found also at the major shrines of Thebes and Heliopolis, where
it is thought that Herodotus actually encountered important Egyptian priestly
informants;181 indeed, John Ray has called the temple library at Heliopolis “the
finest” in Egypt.182 In the same complex as the House of Life, there could often
be a separate structure called “the House of Books” (pr-md3t). The House of
Books was more like a library or storage facility, whereas the House of Life
was where scholarly and religious writing took place, but there was doubtless
some overlap, and a sharp distinction between the two institutions is not always
possible.183 At the most general level, as its name would suggest, the House of
Life was responsible for the maintenance of “life” in Egypt: as Jan Assmann has
put it, it was the place “where language and writing were learned, texts copied,
and theological and philosophical works compiled and collected; the house of
life was the center of the cultural endeavor to preserve and ensure the ongo-
ing progress of cosmic, political, and social life.”184 Crucially, Assmann points
out that this understanding of the House of Life is especially evident in Late
Period Egypt, when a concomitant worry about its violation by the uniniti-
ated or the outsider was also to be found.185 It was at the House of Life that
hieroglyphic writing was taught, partly because it permitted the “immobiliza-
tion of the formal idiom,” which “assured maximum intelligibility for divine
speech”: it was the appropriate mechanism to represent timeless, divine power
and also to script the sacred rites of the gods, through which access was gained
to them. The House of Life, through its instruction in hieroglyphs, assured
but, rather, “an abstraction, a cult organization rather than a physical building.” For the parallel of
temple libraries in Mesopotamia, see above, ch. 2, p. 72 and n.79; cf. Jasnow and Zauzich (2014) 43.
179. Note Thompson (1988/2012) 106 n.46, 184 n.46: three priests of Memphis—Petobastis
“III,” Psenptais “III,” and Imouthes/Petobastis “IV”—are identified as “scribes of the sacred books,
scholars and lector-priests at the seat of Thoth” and “scribe(s) in the House of Life of the living
Apis.”
180. Zivie-Coche (2004) 102; Leblanc (2004) 95–96; Parkinson (2009) 188.
181. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.113.
182. Ray (2001) 85.
183. See esp. Burkard (1980) 85–91; Quirke (1996) 394–99. See also Posener (1936) 23; Der-
chain (1965a) 58, 60; Roccati (1997) 75; Leblanc (2004) 96–97. For a catalogue of references to the
Houses of Life and Houses of Books, see Schott (1990).
184. Assmann (2002) 73. Not all would agree that “learning” took place in the House of Life,
as though a quasi “school” or “university”: note esp. Gardiner (1938) 159, though Gardiner’s own
definition (most clearly stated on p. 176) is substantially much like Assmann’s description, despite
his worry about “teaching” taking place in the House of Life.
185. Assmann (2002) 395–96 and n.51; the text he cites for this is, significantly, P. Salt 825, VII
5. See more below.
“reiterability,”186 and the “true secrets” that were housed there correspondingly
had manifest and unimpeachable authority.187
Cosmic life, political life, and social life in ancient Egypt were all intercon-
nected, and their preservation and progress were things that happened thanks
partly to the activities that took place in a temple scriptorium. David Frank-
furter has provided a crucial insight into how the various functions of the
House of Life could be joined together in one institution:
The activity of the House of Life consisted essentially of updating an-

cient materials. Scribes would revise ritual texts to encompass new situ-
ations, record events in such a way as to reflect ancient paradigms, and
recast a diversity of literary materials—oracles, spells, legends, mythog-
raphy—in order to highlight certain essential themes, in particular, the
kingship.188
The House of Life was responsible for maintaining and renewing old texts and
the records of past events. It preserved, but it also “updated.” In a description
of the activities of the House of Life that has interesting connections to Frank-
furter’s view, Alessandro Roccati has even referred to this process as “forgery”:
“The priests also produced forgeries whenever they felt it necessary or adapted
the ancient texts to new needs.” Rare ancient texts were recorded as being dis-
covered (remember the discovery narratives discussed above); originals that
were beyond repair were labeled “discovered damaged.”189
At a deeper level, as Frankfurter has suggested, what united all the activi-
ties of the House of Life was the preservation of the kingship, on which de-
pended the well-being of the cosmos, the state, and the society of Egypt. Note,
in this connection, the “acts,” identified by Derchain, that are referred to in the
enigmatic “ritual for the preservation of life” at the imaginary House of Life
at Abydos according to Papyrus Salt 825 (fourth century?): spell casting and
apotropaic magic; “Osirian” funerary rites directed at a mummiform statue of
Khentyamentiu, the old local funerary deity of Abydos who became a biform
of Osiris;190 and “the rites of the protection of the king in his palace.”191 The
186. Assmann (2002) 72–73.

187. Kyffin (2011) 232.
188. Frankfurter (1998) 241.
189. Roccati (1997) 75.
190. Zivie-Coche (2004) 77, 186. Also Jasnow and Zauzich (2014) 44–45.
191. Derchain (1965a) 76: “les rites de protection du roi dans son palais.” Cf. Assmann (1990)
218–19. Derchain (1965a) 126 gives a provisional date for the text closer to the Thirtieth Dynasty
and the Second Persian Domination than to the time of Darius I.
Space 165
king was the focus of all these activities. They would have included the promo-
tion of all the duties the pharaoh took up and the provision of help when he
had to deal with specific difficulties or crises. In short, when the king had a
problem, he often turned to the House of Life for answers: Allen, speaking of
libraries in general, has observed that “several Egyptian texts describe how the
king had these libraries searched or searched them himself, to find the proper
rituals for a particular ancient ceremony.”192 Thus, in the Neferhotep Stela of the
Thirteenth Dynasty, Neferhotep I consults the “writings” in the “Library” to set
in motion the fabrication of a new statue of Osiris of Abydos that he needs for
a religious drama.193 The House of Life was concerned with the perpetuation
of the political and societal life of Egypt as embodied in its ruler, the pharaoh,
through the preservation and propagation of sacred, cultic, and legendary texts.
Viewed from within this scholarly world, Manetho’s Aegyptiaca makes perfect
sense: he sought to provide a comprehensive listing and accounting of all the
kings of Egypt, from the earliest to the last native dynasty, and thereby to pre-
serve the “life” of Egypt.
If, in a larger sense, this was the ideology of the House of Life in Egypt, what
is the actual evidence for it? As Gardiner showed a long time ago, while there
are references to the House of Life in the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom
eras, they are “few and far between.”194 In the New Kingdom, beginning during
the reign of Ramesses IV especially, notices to it appear in significant num-
bers.195 Several of these references relate to Ramesses’ interest in the famous
stone quarries at Wadi Hammamat.196 In one inscription, Ramesses is repre-
sented as “excellent of understanding like Thoth,” and “he hath penetrated into
the annals like the maker thereof, having examined the writings of the House
of Life” (Gardiner’s translation [1938] 162 no. 15). In another inscription, also
concerning Hammamat, Ramesses seems to commission a scribe of the House
of Life, one Ramesseoshehab, to use inscriptions at Thebes and elsewhere to
identify monuments constructed out of stone from Hammamat, so that Ra-
messes could build new structures (Gardiner [1938] 163 no. 16); Ramesseoshe-
hab would also have been the ideal person to compose the appropriate hiero-
glyphic inscriptions to accompany the statues and sarcophagus to be placed in
192. Allen (2000) 56.
193. Simpson (2003) 341. Note also Loprieno (1996) 280 and n.15. Cf. Baines (2011) 68.
194. Gardiner (1938) 161.
195. I cannot resist noting two cases from the reign of Ramesses II: Gardiner (1938) 161 nos.
9 and 10, both from Tomb 111 at Thebes, belonging to one Amenwahsu and his sons. Amenwahsu
and his son Khaemope are styled “one/scribe who wrote the annals of (all) the gods (and god-
desses) in the House of Life.” Cf. Schott (1990) 381 no. 1655. The word translated “annals” is gnwt.
See Redford (1986) 65–96.
196. Cf. Moers (2010) 175–76.
the new monuments. Both these texts show, in no uncertain terms, how the
House of Life acted as the means by which the pharaoh gained access to the
past, thereby enabling him to establish and maintain links with it in his own
ventures. In Ramesses IV’s particular case, the House of Life and its staff made
it possible for him to create continuity between his building program and ear-
lier pharaohs’ exploitation of the important quarry at Hammamat. John Baines
has observed that from the late New Kingdom onward, the “House of Life” be-
came increasingly prominent the more written and spoken language diverged,
and hence there was a narrowing of access to elite culture, “contributing to later
images of Egypt as a land dominated by priests.”197
Certainly, when we move to the Saite and Persian periods, the evidence is
even more robust and relevant to the picture I am trying to paint for Manetho’s
working conditions. The court doctor to the pharaoh Apries (589–570 BC),
Peftuauneith, claimed, “I restored the House of Life after its ruin. I renewed the
sustenance of Osiris, and put all his its procedures in order” (Lichtheim’ trans.
[1973/1980] 3.35; cf. Gardiner [1938] 165 no. 27). Similarly, Udjahorresne,
court doctor and priest under Amasis, Psamtik III, Cambyses, and Darius I,
reports that while he was living “in Elam” (i.e., Persia), Darius sent him back
to Egypt “in order to restore the establishment of the House of Life . . . after it
had decayed.”198 He did as his liege commanded him; found new “wellborn”
men, not “lowborn” ones, to staff it; and “supplied them with everything useful
to them, with all their equipment that was on record, as they had been before”
(Lichtheim’ trans. [1973/1980] 3.39–40; cf. Gardiner [1938] 157–59 no. 1). Di-
eleman has even gone so far as to suggest that Udjahorresne’s “restoration” of
the House of Life was also a reform that included the introduction of Meso-
potamian astrology, as part of the brief handed down to him by Darius I.199 If
true, this would have constituted a major policy initiative by Darius, instituted
by Udjahorresne.
These texts suggest that the officers responsible for the House of Life were
important advisors to the pharaoh. Moreover, in Udjahorresne’s case, we can see
that he was instrumental in facilitating the transfer of royal authority through
four rulers and one conquest and dynastic change in Egypt (see the introduc-
tion above, pp. 36–37). These texts also show that in the Late Period, during
times of difficulty, the Houses of Life were regarded as institutions that could
197. Baines (2007) 45.

198. Note Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.41 n.17: there is a lacuna in the text after “House of Life”
that Gardiner restores in such a way as to make “House of Life” potentially plural and the attentions
of Udjahorresne directed at the medical departments of the “Houses of Life.” Lichtheim offers “in
all its parts,” but notes also Posener’s suggestion “of Sais”—Udjahorresne’s own temple complex.
199. Dieleman (2003) 281; (2005) 194 and n.24.
Space 167
“fall into ruin/decay” and that their restoration was a central task of those rulers
who sought at least the appearance of legitimacy. The House of Life was front
and center in the complex relationship of negotiation between the ruler and the
native priestly elite. It should come to us as no surprise, then, to find that in all
three of the great synodal decrees of the Egyptian priesthood from the Ptol-
emaic period—those of Canopus, Raphia, and Memphis (Gardiner [1938] 170
no. 38)—the sacred scribes of the Houses of Life are charged with the inscrip-
tion of the decree and other important duties.200 While all three texts contain
elements that clearly suggest Greek influence, the worship prescribed in them,
the view of the king and gods, the use of symbols and insignia, and particularly
the five-part naming titulature point to documents that were composed in the
classical Egyptian that was taught and practiced in the House of Life.201
As for evidence from the Ptolemaic period for views of the House of Life,
it is good to remember that in Setna I, the hero of the inset narrative, Nanefer-
kaptah, is a zealous scholar who admires the work of the scribes of the House
of Life: “he [had no] occupation on earth but walking on the desert of Mem-
phis, reading the writings that were in the tombs of the Pharaohs and on the
stelae of the scribes of the House of Life and the writings that were on [the
other monuments, for his zeal] concerning writings was very great” (Lichtheim
[1973/1980] 3.128). Furthermore, Naneferkaptah’s son Merib “was taught to
write letters in the House of Life” (Ritner [2003c] 455 and n.5). A particularly
illuminating text for understanding the place of the House of Life in Late Pe-
riod Egypt and specifically in the Ptolemaic era is the opening of the pseude-
pigraphic Famine Stela (Gardiner [1938] 166 no. 31). Purporting to be from
the time of the pharaoh Djoser during the Third Dynasty, the text was in fact
composed during the Ptolemaic period, carved in hieroglyphs on a large stone
on an island near the first cataract of the Nile.202 After an initial dating formula,
Djoser reports his sorrow at the plight of Egypt, having suffered for seven years
from insufficient inundations of the Nile. After reporting the woes of the people
of Egypt, Djoser continues:
The courtiers were in ruin, the temples sealed up, the chapels dusty, ev-
erything found wanting. I directed my thoughts back to the past, and I
consulted a member of the staff of the Ibis, the chief lector priest Imho-
tep, son of Ptah South-of-His-Wall.203

201. Cf. Simpson (1996) 22.
202. Barguet (1953) 33–37. Cf. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.94; Ritner (2003a) 386.
203. Barguet (1953) 16 and, following him, Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.100–1 n.5 argue that a
Djoser asks Imhotep a series of questions relating to the annual flood of the
Nile, and Imhotep replies:
I shall proceed to the sanctuary of Thoth at Hermopolis, being wary for

the confidence of everyone regarding what they should do. I shall enter
into the House of Life, I shall spread out the “Souls of Re” [sacred scrip-
tures], and I shall be guided by them.
Djoser then reports the answers that he got from Imhotep upon his return from
Hermopolis:
He informed me about the flow of the Inundation, [its regions] and ev-
erything with which they are provided. He revealed to me the hidden
wonders to which the ancestors, without equal among the kings since
the very beginning, had made their way. (Ritner trans. [2003a] 387)
Here we have the classic scenario showcasing the utility of the House of Life: a
calamity befalls Egypt, and the pharaoh’s first response is to “direct his thoughts
back to the past,” for it is axiomatic that the past is where the solution to his
problem will be found.204 He consults a priestly sage figure—in this case, Im-
hotep himself—who, in turn, goes to the House of Life in the precinct of Thoth
at Hermopolis for the answers the pharaoh seeks, “spreading out” the “Souls of
Re” and being guided by them. Note, too, that the wisdom that Imhotep com-
municates to Djoser is at least partly “hidden.” The knowledge in the House of
Life is secret, the domain of Thoth knowledge of which one gains by a process
akin to initiation.205 Indeed, in Papyrus Salt 825, it is even commanded that “an
Asiatic may not enter in this House of Life; he may not see it.”206
This brings us to the interesting problem of Diodorus 1.49.2. If we can rely
on the testimony of Papyrus Salt 825, entry into the House of Life was not per-
mitted to non-Egyptians. Hence we can conclude that Hecataeus of Abdera,
Diodorus’ probable source at this point in book 1, did not actually visit this
genitive has been left out; they read “the chief lector priest of Imhotep.” Ritner (2003a) 387 and n.1
rejects their suggestion and translates the text as is: Djoser consulted Imhotep. Cf. Wildung (1977)
149–52.
204. For another excellent, late case, see Gozzoli (2009), though the text in question (Stela
Kawa V) does not mention the House of Life: the Pharaoh of Egypt and Nubia, Taharqo (ruled
690–664 BC), writes (section 10), “His Majesty made the annals of the ancestors be brought to him,
in order to see if a (similar) inundation had happened at their times” (Gozzoli trans. [2009] 237;
see also 294 n.“o” ad loc.).
205. Cf. Jasnow and Zauzich (2005) 1.10–11; also (2014) 19, following Quack.
206. Papyrus Salt VII.5; Derchain (1965a) 140. See also Ritner (1993) 203 and n.941; Dieleman
(2005) 82–83 and n.100.
Space 169
quarter of Thebes near the Ramesseum (Diod. 1.46.8), which, of course, he

did describe on the basis of autopsy;207 he did include a prominent descrip-
tion of “the sacred library” (Diod. 1.49.3: τὴν ἱερὰν βιβλιοθήκην). Derchain
has proposed, on the basis of his intimate knowledge of the “ideal” House of
Life in Papyrus Salt 825, that the description of the House of Life in Diodorus/
Hecataeus was actually from an Egyptian text that contained a similar account
of an imaginary and idealized sacred library.208 In any case, if Hecataeus’ own
Aegyptiaca was known to Manetho (as it surely was) and if Manetho in some
way engaged with this text and was influenced by it, it strikes me as terribly im-
portant not only that a prominent description of a House of Life was found in
Hecataeus’ work but that it was perhaps an idealized account of one, stressing
the importance of the House of Life as the “Healing place of the Soul” (Diod.
1.49.3: Ψυχῆς ἰατρεῖον), a feature central to the characterization of the same
institution in Papyrus Salt 825.
The role of the House of Life as the imagined site of the composition and
preservation of a given literary work cannot be overstressed. For Frankfurter, a
major component of the literature that was produced in Late Period Egypt is its
repeated insistence that the work in question has its origins in the House of Life
and that this process is part of a larger pattern whereby the native priesthood
asserts its power under foreign rule. He argues that the “recurring emphasis”
in Late Period texts in Greek and demotic on the “sacred book, on the cultic
charters, spells, or prophecies it holds, and on its circumstances of composition
and rediscovery under legendary kings shows the self-conscious presence of
the House of Life as an institution in its own right.”209 While the House of Life
remains the authoritative place one consults about the past, it also becomes
the site where king and clergy negotiate power, specifically in the form of texts
that relate not just to the past but to the future as well—prophecy and proto-
apocalyptic narratives such as those having to do with the Hyksos.210 Under
foreign rule, the House of Life continues to make “plays for royal patronage,”
thereby showing its status as dependent on the king, but the texts it produces
also assert that the king must “submit to the wisdom of the scriptorium’s an-
cient books.” A situation of mutual benefit thus clearly arises: “the scribes in-
evitably promoted their own authority by means of the kingship ideology and
its literary themes.”211
It is important, in this connection, to turn to the question of precisely
207. See esp. Goossens (1942); Leblanc (1985); Burstein (1992) 45–46.
208. Derchain (1965b); note also Fraser (1972) 2.723 n.53.
209. Frankfurter (1998) 244.
210. Cf. Smith (1975) 151–52 = (1978) 83–84.
211. All quotes from Frankfurter (1998) 244.
what was stored in the House of Life and how its contents related to the task
of promoting kingship and its own interests. Working with the papyri deposits
found at Tebtunis, dated to the first and second centuries AD, Kim Ryholt has
managed to reconstruct the contents of a temple library, or House of Books,
on which the members of the House of Life doubtless depended for access to
texts.212 Although the Tebtunis facility appears to have been a small temple li-
brary, 285 separate works have so far been identified from the papyrus remains,
with the total number of works probably not exceeding much beyond 400.
Slightly under two-thirds of the total so far identified were written in demotic,
about one-third were written in hieratic, and the remaining five percent are
hieroglyphic or Greek texts—though it should be pointed out that the Greek
texts only constitute a mere one percent of the total.213 According to Ryholt,
fully half the books kept at the Tebtunis library were devoted to matters of cult:
for example, the Book of the Temple (which contained, among other things,
description of the ideal temple, much like what we see in Papyrus Salt 825, as
well as of temple personnel), the Book of Thoth, the Book of Fayum, the Book
of Nut, the Mythological Manual, and the Priestly Manual. A quarter of the
collection was devoted to what Ryholt calls noncultic works: divinatory texts,
astronomical texts, wisdom literature, medical works, mathematical manuals,
and legal texts. Finally, one-quarter was made up of what Ryholt labeled narra-
tive texts. These included the Inaros stories, the Khaemwese stories, the stories
of the Heliopolitan priesthood (i.e., the Petese stories), and narratives concern-
ing Djoser, Imhotep, and Sesostris; also included in this group are prophetic
narratives, most notably a demotic version of the Dream of Nectanebo.214
This last group is of particular interest when we think about the scholarly
world in which Manetho worked. Ryholt has offered a compelling analysis of
the narratives that were stored in the Tebtunis archive. Noting that over half
the narrative material dealt with “stories of might and valor,” he believes that
precisely these sorts of tales “formed the basis of the Egyptian histories by writ-
ers such as Herodotus, Diodorus, and even Manetho.”215 In connection with
Ryholt’s findings mentioned in the preceding paragraph, it is deeply significant
that we find what I take to be strong indications of lengthy narratives in Mane-
tho’s list in connection with Imhotep (F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 62 M)216 and Seso-
212. Ryholt (2005).

213. The figures are from Ryholt (2005) 142–43. In his review, in the same volume, of Ryholt’s
findings, Clarysse (2005) 187 finds the negligible showing of Greek texts surprising, together with
the virtual absence of medical and mathematical texts.
214. Ryholt (2005) 154–57.
215. Ryholt (2005) 163. Cf. Meyer (1904) 79.
216. Assuming one accepts the supplement that is widely regarded as necessary for Tosorthros:
see above p. 110 and n.229.
Space 171
stris (F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 66 M; see below). Moreover, Ryholt argues that

these stories were kept and transmitted precisely to document Egypt’s glorious
past, in which legendary heroes defeat and humiliate a series of enemies who
attempt to invade and rule over the land—this in a world where Egypt had been
ruled by a series of foreign powers for centuries.217 The prophetic texts, predict-
ing years of foreign dominance followed by the restoration of native rule, can
also be understood in this light.
For Ryholt, the narrative texts of the Tebtunis temple library constitute evi-
dence for what history was for the Egyptians of the Greco-Roman period, at
least for elite, priestly Egyptians. This is an important insight, I think, and goes
a long way toward explaining what we find in Manetho. But I think there is also
a problem with pushing the connection between Manetho and the Egyptian
temple library too hard. In tracing the lines of dependence between his Aegypti-
aca and the books of the temple library, we should not lose sight of those places
in Manetho’s work where he clearly diverged from the narrative traditions we
find represented in libraries such as that at Tebtunis.
Indeed, it is useful to set out precisely how Manetho’s Aegyptiaca differed
from these stories and what the implications of these differences are. Most
obviously, the Aegyptiaca was composed in Greek, not in any of the Egyptian
writing systems that were to hand—most practically, demotic. There is another
obvious difference: the one type of text that we do not see in the Tebtunis ar-
chive but that we have to assume was integral to Manetho’s work was the king
list itself. The most famous of these (the Palermo Stone, the Table of Saqqara,
and the Table of Abydos), with the exception of the Turin Canon, are monu-
mental texts; that is, they were literally inscribed on building walls. But more
subtle differences also arise, because Manetho stitched together a variety of
texts. Though Manetho produced narratives that have major points of contact
with the story cycles that we imagine must have made up the narrative hold-
ings of the temple libraries, we ought not to forget that each of his versions was
connected to a chronological frame, derived from Egyptian king lists, that ran
throughout the Aegyptiaca. Moreover, as Ryholt has pointed out on the basis of
his survey of the House of Life at Tebtunis, a king list has yet to be positively
connected to the temple library there or elsewhere,218 though perhaps we are
entitled to think of one at least at Memphis and the temple complex of Ptah
(note Herodotus’ experience: Hdt. 2.100.1).
Thus it was not an obvious move to connect narratives to a chronological
frame, at least not on the basis of what the temple libraries held. The joining
217. Ryholt (2005) 163. See now also Quack (2013) 63–66, referring in his notes to further
publications by Ryholt that regrettably I have not seen.
218. Ryholt (2009a) 234.
of the two would have had two obvious and powerful effects. First, the stories
themselves would have been historicized—that is, they would have been given
a historical frame in which the legendary action was seen to play out. Second
and relatedly, each narrative, regardless of how derivative, was but a part of a
larger, continuous text. Another way to put this is that, while one might find a
cycle of stories in a temple library, those same stories would have appeared in
Manetho in a long sequence of other stories, each one originally a freestand-
ing composition, but all now part of a continuous account. One is reminded
in this connection of the way that Berossus can use Oannes to unite different
traditional narratives in one authoritative figure or, for that matter, how Philo
of Byblos would later employ Sanchuniathon/Taautos for the same purpose.
Manetho and Berossus innovate not by creating new stories but by stringing
very old stories together and giving them a historical framework in the form of
a chronology derived from a king list.
It is critical, at this juncture, to determine precisely which narratives from
the remains of Manetho can be linked, with some degree of certainty, to the
contents of a notional temple library.219 However, before looking at Manetho,
we must acknowledge a few factors that complicate reading his fragments as a
guide to what preexisting Egyptian texts he may have used. First, many of the
narratives that survive to us in demotic, while perhaps framed by references to
specific pharaohs, actually concern nonroyal persons—“princes” perhaps, but
not kings. Inasmuch as Manetho’s chronological frame is a king list, much of
the historical action and hence narrative would have been linked to the kings
themselves. Unless a hook within the framework of the list could have been
contrived for nonroyal narratives, they would have necessarily been left out.
Second, the Palermo Stone in particular raises the problem of the chronicle
notice: a scrap of continuous Greek in the transmitted list of Manetho is not
necessarily the textual vestige of what was originally a full-scale narrative, for
equivalent statements can be found in documents like the Palermo Stone.
A good example of a narrative hook that permits the joining of a nonroyal
text to the continuous narrative of Manetho can be found in connection with the
sole ruler of the Twenty-Fourth Dynasty, Bocchoris: “Bocchoris of Saïs [ruled]
6 years, during whose reign a lamb spoke, 990 years” (F 2).220 This reference to
a talking lamb has been connected to “The Prophecy of the Lamb” (P. Vienna
D. 10,000), a demotic text that was written in AD 4–5 but that refers to being
read out to the pharaoh Bakenrenef (Bocchoris), who ruled in the last quarter
219. Cf. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.110–11, who attempts something similar, though for only a few
of the entries from Manetho’s list.
220. Syncellus Chron. 82 M: Βόχχωρις Σαΐτης ἔτη ϛ΄, ἐφ’ οὗ ἀρνίον ἐφθέγξατο, ἔτη ϡϙ΄.
Space 173
of the eighth century BC.221 The text, which is broken off at the beginning, deals
with the discovery of a prophecy by a certain Pasaenhor (whom scholars also
refer to as Psinyris). It begins with what seems to be a scene between a man
and a woman; the man, Pasaenhor, reads aloud a book that contains predic-
tions regarding future woes to befall Egypt spoken by a lamb, an emissary of
the ram-headed god Khnum. The woman, probably Pasaenhor’s wife, tells him
to “shut up” and stop reading, as though to prevent these troubles from hap-
pening. There follows a detailed prediction of future woes for Egypt followed
by a blessed era, delivered by the prophetic lamb, whose identity is made clear
toward the end of the narrative (“the lamb concluded all the curses regarding
them”: Ritner [2003b] 448). After he gives his prophecy, the lamb expires, and
Pasaenhor takes its body and a scroll containing the prophecy to Bocchoris,
who orders that the lamb be buried with its “sacred writings” and receive cult,
as though a god. This ending shows that the framing of the lamb’s prophecy has
been historicized, insofar as the book containing his prophecy is available to
be read at the start of the narrative but is actually delivered by the lamb in the
course of the document. The two details of greatest relevance here concern the
text’s colophon and the length of the predicted period of woe for Egypt. First,
Reymond believed that the colophon “shows that the scribes in the scriptorium
of the local pr-’nh were engaged in copying literary works of early date”;222 that
is, that the transmission of texts such as the Prophecy of the Lamb was due pre-
cisely to the House of Life. Second, we should not lose sight of the reference to
“990 years” in the entry under Bocchoris from Manetho, for this detail permits
us to see Manetho originally deploying in his own narrative either this proph-
ecy or, if not this text, one very like it. The numeral “990” is probably incorrect
in the text as it stands in Syncellus: Waddell assumed there was a lacuna before
it, and Mosshammer, in his edition of Syncellus, proposed “altogether 95 years”
(ἔτη ὁμοῦ ϙε΄).223 In fact, it is likely that the numeral should be “900” and hence
would link up directly with the figure given by the lamb as the number of years
that the period of woe will last for Egypt, before his prediction of a blessed time
will come true:224 “these [events] will happen only when I am uraeus upon the
head of Pharaoh, which will happen at the completion of 900 years, when I
control Egypt after the occurrence of the Mede” (Ritner trans. [2003b] 448).
The recording of the numeral “900” in the epitome of Manetho’s chronology
221. Kákosy (1966) 344–45; Zauzich (1983); Reymond (1983) 49–50; Depauw (1997) 98; Rit-
ner (2003b) 445–46.
222. Reymond (1983) 49.
223. Waddell (1940) 165 F 64 and n.3; Mosshammer (1984) 82 note to line 27; cf. Adler and
Tuffin (2002) 106 n.1.
224. Koenen (1984) 10–11 n.9. Cf. Dillery (1999) 107 n.43.
suggests that a full-scale version of the prophecy was originally found in narra-
tive form in his history. By itself, the brief statement “during whose reign a lamb
spoke” could, as it stands, be only a mention derived from a chronicle and could
indicate that nothing more was consequently to be found in Manetho’s text. But
the presence of the numeral “900” changes everything.
There is a lot of speculation surrounding the significance of the number
nine hundred. Koenen has suggested that “900 years correspond to the nine
days during which . . . the world sank into chaos between the reigns of the god
Shu and his son and successor Geb” or, alternatively, that the Ennead of gods
is being referred to.225 Zauzich has proposed that the number represents the
squaring of the Sed period of thirty years (thirty times thirty), the standard
jubilee for Egyptian kings seen especially as “protectors of the land,”226 and
is perhaps suggestive here of the renewal of lawful kingship.227 But the larger
point, crucial to note here, is that the numeral—be it “900” or “990”—must be
a footprint of the actual Prophecy of the Lamb, for it does not have an explana-
tion otherwise. It is a detail that emerges in the course of the lamb’s prophecy,
and it is not a part of the narrative tag “in whose reign a lamb spoke” in Mane-
tho, which could indeed have been just a chronicle notice. Numerals at the end
of the entries in Manetho are not uncommon, to be sure, but they always serve
either as the reign length of the particular pharaoh or as the running totals
for individual dynasties. Bocchoris is the only member of the Twenty-Fourth
Dynasty, so a running total is not needed. He certainly did not rule for nine
hundred years (or 990, for that matter); rather, as we are told, he ruled six years.
The only way to account for the presence of this figure at the end of Bocchoris’
entry is that there must have been some form of the lamb’s prophecy in Mane-
tho’s treatment of the reign of this pharaoh. In support of this point, one can
further observe that the story of Bocchoris continues in the entry for the next
king, Sabakon, first ruler of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty: “1. Sabakon, who took
Bocchoris prisoner and burned him alive, and he ruled 8 years.”228 In Manetho’s
version of the Prophecy of the Lamb, there was very likely a historical frame
that contained the unfortunate end of Bocchoris. Be that as it may, the likely
presence of the Prophecy of the Lamb would have brought prominence to the
reign of Bocchoris, a pharaoh of some celebrity in Greek circles. It is possible
225. Koenen (1970) 252–53.

226. Cf. Breasted (1906/1907) 4.372–73 nos. 750, 751; the first recorded Sed jubilee on the
Palermo Stone was in “year x + 3” of the unknown fifth king of the Second Dynasty (Breasted
[1906/1907] 1.59 no. 105). On the importance of the Sed festival, see Redford (1986) 179–80.
227. Zauzich (1983) 173 n.5.
228. Syncellus Chron. 83 M: α΄ Σαβάκων, ὃς αἰχμάλωτον Βόχχωριν ἑλὼν ἔκαυσε ζῶντα, καὶ
ἐβασίλευσεν ἔτη η΄.
Space 175
that he was already known to Greeks contemporary with him on the island of
Ischia, where a scarab seal belonging to him has been found in a Greek burial
(720s BC).229 He was the earliest pharaoh that the Greeks knew of in their own
tradition.230 Certainly, the Prophecy of the Lamb has shown up in the Greek-
language world chronology on a Leipzig papyrus dating to the second century
AD and published by Colomo et al. (2010).231
This discussion of the Prophecy of the Lamb and its relation to Manetho’s
entry for the reign of the pharaoh Bocchoris raises the larger issue of how to
determine when a chronicle notice in Manetho is just that—nothing more than
a simple sentence-length description of a notable fact from a particular reign—
and when it is a vestige of a larger narrative that was once present in Manetho’s
text but is now lost. A difficult case, though fairly representative, is Manetho’s
entry for the pharaoh “Ammanemes,” second ruler of the Twelfth Dynasty: “2.
Ammanemes [ruled] 38 years, who was killed by his own eunuchs” (F 2).232 At
one level, this could be merely a chronicle notice of a remarkable fact: Amma-
nemes was killed by his own eunuchs. However, we also possess an important
New Kingdom text, “The Instruction of King Amenemhat,” in which the de-
ceased King Amenemhat I tells his son Senwosret I about his own assassina-
tion and very clearly passes his royal authority over to his son, thereby fully
legitimating him as the new pharaoh.233 The statement that Amenemhat met
his end at the hands of his eunuchs might well be all the detail that Manetho
provided. But in the “Instruction” itself, Amenemhat refers to his own death as
occurring when he was set upon in his sleep by his own bodyguard. He imag-
ines what he could have done had he been properly armed: “If I had quickly
taken weapons in my hand, | I would have made the back-turners retreat with
a charge” (Parkinson’s trans. [1997] 207). Parkinson has observed that the word
he translated “back-turners” (hms) has both a political valence (“enemies of
the state”) and “a sexual edge—they are effeminates”; Goedicke is even more
explicit: the word means “(male) woman,” has “homosexual connotations,”
and could be translated “bugger.”234 Such a detail might well correspond to the
“eunuchs” found in Manetho. Indeed, Gardiner went further. Having quoted
the section of the “Instruction” mentioning Amenemhat’s assailants as “back-
turners” (Gardiner translates the term as “caitiffs”),235 he goes on: “this clearly
229. See Boardman (1994); Ridgway (1999), (2000); Lane Fox (2009) 31, 143.
230. Austin (1970) 15.
231. See above, ch. 2, p. 115.
232. Syncellus Chron. 66 M: β΄ Ἀμμανέμης ἔτη λη΄, ὃς ὑπὸ τῶν ἰδίων εὐνούχων ἀνῃρέθη.
233. Parkinson (1997) 203–11. See also Lichtheim (1973/1980) 1.135–39; Tobin (2003b).
234. Parkinson (1997) 210 n.10; Goedicke (1988) 1.24–25. See also Thériault (1993) 153.
235. Cf. Helck (1969) 52: “Feiglinge.”
refers to the conspiracy in which Ammenemes lost his life, and a memory of
it, though attributed to the wrong king, survives in Manetho’s statement that
Ammenemes II was murdered by his eunuchs.”236 But that Manetho connected
the murder of pharaoh by his effeminate/eunuch bodyguard to Amenemhat II,
not Amenemhat I, poses a serious difficulty; is this an error that we can imagine
Manetho committing? Further, Gardiner was right to speak of Manetho’s refer-
ence to the event as “a memory,”237 that is, a term that does not require the text
of the “Instruction” to lay behind the notice, to say nothing of the narrative be-
ing present in Manetho’s original version. Yet ostraca from Deir el-Medina have
shown that the “Instruction” was exactly representative of the sorts of texts that
were to be found in the House of Life.238 In the end, the entry that we find for
“Ammanemes” in Manetho must be seen as neither proving nor ruling out the
presence of a known, independently transmitted Egyptian narrative.
One matter relating to “The Instruction of King Amenemhat” that we
should not lose sight of, whether we are talking about a simple reference in Ma-
netho or a full-scale narrative, is the resonance that the story would have had
in the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The story makes much of the transfer
of legitimate power to the king’s son, as coregent to his now murdered father.
While Soter was not murdered, a succession crisis that loomed between Ptol-
emy son of Berenike and Ptolemy son of Eurydike was only resolved by the
designation of the first as coregent with Ptolemy I.239 To be sure, we cannot tell
if Manetho meant anything special by the reference or possible full-scale nar-
rative relating to the events found in “The Instruction of King Amenemhat.” It
is tempting to speculate that Manetho knew full well how such an event would
have resonated at the new court of Ptolemy II, himself the ultimate winner in a
succession battle with his half brother.
Another example of such a tag that could either signal the suturing of a
larger narrative to Manetho’s frame or simply be a chronicle entry is Manetho’s
description of the end of Menes, the first human pharaoh and founder of the
First Dynasty. Menes “was torn apart by a hippo and perished” (see above, p.
85).240 It is hard to imagine that such a spectacular detail as Menes’ death was
not dealt with extensively by Manetho in a narrative of some kind. Indeed, if
the entry is correct, it represents something of an interpretative problem. Nor-
236. Gardiner (1961b) 130.

237. Cf. Gunn (1940) 67 n.2: “It seems probable that Manetho’s note here refers to the death of
Ammenemes I” (but not necessarily to the text of the “Instruction”). See also Gunn (1941) 5. Cf.
Posener (1956) 68–69.
238. Parkinson (2009) 188.
239. Cf. Dillery (1999) 111–12.
240. Syncellus Chron. 59 M: Μήνης . . . ὃς ὑπὸ ἱπποποτάμου διαρπαγεὶς διεφθάρη.
Space 177
mally, a pharaoh comes out the victor in a conflict with a hippo, insofar as such
conflicts are thought to represent the primordial one between Horus (the pha-
raoh) and Seth (the hippo).241 A pharaoh hunting hippos was a fairly common
motif in Egyptian art, and a seal impression from the First Dynasty, founded by
Menes/Min, shows the pharaoh Den wrestling with one hippo and harpooning
another.242 Additionally, in the New Kingdom tale Contendings of Horus and
Seth, the two gods transform themselves into hippos, only to be harpooned
by the goddess Isis.243 Significantly, the Palermo Stone’s chronicle entry for the
same ruler (“year x + 8”) even mentions “the Shooting of the Hippopotamus.”244
As part of the lore surrounding the conflict of Horus and Seth, a “Festival of
Victory” in which Seth was represented by a hippo and overcome by Horus
seems to have occurred at Edfu.245 One of the scenes of the sacred drama there
even depicts the king “Ptolemaeus” victorious over a vanquished hippo that
is being butchered by an attendant.246 The inauguration of the ruling year of
Horus at Edfu was seen as “crucial” during the Ptolemaic period, as an essential
element in the renewal of royal power.247 What could it have meant, then, for
Manetho to record that the first human ruler of Egypt was conquered by this
animal of Seth/Typhon? Was sovereignty overturned at its inception in Egypt? I
think not. I believe that this must be a case where the transmission of Manetho’s
text is perhaps in error and that the entry under Menes originally mentioned
the (first?) shooting of the hippo—a record of the inauguration of royal power
in the First Dynasty that would have (again) resonated powerfully at the new
court of the Ptolemies. Yet it is just as possible that Manetho meant that Menes
really was captured and killed by a hippo, for he reports a similarly bad end for
the founder of the Ninth Dynasty, Achthoes, who is described as an evil king
who fell into madness and was killed by a crocodile,248 a creature who also has
connections to Seth and whose defeat as a representative of Seth was celebrated
at Edfu and Dendera, as well as the defeat of the hippo.249 Indeed, the image
of a pharaoh killing the crocodile of Seth was an enduring symbol of Horus’
241. Of the symbolism of the hippo, Herodotus seems partly aware (Hdt. 2.71), Plutarch fully
(Mor. 371 C–D; De Is. et Os. 50). See Lloyd (1975/1988) 2.311, 397; Griffiths (1970) 490–91; id.
(1960) 46–48.
242. Säve-Söderbergh (1953) 16–17 and fig. 7.
243. Wente (2003a) 97–98. Note also the importance of the hippos in The Quarrel of Apophis
and Seknenre, who make so much noise they do not permit Seknenre to sleep.
244. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.60 no. 110. Cf. Waddell (1940) 28 n.2.
245. Watterson (1998) 115, 126.
246. Blackman and Fairman (1944) 13; cf. Säve-Söderbergh (1953) 28–29 and n.3.
247. Hölbl (2001) 274: “crucial” is his term.
248. Syncellus Chron. 65m: μανίᾳ περιέπεσε καὶ ὑπὸ κροκοδείλου διεφθάρη.
249. Wilson (1997); also Blackman and Fairman (1944), Watterson (1998) 126; cf. Bonnet
(1952) 392–94, Burton (1972) 259–60.
powers of vengeance and expulsion, that is, of the enemy of Ma’at.250 Certainly,
Herodotus knows that the crocodile was sacred in some districts of Egypt but
not in others, where it was consumed (Hdt. 2.69.1–2). Diodorus preserves a
story (which may come to him by way of Hecataeus of Abdera) in which one of
the early kings of Egypt, “Menas” (note his name’s similarity to Menes/Min), is
actually saved from danger by being carried off by a crocodile (Diod. 1.89.3).251
These references in Manetho’s king list could have involved the presentation of
older, traditional narratives. In fact, the rescue of Menas by the crocodile has
been linked to the New Kingdom story The Doomed Prince.252 But a simple
one-sentence “tag” may very likely have been all that was needed.
Indeed, if we look further at the “labels” or “tags” in Manetho, we encoun-
ter other entries that seem almost certainly to contain within them state-
ments that were never more than chronicle items: for example, Athothis and
Uenephes—the second and fourth rulers of the First Dynasty, respectively—are
credited with having built massive structures (the first, a palace; the second,
pyramids),253 precisely the sort of activity that is noted, among other achieve-
ments, by the Palermo Stone.254 Similarly, as I have already mentioned above
(p. 95 and n.165), it was noticed long ago that the recognition of the Mem-
phite Apis, the Heliopolitan Mnevis, and the Mendesian goat as gods under
Kaiechos, second ruler of the Second Dynasty (F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 60 M),
can be linked to the mention of the “running of Apis” in “year x + 12” of the
fifth king of the First Dynasty on the Palermo Stone. I do not think that these
notices from Manetho constitute anything other than what they appear to be:
chronicle statements. However, even as such, we should not undervalue their
importance. The notice of these religious aitia in the chronography of Manetho
helps precisely to “historicize” them: what could have been treated in a sort of
timeless past is given a firm historical anchor in time. Indeed, Doron Mendels
has noted that while Hecataeus of Abdera handled these same cult animals in
a timeless present, Manetho attributes them to the reign of a specific king and,
in so doing, “historicises much of the information which in Hecataeus was a-
historical in order to bring it under the aegis of the King-List tradition.”255
250. Cf. Frankfurter (1998) 3.
251. Burton (1972) 260 ad loc. speculates that the name appears to be a variant for Moeris,
Mendes, or Marrus, found elsewhere in Diod. 1. She does not entertain the possibility that we have
here another rendering of Menes.
252. Cf. Posener (1953); Manning (2010) 93 n.76. Note also the text edited and translated in
Ryholt (2006a) 59–61, P. Petese Tebt. C fragment 2.
253. Syncellus Chron. 60 M: Ἄθωθις . . . ὁ τὰ ἐν Μέμφει βασίλεια οἰκοδομήσας . . . Οὐενέφης . . .
οὗτος τὰς περὶ Κωχώμην ἤγειρε πυραμίδας.
254. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.110 n.106. Note, e.g., the entry for “year 13 of “King ‘W’” of the Sec-
ond Dynasty on the Palermo Stone: “(The temple called): ‘Then-the Goddess-Abides’ was built (of)
stone” (Breasted [1906/1907] 1.64 no. 134).
255. Mendels (1990) 105 and n.50.
Space 179
A different but related problem can be detected in Manetho’s entry for Seso-
stris, mentioned briefly above. First, it is important to read the entry itself:
3. Sesostris [ruled] 48 years, who subdued all Asia in 9 years and the
parts of Europe until Thrace, everywhere putting up reminders of the
character of the peoples, engraving on the stelae the parts of men for
his noble [adversaries], and for his ignoble ones, the parts of women, so
that, after Osiris, he was considered first by the Egyptians.256
The size and discursiveness of this entry, together with the indisputable fact
that Sesostris (= Senwosret I and/or III)257 was, as the text informs us, the
most important pharaoh “after Osiris” himself, suggest that a full-scale nar-
rative of his rule, or at least his “9 year campaign” was originally found in the
Aegyptiaca of Manetho, much as Ryholt speculated on the basis of the remains
from the library at Tebtunis. Yet we have to entertain seriously the possibility
that Manetho made use of a Greek source at this point in his history, namely,
Herodotus 2.102.3–5, where we also read of Sesostris’ stelae with human sex
organs denoting fierce (male) and unwarlike (female) people, as well as pos-
sibly Hecataeus of Abdera, who may also have had the same detail (cf. Diod.
1.55.7–8). I will deal with this possibility extensively in chapter 6, together
with the topic of Manetho as an adapter and interpreter of Greek texts. Suffice
it to say here that while Greek texts were found in the library at Tebtunis, they
constituted a microscopic percentage (less than 1 percent) of the total. While
it is hazardous to assume that what Manetho would have found in his own
temple library and House of Life at Heliopolis would have been identical to
the holdings in the more modest library at Tebtunis,258 there must have been
a considerable overlap, and (crucially) the proportions were probably not that
different, with the vast majority of material being made up of demotic works
(two-thirds) followed by hieratic ones (one-third), making it unlikely that a
significant collection of Greek texts was to found in the pr-’nh and pr-md3t
with which Manetho was most familiar. Remember that on Ryholt’s reckon-
ing, there would not even have been a significant amount of hieroglyphic
256. Syncellus Chron. 66 M: γ΄ Σέσωστρις ἔτη μη΄, ὃς ἅπασαν ἐχειρώσατο τὴν Άσίαν ἐν
ἐνιαυτοῖς θ΄ καὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης τὰ μέχρι Θρᾴκης, πανταχόσε μνημόσυνα ἐγείρας τῆς τῶν ἐθνῶν
σχέσεως, ἐπὶ μὲν τοῖς γενναίοις ἀνδρῶν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῖς ἀγεννέσι γυναικῶν μόρια ταῖς στήλαις
ἐγχαράσσων, ὡς ὑπὸ Αἰγυπτίων μετὰ Ὄσιριν πρῶτον νομισθῆναι. For the reading of σχέσεως as
“character,” see Adler and Tuffin (2002) 84 n.1, with bibliography.
257. On the legendary Sesostris, see pp. 206, 312–15.
258. Another point of caution, in addition to the size of the Tebtunis library, would be its date:
later Egyptian libraries may well have been influenced by the nonnative libraries of the Greco-
Macedonians, especially by the great Library at Alexandria (Quirke [1996] 394), to say nothing of
scholarly practices borrowed from the Greeks (von Lieven [2005] 65).
material, though his data comes from the Roman period, and knowledge of
hieroglyphs, while persisting among some members of the priestly class in
use until AD 394, steadily declined throughout Greco-Roman antiquity, with
many more literate in hieroglyphs in Manetho’s day than later in the second
century AD.259 Hence, it seems certain that Manetho’s knowledge of and ac-
cess to Greek texts will have happened outside the institutions of the House
of Life and House of Books.
Finally, it is vitally important to remember that specific temple complexes
and their accompanying Houses of Life and Houses of Books will presumably
have fostered views of the past that privileged the regions where they were lo-
cated.260 To be sure, it is routine to think of pharaonic Egypt as a highly central-
ized culture, focused politically on the king and physically on the Nile valley
and delta. Yet centralized government and social order were episodic through-
out Egyptian history, with some periods marked by strong central authority
and some periods marked by the fragmentation of power and the emergence of
regional power centers, to say nothing of competing royal centers.261 Temples
were dedicated to different gods, some of whom could be deities with very lo-
cal meanings and connections, and the temple communities themselves could
develop competing theological systems—I have already noted that the oldest
cosmogony was formed at Heliopolis, only to give way to a rival Memphite
version,262 one claiming Memphis as the “capital of Egypt and the hinge of Up-
per and Lower Egypt.”263 In fact, an early rival to the Heliopolite cosmogony
was yet another one that developed at Hermopolis.264 In the fifth century BC,
Herodotus could observe of the Egyptians, “Now the Egyptians do not all wor-
ship the same gods in like fashion, except for Isis and Osiris” (2.42.2).265 He
went on to show how the Mendesians keep from sacrificing goats but slaugh-
ter sheep instead, while the Thebans do the exact opposite in their sacrifices
(2.42.3). Sauneron has even spoken of the Egyptian temple space as a “micro-
cosm” or model universe “through which the deity passed”:266 it is perhaps not
difficult to see how such a self-enclosed “world” might well develop idiosyn-
cratic views of the past in relation to other Egyptian temple complexes.
259. Cf., e.g., Fowden (1993) 60–61; Roccati (1997) 81–83; Frankfurter (1998) 248–49.
260. Clarysse (2009) 565.
261. See, e.g., Wilson (1951) 49–50, 66–67, 69–70, 141–44.
262. Assmann (2002) 345–48.
263. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 1.51.
264. Griffiths (1955a) 21–22.
265. θεοὺς γὰρ δὴ τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἅπαντες ὁμοίως Αἰγύπτιοι σέβονται, πλὴν Ἴσιός τε καὶ Ὀσίριος.
266. Sauneron (2000) 48–49.
Space 181
More to the point, by the time of the Macedonian conquest of Egypt, certain
temple complexes had become what have been described as “quasi-autonomous
enclaves.”267 From the Satrap Stela and continuing through the great priestly
synodal decrees, it is clear that the Egyptian temple complexes were granted a
significant degree of local autonomy and enjoyed the revenues and products of
extensive “sacred estates,” which could include not just large agricultural hold-
ings but also workshops and other enterprises.268 To be sure, the exact nature
of the sacred estates changed during the Ptolemaic period, with their economic
and administrative independence contracting over time; moreover, as Clarysse
has suggested recently, although the synodal decrees project an image of the
Egyptian priesthood as distinct from the Greco-Macedonian ruling elite, the
priests were an integral part of the apparatus of royal rule,269 playing an impor-
tant role in maintaining Ptolemaic power. However, despite these limitations
on the perceived independence of the Egyptian clergy and their institutions,
the temple complex was indeed remarkably independent in Manetho’s time,
and one might well expect that the perspectives of the past that emerge from
such “enclaves” would have had unusual or even unique elements. Gardiner
and Lloyd have argued that even the king lists show marked differences, and
these are explained at least partly by the fact that different communities were
producing them.270
Indeed, Doron Mendels has argued that a distinct, local orientation can be
detected in the remains of Manetho: “it is clear that, throughout the Aegyp-
tiaca, Manetho was mainly interested in Memphis and Lower Egypt.”271 The
evidence he adduces does not seem to me to suggest a particular narrowing
on Manetho’s part to Lower Egypt, however, and Mendels himself brings up
several instances where Manetho’s focus becomes wider; that Manetho took
note of the origins of dynasties that did not come from Memphis could be in-
terpreted not as deviations from the norm but as simply the result of being truly
comprehensive.272 We can perhaps detect a very local orientation to Manetho’s
work in the prominence of Heliopolis in a few of the extant fragments of this
work, exiguous though they are. Recall that under the second ruler of the Sec-
ond Dynasty (Kaiechos), “the bulls Apis in Memphis and Mnevis in Heliopolis
267. Dunand (2004) 206.

268. Dunand (2004) 207. But note the monumental work of Préaux (1939) 480–91 and now
Manning (2003). See also Bingen (2007) 219–21 and n.10.
269. Clarysse (1999) 54.
270. Gardiner (1961b) 50; Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.90 and n.22.
271. Mendels (1990) 102 = (1998) 151.
272. Mendels (1990) 102–3 and nn.40, 41 = (1998) 151.
and the Mendesian goat were considered to be gods” (Syncellus Chron. 60 M).
Mnevis was intimately associated with the city of Heliopolis, the location also
of Manetho’s priesthood.273 Note, by way of contrast, that “the Running of Apis”
occurs three times on the Palermo Stone (Breasted [1906/1907] 1.60, 62, 63,
sections 114, 121, 127)274—as well as other festivals (e.g., the Sed jubilee, the
feasts of Zet and Sokar) and, indeed, other Heliopolitan rites held during the
Fifth Dynasty275—but there is no mention of Mnevis. This is not to say that Mn-
evis was not important. Nothing could be further from the truth: the Heliopolis
building inscription of Sesostris I (Breasted [1906/1907] 1.242–45) makes this
abundantly clear.276
The absence of Mnevis on the Palermo Stone suggests that it was not axi-
omatic to mention Mnevis the way it was apparently with Apis and, in fact,
the way it appears to have been after Manetho’s time: thus Diodorus brings
up both Apis and Mnevis, together with the goat of Mendes just as Manetho
does,277 and adds also the crocodile of Lake Moeris and the lion of Leontopolis
(1.84.4).278 Later, Plutarch discusses both Apis and Mnevis in his On Isis and
Osiris (ch. 33 = Mor. 364c) but comments that “[Mnevis] is second only to Apis
in honour” (Griffiths trans. [1970] 171). All these texts postdate Manetho. By
contrast, Herodotus mentions Apis prominently (2.38, 153; 3.28), as well as the
Mendesian goat (2.46.3) and the crocodile of Lake Moeris (2.69.2, 148.5),279 but
not the Mnevis bull; indeed, for him, all bulls are sacred to “Epaphus” in Egypt,
which is to say, Apis (2.38.1). Perhaps we can say that Manetho put Mnevis on
the historiographic map, at least for later Greek authors. Certainly, Apis and
Mnevis were both important to the Ptolemies.280 Heliopolis also comes up in
Manetho in connection with the renegade priest Osarseph, who plays an im-
portant role in his Hyksos narrative.
273. Cf. de Jong (1994) 149.

274. See also above pp. 95, 178.
275. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.68–69, nos. 155, 159.1.
276. Note esp. Breasted (1906/1907) 1.245 no. 504.ii, where Mnevis is clearly referred to as the
incarnation of Re-Atum: “Thou art great that thou mayest make thy monument in Heliopolis, the
dwelling of the gods. Before thy father, the lord of the great house, Atum, the bull of the gods.” Cf.
Griffiths (1970) 425. In death, Mnevis was called “Osiris Mnevis” and was treated, like Apis, in a
manner resembling royal burial: see Spiegelberg (1928).
277. Lloyd (1975/1988) 2.194: “The three most famous examples [of temple animals] were the
Apis and Mnevis Bulls and the Ram of Mendes.”
278. Burton (1972) 242–43 ad loc.
279. In the case of the sacred animals, Herodotus seems to recognize that the individual animal
incarnations of Egyptian divinities receive special treatment distinct from other sacred animals by
being embalmed.
280. Thompson (1988/2012) 111, 115–16.
Space 183
Space and Hellenistic Greek Historiography: Local

Advocacy and the Lindian Chronicle
The role of space in conferring legitimacy on the recording of the past was far
from unique, of course, to Berossus and Manetho and their antecedents, real
and imagined, in the ancient Near East. We can see the issue in Greek texts of
the Hellenistic period as well. In 99 BC, the community of Lindos on Rhodes
put up an inscribed stele that recorded the offerings made to the goddess of
the town’s shrine, Athena Lindia. The beginning of the document explains its
origins:
When Teisylus the son of Sosicrates was priest, on the twelfth of Arta-
mitios, it was decided by the mastroi and the Lindians; Hagesitimus son
of Timachidas the Lindian proposed: since the temple of Athena Lindia,
being the most ancient and honored, has been adorned with many beau-
tiful dedications from the oldest times, on account of the presence of the
goddess, and since it has happened that the majority of the dedications
have been destroyed together with their records thanks to time, with
good fortune it has been decided by the mastroi and the Lindians, when
this decree has been ratified, to select two men; let these men, once se-
lected, prepare in accordance with what the architect prescribes a stele
of Lartian stone, and let them inscribe upon it this decree, and let them
inscribe from the letters and the documents and the other testimonies,
whichever ones are fitting regarding the dedications and the presence of
the goddess, making a record of the stele with the secretary of the mas-
troi. (Higbie [2003] A 6–8; cf. Blinkenberg [1941] no. 2; FGrH 532)281
Several details stand out here and serve usefully to reintroduce many of the
topics I have treated in this chapter. As with most texts of this type, there is an
implicit argument to be found here: the temple of Athena at Lindos is worthy of
the greatest respect, due to its vast antiquity and to the manifest presence of the
281. [ἐ]π’ ἰερέως Τεισύλ[ου τοῦ Σωσικράτευς, Ἀρτα]μιτίου δωδεκάται ἔδοξε μαστροῖς καὶ
Λινδίο[ις]. | [Ἁ]γησίτιμος Τιμαχίδα Λ[ινδοπολίτας εἶπε· ἐπεὶ τὸ ίερὸ]ν τᾶς Ἀθάνας τᾶς Λινδίας
ἀρχαιότατόν τε καὶ ἐντιμό[τα]|τον ὑπάρχον πολλοῖς κ[αὶ καλοῖς ἀναθέμασι ἐκ παλαιοτ]άτων
χρόνων κεκόσμηται διὰ τὰν τᾶς θεοῦ ἐπιφάνειαν, | συμβαίνει δὲ τῶν ἀνα[θεμάτων τὰ πλεῖστα μετὰ
τᾶν αὐτῶν ἐ]πιγραφᾶν διὰ τὸν χρόνον ἐφθάρθαι, τύχαι ἀγαθᾶι δεδόχθαι | [μ]αστροῖς καὶ Λινδίοις
κυρ[ωθέντος τοῦδε τοῦ ψαφίσματος ἑλέ]σθαι ἄνδρας δύο, τοὶ δὲ αἱρεθέντες κατασκευαξάντω
στάλαν | [λί]θου Λαρτίου καθ’ ἅ κα ὁ ἀρχ[ιτέκτων γράψηι καὶ ἀναγραψάντ]ω εἰς αὐτὰν τόδε
τὸ ψάφισμα, ἀναγραψάντω δὲ ἔκ τε τᾶν | [ἐπ]ιστολᾶν καὶ τῶν χρηματ[ισμῶν καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων
μαρτυρί]ων ἅ κα ἦι ἁρμόζοντα περὶ τῶν ἀναθεμάτων καὶ τᾶς ἐπιφανείας | [τ]ᾶς θε⟨ο⟩ῦ ποιούμενοι
τὰν ἀ[ναγραφὰν τᾶς στάλας μετὰ τοῦ γρ]αμματεως τῶν μαστρῶν κτλ.
goddess herself in her sacred space. These claims would be put beyond doubt
if the dedications that adorned the temple had survived, but the great majority
has not (out of forty-two listed objects, only six were surviving at the time of
the inscription, and even they are documented).282 Therefore, the very first task
for the men appointed to the job of carrying out the terms of the decree is to
marshal written evidence in order to determine and record for posterity what
was once stored in the temple.
The evidence, as it is described in the preamble, are “letters,” “documents”
(chrematismoi: literally “memoranda” of official transactions),283 and “other tes-
timonia” (A 7: ἔκ τε τᾶν ἐπιστολᾶν καὶ τῶν χρηματισμῶν καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων
μαρτυρίων). In the body of the text, in connection with both the listing of vo-
tives and the stories of Athena Lindia’s epiphanies, these sources are cited with
great precision.284 The letters turn out to be those of the temple priests, and the
miscellaneous “other testimonies” are a number of historical works of various
descriptions. The chrematismoi are cited only in connection with the last five
votives listed; these happen to be the latest in the collection and the only ones
that had survived intact down to the time of the setting up of the stele.285 The
general relative clause depending on the list of sources is especially important
to this discussion: “whichever [documents] are fitting regarding the dedica-
tions and the presence of the goddess” (A 7–8: ἅ κα ἦι ἁρμόζοντα περὶ τῶν
ἀναθεμάτων καὶ τᾶς ἐπιφανείας | [τ]ᾶς θε⟨ο⟩ῦ). I wish to focus on the parti-
ciple ἁρμόζοντα, “fitting”. In its primary sense, the verb harmozein means “to
join,” “fit,” or “bring together”286 and often refers to items or concepts that are
thought to be opposed.287 Secondarily, when used intransitively, harmozein can
denote some person or thing that “is fitting”; in this sense, it is often found
employed impersonally to mean that “it is fitting” for some person or another
to do something. This is the meaning we often find the term bearing in inscrip-
tions.288 What is so arresting about the use of the verb here in the introduction
to the Lindian Chronicle is that it applies not to persons but to “whichever
documents” are thought to be ἁρμόζοντα,” or “fitting.” It is true that “words”
282. Cf. Higbie (2003) 188–89.

283. See LSJ s.v.; also Welles (1934) 375.
284. Cf. Bertrand (1992) 23.
285. Higbie (2003) 189. Item no. 37, a shield given by the damos of the Rhodians, was extant,
but the chrematismoi are not cited in connection with it.
286. See LSJ s.v.; note also the bibliography cited in Giangiulio (1992) 33–35 nn.10–15. Cf.
SEG 42.374
287. Note, in this connection, Solon 36 (West) lines 15–17: ταῦτα μὲν κράτει | ὁμοῦ βίην τε
καὶ δίκην ξυναρμόσας ἔρεξα. Cf. Giangiulio (1992) 34, discussing the Solon passage in connection
with ML 10.1
288. E.g. SIG3 598 C 8; OGIS 383.99, 666.21.
Space 185
and “times” can be “appropriate,”289 as can even famous sayings,290 but to my

knowledge, this is the only instance in both the epigraphic and literary record
where we see ἐπιστολαί, χρηματισμοί and μαρτύρια modified by ἁρμόζοντα.
The term seems to have a double valence here. First, only “pertinent” materials,
not everything, will be used in telling the sacred past of the temple at Lindos.
But with ἁρμόζοντα, I think we are to understand a moral sense in addition:
the evidence marshaled is also to be “fitting” in the sense that it is to reflect
“suitably” or “properly” the majesty of the goddess—it is to be “appropriate.”291
Herein is the implied argument. As the introductory statement goes on to make
clear, the documents in question were expected to provide information specifi-
cally “regarding the dedications and the presence of the goddess” (lines 8–9:
περὶ τῶν ἀναθεμάτων καὶ τᾶς ἐπιφανείας | [τ]ᾶς θε⟨ο⟩ῦ). The votives were wit-
nesses to the god’s enduring presence at her shrine; in a sense, they proved that
Athena Lindia truly abided there. Yet virtually all of the votives themselves,
including the oldest ones, were gone. By contrast, Herodotus frequently refers
to temple dedications that have survived “(even) to my own time” (ἔτι (καὶ) ἐς
ἐμέ),292 in one case even reporting a dedication to Athena Lindia on Rhodes
that the Lindian Chronicle also notices, referring to Herodotus’ own discus-
sion (Hdt. 2.182.1; C 38–39).293 Perhaps most strikingly, Herodotus elsewhere
reports the continued presence, down to his own time, of rocks that helped to
drive off the Persian forces from Delphi (Hdt. 8.39.2): dedications of a sort, they
are also witnesses to the manifest protection (an epiphany) by the divine of a
sanctuary, thus combining what we see in the list of votives and the stories of
epiphany at Lindos.
A visitor to the temple of Athena Lindia could see neither the vast majority
of the dedications referred to in the text nor the actual presence of the god-
dess; it was the Lindian Chronicle’s inscribed list of offerings, as well as the
companion stories of Athena’s appearances at particular moments in the past,
that vouchsafed her epiphaneia. That the noun occurs in the singular (twice)
289. For “appropriate words,” see, e.g., OGIS 335 D 159 = Ager no. 146 IV 159 (τοὺς ἁρ]
μόζοντας λό[γους), with Dittenberger following the restoration of M. Fränkel, who compares Plb.
1.15.3; this is a commonplace in Polybius (see, e.g., 18.41.1 [singular], 36.1.6). Note also SEG 44.867
C 53–54: τοὺς ἁρμόζοντας λόγους. For “appropriate “times” (kairoi), see, e.g., Chiron 28 (1998) 89
line 29 (τοὺς ἁρμόζοντας καιρούς), from Crowther et al. (1998) 87–100; cf. Gauthier (1999) no.
405. Cf. also “suitable feasts” in Pindar, e.g., P. 4.129 and N. 1.21, with Schmitt-Pantel (1990) 22–23.
290. Aristotle Rh. 1377a19 (= DK 21 A 14): καὶ τὸ τοῦ Ξενοφάνους ἁρμόττει κτλ. Cf. Rh.
1394b34.
291. Note the translation in Bertrand (1992) 23: “d’après les letters, les archives publiques et
tout autre témoignage approprié.” Cf. also the more common terms τὰ προσήκοντα and ἐπιεικῶς
vel sim.: see Clarke (2008) 248 and n.10.
292. Note, e.g., Hdt. 1.52, 66.4, 92.1. See Powell (1938/1960) 150 s.v. ἔτι I 2 a.
293. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 515–16; Francis and Vickers (1984).
in the preamble of the decree is crucial in this regard, as Carolyn Higbie has
observed. Comparing the Lindian Chronicle with a similar statement by Strabo
concerning Asclepius’ epiphaneia at Epidaurus (Strabo 8.6.15),294 Higbie notes,
“In neither instance does the phrase [‘epiphany of the god’] refer to any spe-
cific appearance of god, but rather expresses an understanding that the divin-
ity, in some sense, resides in the sanctuary, and permeates it with his or her
presence.”295 Athena was in some sense always there at Lindos, and her contin-
ued epiphaneia quite literally put the community on the map.
I do not want to suggest here that the Lindians were in some way inadver-
tently exposing their dependence on forged documents for making the case for
Athena Lindia—for coming up with “all the history that fit,” as it were. As with
the proofs of the Magnesians’ claims for “isopythic” status (i.e., equal to the
games held quadrennially at Delphi) for their new games in honor of Artemis
Leukophryene—among which, significantly, was the appearance of the god-
dess herself (SIG3 557.5 = Rigsby no. 66)296—I am sure the Lindians believed
in the truth of the reconstructed list of votives;297 I am furthermore convinced
that they believed in the various epiphanies of their god, just as the Greeks
and Romans tended to do at virtually all periods of antiquity298: it is good to
remember, in this connection, that Xenophon can, without blinking an eye,
cite local authorities for both the flaying of the satyr Marsyas by Apollo and
Heracles’ descent to the underworld to fetch the three-headed dog Cerberus,
complete with footprints (An. 1.2.8, 6.2.2).299 The votive gifts and the divine
presence they attested were at the center of the Lindians’ view of their shrine
and consequently constituted an essential aspect of their own civic and reli-
gious identity.300 At some level, however, the chronicle of Athena at Lindos, the
historical case for the games for Artemis at Magnesia, and countless other simi-
lar documents were “invented history,” a phenomenon that, as we have seen, is
not at all limited to the Greek world.301
294. “And this city [Epidaurus] is not without distinction, particularly because of the epi-
phaneia of Asclepius who has been entrusted with the healing of all manner of illnesses” (και
αὕτη δ’ οὐκ ἄσημος ἡ πόλις, καὶ μάλιστα διὰ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ θεραπεύειν νόσους
παντοδαπὰς πεπιστευμένου).
295. Higbie (2003) 264; see also 54 (commentary), 274 with n.61.
296. ἐπιφαινομένης αὐτοῖς Ἀρτέμι[δο]ς Λε[υκοφρυηνῆς.
297. See esp. Gehrke (2001) 298 and n.59. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 507; above, p. 8.
298. Graf (2004) 113–15, together with the bibliography he cites. Note also Rostovtzeff (1941)
2.1123.
299. In the second case of Heracles’ footprints, this information is connected to the Black Sea
local historian Herodorus of Heraclea (FGrH 31 F 31): see Dillery (2001) 481 n.13; cf. Burstein
(1976) 39–41.
300. Cf. Shaya (2005) 433; also Clarke (2008) 321–25. Note also SEG 55.906.
301. Nor, indeed, is it limited to the ancient world. See esp. the papers in Hobsbawm and
Space 187
But in a larger sense, the Lindian Chronicle demonstrates precisely how

space can be intimately bound up with the issues of both the authentication
of the historical record and the grounding of the historiographic vision in a
particular locality. The temple of Athena at Lindos, irrespective of whether it
really housed all the votives listed in the Lindian Chronicle, became the site of
the “imagined treasure” described in such detail in the list;302 and, of course,
the stele bearing the list was itself housed in the sacred precinct. Regarding the
stele, Higbie again offers a valuable insight: “perhaps the most striking element
of the stele” is the care, bordering on mania, with which the compilers of the
chronicle cite their sources.303 At the end of each story of epiphany and at the
end of each entry on the list of votives is a set of source citations, some, such as
the one at the end of the entry for the two shields given by Heracles (B 29–36),
containing a truly impressive collection of authorities (eight altogether).304 Re-
member the “museum” world of the would-be archaeologist Nabû-apla-iddina,
the obsession with artifacts of Setna Khaemwese, and the textual histories of
both figures’ finding of their respective documents.
Indeed, Higbie has detected a pattern of sorts: “more sources are cited for
the earlier objects than the later, perhaps because those votives were the more
famous or older and thus more written about.”305 This intriguing suggestion
deserves to be followed up. It might be tempting to state that the reason for the
larger number of citations in connection with the earlier votives is that, being
largely mythical and legendary, they required more “shoring up,” exemplifying
the axiom that a greater claim needs greater proof.306 But this is not so in the
case of the Lindian Chronicle. I believe Higbie is right in her suspicion: the
amount of authentication one gets in the list is directly proportionate to the
fame of the donor and/or the stories associated with them. More authorities
are cited for Heracles’ shields than for, say, Alexander’s gifts of boukephala (“ox
heads”) and armor (one authority is cited, the chrematismoi of the Lindians, at
C 108),307 even though both figures were enormously famous and important.
Ranger eds. (1992). A particularly good parallel from modern Europe (sixteenth-century Spain) is
the “discovery” from 1588 onward of lead books (plomos) proving Moorish Spain’s lost Christian
history, e.g., that the first Mass in Spain was held by St. James in Granada (MacCulloch [2003] 409).
302. A point well made in Shaya (2005) esp. 428; “imagined treasure” is her phrase. See also
Platt (2010) 210–11.
303. Higbie (2003) 188.
304. Surpassed only by the nine authorities cited for the gift(s) of Amasis: see Higbie (2003)
190.
305. Higbie (2003) 190.
306. A good statement of the principle to be found at Syme (1972) 3; note also Grafton (1991)
90. Consult, in general, Speyer (1971); also Facchetti (2009) esp. 47–67.
307. What the boukephala are is a puzzle. Higbie argues for “caltrops,” iron balls mounted with
spikes that are meant to impede cavalry. The word literally means, of course, “ox heads” or “ox
The difference lies simply in the fact that more had been said about Heracles’
dedications, and therefore there was more to cite in the chronicle. Expansion
of detail in connection with authentication reveals not anxiety about the his-
toricity of the item in question but that there is more of an opportunity to cite
preexisting sources. This is a very important principle that we will do well to re-
member when we turn back to Berossus and Manetho. It is also worth pointing
out that Alexander’s gift of the “ox heads” are themselves marked as important,
but in a different way, by the quotation of the four-line inscription to be found
on them (C 104–7).
It almost goes without saying that the point of view that emerges from texts
like the Lindian Chronicle is a highly local one. Seen from within the world
imagined by the stele, individuals (the dedicators of the votives) and episodes
(the epiphanies) from the Greek past are brought onto the historical stage only
as they pertain to the temple of Athena Lindia. Yet because so many of the
dedicators are exceedingly famous in their own right and because, in several
cases, their deeds are known through other sources—indeed, sources that are
extremely well known (e.g., Menelaus from the Iliad)308—it can be argued that
the view of the Greek past that is constructed in the Lindian Chronicle is also
selective, that while some canonical texts are being referred to and augmented,
some are being left out. The point has already been made that what Heracles
and Alexander achieved is important only insofar as it is connected to the tem-
ple; but this requirement cuts two ways, leading not only to expansion and
elaboration but also to omission.
In this connection, it is worth thinking a bit more about the entry for Alex-
ander’s gift of “ox heads.” The entry appears as follows (C 103–9):
King Alexander [gave] ox heads, upon which is inscribed:

“King Alexander, after defeating Darius in battle
and becoming ruler of Asia,
made sacrifice to Athena Lindia in accordance with a prophecy,
during the priesthood of Theugenes son of Pistokrates.”
The chrematismoi preserve [a notice] about these things.309
He also dedicated armor, upon which there is an inscription.310
skulls,” which were, in fact, not infrequently found as dedications. Higbie (2003) 134–35 argues for
caltrops partly on the basis that the Lindian Chronicle elsewhere clearly refers to “cow skulls” with
different terms (at C 110–111C, the offerings of a Ptolemy are referred to as προμετωπίδια βοῶν).
That said, most translators opt for “ox head,” which I follow here.
309. For the translation of this line, cf. Bertrand (1992) 24: “Mention en est conservée dans les
archives de Lindos.”
310. βασιλεὺς Ἀλέξαν[δ]ρος [β]ο[υκέφαλ]α, ἐφ’ ὧν [ἐ]πιγέγραπται· | ‘Βασιλεὺς Ἀλέξαν[δ]
ρος μάχαι κρατήσας Δα-|ρεῖον καὶ κύριος γε[ν]όμενος τᾶς Ἀσίας ἔθυ-|σε τ[ᾶ]ι Ἀθάναι τᾶι [Λι]
Space 189
If we can trust the words of the quoted inscription—a text presumably found
on the objects in question, recorded in the official documents of the shrine, and
now found on the stele containing the Lindian Chronicle—Alexander made
a sacrifice to Athena of Lindos shortly after defeating Darius III (probably af-
ter the battle of Gaugamela).311 We do not know where he did this, but it was
presumably somewhere in Asia, and it was certainly not at Lindos. Note that
the defeat of Darius is dated to priesthood of “Theugenes, son of Pistokrates,”
a member of the Rhodian aristocracy holding his office at Lindos; Theugenes
even appears on another fragmentary list as a priest of Athena Lindia.312 Notice
of the holders of the priesthood at Lindos is certainly not how the ancient au-
thorities who treat Alexander’s victory over Darius date the signal events, par-
ticularly Gaugamela: Arrian dates the battle (incorrectly) by Athenian archon-
ship (An. 3.15.7), and Plutarch dates it by Athenian month and day (Cam. 19.3)
or by Athenian month and time elapsed from a lunar eclipse (Alex. 31.4).313
Both the reference to Alexander’s sacrifice to Athena Lindia and the dating of
his victory by the priesthood at Lindos help to tie this event of massive inter-
national significance from the past both spatially (the sacrifice) and temporally
(the dating) to Rhodes and the community at Lindos. To be sure, dating by
Athenian magistrate and calendar might seem equally parochial, yet for men
of letters later in the Second Sophistic, such as Plutarch and Arrian, “Athens”
really meant “Greece,” the storehouse of Hellenic paideia.314 An even more ex-
treme formulation of this same orientation in the Lindian Chronicle is to say
that within the thought world of the stele, if the boukephala of Alexander were
not there, the victory of Alexander would not have had a place in the stele’s ver-
sion of the Greek past. The dedication permits the story of Alexander’s victory
over Darius to be told, and this epoch-making episode becomes historiographi-
cally intelligible only by connections made to Athena at Lindos.
A fair point to raise at this point is how representative the Lindian Chronicle
is of Greek historiographic practice. It is true that the Lindian Chronicle dates
νδίαι κατὰ μαντείαν | ἐπ’ ἰε[ρέ]ως Θευγέν[ε]υς Πιστοκράτευς’. πε-|ρὶ [τ]ούτων το[ὶ] Λινδί[ων]
χρηματισμοὶ περ[ι]έχοντι. | ἀν[έ]θηκε δὲ καὶ [ὅ]πλα, ἐφ’ ὧν ἐπιγέγραπται.
311. I believe that Fraser (1952) 201 and n.1 is correct, namely, that the phrase “having become
king of Asia” points to a date after Gaugamela. See also Blinkenberg (1941) col. 180; cf., e.g., Burst-
ein (1985) 62 n.10. Note that Higbie is less certain (2003) 135–36.
312. Blinkenberg (1941) no. 1 B 7. See Higbie (2003) 136. Note also LGPN 1.220 and 372, under
both “Theugenes” and “Pistokrates”: there are several bearers of these names from Rhodes, particu-
larly father/son pairs from Kamiros, one of the three constituent poleis of Rhodes (the others being
Lindos and Ialysos) with direct control over the shrine.
313. See esp. Brunt (1976/1983) 1.491–92. For Arrian’s incorrect dating and the reasons behind
it, see Bosworth (1980–) 1.312–13 ad loc. Note also that Arrian dates Alexander’s death by both
archonship at Athens and Olympiad (An. 7.28.1).
314. Cf. Swain (1996) 20: “The key point to remember is that Athens at all times remained the
cynosure of Greek classicism.”
to 99 BC, a period that falls well outside the limits of the present investigation.
It is, furthermore, a documentary and not a literary text. On both counts, the
chronicle’s relevance to a treatment of Berossus and Manetho might well be
questioned. On the problem of date, I follow the lead of Katherine Clarke in her
superb volume on “local history and the Greek polis”: the “motivation” behind
the chronicle places it in a tradition that is “clearly recognizable”315 and that
goes back at least to the early years of the Hellenistic Age, if not before.316 The
Lindian Chronicle was written at a time when Rhodes had little real political
power; rather, it had to defer to Rome on matters of importance.317 Much Greek
historical writing focused on regions and cities is precisely concerned with at-
tempting to articulate the needs and aspirations of local communities dealing
with larger, superregional powers. An allied phenomenon from the diplomatic
sphere was the common practice in the Greek world of establishing kinship be-
tween often small localities and more important central, transregional powers
by claiming a legendary common founder: local pasts were thereby connected
to larger, mythical suites of information.318
A point at least as important regards the form and medium of the Lindian
Chronicle. The list of votives might perhaps seem more “documentary” than
a piece of straightforward historical writing (a point I would dispute). But we
need to remember that the narratives of epiphany at the end betray, in no un-
certain terms, powerful connections between the Lindian Chronicle and more
“literary” local histories.319
Although this is not the place to go into a full-scale treatment of the role of
“space” in Greek historiography, it is perhaps useful, in the context of the Lin-
dian Chronicle’s affinities with narrative historical writing, to mention briefly
issues relating to the idea of “locality” as they are found in the major Greek
historians. It has long been recognized that Herodotus’ intimate knowledge of
Delphi and (importantly) its votives reflects a very Delphi-centered orienta-
tion to his entire work.320 Thucydides, of course, is acutely aware of the limita-
tions on factual reporting imposed by space (Thuc. 1.22.2–3): ideally, he would
possess knowledge of erga (deeds) through autopsy or would carefully sift the
reports from informants who were present at the relevant events, but even
such informants had their problems (bias and faulty memories).321 Elsewhere,
315. Clarke (2008) 321.
316. Cf. Veyne (1988) 77 and n.163.
317. Consult esp. Higbie (2003) 53, 236–37. Higbie cites, in particular, Fraser (1953) 36; Ber-
thold (1984) 41 and ch. 2; Linders (1996). See now esp. Clarke (2008); cf. Dillery (2005b).
318. Curty (1995); Jones (1999); Erskine (2002).
319. Cf. Dillery (2005b) 517, following the observations of Keil (1916).
320. Note esp. Murray (1987) 105–6 = (2001) 31–32; id. (1993) 26–27. Cf. Jacoby (1913a) 250–
51 = (1956b) 30.
321. A widely discussed passage, but see esp. Gomme (1945/1980) 1.141–48; Hornblower
Space 191
Thucydides acknowledges the constraints that were put on him as an Athenian

historian; following his exile, he gained access to material from the other side
(Thuc. 5.26.5).322 It is surely no accident that the historian who knows the most
about Sparta seems to have had intimate personal and extensive contact with
it and also lived nearby, on an estate close to Olympia: I mean, of course, Xe-
nophon.323 Finally, Polybius can criticize Timaeus of Tauromenium for writing
history “in a saucer”—that is, treating events in Magna Graecia as if they were
of universal importance324—yet he himself also betrays at times “strong local
patriotism,” leading him to indulge in matters that have little to do with his
main narrative.325
Indeed, it is good to remember, in this context, that Greek historiography
has a major subgroup called “horography,” or “local history”—to be sure, not
an ancient label (though Dionysius of Halicarnassus comes pretty close to using
it),326 but one designating a recognizable and large set of historians nonethe-
less. The best attested and largest group of these historians are the so-called
Atthidographers—the local historians of Athens. Dionysius clearly recognized
them as a distinct set of authors, and he said that their distinguishing fea-
ture was that they wrote chronicles, that is, chronikai pragmateutheisai, “mat-
ters arranged chronologically” (D.H. AR 1.8.3).327 He also complains, in the
same place, that these local histories of Athens (Atthides) strike a single note
and “soon become offensive to listeners.”328 Dionysius seems to assume that
the reading out loud of historical texts is the norm, even for texts that are not
“listener-friendly,” such as chronicles. Recall that Syriscus won at least regional
fame for writing and performing his Appearances of the Maiden, and he was
most certainly also a local historian.329 Virtually every region of the ancient
Greek world had local historians. In them, we see many of the same concerns
that are so visible in the Lindian Chronicle.
“Space” or “place” is obviously central to this brand of historiography. Natu-
(1991/2008) 1.60. Extremely useful also are Marincola (1997) 67 and (1989). On the larger ques-
tion of autopsy, see esp. Schepens (1980).
322. Note Gomme et al. (1945/1980) 4.13–15. Very insightful also is Syme (1962) 40–41. Cf.
Dillery (2007a).
323. Cartledge (1987) 57–61. Cf. Dillery (1995) 16; Cawkwell (1979) 161 n.
324. Plb. 12.23.5–7 (of Timoleon: καθάπερ ἐν ὀξυβάφῳ). See Walbank (2005) 12–13. Cf. Dil-
lery (2007a) 69–70.
325. Walbank (1962) 12 = (1985) 278–79.
326. Note esp. D.H. Thuc. 5.1: “traditions preserved among the local people [by nations and
cities] <or> written records preserved in sacred or profane archives.” (Fowler trans. [1996] 63). Cf.
Jacoby (1949) 289 n.110; Dillery (2005b) 506–7 and n.6.
327. Jacoby (1949) 86; Harding (1994) 3.
328. μονοειδεῖς τε γὰρ ἐκεῖναι καὶ ταχὺ προσιστάμεναι τοῖς ἀκούουσιν. On the force of
προσιστάμεναι here, cf. D.H. Isoc. 2, and note esp. Dem. 60.14.
329. See the introduction above, pp. 11–13.
rally, local historians demonstrate a strong regional focus and yet have an eye
also on the importance of their regions in the larger world. Although it has long
been argued that these writers did not rely much on documentary evidence, I
agree with Harding’s assessment: the Atthidographers did, for one thing, exten-
sively extract details from documents,330 and the same can, I think, be supposed
for other local historians. Inasmuch as the tendency of local historians, even
of places with good claims to being places of importance, was to situate their
home at the center of the world and its history, one can see a corresponding de-
sire to counter worries about the truth of such claims in their reliance on a past
that could be verified. Again, recall the case of the Atthidographer Phanodemus
(who probably began to write sometime before 335 BC): not only did he situate
famous Greek myths that were normally understood as having nothing to do
with Attica in his native region (see above, p. 8 and n.21), but he did so in a way
that gave the claims a “documentary feel.” Thus, according to his history, not
only was Troy an Athenian colony, but its founder, Teucer, was an “archon of
the deme Xypete” (FGrH 325 F 13 = D.H. AR 1.61.5); and Artemis substituted
Iphigeneia not with deer at Aulis but with a bear and evidently in Attica (F 14
a + b), a detail that seems to link Brauron and its cult to the popular story of
the sacrifice of Iphigeneia.331 Many have observed that the need to promote
one’s region—be it through lists of votives, through (I would add) local history,
or through both (as in the case of the Lindian Chronicle)—is especially felt in
places where real political power has been lost.332 This perspective or orienta-
tion is visible on every page of Berossus and Manetho. They spoke for ancient
communities, both at the local and regional levels, that were navigating the dif-
ficult waters controlled by transregional powers, with their only help provided
by the suasion of cultural legacy and the legitimacy it conferred.
330. Harding (1994) 36–37, 44–45, countering the views of Jacoby (1949) 209 and, following
him, Thomas (1989) 90–91.
331. On the connection of Iphigeneia to Brauron, note Eur. IA 1462–67; cf. Simon (1983) 83.
332. See above, p. 190 and n.317.
Part 3
Narrative History
Chapter 4
The Great Narratives
Introduction
A section on narrative runs the risk of being overwhelmed by enormous ques-

tions that are frankly well beyond my competence to handle and seem to fall
well outside the compass of this book. Yet working through some larger ques-
tions relating to narrative and historiography will help to foreground what I
take to be at stake in the following chapters and what I think constitutes one of
the major points of importance regarding Berossus and Manetho.
For many today, “history” means necessarily “narrative history.”1 Indeed,
since the 1960s, a debate has raged in academia over “the extent to which the
discipline of history is essentially a narrative mode of knowing, understanding,
explaining and reconstructing the past.”2 That history is at some level intrinsi-
cally narrative seems inescapable. Yet several developments in the professional
practice of history have tested this notion: the rise of quantitative history and
the Braudelian longue durée, to name just two modern branches of the study
of history, can both be seen to challenge the necessity of “history” being, at
its most basic level, a “story” or “narrative” of events.3 Additionally, there has
been a distinct rise of scholarly interest in various cultural practices that can be
grouped under the rubric “social memory,” particularly oral tradition, which
has no place for written narrative history, yet still deliberately and carefully
maintains the past.4 Relatedly, anthropologically based approaches to histo-
riography, together with allied disciplines such as postcolonial studies, have
1. Note the first two entries from the latest online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary s.v.
“history” (accessed via http://dictionary.oed.com): “1. A relation of incidents (in early use, either
true or imaginary; later only of those professedly true); a narrative, tale, story . . . 2. spec. A written
narrative constituting a continuous methodical record, in order of time, of important or public
events, esp. those connected with a particular country, people, individual, etc.” (my emphasis).
2. Roberts (2001) 1.
3. Note esp. the discussion of Stone (1979).
4. See, e.g., Sahlins (1981), (1991); Connerton (1989); Comaroff and Comaroff (1992). Cf.
Grethlein (2010) 1–2.
195
raised the issue of other, especially non-Western ways of capturing and inter-
preting the past that do not feature an extensive, analytical historical narrative.
When it comes to the Greeks, while it is abundantly clear that they handled
their past in a variety of ways,5 few would deny that their treatment of history
in writing was closely bound to narrative. Christopher Pelling has put the mat-
ter most succinctly: “Greek historiography is fundamentally a narrative genre.”6
In a notoriously difficult passage from Aristotle’s Poetics, the assumption that
history must be narrative emerges in a discussion of how history and tragedy
are related: “the essential difference [between historian and poet] is that the
one tells us what happened and the other the sort of thing that would happen”
(Po. 1451b: τὸν μὲν [the historian] τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, τὸν δὲ [the poet] οἷα
ἂν γένοιτο). But both the historian and the poet “tell” (λέγειν) their accounts;
both are engaged in a form of mimesis or representation “not of people but of
their actions and life” (cf. 1450a)—that is, a narrative of those things.7 For how
else can actions be intelligible or understood if not presented sequentially, in a
narrative form?8 Similarly, Polybius was eager to distance history from tragedy,
but the goals of both (persuasion for all time and persuasion for the moment,
respectively) can only be realized through processes that must be substantially
narrative in form (Plb. 2.56.11–12): both genres tell stories of one sort or an-
other.
Thus, for the Greeks, “history” had also to be “story.” But so much could
have been guessed from the pungent observation of the Roman imperial Syro-
Greek literary authority Lucian in his work How to Write History: “after the
prooemium, long or short according to the subject, let there be a smooth and
easy transition to the narrative. All the rest of the body of the history is essen-
tially a long narrative (ἅπαν γὰρ ἀτεχνῶς τὸ λοιπὸν σῶμα τῆς ἱστορίας διήγησις
μακρά ἐστιν)” (Hist. Conscri. 55).9 In fact, the requirement for the Greeks that
history be narrative could have been gathered from even a text as apparently
unpromising as the Lindian Chronicle, discussed in previous chapters: while
primarily a listing of artifacts that were once on display in the temple of Athena
at Lindos, the inscription also refers repeatedly to other, narrative texts, be they
5. See esp. Grethlein (2010); Thomas (1989), (1992). Note also the papers in Marincola et al.
eds. (2012).
6. Pelling (2000) 8. Note also Dewald (2007) esp. 98–100.
7. Translations from Hubbard (1972) 102, 98. On mimesis and historiography, see esp. Wal-
bank (1960) 218–19 = Walbank (1985) 226–27.
8. Cf. Clay (2011) 30: “Verbal communication, whether oral or written, is sequential. In fact,
you cannot tell two stories at the exact same time, no matter what their temporal sequence.”
9. Russell trans. (1972) 545 (emphasis original). Note that Russell’s italicized All tries to capture
the Greek, ἅπαν; the whole phrase more literally rendered: “For quite simply all the remaining body
of the history is a long narrative.”
The Great Narratives 197
literary (e.g., Homer, Herodotus) or documentary (letters of priests); more im-

portant, it has its own large-scale narratives in the appendix of epiphanies of
Athena Lindia that forms the last section of the inscription.
Why is there such concern about narrative and historical writing? Simply
put, narrative that takes up events from several years requires that the historian
select and synthesize.10 This is not to say that these two procedures are absent
from other types of historiography. Thus, most obviously, king lists are syn-
thetic and selective in that they combine and relate some, but not all, events that
took place under the rulers of different dynasties and even empires. However,
narratives can go further in their synthesis—beyond, that is, the mere combin-
ing of rulers over even great stretches of the past.
When narrative is joined by the judgment of the historian as to what con-
stitutes the connection between events, arcs of causation or chains of sequen-
tial events can be made over large temporal periods. Herodotus realized the
power of explanation implicit in narrative, when he traced the beginning of
the conflict between East and West at the start of his history (Hdt. 1.5). The
significance of this profound observation is that if you looked back from the
vantage point of Herodotus’ own lifetime, you might be led to believe that the
events of the Persian Wars either sprang from the very recent past (the circum-
stances of the Ionian Revolt) or had to be traced back to the world of legend
(the abduction of princesses in myth). But for him, the truth lay in the middle
ground, in the career of the Lydian king Croesus, from the mid-sixth century
BC. Herodotus showed the truth of his claim by telling the story of Croesus,
his conquest of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and his defeat at the hands of Cyrus
the Great. Thucydides, too, felt he must present his unique accounting of the
Peloponnesian War by identifying Spartan fear of growing Athenian power as
the root cause of the conflict (Thuc. 1.23.6), something he does by telling the
“story” of the fifty years from the end of the Persian Wars to the outbreak of the
Peloponnesian (the “Pentecontaetia”).11 In both Herodotus and Thucydides,
the substantiation of their claims to find the true starting points of the subjects
of their accounts takes on a narrative form.12
Noting that Greek historians very seldom tell you explicitly what is signifi-
10. Cf. Walbank (1957/1979) 1.262 ad Plb. 2.56.11–12.

11. Cf. Rood (1998) 224.
12. Indeed, some have gone the further step and suggested that there is more to the similarity
than simple reliance on narrative. Derow (1994) 77–80 has argued, on the basis that both Croe-
sus’ own invasion of Persia and Sparta’s initiation of hostilities against Athens were motivated by
fear, that Thucydides was, in some sense, imitating Herodotus in the formulation of his historio-
graphic enterprise. For Thucydides’ engagement with Herodotus in general, see esp. Hornblower
(1991/2008) 2.19–38, 122–45; Rood (1999).
cant about the events they recount, Pelling very usefully formulates a general
rule about Greek historiography that is of direct relevance here:
Greek historians prefer to allow their big ideas to emerge through the
narrative, to allow readers to infer the leading themes through recurrent
patterning, selective emphasis, suggestive juxtaposition, and sometimes
through the speeches of the characters themselves. “Show, not Tell”: that
is the historian’s craft. (Pelling [2000] 8 [emphasis original])
In other words, for the Greek historian, the narrative itself has explanatory
power. John Gould has made this point brilliantly in his insightful book on
Herodotus: “ [T]he notion of ‘meaning’ is perhaps built into the very definition
of a narrative[.] . . . Herodotean narrative prompts reflection about the nature
of political action without having that reflection, in the form of a message, as its
pre-existing cause.”13 Similarly, Polybius can observe that when you subtract the
historian’s evaluative processes, all that one is left with is a “useless narrative”
(Plb. 1.14.6: ἀνωφελὲς . . . διήγημα):14 note that the historian’s critique—his
“message,” if you will—is implicit in the narrative, which is rendered pointless
if the critique or judgment is removed.15 But narrative is always there, whether
critique and evaluation are built into it or not.
Egbert Bakker has made the further observation that insofar as Herodotus’
History was, in fact, constructed out of several narratives, “[t]he only way to
make clear the causal relations between the various lines of actions was to in-
tegrate into one continuous logos all the single logoi he could find that would
help explain the conflict between Greeks and barbarians.” Seen in this way, the
larger logos is even spoken of as an animate thing—for instance, even “seek-
ing out” (ἐπιδίζηται) Cyrus the Great, as the goal set up by the story of Croe-
sus (Hdt. 1.95.1; cf. 4.30.1).16 The larger logos is the historian’s master narrative
quite literally, dictating where the story will go and embodying its main “point”
or “message.”
By contrast, in Egypt and the Near East, until Berossus and Manetho, con-
tinuous analytical history was not presented in narrative form. I am not claim-
ing that these civilizations did not practice historical writing or did not have
narratives. I am saying that they did not have continuous narrative history. John
Baines has put the matter well as it relates to Egyptian historiography:
13. Gould (1989) 120.

14. Note Polybius’ very similar remarks at 3.31.11–13 and 12.12.3.
15. Cf. Finley (1975) 67 and n.7, citing Mandelbaum (1967) 417.
16. Bakker (2006) 94–95 and n.10.
A view of Egyptian historiography that takes Manetho as its point of

departure gives only a distanced perspective. Egypt, like many civiliza-
tions, did not develop a genre of written discursive narrative or analysis
of the past, but from the beginning of the Dynastic period onward (c.
3000) the past was curated intensively in writing. (Baines [2011] 54)17
As shown in earlier chapters in this book, the Egyptians “curated” their past
in writing through a variety of texts: chronologically structured material (king
lists, annals/chronicles), personal narratives written in the voice of kings or
other elite figures (typically monumental), what may be loosely called fictional
historical tales, and prophetic texts that treat historical events as though they are
in the future (ex eventu).18 Indeed, in connection with the Prophecy of Neferty,
Goedicke has even argued that the concept “history” can be detected in the
term hprt and can be paralleled by other Egyptian texts.19 This view does not
seem to have won wide acceptance. Similarly, in Mesopotamia, while there was
no one word for “history,” the past was treated in writing not only in a number
of forms analogous to what we see in Egypt but also in some unique ways, and
there were notable absences: chronicles, monumental narratives, fictional texts,
and prophecies are all well attested; further, unlike what we see in Egypt, ac-
counts of the building or restoration of temples, deposited in the foundations of
the buildings in question, were also very popular, while personal narratives of
nonroyal persons seem not to have been.20 Many of these modes for recording
the past in both Egypt and Mesopotamia continued through the Persian pe-
riod and into the era of Macedonian dominion. Thus, as we found in an earlier
chapter, there are priestly testimonials in Egypt from the start of the Persian
occupation, and they carry on into the Ptolemaic era; in Babylon, even longer
periods of nonnative rule are treated in the tradition of chronicles, beginning
with Chronicle 1 (Sennacherib), dominant in Chronicle 7 (“the Nabonidus
Chronicle”), and continuing through Chronicle 13 (“Chronicle of the Seleucid
Period”), altogether covering the period from the conquest of Assyria down to
the reign of Seleucus III (225–23);21 and in both cultures, prophetic texts in the
native tongue are clearly also in evidence. This continuity of indigenous histo-
riographic forms from the Persian into the Hellenistic periods prompts a very
17. Cf. Otto (1964/1966); O’Mara (1996); Allen (2000) 297–99; Beylage (2002) 2.534–38; Ba-
ines (2007) 179–201. Note also the papers in Fitzenreiter ed. (2009). For the Near East, an equiva-
lent statement can be found at Van De Mieroop (1999) 25.
18. Cf. Baines (2011).
19. Goedicke (1977) 64. To the king’s request that Neferty “tell me some true words and choice
opinions,” Neferty responds, “Something that has happened or something that is bound to hap-
pen . . . ?” (Goedicke trans. ([1977] 177).
20. Liverani (2011). Cf. Drews (1975) 39–43; in general, Finkelstein (1963b).
21. Grayson (1975a) 16, 21, 27–28.
important question: why did Manetho and Berossus innovate, when traditional
ways of “curating” their nations’ pasts were still being practiced and, in some
cases, were even flourishing? At some level, they had a choice; they did not have
to write history in the way they did, and they certainly did not have to write in
the Greek language.
It remains incontrovertible that the first narrative histories of Egypt and
Babylon by indigenous scholars were composed in Greek by Berossus and Ma-
netho. To put the matter bluntly, I do not think that this coincidence of “firsts”
is an accident: writing history that is built from lists and narratives, doing this
for the first time despite a long tradition of treating the past in many other ways,
and writing history in this way in the Greek language all go hand and hand. But
why did Berossus and Manetho write narrative history and in Greek? These are
large questions that I will take up in the next three chapters. Suffice it for me
to say here that part of the answer lies in what their models were: Greek histo-
riography on Babylon and Egypt. But part of the answer also lies in what they
hoped to achieve by writing their histories: to influence their Greek-speaking
overlords and to counter Greek misapprehensions or ignorance regarding their
civilizations’ pasts. With apologies to Baines, we must change the model of
their activity implicit in the terms we have been using. Berossus and Manetho
wrote narrative history in Greek because they were not only, in fact, “curators”
of their nations’ pasts, as so many of their forebears were and as others would
continue to be; rather, they were also acting as advocates for the histories of
Babylon and Egypt. It is hard to “curate” an argument; one has to engage with
the opponent, promote certain views, and deny others.
I want to move now to an inventory of the narratives that we have in the
remains of Berossus and Manetho. I will then discuss the methodological prob-
lems implicated in their interpretation, especially as regards their status as ma-
terial presented by another ancient authority, Josephus. Finally in the succeed-
ing chapters, I will offer a close analysis of the narratives themselves, especially
in light of the parallel accounts from indigenous literature.
The Great Narratives: What’s There?
I begin with a clarification: I believe that a great deal more narrative was in
the works of Berossus and Manetho than what we now have, which is extant
thanks almost exclusively to Josephus and (in the case of Berossus) also Syncel-
lus. Below, I survey the fragments of actual narrative that have survived to us.
For the most part, I do not discuss the narrative tags from Manetho that may
well indicate where stories were once located in the Aegyptiaca and that are
themselves sometimes not inconsiderable discursive texts. I do make a couple
of exceptions, most of which I have discussed in the preceding chapter.
Three extended narratives survive from Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, all by way of
Josephus’ Against Apion: the shepherd fragment, or what I designate as Hyksos
I (F 8, Waddell F 42 = Jos. Ap. 1.73–92); the story of Sethos and Harmais (F 9,
Waddell F 50 = Jos. Ap. 1.93–105); and the leper fragment, which I designate as
Hyksos II (F 10, Waddell F 54 = Jos. Ap. 1.227–87).22 Five narratives of consider-
able length survive from Berossus’ Babyloniaca: two via George Syncellus and the
Armenian translation of Eusebius; one from the Armenian Eusebius alone; and
two from Josephus in his Against Apion, augmented by references from his Jew-
ish Antiquities. They are accounts of Creation (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 28–29 M;
Euseb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoen [1875] 14–18); the Flood (F 4 = Syncellus Chron.
30–32 M; Euseb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoen [1875] 19–23); Sennacherib’s Cilician
campaign (F 7 = Euseb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoen [1875] 27 + FGrH 685 F 5 = Eu-
seb. [Arm.] Chron. Schoen [1875] 35; cf. Jos. AJ 10.20; the activities of the Neo-
Babylonian kings Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II (F 8 = Jos. Ap.
1.132–41 [cf. AJ 10.220–26]); and the reigns of the last Neo-Babylonian rulers,
Neriglissar, Labashi-Marduk, and Nabonidus (F 9 = Jos. Ap. 1.146–53). It will be
immediately obvious that there is more variety both of source and period in the
narratives of Berossus: there are stories treating early, legendary events of cosmic
importance (Creation and the Flood), narratives of an important Neo-Assyrian
ruler (Sennacherib), and a suite of stories relating to Neo-Babylonian kings, in-
cluding the last ones that have a direct bearing on Jewish history. Josephus is the
conduit for the last narratives, but that is it. By contrast, with Manetho, the only
narratives we have come to us through Josephus, and they all concern events re-
lating to the Second Intermediate Period and the early years of the New Kingdom
(the Eighteenth Dynasty).23 But while we have less variety and scope in the Mane-
thonian material, we have more of his narrative in terms of shear bulk (number of
words) than what we possess in the case of Berossus.
Josephus: Problems and Opportunities
It is time to face the enormous problem posed by our dependence on Josephus

for much of what we know about the narratives of Berossus and Manetho—
22. Cf. Meyer (1904) 71–78.

23. Cf. the general discussion of Ryholt (2009a).
indeed, for Manetho, Josephus supplies all that we really have of lengthy nar-
rative panels. Since the pioneering work of August Boeckh, Alfred von Guts-
chmid, and Eduard Meyer (Boeckh [1845] 120–21; Gutschmid [1893] 431;
Meyer [1904] 71–80), scholars have debated the nature of Josephus’ citations
in his Against Apion, particularly in connection with Manetho: are they quota-
tions of authentic material from Manetho, or have they been altered by Jose-
phus or some intermediary figure, either intentionally or through error of some
sort?24 In other words, just how reliable is Josephus when he cites the narratives
of Berossus and Manetho?
It seems unreasonable to suppose that what may have been true of Josephus’
access to and treatment of one author held true for all the others of whom he
made use. Thus, if it can be shown, for instance, that Josephus is an unreliable
source for Manetho for whatever reason, this may not have any bearing on
his citations of Berossus. For one thing, even the most cursory glance at the
first book of Against Apion reveals that Josephus is much more engaged with
Egyptian testimony about the Jews, particularly Manetho,25 than with anything
that Berossus had to say. Indeed, as Momigliano sagely observed, “[i]t is telling
that the Contra Apionem is a response to a detractor who was a Greek-speaking
Egyptian,” namely, Apion.26 Josephus’ closer treatment of Manetho would pre-
sumably have had very real consequences that will have effected his transmis-
sion of Manetho, whatever the state of his “Manetho” was initially.
With these caveats in mind, it is nonetheless instructive to take a quick look
at one place where we can measure Josephus’ accuracy and method in repro-
ducing another ancient author’s text, by comparing it with the original. At Ap-
ion 1.169–70, Josephus quotes the better part of two sections from Herodotus’
second book (Hdt. 2.104.3–4). It is immediately discernible how faithful Jose-
phus is: although he has unsystematically converted many (not all) of Herodo-
tus’ Ionic forms into Attic/Koine, Josephus essentially reproduces exactly what
Herodotus wrote.27 It is just as important to note for our purposes here, as also
in the case of Manetho, that Josephus cites the same passage elsewhere and
even quotes a sentence from it in his Jewish Antiquities (8.262).28 Indeed, in the
24. For a recent treatment of the history of this problem, with bibliography, see Siegert (2008)
2.41–47. See also Labow (2005) 60–72; Barclay (2007) 335–37.
25. Cf. Barclay (2007) 48.
26. Momigliano (1987) 111. On the historical Apion, see now P. Oxy 5202 and Benaissa (2014);
also Jones (2005).
27. Beyond the differences of dialect, the main divergences are that Josephus has οὗτοι instead
of αὐτοί at one point and that his word order just one line later is trivially different (Σύριοι δὲ οἱ
περὶ Θερμώδοντα καὶ Παρθένιον ποταμόν instead of Σύριοι δὲ οἱ περὶ Θερμώδοντα ποταμόν καὶ
Παρθένιον). Cf. Inowlocki (2005) 385–86.
28. Φοίνικες γὰρ καὶ Σύροι οἱ ἐν τῇ Παλαιστίνῃ ὁμολοῦσι παρ᾿ Αἰγυπτίων μεμαθηκέναι. This
quotation features three further changes: omission of δὲ and αὐτοί and conversion of Σύριοι to
Σύροι.
most detailed and careful study to date on Josephus’ practices in Against

Apion regarding the citation of other ancient authors, Sabrina Inowlocki
has concluded that while Josephus most certainly misrepresented other
authors’ texts, it was chiefly through taking quotations “out of context,”
rather than by the deliberate tampering of the actual words of the authors
in question.29
It needs to be observed, further, that Josephus is quite scrupulous in ad-
vertising the different ways he uses other authors’ texts: direct quotation, para-
phrase, and summary. Thus he begins his treatment of Manetho by stressing
that he is quoting him “in his own words,” as though bringing him forward as
a “witness” in court (Jos. Ap. 1.74: παραθήσομαι δὲ τὴν λέξιν αὐτοῦ [Manetho]
καθάπερ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον παραγαγὼν μάρτυρα).30 Then follow two instances
where Josephus cites Manetho using simply the construction “he says” (1.84,
91), until we come to another extensive quote. Here Josephus announces that
he “will subjoin again the words of Manetho: he speaks as follows . . .” (1.93:
πάλιν οὖν τὰ τοῦ Μανέθω . . . ὑπογράψω. φησὶ δὲ οὕτως . . .). At the end of the
quote, which extends over eight sections of text, Josephus glosses the conclu-
sion of Manetho with his own words of explanation (1.102: “he [Manetho] says
this because . . .”) and then moves on to a more general critique of the Mane-
thonian material with the capping words “these things Manetho [says]” (1.103:
ταῦτα μὲν ὁ Μανέθως). Josephus has carefully managed the presentation of
Manetho’s work, signposting his introduction of direct quotation and marking
off his own evaluations.
Importantly, Josephus employs many of these same editorial asides in his
treatment, later in Against Apion (1.228), of material from Manetho that he
regards as coming from a different, inferior set of materials from the ones Ma-
netho used in text on which Josephus had already commented. That Josephus
alleges that the nature of Manetho’s source is different for the text he critiques
in this section of Against Apion is a crucial point central to my analysis of Ma-
netho’s narratives and one to which I will return immediately below. In terms of
editorial procedure, however, Josephus is consistent, treating Manetho’s text in
a manner identical to his discussion earlier in the same book of Against Apion.
He begins by asserting that the material he is about to discuss was “added”
29. Inowlocki (2005). Her findings have been borne out by the research of van der Horst, who
demonstrates the highly unusual word choice of the Apion, due partly to Josephus’ extensive quota-
tion of other authors (van der Horst [1996] 85). Cf. Barclay (2007) 99 n.557, on Josephus’ handling
of the Herodotus quotation: “For once we can check Josephus’ citation against the original. . . . He
has cut Herodotus’ text mid-sentence, and slightly alters the wording at the beginning[;] . . . other-
wise, however, he is almost entirely faithful to Herodotus.”
30. On Josephus and trial imagery in the citation of material in Against Apion, see esp. Good-
man (1999) 53–54; Dillery (2003b) 387 and n.17; more generally, van Henten and Abusch (1996)
298–308.
(προθείς) by Manetho (1.230). Josephus then cites five sections of Manetho-

nian text in indirect discourse (1.232–36), dependent on a simple “he says”
(φησί). At section 1.237, however, he shifts over to direct citation, prefacing
his quotation of Manetho with the words “and then, word for word, he has
written as follows” (note kata lexin).31 There follows a massive block of text
from Manetho, extending over fourteen sections (1.237–50: the leper narrative,
or Hyksos II). Josephus closes his citation of Manetho by noting that this and
more is the sort of nonsense the Egyptians (not Manetho) “relate” (Αἰγύπτιοι
φέρουσι) about the Jews and that he has omitted other Manethonian material,
some of which he offers in a very brief summary, concluding with the words
“this and like material Manetho wrote up” (1.251–52: ταῦτα μὲν καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα
Μανέθως συνέγραψεν).
In sum, it is good to remember here several of Brunt’s dicta regarding the
quotation and epitomizing of earlier authors by later ones in antiquity: when
they can be identified, verbal quotations, not paraphrases, are best, and longer
quotes are more useful than shorter ones for bringing to light the nature of the
quoted author’s “mode of composition” and methods.32 While, as Brunt notes,
long, direct quotes are generally rare, this is not the case in Josephus’ Against
Apion. Furthermore, Josephus is, as we have seen, careful to identify the exact
nature of the report of the earlier author’s work.
Of course, all I have managed to demonstrate so far is that Josephus was, in
Against Apion, a very self-conscious transmitter of other writers’ texts and, in
the one case where we can check him, a faithful one too. But what if the text that
Josephus had to work with was already itself badly corrupted with interpolation
and/or later editorial intrusion? This is precisely the problem that lies behind
Josephus’ texts of Manetho, particularly the long second Hyksos narrative on
the lepers. In relation to the problem of tampered material in Josephus’ hands,
not Josephus himself as tamperer, it bears pointing out that Josephus was aware
of different narrative “textures” in Manetho’s account, as we can see in his intro-
duction to the second Hyksos narrative:
Now this Manetho—the one who promised to translate [μεθερμηνεύειν]

Egyptian history from sacred writings [ἱερῶν γραμμάτων], having
stated that our ancestors came to Egypt with many tens of thousands
and conquered the inhabitants, then admitting himself that thereafter,
in time, they later fled and held what is now Judaea, founded Jerusa-
31. κἄπειτα κατὰ λέξιν οὕτως γέγραφεν.

32. Brunt (1980) 478–79.
lem, and built the Temple—up through these events he followed records
[ἀναγραφαῖς]. Then, giving himself the opportunity through saying
that he would write up legendary and oral material [τὰ μυθευόμενα
καὶ λεγόμενα] about the Jews, he inserted [παρενέβαλεν] unreliable
accounts [λόγους ἀπιθάνους], wishing to mix us up with a crowd of
Egyptian lepers and people condemned for other infirmities to exile, as
he says. (Jos. Ap. 1.228–29)33
This is an extraordinarily important and difficult passage. It is worth noting,

in the first place, how many different words Josephus uses for the sources of
Manetho: “sacred writings” and “records” support Manetho’s first and largely
positive narrative of the ancestors of the Jews, and Manetho used “legend,” “oral
material,” and “untrue logoi” to write up his second, negative account. It is im-
portant also to Josephus’ allegation that Manetho “inserted untrue logoi” into
the history that was literally “translated” from sacred records. These untrue ac-
counts are identified as “legendary and oral material” (ta mutheuomena kai
legomena). Earlier in Against Apion, Josephus explains that these tales came
“not from writings kept by the Egyptians, but as [Manetho] himself admits,
from unattributed mythological accounts” (1.105). In addition to being not
documentary in character, then, Josephus also alleges that the problematic nar-
ratives bore no name of authorship (adespotos).34
To return to the crucial statement at Apion 1.229, in virtually every other
case where Josephus uses the verb “to tell (or make) muthoi” (mutheuein), he
contrasts local, oral tradition with a standard written version of events, often
the Bible.35 Thus, in his Jewish War, Josephus reports local legends (ta muth-
euomena) regarding Sodom that he has confirmed by autopsy (BJ 4.485), and
he likewise refers to the stories the residents of Hebron tell (mutheousi) about
Abraham’s residence there (BJ 4.531; cf. Genesis 13:18). Elsewhere in Against
33. ὁ γὰρ Μανέθως οὗτος, ὁ τὴν Αἰγυπτιακὴν ἱστορίαν ἐκ τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων μεθερμηνεύειν
ὑπεσχημένος, προειπὼν τοὺς ἡμετέρους προγόνους πολλαῖς μυριάσιν ἐπὶ τὴν Αἴγυπτον ἐλθόντας
κρατῆσαι τῶν ἐνοικούντων, εἶτ’ αὐτὸς ὁμολογῶν χρόνῳ πάλιν ὕστερον ἐκπεσόντας τὴν νῦν
᾿Ιουδαίαν κατασχεῖν καὶ κτίσαντας Ἱεροσόλυμα τὸν νεὼν κατασκευάσασθαι, μέχρι μὲν τούτων
ἠκολούθησε ταῖς ἀναγραφαῖς. ἔπειτα δὲ δοὺς ἐξουσίαν αὑτῷ διὰ τοῦ φάναι γράψειν τὰ μυθευόμενα
καὶ λεγόμενα περὶ τῶν Ἰουδαίων λόγους ἀπιθάνους παρενέβαλεν, ἀναμῖξαι βουλόμενος ἡμῖν
πλῆθος Αἰγυπτίων λεπρῶν καὶ ἐπὶ ἄλλοις ἀρρωστήμασιν, ὤς φησι, φυγεῖν ἐκ τῆς Αἰγύπτου
καταγνωσθέντων.
34. οὐκ ἐκ τῶν παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις γραμμάτων, ἀλλ’ ὡς αὐτὸς ὡμολόγηκεν ἐκ τῶν ἀδεσπότως
μυθολογουμένων.
35. Note also AJ 1.15: Josephus encourages his readers “to test whether our lawgiver contem-
plated God’s nature worthily of Him and always attributed to His power deeds that were fitting,
keeping pure from all inappropriate mythology [muthologias] found among others the word re-
garding Him.”
Apion, Josephus refers jokingly to “the legendary king of Egypt, Sesostris”

(Σέσωστρις αὐτὸν [Apion] ὁ μυθευόμενος Αἰγύπτου βασιλεὺς ἐτύφλωσεν),
who had “blinded” Apion for an error he made (2.132). This last example is
most instructive. The identification of Sesostris as “the legendary king of Egypt”
suggests that Josephus was aware of the mass of stories that had accumulated
around this king.36 Indeed, in the Jewish Antiquities, he even twice criticizes
Herodotus for attributing to Sesostris deeds that properly belonged to Sheshonq
(AJ 8.253, 260; cf. Hdt. 2.102–9).37 The account of Sesostris in Herodotus is, in
turn, clearly derived from the same sort of legendary historical romance, or
Königsnovelle, that lay behind the leper story we see in Josephus’ Hyksos II nar-
rative: while discussing Sesostris’ marshaling of his army for world conquest,
Herodotus speaks of “the report of the priests” (2.102.3: τῶν ἱρέων ἡ φάτις),
which might well be such a text, housed in their Houses of Life. Hence, I think
we can conclude that Josephus was attuned to the different narrative registers
in the text of Manetho and even supposed that some of the longer tales were in-
serted by Manetho himself into an already completed textual fabric constructed
out of material coming from “records,” as though Manetho was his own inter-
polator.38 This is an important point to which I will return shortly.
Indeed, it is worth noting here that the skepticism that has developed in
connection with the narratives of Manetho that come to us by way of Josephus
in one form or another (quote or paraphrase/summary) is at least partly en-
couraged by Josephus’ own awareness that different sorts of texts went to make
up the final form of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca. After all, Josephus himself excites
this skepticism. It is not a difficult step to take to view the narratives that Jose-
phus understands as later additions by Manetho as, in fact, partly or wholly the
later work not of Manetho at all but of some other person or persons.
It is best, at this point, to note the essential elements of the argument that
the text—or, possibly (as we shall soon see), texts—of Manetho that were at
Josephus’ disposal were contaminated with inauthentic material. The decisive
passage on which much depends is Apion 1.82–83. There we learn the etymol-
ogy of the name Hyksos, which is first explained as meaning “king-shepherds.”
But Josephus notes the meaning “captive-shepherds” that occurs “in another
copy” (ἐν δ’ ἄλλῳ ἀντιγράφῳ), an interpretation that he considers “more
trustworthy” and “consistent with ancient history” (πιθανώτερον . . . παλαιᾶς
ἱστορίας ἐχόμενον). If chapter 83 is, in fact, an authentic part of Against Apion,
36. Cf. Braun (1938) 14.

37. Cf. Barclay (2007) 237 n.482.
38. Schäfer (1997) 18 refers to “an interesting example of [Josephus’] Quellenkritik.” Cf. Pucci
ben Zeev (1993) 231.
then “in another copy” would seem to necessarily mean “in another copy of
Manetho” that Josephus consulted; just a few chapters later, in a section that
seems genuine (Ap. 1.91), Josephus cites another portion of Manetho’s work
with the phrase “in another book of the Aegyptiaca” (ἐν ἄλλῃ δέ τινι βίβλῳ
τῶν Αἰγυπτιακῶν), thus ruling out the possibility that he meant to refer to the
Aegyptiaca at chapter 83. But since he discusses the origin and meaning of the
name Hyksos in chapter 91, with apparently no knowledge of the treatment of
the same issue at 1.82–83, chapter 91 has been used as evidence that at least
chapter 83 is interpolated. With that said, though, there are advantages to re-
taining the chapter for the sense it brings to the Greek: the first two verb forms
in chapter 83, both infinitives (σημαίνεσθαι and δηλοῦσθαι), could then be
explained as grammatically dependent on the legousi (“some say”) of the last
sentence of chapter 82, creating the following transition: “some say they [the
Hyksos] are Arabs, but in another copy, that ‘hyk’ does not mean [σημαίνεσθαι]
‘king’ but, on the contrary, indicates [δηλοῦσθαι] that the shepherds were ‘cap-
tives.’”
Certainty is impossible in deciding the issue. While some scholars have pre-
ferred to view the whole of chapter 83 as an interpolation in Josephus’ text,39
a clear majority has argued that it is, in fact, the work of Josephus; that he was
making use of a redacted text of Manetho, full of glosses, commentary, and
other unoriginal material; and that he simply carried over that extra material
into his citation in Against Apion,40 perhaps at a later point.41 My own view is
that the text is indeed genuinely Josephus’ and that we therefore have to assume
that he had at least two copies of Manetho. Certainly, the text of Against Apion
that Eusebius used in his Praeparatio Evangelica in the early fourth century AD
contained chapter 83, and Eusebius understood it to belong to the treatise.42
However we decide the specifics of the case at chapter 83, it needs to be
stressed that once the specter was raised of the distinct likelihood that Jose-
phus’ text (or texts) of Manetho was adulterated with inauthentic material, it
released a flood of speculation that has seriously undermined confidence in Jo-
sephus as a preserver of Manetho’s narratives. In particular, any detail that links
the Hyksos to the Jews is seen to be unmotivated and not integral to Manetho’s
39. Niese (1889) xx–xxi. See esp. Barclay (2007) 56–57 n.316, hesitantly supporting Niese, but
also providing a very useful overview of the scholarly debate surrounding the passage. Cf. Vogel
(2008) 73 ad loc.
40. Gutschmid (1893) 431–32; Meyer (1904) 72; Weill (1918) 70–72; Laqueur (1928) 1067–70;
Momigliano (1931) 500–502 = (1975c) 2.780–82; Troiani (1977) 90. Cf. van Henten and Abusch
(1996) esp. 275–80 (but they seem not to recognize the difficulties posed by chs. 82–83).
41. An intriguing suggestion of Labow (2005) 82 n.90.
42. Euseb. PE 10.13.4, p. 607 Mras. Cf. Boeckh (1845) 120 n.1; also Reinach (1930) 17. For the
date of the PE, see Mras (1982) lv: roughly AD 312–22.
account, and any that is regarded as anti-Jewish is viewed as fundamentally

anachronistic. An example of the first type is the notorious identification of
the renegade leprous priest Osarseph with Moses (Ap. 1.250), and an example
of the second is the labeling of Osarseph’s laws mandating cultic and dietary
exclusivity as misoxenia or misanthropia (1.239).43 There are indeed few, if any,
who would defend as authentically Manethonian the connection of Osarseph
to Moses.44 But going back to the arguments of V. Tcherikover and M. Stern,
one can see that the assimilation of the Jews to the Hyksos rests on more than
just the identification of Osarseph with Moses.45 Most decisively, already in
the Hyksos I narrative, shepherds depart from Egypt and travel to Syria, from
where fear of the Assyrians drives them to “the land now called Judaea,” where
they found the city of Jerusalem (Ap. 1.89–90), an event summarized without
editorial cavil in the next paragraph, in a section dominated by a chronological
king list (1.94)—that is, a portion of text that Josephus is confident came from
“records” (anagraphai).46 Who else can these shepherds be but the forebears of
the Jews?47 Josephus never criticizes Manetho and his sources for this account;
indeed, he goes out of his way to note their reliability, and he elsewhere even
employs the founding of Jerusalem from the Hyksos I narrative to suggest that
the narrative of Hyksos II is wildly incorrect (Ap. 1.228–29).
The more general invalidation of what can be styled “anti-Jewish” views in
Josephus’ Manetho narratives rests on the assumption that such an orientation
would have been anachronistic in Manetho’s own time and, thus, must be a later
importation. The dating of the “start” of anti-Semitism in antiquity is an enor-
mously vexed issue beyond the compass of this work and certainly well beyond
my own competence. I just note in passing that in connection with the Manetho
fragments of Josephus, the argument casting doubt on the anti-Jewish elements
in Manetho on the grounds that anti-Semitism developed later is circular and
deeply flawed. In the first place, what if Manetho was one of the first ancient
figures to express such views?48 Secondly, several scholars have argued that an ac-
tual or potential anti-Jewish view antedated Manetho and, just as important, was
found in an author with a clear connection to earliest Ptolemaic Egypt, Hecataeus
of Abdera (FGrH 264 F 6 = Diod. 40.3.1–8; Photius Bibl. 380–81 B). The text of
Hecataeus at issue is problematic because it is so far removed from that author’s
43. See, in particular, the excellent discussion of Schäfer (1997) 19–21.
44. Note esp. the assessment of Gager (1972) 117–18.
45. Tcherikover (1959) 362–63; Stern (1974/1984) 1.62–65. Cf. Momigliano (1975a) 94. Note
that Stern points out (at his n.2) that the observation can already be found in Bousset (1907) 1166.
See also, more recently, Schäfer (1997) 20; Raspe (1998) esp. 132–37; in general, Volokhine (2002).
46. Cf. Raspe (1998) 135–36 n.41.
47. See esp. Raspe (1998) 128–29, also 134–35.
48. Cf. Tarn (1961) 233; Heinen (1992) 143–44.
original work and, furthermore, is misattributed to the wrong Hecataeus. It is a

summary that comes to us from Photius, who is, in turn, quoting Diodorus Sicu-
lus; at its conclusion, the passage is attributed to “Hecataeus of Miletus,” though
this is universally regarded as a slip for “Hecataeus of Abdera.”49 The text may
have come from Hecataeus’ own Aegyptiaca, probably from the introductory sec-
tion where Hecataeus sought to show how certain nations had their origins in
Egypt.50 In several crucial details, the passage can be seen to anticipate important
elements in the narratives cited by Josephus as coming from Manetho: a pesti-
lence befell Egypt that led to the expulsion of a distinct group (in this account,
aliens); these people went to different regions under the command of able men—
Danaus and Cadmus among them—but the majority were driven to Judea, with
Moses as their leader; Moses founded cities, chief among them Jerusalem; he
also instituted for the exiles worship practices and political structures that were
at odds with those of all other nations; indeed, “because of their own expulsion
[Moses] introduced a manner of living that was somewhat anti-social and hostile
to outsiders” (Diod. 40.3.4: διὰ . . . τὴν ἰδίαν ξενηλασίαν ἀπανθρωπόν τινα καὶ
μισόξενον βίον εἰσηγήσατο).
Although problematic because of its transmission to us, this possible vestige
of Hecataeus’ Aegyptiaca would show, in no uncertain terms, that the assimila-
tion of the Jews to the Hyksos predated Manetho and, furthermore, that what
can be styled as at least a latent (though it is not so very latent) anti-Jewish view
was also to be found in this same text.51 I would further add that both Heca-
taeus of Abdera and Manetho were active in the court of the early Ptolemies
and that it would have been strange if Manetho, a Greek writing on Egypt, was
not aware—indeed, perhaps intimately aware—of what Hecataeus had written.
This is a topic I will take up below.
Suffice it here for me to state my belief that substantial parts of the narra-
tives of Manetho quoted by Josephus are, in fact, relatively good representa-
tives of what would have stood originally in Manetho’s text. It is both curious
and thought provoking that the narratives Josephus quotes from Berossus’
Babyloniaca have not generated anywhere near the same amount of discus-
sion and controversy.52 No doubt the reason for this is that Berossus’ words
do not have any real bearing on the anti-Jewish views that Josephus felt he
49. See, e.g., Bar-Kochva (1996) 22 and n.40 (with full bibliography); note also Bloch (2002)
32 n.34. A notable defender of the attribution of the passage to Hecataeus of Miletus is Dornseiff
(1939) 52–65; note the reception of Dornseiff ’s argument by Momigliano (1977) 25–26.
50. Consensus is now that the section is not from Hecataeus of Abdera: see esp. Bar-Kochva
(1996). Cf. Walter (2002).
51. Cf. Bloch (2002) 38. Note also Stern (1974/1984) 1.20–35.
52. Note the differences of scale in the treatments of Berossus and Manetho in Stern (1974/1984)
1.55–61 (Berossus), 62–86 (Manetho). Cf. Siegert (2008) 1.29.
had to grapple with, whereas Egyptian authors in general and particularly

Manetho, their first and chief authority on the question, naturally received a
lot more attention from Josephus. Berossus provided a parallel for the biblical
story of the Flood, gave an account of the Neo-Babylonian conquest of Judah
and the fall of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar II, and generally furthered
Josephus’ argument that the Jews were an ancient race. It is very likely that
Josephus only had access to Berossus through excerpts found in Alexander
Polyhistor.53 But if Josephus’ engagement with Berossus was not as compli-
cated and fraught as his engagement with Manetho, he did treat Berossus’
work in ways that were similar with what he did in connection with Manetho.
Josephus introduces his long quote of Berossus on the reigns of Nabolpol-
assar and Nebuchadnezzar with language similar to that which he used to
cite Manetho (Ap. 1.134; cf. 1.93),54 and he considered both men to be very
similar in cultural outlook—styling both Manetho and Berossus, whether ac-
curately or not, as essentially “culture Greeks” (Ap. 1.73, 129)—a similarity
noted as long ago as 1893 by Gutschmid: while both were non-Greek in ori-
gin, they both possessed Hellenic paideia, or learning, explicitly claimed in
the case of Manetho and implied in that of Berossus.55
Thus far, I have spoken only of “problems” in connection with Josephus’
preservation of narratives from Manetho and Berossus. What of the “oppor-
tunities”? I think that some of the same passages I have discussed above from
Against Apion can help us to get closer to the textual “feel” of the Aegyptiaca
in particular. In the first place, it has been noted for some time that sections
1.93–103 of Apion provide a precious glimpse of how narrative was joined to
the armature of chronology in Manetho’s account, with the names of the kings
almost serving as headings for separate entries (Capitelüberschrift).56 It is best if
I reproduce the relevant text from Josephus here in full:
Now I set forth the Egyptians as witnesses of this antiquity [sc. of the
Jews]. Again, therefore the work of Manetho, how it relates to the order
of time, I write below. He speaks as follows: “After the people of the
53. Schnabel (1923) 134–68; Stern (1974/1984) 1.59 note to section 135. Cf. Barclay (2007) 80
n.428; De Breucker (2012).
54. Barclay (2007) 82 n.445.
55. Gutschmid (1893) 491 ad Jos. Ap. 1.129; Tarn (1961) 160–61. Berossus, though a Chaldaean
by birth, was “known to those possessed of paideia” (Ap. 1.129: γνώριμος δὲ τοῖς περὶ παιδείαν
ἀναστρεφομένοις); the contrast makes certain that the reference to “learning” is to “Greek learn-
ing.” Cf. Barclay (2007) 80 n.430.
56. Gutschmid (1893) 443 ad Ap. 1.93: “Manetho die Namen der Könige als Capitelüberschrift
voranstellte und dann die Erzählung ihrer Geschichte gab”; cf. Barclay (2007) 62 n.337. Note also
Fraser (1972) 2.734–35 n.124: “Jos., CAp. i.93–102, is no doubt a fairly true version of a section
of the work in which chronological and narrative material are juxtaposed.” Cf. Dillery (1999) 95.
Shepherds went out from Egypt to Jerusalem, the king who expelled
them from Egypt, Tethmosis, ruled after these events for 25 years and
four months and then died, and his son Chebron took up the rule for 13
years. After him, Amenophis ruled for 20 years and seven months; then
his sister Amessis 21 years and nine months; her son Mephres 12 years
and eight months; his son, Amenophis, 30 years and eight months; his
son Misphragmouthosis 25 years and ten months; his son Touthmosis
9 years and eight months; his son Amenophis 30 years and ten months;
his son Oros 36 years and five months; his daughter Akencheris, 12
years and one month; then her brother Rhathotis 9 years; then his son
Akencheres 12 years and five months; then his son Akencheres the Sec-
ond, 12 years three months; his son Harmais 4 years and one month;
his son Ramesses 1 year four months; his son Harmesses Miamoun 66
years and two months; his son Amenophis 19 years six months; his son
Sethos [also called] Ramesses, who possessed both cavalry and a navy.
This [king] made his brother Harmais the overseer of Egypt and gave
over to him all the rest of the kingly authority, only he bade him not to
wear a diadem or to do injustice to the royal mother of his children and
to keep away from the other royal concubines. The king himself, having
made expeditions against Cyprus and Phoenicia and again against the
Assyrians and the Medes, made all of them subjects, some by the spear
and others without battle, through fear of his great power. He formed
great ambitions on the basis of his successes and was marching out yet
more boldly, intending to conquer the cities and lands of the East. When
enough time had passed, Harmais, who had been left in Egypt, was do-
ing without fear everything the opposite of what his brother was order-
ing. He treated the queen violently; he was making use of the rest of the
royal concubines without stint; and under the advice of his friends he
was wearing the diadem and had risen up against his brother. The man
put in charge of the priests of Egypt wrote a letter and sent it to Sethos,
making clear to him everything and that his brother Harmais had risen
up against him. At once, then, he turned back to Pelusium and gained
control of his own kingdom. The land was called, after his name, ‘Ae-
gyptus’, for it is said that Sethos was called ‘Aegyptus’, and Harmais his
brother ‘Danaus’. Manetho [wrote] these things.
From the remainder of Apion 1.103, we can tell what information Josephus ex-
tracted from Manetho’s passage: he calculates the time between the departure
of the shepherds from Egypt and the arrival of Danaus in Argos (393 years), in
order to demonstrate the antiquity of his “ancestors” (progonoi) and, indeed,
their priority in time over legendary Greece—represented here by the earliest

history of Argos. In other words, for Josephus, the two registers of presenta-
tion in the Aegyptiaca were of equal importance, and he made use of both. The
chronological component gave him the evidence he needed to demonstrate the
anteriority of the Jews with respect to the Greeks, and the narrative elements
helped him to identify the shepherds as the Jews’ ancestors, as well as allowing
him to show that Danaus was the expelled brother of Sethos, Harmais.
Recall that Josephus takes Manetho to task for being, in essence, a “self-
interpolator” (Ap. 1.228–29), “intruding” (παρενέβαλεν) certain “unreliable
tales” (λόγους ἀπιθάνους) into his otherwise admirable reporting based on
records (ἀναγραφαῖς). Indeed, in this same section, Josephus claims that Ma-
netho “gave himself the opportunity” to proceed in this manner with his nar-
rative by stating that he would include “myths and legends” (τὰ μυθευόμενα
καὶ λεγόμενα). This observation of Josephus must mean that Manetho some-
where made clear an intention to base his history on narrative sources as well
as on anagraphai—the latter meaning records with a strong chronological
component (annals and king lists). This would have been a terribly important
programmatic statement and claim. When Josephus wraps up his criticism of
Manetho (Ap. 1.287), he again asserts that when Manetho followed “ancient
records” (ταῖς ἀρχαίαις ἀναγραφαῖς), he did not fall far from the truth, but
when he relied on “anonymous tales” (τοὺς ἀδεσπότους μύθους), he put them
together “not persuasively” (συνέθηκεν αὐτοὺς ἀπιθάνως) or “relied on those
who spoke from hatred.”
Even allowing for Josephus’ own reasons to present Manetho’s text as de-
rived from two very different types of material (anagraphai, supporting Jewish
claims to great antiquity and therefore reliable; and mutheuomena/legomena,
anti-Jewish in outlook and therefore unreliable), one still senses that there was
an uncomfortable fit between the chronologically based sections and the nar-
rative sections. Or, to put the matter a little differently, the shifts in the nature
of Manetho’s sources had a corresponding effect on the nature of Manetho’s
presentation, making the joins between materials self-evident—at least to
someone like Josephus. Indeed, at Apion 1.287, the term that we translate “not
persuasively” (ἀπιθάνως) can mean that Manetho put together his materials
“coarsely” or “rudely”57 and thus was not persuasive: the sutures between texts
were plain for all to see.58
John Barclay has observed recently that little “in style and genre” sepa-
rates the story of Sethos and Harmais from the story of the lepers and that we
57. See LSJ s.v.

58. Barclay (2007) 152–53 n.970 notes that the adverb and the verb, when “put together,” allow
us to see that “Josephus rightly detects the artificial combination of varied tales.”
can therefore assume that there was mixing of “regnal-records and folk-tales”
throughout the Aegyptiaca.59 I do not dispute that claim at all, but it is worth
pointing out Barclay’s seeming assumption that the Sethos and Harmais story
was original to the anagraphe source that Manetho used. While I do not believe
that the anagraphai were devoid of narrative elements (indeed, see above, pp.
85–86, 172–80), I do not think that they were at all extensive and of the sort
we see in the Sethos and Harmais account. I believe that all extensive narrative
portions (sections of more than three or four sentences) would have come from
those sources that Josephus describes as mutheuomena and legomena. For the
Sethos and Harmais account, Manetho himself intruded the story of the broth-
ers into the chronological frame, no doubt thanks to a mention of Sethos in the
list from the anagraphe source. I realize that this understanding of what Ma-
netho did requires us to assume that Josephus was mistaken. But this is not an
insurmountable difficulty. It almost goes without saying that, as I have already
noted, Josephus was predisposed to view some narratives of Manetho as reli-
able and others as unreliable, depending on their characterization of the Jews.
A couple of important details that emerge from Josephus’ attack on the
“calumnies” of Manetho also contribute to our understanding of how faith-
ful Josephus was in transmitting Manetho’s work. First, it is important to note
that Josephus evaluates Manetho not by adducing external evidence to refute
him but by proving him wrong through Manetho’s own words (cf. Ap. 1.253:
“I will attempt to examine these things through words spoken by [Manetho]
himself ”).60 These “words” turn out to be internally contradictory or improb-
able statements. This critical posture of Josephus may well have had the effect of
lessening the potential for distortion and contamination by the incorporation
of inauthentic material. Inasmuch as Josephus let Manetho “speak for himself,”
as it were, and took notice of both Manetho’s negative accounts of the Jews as
well as the positive, we can probably place a good deal of confidence in what
Josephus quotes or paraphrases from Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, and in any case, we
get a good idea of what it looked like.
Josephus’ handling of Berossus is similar to his treatment of Manetho,
though there are some notable differences. As has already been observed, Jo-
sephus views Berossus as a “culture Greek” (Ap. 1.129) who relied on ancient
native records (130) when he wrote his history, just as in the case of Manetho.
Josephus cites extensive narratives from the Babyloniaca verbatim, though the
total amount of text that results is much less than what we get from Manetho’s
Aegyptiaca. But in contrast with his engagement with Manetho, Josephus no-
59. Barclay (2007) 132 n.796.

60. ταῦτα πειράσομαι διὰ τῶν ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ λεγομένων ἐλέγχειν.
where criticizes what Berossus wrote; in fact, he is uniformly accepting of Ber-

ossus’ claims. Josephus even observes with relish that Berossus refuted Greek
authorities who claimed that Queen Semiramis founded Babylon and that its
wonders were due to her (Ap. 1.142, chiefly refuting Ctesias: see Lenfant F 1b p.
32; Stronk p. 214 = Diod. 2.7.2).61 As Josephus says,
in regard to these matters, the record of the Chaldaeans must be re-

garded as trustworthy [τὴν μὲν τῶν Χαλδαίων ἀναγραφὴν ἀξιόπιστον
ἡγητέον]. Moreover, also in the public archives [τοῖς ἀρχείοις] of the
Phoenicians, similar things to what Berossus says have been written up
about the king of the Babylonians, namely, that he conquered Syria and
all of Phoenicia. (Ap. 1.143)
It would seem that for Josephus, Berossus is the “record of the Chaldaeans.”
Indeed, while Manetho is one of several Egyptian authorities whom Josephus
cites, Berossus is the only “Chaldaean” quoted in Against Apion.62 It is both
noteworthy and important that while Josephus feels the need to engage with
a long tradition of Egyptians and Greeks for Egyptian history (going back to
Manetho and, before him, Hecataeus of Abdera), he finds Berossus definitive
for the history of Babylon. This is due partly to the fact that there simply were
not many other figures like Berossus, whereas Greco-Roman Egypt produced a
number of scholars like Manetho who dealt with much the same kind of mate-
rial he did. But Josephus seems to treat Berossus with a degree of respect that
cannot be explained only as the result of the latter being the only Babylonian
authority the former knew. Berossus could state, after all, that nothing further
that really mattered to humanity was discovered since Oannes’ revelation. It is
distinctly possible that, for Babylonia at least, Josephus took him at his word.
Theoretical Interlude: South Asian Historiography;

“Embedded History” and “Texture”
To state the obvious, when Berossus and Manetho began to write their histo-
ries of Babylon and Egypt, the particular form their works took represented a
61. Cf. Reinach (1930) 28 n.3, noting that these would have been Ctesias, Deinon, Cleitarchus
and others, followed later by the likes of Strabo and Diodorus. Cf. also Lenfant (2004) 238 n.141.
62. Barclay (2007) 77 gets this point crucially wrong: while he rightly sees that the Chaldaean
section of Josephus’ Apion is dependent on Berossus alone, he incorrectly states that this is also the
case for Josephus’ Egyptian testimony.
break from how the past was treated in their respective cultures. To be sure, the
antecedents for their histories—indeed, the very building blocks from which
they were constructed—were actually millennia old in some cases. But it is my
contention that the particular combination of materials they employed in the
composition of their texts distinguishes their work from earlier Babylonian and
Egyptian historiographic practice. The incorporation of narratives systemati-
cally into a chronographic scheme was unparalleled in their native traditions.
This combination had the effect of historicizing their narratives. Hence, in my
detailed examination of the narratives of Berossus and Manetho, it will be my
purpose to focus particularly on the ways that each author sought to marry
narrative to its chronographic support—that is, how the narratives were framed
and what sort of changes in the original accounts had to be engineered in or-
der for the stories they tell to be made intelligible as historical texts, not as
theogony, prophecy, or royal biography. Theirs were texts that were meant to
be read as “history”; they were not simply intrinsically historiographic, with a
“historical consciousness” embedded within them.63
But before I turn my attention to the narratives of Berossus and Manetho, it
is important to take up briefly how what I am arguing for here intersects with
current debates on the nature of “history”—not only the writing of history, but
also the issue of “historical consciousness” itself—especially viewed from co-
lonial and postcolonial perspectives. Insofar as I am arguing that knowledge
of and contact with Greek historiography helped to precipitate the change in
historical writing in both Babylon and Egypt as found in the work of Berossus
and Manetho, several issues of acute concern in scholarly discussions regard-
ing the status of historiography among subject peoples could seem also to be in
play here. For purposes of comparison, I will focus on scholarship concerning
South Asia. In the nineteenth century, Western scholars thought that preco-
lonial India essentially had no history and, correspondingly, that the Indians
lacked “historical consciousness.”64 This view, which has been shown to be
linked to the attempt by Western colonial powers to justify the need for impe-
rial control of the subcontinent,65 has provoked a strong reaction in the last few
decades. Contemporary treatment of “historical discourse” in precolonial India
63. Cf. Bloch (1953) 60–61.

64. Notoriously, James Mill wrote in 1817 that “of this branch of literature the Hindus are to-
tally destitute” (Mill [1975] 329); Hegel (1956) 162 noted that the condition of the people of India
“makes them incapable of writing history.” I owe my knowledge of these texts to Ali (2000) 167
nn.7, 8; his entire discussion at 165–69 (entitled “India: the Land with No History”) is very helpful.
Note also Lal (2003) 27–78.
65. See esp. Ali (2000) 165–69.
has tended to go in one of two directions.66 Some have argued that India did
indeed possess historical writing from early on but that it was “embedded” in
traditional literary and documentary forms. As Romila Thapar has put it, “em-
bedded history” is real historical consciousness that needs to be “prised out”
from traditional texts.67 Although problematic concepts, I shall at times borrow
terms used extensively by Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman, and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, namely, “framing” and “texture.” Arguing for a new brand of
reading that permits the recognition of a variety of works as “historical,” they
note that there are external criteria (“framing”) but that “more often . . . the
central criteria [for identifying the “historical” in a text] derive from what we
will be calling ‘texture’. Readers or listeners at home in a culture have a natural
sensitivity to texture. They know when the past is being treated in a factual
manner.”68
Alternatively, others have argued that the very attempt to locate a native,
precolonial historiography is itself misguided and “colonial” in outlook, essen-
tially employing as its standard a distinctly Western, modern and professional
historiography, while overlooking other possible ways of capturing or curating
the past that do not conform to this standard. They argue that the attempt to
locate historical consciousness in precolonial South Asian texts insists on and
seeks out the very historical writing of the West that Mill and Hegel assumed
was absent in India until the advent of European colonists, thereby legitimizing
it as the one true historiography.69 Essentially the same sort of argument can
and has been made regarding sub-Saharan Africa. Scholars have been wary
of falling into the “Trevor-Roper trap”; in responding to Hugh Trevor-Roper’s
notorious claim that “Black Africa” had no history and was consequently “un-
historic,” they might merely “squeeze the past of Black Africa” into the very
categories envisioned by Trevor-Roper and might thereby define the African
past precisely in the terms Trevor-Roper insisted on for “history.”70
66. Here I rely particularly on Novetzke (2006) 112–15.

67. Thapar (1993) 137–38. Note also the enormously influential volume by Narayana Rao et al.
(2001); for their engagement with Thapar, see esp. 21 and n.40.
68. Narayana Rao et al. (2001) 5 (emphasis original). This book spawned a massive response,
including a significant part of History and Theory 46 (2007) 366–427, featuring the authors’ own
reply to criticisms: Narayana Rao et al. (2007). See also Guha (2004); Deshpande (2007).
69. See esp. the responses to Narayana Rao et al. (2001) in the vol. of History and Theory noted
above (n. 68), particularly Chekuri (2007) 385 and Mantena (2007) 408. Note also Lal (2003); at a
more general level, Goody (2006).
70. See Fuglestad (1992) esp. 310: “Once one accepts [through objecting to] Trevor-Roper’s
framework and definition, one finds oneself clad in a sort of straightjacket [sic], that is one finds
oneself compelled to squeeze the past of Black Africa into the categories, and more generally the
conceptual framework and paradigms, that have been devised for the comprehension of the Euro-
At one level, the concerns of this book are different: it is not my purpose to
allege, explicitly or in substance, that modern historiographic aims lurk in the
pages of Berossus and Manetho or, for that matter, in ancient Greek histori-
cal writers. But I do need to address the issues of historical consciousness and
embedded historiography. It may seem that I am making a claim that is not
that different from what Mill and Hegel said about precolonial India: that his-
tory did not exist for Egypt and Babylon until the advent of Greco-Macedonian
rule. My response would be similar to that of Thapar or Narayana Rao et al. on
South Asia: that there most certainly was historical consciousness in Egypt and
Babylon—indeed, it had been around for a very long time (in fact, millennia)—
and that this consciousness is reflected precisely in the historiographic views
that are embedded in chronicles and narrative accounts such as royal biography.
At the same time, I would want to stress that in the cases of Berossus and
Manetho, even if the impetus to write history in a new way in their respective
scholarly cultures came from the Greeks and their historical texts, they them-
selves were the ones who realized the potential for critical, narrative analysis of
their nations’ pasts through their own “recovery” or “disembedding” of histo-
riographic views implicit in their sources.71 They did this by incorporating tra-
ditional narratives into a chronographic scheme. The sequence of events from
chronographic material thus became meaningful in a new way, articulated and
punctuated by narrative that functioned as commentary, and the narratives,
in turn, received a temporal orientation that allowed for narrated actions and
plans to have preconditions and consequences.
As regards their purposes and audience, I think it is important to see that
while Berossus and Manetho did indeed write for the new masters of their
lands and correspondingly assimilated Greek methods for dealing with the past
as “first phase native writers” reacting to imperial rule (though their lands had
been occupied before by other outsiders, namely, the Persians),72 their treat-
ments of their national history did not just entail the adoption of some Greek
historiographic elements, not to mention the Greek language itself; they also
pean past.” In a series of lectures for the BBC (later published in book form), Trevor-Roper claimed
that Africa had no history, and he described Africa as “unhistoric” in Trevor-Roper (1969) 6. See
Fuglestad (1992) 323 nn.2, 3.
71. Cf. Narayana Rao et al. (2001) 3. Arguing for a history derived not from documentary
evidence, they propose a new strategy: “We argue in this book for a different view. It is a view that
recovers as history a significant body of literature from late medieval and early modern south In-
dia. These texts . . . have usually been seen as something else, in line with genre in which they are
couched, from folk-epic to courtly poetry (kavha) to variously categorised prose narratives” (my
emphasis).
72. Cf. Fanon (1968) 222.
represented the deployment of native forms of treating the past in new settings.
To be sure, this was a reasonable course of action—indeed, a predictable one—
for Berossus and Manetho to take. But it was nonetheless a staggering one of
worldwide importance. We should also not lose sight of the distinct possibil-
ity that the use of native historiographic materials was meant for their fellow
priests and other literate, native elites; as Walbank has well observed of Ma-
netho but as might also be applied to Berossus, “Manetho will not have been
an isolated phenomenon.”73 This possibility helps to explain some problematic
features of their narratives, ones that can be understood to apply to the future
and that can be styled (borrowing the terminology of Jonathan Z. Smith that I
have followed elsewhere) “proto-apocalyptic.”
I wish, in this context, to focus on the analysis of Smith’s concept of “proto-
apocalypticism.” In a sense, he has tackled many of the same issues I have just
been treating, but from a social-anthropological point of view. In a ground-
breaking article published first in 1975 and reprinted in 1978 (Smith 1975),
Smith, using much of the same material I have been examining, proposed
that the historical frames of both Near Eastern and Egyptian traditional wis-
dom texts and prophecies rendered them “proto-apocalyptic.” Stating that
“Wisdom and Apocalyptic are interrelated in that both are essentially scribal
phenomena,”74 he argued that apocalypticism can be described as “wisdom
lacking a royal patron.”75 A specific king from the past is described as overcom-
ing the forces of chaos, particularly foreign invasion. But in later iterations of
this story, after the removal of the specific historical details, the same events
become apocalyptic. The status of the narratives in Berossus and Manetho is
intermediary, or “proto-apocalyptic,” in that they are truly historical in orienta-
tion, but with the potential for apocalyptic interpretation. One can view their
stories as historically contextualized and yet, at the same time, admonitory. The
indigenous royal houses of both Berossus and Manetho were gone. The new
Macedonian rulers of their lands required histories of their new domains, and
Berossus and Manetho were ready to provide them in the language of the con-
querors, as well as in a narrative form that the Greeks had perfected over the
last 150 years or so. But the new rulers also needed the tools to be seen as the le-
gitimate kings of their lands, and thus we can see another major impetus to the
writing of Berossus’ and Manetho’s histories: they showcased models of good
and bad rule but also made clear the importance of the maintenance of proper
cult and, thereby, the native clergy. The stories of earlier kings, even the founda-
73. Walbank (1993) 120.

74. Smith (1978) 85.
75. Smith (1978) 81. Cf. Dillery (1999) 108.
tional tales dealing with the establishment of order in the universe, could thus
be regarded as historical record but, simultaneously, as potentially “insurgent,”
insisting on the privileged status of native cult and priesthood, which required
maintenance to prevent the “delegitimation” of the new ruling house.76 To bor-
row the language of Christian Lee Novetzke on modern approaches to South
Asian historiography, Berossus’ and Manetho’s works were thus “numinous his-
tory,” both “history” and “religion.”77
76. I first articulated this picture of mutual dependency in Dillery (1999) 111, relying on the
concept of “legitimacy” as defined by Stinchcombe (1968) 150–51, who emphasizes the grant of
power through chains of interdependence.
77. Novetzke (2006) 121, 125; “insurgent” is also his term.
Chapter 5
Berossus’ Narratives
Part 1: Mythical Narratives
First Things: Cosmogony and Allegory
In chapter 4, I primarily took my material from Manetho, and I shall return

to him in earnest in chapter 6, but it is time I turned to Berossus. A quick
glance at the surviving narratives points up an immediate difference: while all
of Manetho’s longer narratives come from later periods of Egyptian history,
particularly from the end of the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate
Period, and the New Kingdom, Berossus has a fairly even split, with narratives
coming from later periods but also with longer fragments relating to earliest
history. I propose to take up the narratives of early history first and then turn
to the later ones.
Although occupying only a scant sixty-four lines in the modern edition of
George Syncellus (Syncellus Chron. 28–30 M = F 1b), or roughly two pages of
printed text, virtually all of what survives of the first book of Berossus’ Babylo-
niaca is preserved there and in the parallel Armenian translation of Eusebius (F
1a).1 It will be good to review here how this material is presented in Syncellus.
We first encounter a label summarizing the account of Alexander Polyhistor,
whose own history depends on Berossus: “From the history of Alexander Poly-
histor on the ten Chaldaean kings before the Flood and the Flood itself, and on
Noah and the ark, in the course of which he also reports some remarkable sto-
ries, as they have been recorded by Berossus” (Syncellus Chron. 28 Μ: τινα διὰ
μέσου τερατώδη φάσκει, ὡς τῷ Βηρώσσῳ γεγραμμένα). We are then given the
biographical information about Berossus himself, the geography of Mesopota-
mia, and a description of its plants and animals—all items previously discussed
1. The sole exception is F 2, from Athenaeus 639C, containing Berossus’ mention of the Persian
Sacaea festival: see above, p. 46.
220
Berossus’ Narratives 221
and dependent on the indirect statement “Berossus says in the first book of
his Babyloniaca . . .” The statement continues, “[Berossus says that] in Babylon
there was a great crowd of foreign men [ἀλλοεθνῶν] inhabiting Chaldaea. They
were living in a disorderly manner, just as wild animals.”
At this point, we are told that “in the first year there appeared out of the
Red Sea in the land bordering Babylonia a sentient [ἔμφρον] creature by the
name Oannes.” An elaborate description of this fish-man sage and his civilizing
activities follows. Only after this do we arrive at the first significant inset nar-
rative: the creation of the world, introduced by the statement “Oannes wrote
about Creation and government and transmitted [παραδοῦναι] to humanity
the following logos. He says that there was a time in which everything was dark-
ness and water.” The key term here is “transmitted”: παραδοῦναι literally means
“hand over” but can also mean “hand down” by tradition (e.g., legend, espe-
cially pheme and muthoi) as well as “teach” (i.e., doctrine), though that seems a
later meaning.2 Indeed, all these senses could well be in play here in Syncellus’
version of Polyhistors’ digest of Berossus.
The framing story of the creation logos of Oannes is important in a number
of ways. I have already noted in chapter 2 above (p. 75–79) that the presenta-
tion of chronology in the frame is curious: Creation has apparently already
happened, and we are already in the “first year,” but the first year of what? Spe-
cifically, which king is ruling? He has not yet been identified. Since the sage
Oannes is paired elsewhere with the first king, Aloros, it could be the “first
year” of that king, though perhaps not, since humanity is not yet organized,
(i.e., governed by a king or anybody else). It must be the “first year” of human
history, when humanity was living in a precivilized and savage state but at some
temporal remove from the creation of the cosmos. This is a fundamental point
for Berossus, for situating what are mythical and legendary events in a “first
year” historicizes them. The mythical is put on a temporal grid, or, to put it
another way, it becomes historical. Furthermore, it is vouched for by the most
important sage of the Mesopotamian wisdom tradition.
As part of the civilizing process, Oannes hands over to human kind a cos-
mogony, at the end of which is an account of the creation of human beings.
Hence, through Berossus’ framing of the account of Oannes’ telling (or even
reading?) of the Babylonian Genesis, its narration of earliest cosmic events
2. LSJ s.v. I.4.a and b. Note esp. Plato Phlb. 16c: Socrates says that “the ancients [palaioi], being
better than we and dwelling closer to the gods, handed down this story [ταύτην φήμην παρέδοσαν]”
(cf. Bury [1897] 17 ad loc.); it is significant that he is speaking obscurely of the mystical transmis-
sion of something approaching genuine knowledge: see D. Davidson (1990) 61–62. Note also De-
mosthenes 23.65 (παραδεδομένα καὶ μυθώδη); Aristot. Po. 1451b24 (οἱ παραδεδομένοι μῦθοι).
becomes retrospective and part of Oannes’ instruction. We should not lose

sight of another odd detail: why are earliest humans described as “foreign”
(ἀλλοεθνής)? Since there is no differentiation of humanity into categories of
any sort at this juncture, how can there be foreigners? The answer is not far to
find: since, as Berossus goes on to say, earliest humanity lived “without order
just as wild animals” (ἀτάκτως ὥσπερ τὰ θηρία), they approximate to the out-
siders of later periods, whose ways are not recognized as civilized.3 The orienta-
tion that the language provides, if truly Berossus’, is illuminating: civilization is
inherently Babylonian, and savagery is its absence, rendering primeval humans
and non-Babylonians of later periods equivalent. Berossus was not unique in
viewing earlier humanity as the “barbarians” of his own day (cf., famously,
Thuc. 1.6.5–6),4 but what I think is important in this detail is that even before
there was a Babylon to speak of, Babylon is there in Berossus’ mind. Indeed,
recall that where Oannes comes out of the sea is identified as being an area near
the land bordering Babylon—a historical impossibility (Babylon was not usu-
ally regarded as antediluvian, let alone present at Creation) but, because of that,
similarly illuminating (see above, p. 136). Berossus himself seems to acknowl-
edge the impossibility, because the periphrasis he uses, “by the place bordering
Babylonia,” allows him to blur the claim that Babylon was actually there at the
beginning of things.
Another detail that is vitally important to note is how the handing over of
the story of Creation is part of Oannes’ larger mission of bringing civilization
to earliest humanity. Berossus seems very clear: in addition to all the other gifts
that he also “hands over” (writing, learning, knowledge of all the other civiliz-
ing arts),5 “Oannes wrote about generation and government and handed over
the following logos to humans.”6 But Berossus seems to be ambiguous regarding
precisely how Oannes gave his wisdom to early humans: he “wrote” (γράψαι)
about generation and government, but he “transmitted” (παραδοῦναι) the logos
of Creation; the latter wording strongly implies an oral account. This ambiguity
is cleared up for us if we turn to parallel scenes of instruction from cuneiform
texts. In one from the “Library of Ashurbanipal” (ruled 668–631/627), the so-
3. Recall that the description of the savage condition of earliest humans has a parallel in a Su-
merian text where they are living like wild animals: see above, p. 137 and n.58.
4. Indeed, the thought is extremely widespread and persistent. Cf. Darwin on animal hus-
bandry in ancient and modern times: “Some of these facts do not show actual selection, but they
show that the breeding of domestic animals was carefully attended to in ancient times, and is now
attended to by the lowest savages” (The Origin of Species [Oxford World Classics, 1996], 30).
5. Syncellus Chron. 29 M: παραδιδόναι τε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις γραμμάτων καὶ μαθημάτων καὶ
τεχνῶν παντοδαπῶν ἐμπειρίαν.
6. Syncellus Chron. 29 M: τὸν δὲ Ὠάννην περὶ γενεᾶς καὶ πολιτείας γράψαι καὶ παραδοῦναι
τόνδε τὸν λόγον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.
called Catalogue of Texts and Authors, it is stated that “Oannes-Adapa | spoke”

a number of items identified as written texts (K 2248 Obv. 6–9) and that he
wrote down a tale with the title . . . from before the Flood at the dictation of
another, probably divine being (K 9717 + 81-7-27, 71 Rev.; Sm 669 Rev. 15–
16).7 In other words, Oannes should probably be understood as writing down
knowledge that comes from the mouths of the gods and then relaying this in-
formation to humans, very possibly reading it out to them and leaving behind
the text. Lambert has shown that works that clearly were ascribed to gods could
not be authored by humans and that the sage Oannes-Adapa was enlisted as a
sort of secretary to the divine;8 he is a quasi representative on earth of Ea, god
of wisdom.9
A bilingual cuneiform series of texts in Sumerian and Akkadian, dating
probably to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (1126–1105 BC), makes this pro-
cess of transmission even clearer.10 A king of Sippar, Enmeduranki, the man
identified as the seventh king, Euedoranchos, on Berossus’ list, is described as
being brought by the deities Shamash and Adad before an assembly of the gods,
where he is instructed in “special knowledge from the divine realm”;11 specifi-
cally, they show him how to perform divination. Enmeduranki then brings the
men of Nippur, Sippar, and Babylon into his own presence and shows them
the same things he learned and also a sacred text, the Enuma Anu Enlil, to-
gether with a commentary, as well as instruction on “how to make mathemati-
cal calculations.”12 It is noteworthy that the Enuma Anu Enlil is itself a manual
on divination from omens:13 praxis and text are both part of Enmeduranki’s
instruction to the people of Nippur, Sippar, and Babylon.
Berossus does not describe how Oannes got the wisdom he possesses and
hands over to humanity, in contrast to the instruction of Enmeduranki. Hence
I am not sure we are entitled to transfer to Berossus’ account all the details from
this and related texts. But these texts do most emphatically demonstrate that the
post-Kassite period already possessed an anxiety about the status of traditional,
textual wisdom. It had to have a divine origin but also some sort of human au-
thorship that made the knowledge available to humans. This is precisely where
the primeval sage comes in. He is himself a repository of divine wisdom but,
at the same time, a scholar and “curator of the past”; he becomes a figure who
7. Lambert (1962) 65, 67. Cf. Denning-Bolle (1987) 218.

8. Lambert (1962) 73.
9. Cf. Oppenheim (1977) 195.
10. Lambert (1967) 126–27.
11. Rochberg (2004) 183.
12. Lambert (1967) 132–33.
13. Rochberg (2004) 165–67.
graphically illustrates the fusion of material from the canon of traditional wis-
dom and the maker of that canon. Berossus’ Oannes fits this description pre-
cisely, and the duality of his mode of the transfer of knowledge is explained. We
have seen this phenomenon elsewhere, especially in connection with Sanchu-
niathon and other figures associated with the discovery of ancient texts (above,
pp. 132–33). Indeed, it is good to remember that Manetho, for his part, was
careful to draw attention to the Third Dynasty culture hero Imhotep/Imouthes,
who, of course, was treated as a god from the Late Period onward (F 2, Waddell
F 11 = Syncellus Chron. 62 M + Sethe’s corrections):14 like Oannes, the culture
hero becomes a true intermediary between divine and human, imparting the
gifts of the transcendent to the ephemeral world of men. It is obvious how such
a figure had great utility for men like Berossus or, for that matter, the priests and
scribes who earlier set about establishing the canon of knowledge in Babylon’s
Kassite and post-Kassite periods. The past was immediate and normative, pro-
viding models for civilized life yet distanced from it, and those who recorded
the past had to account for the traditional and authoritative lore that had been
built up about it. The wisdom of Oannes is thus both oral (“handed over”) and
textual (he “wrote it”). Do not forget, in this connection, that Berossus evi-
dently felt the need to assure his reader that “an image of [Oannes] was even
now preserved” (F 1= Syncellus Chron. 29 M), literally making real, or at least
visible, the sage himself to the people of Berossus’ own time, but also removed
from them. A similar impulse to bring the absent Oannes into the “here and
now” may also be felt a few lines later in the same section where the creature is
reported as returning to the sea after his visitations among humans: “when the
sun was setting, this here Oannes went back into the sea”—the this here of my
translation trying to capture the force of τουτονί, the deictic or “showing” form
of the demonstrative pronoun: this Oannes, right here!
Indeed, it is important to mention in this context the dating of the Baby-
lonian creation story, the Enuma Elish, a version of which Oannes delivers to
the first people. Without wanting to discount evidence for earlier dating, not to
mention elements that may go back considerably earlier,15 most scholars have
settled on two main possibilities for dating the composition of the Babylonian
epic of Creation: either during the Kassite period (perhaps c. sixteenth century
BC) or to the post-Kassite monarch of the so-called Second Dynasty of Isin,
the aforementioned Nebuchadnezzar I (twelfth century).16 It is certain that the
14. Cf. Sethe (1902); Wildung (1977) 88–89.

15. Kramer (1943) argued for a Sumerian origin and draws notice to several antecedents. His
views have not won wide acceptance.
16. See esp. Burstein (1978) 14 n.10; Kuhrt (1995) 1.378 (cf. 338), citing earlier bibliography.
See also Dalley (2000) 228–30. Cf. Burkert (1992b) 93 and n.17, with further bibliography.
story represents the triumph of Babylon’s deity Marduk over the goddess of
the salt water, Tiamat (Tablet 4.100–103, ANET3 67), and later the building of
Babylon itself as the first city (Tablet 6.57, ANET3 68). Hence most scholars are
prepared to see in the epic the assertion of Babylon’s primacy in the region,
celebrating either the Kassite defeat of the rulers of the marshy southern re-
gion of Mesopotamia, “Sealand,” or Nebuchadnezzar’s later victory over Elam.
Moreover, by putting the epic in the mouth of the first primeval sage, it could
also be argued that Berossus is claiming the text as antediluvian,17 along with
the city it indirectly glorifies.
We should also not forget a point that has already been made above (p. 50)
but is worth stressing here again: the Enuma Elish was recited at the Akitu, or
New Year’s Festival, of Babylon. This is an important fact in its own right, for
the superiority of Marduk that is broadcast in the epic was enacted at that fes-
tival by having divine statues from other cities brought before his image and
made to acknowledge his suzerainty. Lambert has further argued that the fes-
tival also witnessed a cultic reenactment in which Marduk ritually defeated
Tiamat.18 Similarly, all the retainers of the king were to renew their oaths of
loyalty to him, and the king himself was ritually beaten by the urigallu-priest
and made to atone for any misdeeds he may have committed the year before,
in preparation for him serving as king and high priest for another year under
the grant of Marduk.19 This cultic background for the Enuma Elish helps, I
think, to explain the striking description of what Oannes wrote about accord-
ing to Berossus in the framing account just before the sage begins delivering
the story of Creation: “Oannes wrote about generation and government” (τὸν
δὲ Ὠάννην περὶ γενεᾶς καὶ πολιτείας γράψαι). This is an important grouping,
showing that Creation and government were linked in the Babylonian mind.
Moreover, the choice of the word I have here translated “generation,” γενεά,
is particularly arresting.
First, genea (or Ionic genee) can mean “a (human) generation” or time span,
“race” (similar to genos), and even “offspring,”20 but it does not normally mean
“generation” in the sense of “birth” or “genesis,” though that is what it appears to
mean here.21 It is noteworthy that Philo of Byblos deploys the word as the name
of one of the first humans (FGrH 790 F 2 = Euseb. PE 1.10.7). The term does
17. A point well made in Burstein (1978) 14 n.10.
18. Lambert (1963), (1965) 295 = (1994) 104–5, and implicitly in (1997); Schibli (1990) 93
n.39, with additional bibliography. Heidel (1951) 16 is more circumspect.
19. Black (1981); Kuhrt (1987b) esp. 38; Dalley (2000) 231–32.
20. See, e.g., Schmidt (1982); Most (1997) 111–12; Fantuzzi (2001) 235–36.
21. Schnabel (1923) 137. Cf. the translations of Adler and Tuffin (2002) 39 (“birth”); Burstein
(1978) 14 (“birth”); Verbrugghe and Wickersham (1996) 44 (“creation”). Note that Syncellus em-
ploys the word genesis several times elsewhere in his Ecloga, making it likely that genea is Berossus/
Polyhistor’s term (in this context, it is the lectio difficilior).
have a strong epic resonance, and perhaps that is what Berossus was striving for
here. Furthermore, stories of Creation are often also stories that help to validate
the political ordering of the world (politeia), especially government by kings:
it is good to remember, in this context, that Hesiod praises kings, particularly
the good king, in the Theogony (80–92), observing a few lines later that as bards
are from the Muses and Apollo, so kings are from Zeus (94–96).22 In theogonic
and cosmogonic poetry, the human order mirrors the divine order,23 and it is
explicitly treated as such in the New Year’s Festival. Hence Oannes’ story of
Creation expresses the primacy of his native Babylon but also can be seen as the
aition or explanatory account of heavenly kingship and, by implication, human
kingship as well.24 Viewed as such, genea and politeia is an apt description for
the creation myth of Babylon.
In this connection, it is vital to recall (see above, ch. 1, p. 50) that the tablet
containing the “Temple Program for the New Year’s Festivals at Babylon” is Se-
leucid in date.25 To be sure, this fact demonstrates only that the rite incorporat-
ing the annual cultic recitation of the Enuma Elish continued to take place and
be important in the Seleucid period. But Jonathan Z. Smith has gone further,
following Lambert’s interpretation of the formation of the epic Enuma Elish:
viewing the New Year’s Festival as inherently “an apocalyptic situation” that
privileged Babylon as the establishment of the cosmic order, he argues that the
Seleucids “reapplied” and transformed the ritual, which insures the continu-
ing cosmic order contingent on the behavior of the king, into a “ritual for the
rectification of a foreign king.”26 In this proto-apocalyptic text and cultic event,
the Seleucids were warned to rule Babylon in a manner consistent with the in-
struction of the Babylonian priesthood. Even if we do not wish to endorse fully
Smith’s interpretation (though I see no good reason not to do so), it remains
the case that Oannes’ pronouncement of the Enuma Elish to the first humans
would have resonated powerfully with Berossus’ audience in a Seleucid setting,
both Greco-Macedonian and Babylonian. Creation would have been mediated
by a Babylonian sage figure and would have been the version that gave pri-
22. West (1966) 44, 182 ad 80ff., proposing that the Theogony focused on kings at its beginning
precisely because Hesiod recited the work before a king or kings. Be that as it may, the poem still
can be seen to praise Zeus and to state that human kings somehow depend on him. Cf. M. West
(1988) xii–xiii; Fränkel (1975) 107–8.
23. Lamberton (1988) 65: “Confined to the human plane in Homer, the designation [sc. basi-
leus, or “king”] is extended in Hesiod to the projections and legitimations of those human rulers
on the level of the divine.”
24. Note esp. Vernant (2006) 374.
25. ANET3 331; cf. Thureau-Dangin (1921) 1 (dating), 129–48 (text).
26. Smith (1976) 7–8 and n.20.
mary importance to Babylon and its kings, now firmly sited in the antediluvian
period—indeed, at the very beginnings of human history.27
As for the creation account of Oannes, it is best to present it here and then
comment on its important features:
He [sc. Oannes] says that there was a time in which the totality was
darkness and water [τὸ πᾶν σκότος καὶ ὕδωρ εἶναι], and in this [wa-
ter] monstrous creatures having their own, unique forms [ἰδιοφυεῖς
τὰς ἰδέας ἔχοντα] came into being. For there were born men with two
wings, and some also with four wings and two faces. And they were
possessing one body, but two heads, male and female, and two sets of
genitalia, male and female. And other men had the limbs and horns of
goats, others the feet of horses, and others the back parts of horses, but
the forward parts of humans, which are in form hippocentaurs. And
bulls having human heads were born (ζωογονηθῆναι), and dogs with
four torsos, having tails of fish from the back parts, and horses with dog
heads, and humans and other creatures having the heads and bodies
of horses but the hindquarters of fish, and other creatures having the
shapes of all manner of beasts, and in addition to these, fish and reptiles
and snakes and a host of other remarkable creatures having appearances
different from each other. And images of these creatures are set up in
the temple of Bel [ὧν καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας ἐν τῷ τοῦ Βήλου ναῷ ἀνακεῖσθαι].
A woman rules all these [creatures] to whom the name is “Homoroka.”
This name is in Chaldaean “Thalatth,” and translated in Greek “Thal-
assa,” and has the same value as Selene.
When everything was thus constituted, Bel, having risen up, split the
woman in half, and half of her he made into earth, and the other half sky,
and he destroyed [ἀφανίσαι] the creatures in her. He says that this ac-
count of nature has been told allegorically [ἀλληγορικῶς δέ φησι τοῦτο
πεφυσιολογῆσθαι]. For with everything being water [ὑγροῦ γὰρ ὄντος
τοῦ πάντος], and when the creatures had been created in it, this god
removed his own head [τοῦτον τὸν θεὸν ἀφελεῖν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κεφαλήν],
and the other gods mixed the flowing blood with the earth, and they
formed humans; for this reason they are rational and have a share of
divine thought [φρονήσεως θείας].
27. Cf. Burstein (1978) 14 n.10.
Bel, whom they call “Zeus,” having split the darkness in half [μέσον
τεμόντα τὸ σκότος], made a place for the earth and heaven apart from
each other, and he ordered the cosmos [διατάξαι τὸν κόσμον]. The crea-
tures, having not endured the force of the light, perished [τὰ δὲ ζῷα οὐκ
ἐνεγκόντα τὴν τοῦ φωτὸς δύναμιν φθαρῆναι]. And Bel, seeing the land
deserted and not bearing fruit, ordered one of the gods to remove his
own head and to mix the earth with the blood flowing out and to form
humans and beasts capable of bearing the air [θηρία τὰ δυνάμενα τὸν
ἀέρα φέρειν]. And Bel produced stars and sun and moon and the five
planets. Alexander Polyhistor says that Berossus was stating these things
in his first book. (Syncellus Chron. 29–30 M)
Several problems are connected to Berossus’ narrative. As found in Syncellus,

Oannes’ version of the epic of Creation is much more abbreviated when com-
pared to the Enuma Elish. Furthermore, it has been argued that the creation
story Oannes tells owes much to nontextual sources—particularly to images of
monsters and mythical beasts that decorated Mesopotamian buildings as stat-
ues and friezes, as well as cylinder seals. It also seems to contain elements that
suggest considerable later contamination with information deriving from Jew-
ish tradition regarding the world’s creation (i.e., Genesis). Of paramount im-
portance is the problematic comment within the narrative itself that maintains
it is “an account of nature [that] has been told allegorically.” Finally, what ap-
pears to be a clear doublet in Oannes’ account relates the creation of humanity
out of the blood flowing from the severed head of a deity and contains details
that are at variance with the Enuma Elish.
In the Enuma Elish, the story of the origin of the gods takes up a consid-
erable amount of the narrative, with the different divine generations coming
into being, starting with the primordial pair of Apsu and Tiamat (Tablet 1.3–4,
ANET3 61). This material is completely absent from Berossus’ account: either
he left it out of his account entirely, or Polyhistor removed this element in his
desire to focus on the conflict of Marduk and Tiamat.28 Relatedly, while the
army that Tiamat creates to fight the younger gods is indeed similarly mon-
strous in the Enuma Elish (Tablet 1.132–45, ANET3 62), the list of its compo-
nents is not at all as extensive and detailed as that we find in Berossus. Many
have argued that this expansion was perhaps due to Berossus’ interest in the
images of monsters and demons familiar from statuary, reliefs, and seals.29 The
28. Cf. Schnabel (1923) 138; Heidel (1951) 78.

29. Note esp. Frankfort (1939) 199: “we find in Berossos an enumeration of those who lived
when all was darkness and water, which far exceeds the lists of the Epic of Creation and includes all
the figures familiar from seals.” See also Burstein (1978) 14 n.12.
tip-off that this body of visual material was Berossus’ source for the elaboration
of the monsters who served Tiamat is taken to be the remark in the narrative
itself concluding the list of primordial beasts and monsters: “And images of
these creatures are set up in the temple of Bel” (ὧν καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας ἐν τῷ τοῦ
Βήλου ναῷ ἀνακεῖσθαι)—that is, one could actually see the creatures described
by Berossus’ Oannes as images in the Esagila at Babylon.30 Significantly, in the
Enuma Elish, Marduk makes statues of the eleven minions of Tiamat so that
the events of the theomachy may not be forgotten (Tablet 5.74–75, ANET3 502).
Schnabel argued some time ago that several details in Oannes’ creation ac-
count are probably interpolations derived ultimately from a later reader of Ber-
ossus who knew the Jewish story contained in Genesis.31 Of particular concern
is the description of conditions at the very beginning of the world as “a time
in which the totality was darkness and water” (τὸ πᾶν σκότος καὶ ὕδωρ εἶναι):
while darkness is a key element in Genesis,32 it is not so in the Enuma Elish.
Hence it is tempting to conclude that Berossus was not responsible for this de-
tail and others like it. It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Syncellus
sees precisely this section of Oannes’ account of Creation as plagiarized from
Hebrew scripture (Syncellus Chron. 32 M).
While similarly suggestive of a nonnative cultural view—this time Greek—
the remark that Oannes’ story was to be interpreted “allegorically” has been
assumed to be a genuine feature of Berossus’ text.33 It ought to be observed
here that the word allegoria and related terms occur only beginning in the first
century BC in Stoic writings, so that Berossus must have written something
else that was later interpreted to mean “allegorically”;34 nonetheless, the process
of literary analysis we know by that term obviously predated this and seems
to have been known to Berossus, even if he did not use this exact term in his
own text. It is important also to note that the observation is found in a context
dominated by especially spectacular and gruesome details—namely, right after
Bel’s splitting of Tiamat in half and just before the (self?-)decapitation of Bel
that leads to the creation of humanity—as though to explain or even apologize
for them:
30. Schnabel (1923) 177: “für die Schilderung dieser Ungeheuer gibt uns Berossos seine Quelle
an: ‘ὧν (scil. τούτων τῶν ζώων der geschilderten Ungeheuer) καὶ τὰς εἰκόνας ἐν τῷ τοῦ Βήλου
ναῷ ἀνακεῖσθαι’. Also im Tempel des Marduk-Bel in Babylon, Esagila, befanden sich Abbildungen
solcher Ungeheuer.” See also Heidel (1951) 79.
31. See Schnabel (1923) 156 for the passage in question; more generally, 155–62. See also Burst-
ein (1978) 14 n.11; Adler and Tuffin (2002) 42 n.1; de Breucker (2010) ad F 1b, (2012) 60 and n.23.
32. Cf. Genesis 1:1–2: “In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth, the
earth was without form and void, with darkness over the face of the abyss.”
33. Cf. Schnabel (1923) 178; Heidel (1951) 79; Burstein (1978) 31.
34. See, e.g., Whitman (1987) 44. Cf. LSJ sv.
Bel, having risen up, split the woman in half, and half of her he made into
earth, and the other half sky, and he destroyed [ἀφανίσαι] the creatures
in her. He says that this account of nature has been told allegorically
[ἀλληγορικῶς δέ φησι τοῦτο πεφυσιολογῆσθαι]. For with everything
being water [ὑγροῦ γὰρ ὄντος τοῦ πάντος], and when the creatures had
been created in it, this god removed his own head [τοῦτον τὸν θεὸν
ἀφελεῖν τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κεφαλήν], and the other gods mixed the flowing
blood with the earth, and they formed humans. (Syncellus Chron. 30 M)
To be sure, the splitting of Tiamat into two parts, from which the world and the
heavens are made, is also to be found in the Enuma Elish and so is to be expected
in any Babylonian account of Creation. Harder to explain on these grounds,
though, is the origin of humanity from the blood of the severed head of a divinity
mixed with the dirt of the earth: in the Enuma Elish, humanity is created from the
blood of Tiamat’s lieutenant, Kingu, not her adversary Marduk (or, in the dou-
blet, an unnamed god: see below), and it is the blood from Kingu’s severed blood
vessels (not his head), unmixed with any other substance (Tablet 6.32–33, ANET3
68).35 Moreover, Bel’s removal of his own head is a difficult detail to explain. To
be sure, the idea of the “embodied world” was commonplace in the ancient Near
East, with the body and the world thought of as “homologies” and with an “an-
cestral corpse” undergoing dismemberment and transformation as an etiological
explanation for the ordering of the cosmos (indeed, as in the case of Tiamat).36
Furthermore, the making sacred of and ritual focus on the head were also found
in Mesopotamia, where the use of decapitated enemy heads as trophies and indi-
ces of the extent of victory were a typical feature of Assyrian warfare.37 But self-
decapitation is extremely rare, if not almost unparalleled, in world mythology.38
It could be that our text is corrupt or incorrectly transmitted and that Berossus
wrote no such thing, that Bel decapitated some other divine figure and not him-
self.39 Alternatively, perhaps, in Berossus’ mind, Bel took on not just the role of
35. Cf. Kvanvig (2011) 49.

36. See, e.g., Dickson (2005), relying on the work of Lincoln—esp. (1986) and (1991)—whose
scholarship focuses on Indo-European societies. Also important is van Dijk (1964) esp. 5–6.
37. Bonatz (2005).
38. Harle (1963) discusses a South Indian image from the first quarter of the tenth century AD
of a devotee of the goddess Durga who seems about to decapitate himself: note esp. Harle (1963)
240–41 and fig. 4. In Japanese Kabuki theater, seppuku (self-disembowelment) is often depicted,
and sometimes a special executioner decapitates the character before he dies from his self-inflicted
wound, but this is different, of course: see Leiter (1969) 148. I cannot help but note also the predica-
ment of the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado.
39. Cf. Heidel (1951) 78 n.88. Heidel wants to understand Berossus’ text to mean that Bel
decapitates Kingu; but he does not account for the Greek ἑαυτοῦ, “his own”: see Burstein (1978) 15
n.16. See also de Breucker (2010) ad F 1b.
creator god but the very stuff (in part) of human creation, analogous to Kumarbi
in the Hittite Song of Kumarbi or Zagreus in Orphic doctrine (if correct)—male
gods that serve as the producers or even the material of new life through an act of
violence.40 It is important to note in this connection that recently Stephanie Dal-
ley has adduced a fragment from an Assyrian cultic calendar that in fact refers to
Bel cutting off his own head, and another from the same text in which a “criminal
god” is beheaded on the orders of Anu.41 Bel’s self-decapitation in Berossus may
not be an impossibility at all.
But if the spectacular and gruesome details of the creation story are to be
expected in whatever form they may originally have had in the Babyloniaca, it
is important to observe that Berossus still feels the need to defend them as “an
accounting of nature that has been told allegorically.” It has long been argued
that Berossus’ words were meant as a “concession” to the Greek reader,42 sug-
gesting that he was worried that the graphic destruction of Tiamat and self-
destruction of Marduk would have scandalized the Greek who picked up his
text. This difficult matter needs to be sorted out. First, the same scholars who
see a concession to the Greek reader in Berossus’ remark are also quick to point
out that allegory was not the sole possession of the Greeks; indeed, while Tia-
mat is clearly sometimes presented in the Enuma Elish as corporeal and thus
able to be subdued, killed, and split in half by Marduk, she is also primordial
salt water, mixing with the sweet water that is her consort, Apsu (Tablet 1.5,
ANET3 61), and “contain[ing] all the elements of which heaven and earth were
afterward made.”43
Furthermore, the notion that the Greeks would have been scandalized by
Berossus’ account of Creation delivered from the mouth of Oannes assumes
that they did not possess texts like it or the Enuma Elish, and this is manifestly
wrong. There was, of course, Hesiod’s Theogony, with its similar tales of divine
and cosmic strife, as well as important passages in Homer that were similar in
spirit (e.g., the tale of Hephaestus battling the river Scamander, at Il. 21.342–82).
40. Cf. Dornseiff (1937) 246–47 with n.4 = (1959) 54–56 and n.45. On Kumarbi, see West
(1997) 278–79. It is matter of current debate whether Zagreus and the creation of humanity out
of his and the Titans’ remains is authentic Orphic doctrine. For the view that accepts the myth as
authentic, see, most recently, Bernabé (2002), (2003), and (2008). Note also esp. Gagné (2007) 17–
18 and n.56; Betegh (2004) 143 and n.56. For the view that sees it as inauthentic, see esp. Edmonds
(1999); Brisson (2002).
41. Dalley (2013) 170–71.
42. Schnabel (1923) 178: “Gewiss ist dieser Satz eine Konzession an die grieschichen Leser”;
Heidel (1951) 79: “Here Berossus is obviously making a concession to certain Greek philosophers
in order to render Babylonian speculation more acceptable to them”; cf. Burstein (1978) 15 n.16,
31.
43. Heidel (1951) 79 and n.92, following Schnabel (1923) 178. See also Burstein (1978) 15 n.16.
Cf. Rochberg (2010) 341.
There were other stories, too, that are not well preserved, such as Pherecydes
of Syrus’ accounts of Zas, Chronos, and Chthonie and of the conflict of Kronos
and Ophioneus.44 But leaving aside the literary parallels for the conflict of Mar-
duk and Tiamat from the Greek world, we need also to take up the related issue
of Greek allegorical interpretation—allegedly, this sort of analysis would have
made this portion of Berossus’ narrative more palatable to Greek tastes. This as-
sumption prompts several questions: what was allegorical interpretation for the
Greeks, when did it begin, how current was it when Berossus wrote, and how
are we to understand the meaning of the crucial sentence? Specifically, who
is performing the allegory—Berossus, Oannes, or even Alexander Polyhistor?
Let us take another, closer look at the sentence in question: “He says that
this account of nature has been told allegorically” (ἀλληγορικῶς δέ φησι τοῦτο
πεφυσιολογῆσθαι). First, it is important to see that “he says” (φησι) is quite re-
mote from any expressed subject, that ἀλληγορικῶς can be understood with ei-
ther φησι or πεφυσιολογῆσθαι, and that the syntax of the entire phrase is some-
what strained: τοῦτο must be the subject of the infinitive πεφυσιολογῆσθαι but
has no clear referent, necessitating the translation I have given (“this [account]
of nature has been given”). Note, too, that the infinitive πεφυσιολογῆσθαι is
perfect (a point that is lost in all other translations I have consulted), suggest-
ing that the account was made at a some point in the past and has endured to
the imagined present of the voice of the narrator, a scenario that fits best with
understanding the subject of φησι to be Berossus commenting on the narrative
delivered by Oannes: “he [i.e., Berossus] says that this account of nature has
been made [by Oannes] allegorically.” In support of this interpretation are the
words of Syncellus on precisely this same text: Syncellus believes that Berossus
is speaking through Oannes, and there is a similar confusion resulting from the
absence of a distinguishing pronoun (Syncellus Chron. 32 M).45
The LSJ defines the verb φυσιολογέω as follows: to “discourse on nature, in-
vestigate natural causes and phenomena.”46 In interpretative practice, the term
φυσιολογέω and allied expressions (e.g., λόγος φυσικός) were almost always
connected to allegorical explanations.47 A “physical” explanation often con-
cerned how a given myth could be seen to be an accounting, in some way, of
the natural world: for example, according to Aristotle or, more probably, the
Stoics, Helios’ cattle in the Odyssey were a reference to the days of the lunar year
44. Schibli (1990) esp. 169–71, FF 78–80 (the conflict of Kronos and Ophioneus).
45. Note Adler and Tuffin (2002) 41 and n.3.
46. LSJ s.v.
47. Munck (1933) 88–93; Pépin (1987) 20–24; Most (1987) 6–9. Cf. Radice (2007) xxiii; Porter
(2002) 176–80.
(Arist. Apor. Hom. F 175 Rose3).48 The term has been shown by Glenn Most to
have two distinct applications in the criticism of literature in antiquity: (1) to
“designate the activity of the interpreter” of a text and (2) when “the interpreter
applies these words, not to his own activity, but to the alleged activity of the
poet.”49 In the first case, the interpreter of an ancient text is arguing on his
own authority that a passage requires that an external, natural-philosophical
interpretation be applied to it in order for it to be properly understood, whereas
in the second, the interpreter is maintaining that this interpretation has been
somehow written into the text itself by the original author. It is clear that Most
believes our passage to be an example of the second type:50 Berossus is assert-
ing that Oannes told his tale of the conflict of Marduk and Tiamat and of Cre-
ation with the intention that it be understood allegorically, as an accounting of
the natural world, and that Oannes’ story, with its encoded interpretation, has
survived to Berossus’ own time. It must be admitted that there is also the pos-
sibility that neither of the cosmological narratives that survive from Berossus
is in fact the historian’s allegorical exegesis of the creation story and that this
has been lost.51 My own view is that Berossus, seeing the allegory latent in the
version of the Babylonian creation epic that Oannes tells, felt that he had to
articulate and even identify this interpretative approach.
The beginning of allegorical exegesis is datable in the Greek world to the
late sixth century BC and the work of Theagenes of Rhegium (DK 8 A 1), who
interpreted the combat of the gods in Iliad 20 as the conflict of elements (DK
8 A 2).52 I hasten to add that the earliest examples of this type of analysis are
invariably of theomachies or conflicts of the gods such as we see in Berossus.53
Closer in time to Berossus, Aristotle’s Homeric Questions provided “solutions”
to several “unreasonable statements” or “paradoxes” in Homer by recourse to
allegorical and “physical” interpretation.54 While some of the allegorical solu-
tions of problematic Homeric passages attributed to Aristotle in this work are
probably the products of later, Stoic thought, others clearly are genuine read-
ings of Aristotle himself.55 It could be argued that almost exactly contemporary
48. Cf. Niehoff (2011) 144 n.39. On the attribution of the interpretation, see below, n.55.
49. Most (1987) 7–8. See also Long (1992) = (1996) 58–84 on allegory; Long sees basically
the same two meanings but labels the distinction “intentionalist” vs. “anthropological.” Cf. Feeney
(1991) 32–33.
50. Most (1987) 8 n.47. Note also de Breucker (2010) ad F 1b, who is uncertain if the allegory
is genuinely Berossus’, but who is supportive of the idea.
51. This is the position of Burstein (1978) 15 n.16.
52. Pfeiffer (1968) 9–11; Schibli (1990) 99 n.54; Feeney (1991) 10–11.
53. Pfeiffer (1968) 10; Schibli (1990) 99–100 n.54.
54. See esp. Lamberton (1992) xii–xv; Brisson (2004) 29–40; Niehoff (2011) 143–44. Cf. Radice
(2007) xxi–xxii.
55. See Lamberton (1992) xiii–xiv and n.21 on F 175 Rose3, considering the passage giving
with Berossus (late fourth to early third centuries BC), the author of the Der-
veni papyrus was attempting an interpretation of cosmogonic literature that
was not that different from the characterization of Oannes’ efforts in Beros-
sus.56 By the time of Aristarchus (c. 216–144 BC), the allegorical reading of
epic had become so widespread that this great Homeric scholar and head of the
Library at Alexandria felt he had to condemn such interpretations.57
Assuming, for the moment, that the Greek practice of allegory was indeed
widespread in Berossus’ day and, furthermore, that he knew of this practice,
we still encounter a major difficulty, to my thinking, if we explain Berossus’
employment of that practice at this point in his Babyloniaca as an attempt to
accommodate the rationalist tastes of putative Greek readers: the description
of Oannes himself, who is alleged by Berossus to have delivered the account
of Creation. How much of a concession to the Greek reader would the admis-
sion that Oannes presented his story of Marduk’s murder of Tiamat only as “an
allegorical account of nature” have been, when the creature who told the tale
was himself a fish-man sage not that different in appearance from the hideous
hybrid creatures he spoke of? While it is true that the Greeks also possessed
man-animal hybrids,58 even wise ones such as Chiron the centaur who educates
heroes, they do not play such a central role in the foundation myths of Greek
culture and are moreover mixtures of land creatures and humans. Instead, as in
Hesiod’s Theogony, when we do encounter entities that are part reptile/fish and
part anthropomorphic, they are awful monsters of chaos (notably Typhaon/
Typhoeus), not culture heroes. But as I have already discussed above (p. 75 and
n.86), the fish-man sage was a stock figure of scholarly authority and wisdom
in Babylonia, and Berossus clearly envisioned Oannes in this way—indeed, it
would have been strange to think of him otherwise. Berossus could not explain
away Oannes’ scales, nor did he want to. In fact, he lavishes quite a bit detail on
him, giving us an exact description of his remarkable hybrid body. Clearly Bab-
ylonian myth had room for both a positive and negative view of such figures:
sages, but also the terrible creatures of Tiamat who are precisely the forebears of
Hesiod’s Typhoeus and the monstrous offspring of Phorkys and Keto.59
But Berossus did want to make clear to his Greek reader that the events of
the traditional creation story really happened in historical time (if not in the
“first” year). In this way, allegorical physiologia proved useful, enabling him to
the number of the cattle of the Sun (Od. 12.129) to be probably Stoic; but see xiv–xv for authentic
readings.
56. Betegh (2004) 56–59 (date), ch. 4 (interpretation). See also Obbink (2003).
57. Feeney (1991) 32, 37–38.
58. Cf. Tuplin (2013) 186.
59. West (1966) 243-44 ad Hes. Th. 270-336 and 379-80 ad 820-80; West (1997) 300–304.
express the truth that Schnabel and others saw some time ago,60 that an al-
legorical analysis already built into the creation account made it possible for
Babylonian scholars to render it as a “real” story of cosmic origins and not
just a “myth.”61 In other words, allegorical physiologia furthered the process
of historicization for Berossus. Framed by the larger story of Oannes’ civiliz-
ing mission and given unimpeachable credentials as to its truth by being de-
livered by this fish-man sage who spoke allegorically, the Babylonian creation
story was written by Berossus into human history.62 Note that the two forms of
authentication for his account are both centered on Oannes but speak to two
different audiences: Oannes identification as fish-man was required by Babylo-
nian scholarly practice, but characterizing his efforts as allegorical physiologia
helped his Greek readers understand the account in the way Berossus believed
Oannes meant it to be understood. The invitation to view the story of Creation
as implicitly allegorical created both a Babylonian and Hellenic narrative tex-
ture. In a way, this somewhat ambivalent attitude toward Greek interpretative
procedure is found in Philo of Byblos and the difficulties we can see in his
text regarding the question of Euhemerism: while he criticizes the approach
head-on, his own text betrays strong euhemeristic tendencies, as we have seen
(above, pp. 130–33).
It is vital, at this point, to take up the fragment of Eudemus of Rhodes pre-
served in the work of the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius from the fifth
and sixth centuries AD.63 Eudemus, a student of Aristotle and a first-generation
member of the Peripatos, flourished in the last quarter of the fourth century.64
According to Damascius, Eudemus wrote:
Of the barbarians, the Babylonians seem, on the one hand, to have

passed by in silence the single foundation of all [τὴν μίαν τῶν ὅλων
ἀρχήν], but rather have two,65 Tauthe and Apason, making Apason con-
sort of Tauthe and calling this one [i.e., Tauthe] mother of the gods,
from whom [pl.] was born an only begotten child, Moümis, being pro-
duced, I believe, as the noetic cosmos [i.e., of the mind, not corporeal]66
from the two foundations. From the same pair proceeded another gen-
61. Cf. Veyne (1988) 59: “Criticizing myths did not mean proving they were false but rediscov-
ering their truthful basis.”
62. Cf. Clarke (1999) 178.
63. Dalley and Reyes (1998) 110–11; Dalley (1998c) 164. Note also Strömberg (1946).
64. Wehrli (1968b) 652–53.
65. This concern with a single, primordial principle versus a dual one springs from Damascius’
Neoplatonic doctrine: see Strömberg (1946) 183 n.1.
66. Cf. Philo Quaes. in Gen. IV F 8a (Marcus): ὁ ἀσώματος καὶ νοητὸς κόσμος.
eration, Daches and Dachos, then a third from the same, Kissare and
Assoros, from whom were born three, Anos, Illinos, and Aos. Of Aos
and Dauke was born a son, Belus, who they say is demiourgos. (Eudemus
F 150 Wehrli = Damascius Princ. I.321–22 Ruelle, Westerink-Combès
III.165)67
It has long been recognized that the underlying text for Eudemus was a ver-
sion of the Enuma Elish, no doubt in the form of a translation.68 The fidelity of
Eudemus’ generational accounting of the Babylonian gods is truly striking.69
Tauthe is Tiamat; Apason, Apsu; Moümis, Mummu. Dache and Dachos are
Lahmu and Lahamu, and Kissare and Assoros are Kishar and Anshar; Anos is
Anu; Illinos, Enlil; and Aos, Ea.
This treatment of the Babylonian creation account is important for our un-
derstanding of Berossus in two ways. First, it helps explain one of the obscuri-
ties in Berossus’ text, namely, Tiamat’s name: “. . . ‘Homoroka’. This name is
in Chaldaean ‘Thalatth’, and translated in Greek ‘Thalassa’, and has the same
value as Selene.” “Thalatth” has doubtless been assimilated to Greek “Thalassa,”
with which it is explicitly linked in the text of Syncellus.70 The creation story
of Damascius/Eudemus points us toward what may have originally stood in
Berossus’ version. Inasmuch as Damascius/Eudemus has “Tauthe,” it is tempt-
ing to reconstruct the name in Berossus’ text as “Thamte” < Akkad. tamtu (a
title of Tiamat, “the sea”) or, alternatively, “Tauthe” or “Tauathe.”71 “Homoroka”
must be emended to “Omorka,” as Scaliger recognized as long ago as 1606:72 the
numeric values of the letters of both “Omorka” and “Selene” in Greek add up to
301.73 The exact meaning of “Omorka” is unclear, but it is likely to be another
attempt to render an Akkadian title of Tiamat.74
Second and more important, the passage of Eudemus from Damascius
suggests two more general points of major significance regarding Berossus’
67. See Betegh (2002). Also now Haubold (2013) 149–50.

68. E.g., Heidel (1951) 76. Note also Westerink and Combès (1986/1991) 3.234–35; West
(1994) 291; Dalley (1998c) 164; Dalley and Reyes (1998) 110–11; specifically, for translation, Burk-
ert (1992b) 93. See now also George (2003) 1.58; Ahbel-Rappe (2010) 418, 500–502 n.99.
69. Cf. Heidel (1951) 76: “It is indeed remarkable how well this summary agrees with Enuma
Elish; it sounds almost like a passage taken directly out of the Babylonian epic.”
70. Haupt (1918) 306–7; Komoroczy (1973) 132; Burstein (1978) 14 n.15.
71. Burstein (1978) 14 n.15, with discussion of Haupt (1918) and Komoroczy (1973). See also
Burkert (1992b) 93; (2004) 31. Note Wright (1895) 71 n.1, though clearly wrong in places: cf. Haupt
(1918).
72. Haupt (1918) 306 and n.2; Grafton (1983/1993) 2.710 and n.101, citing Freudenthal
(1874/1875) 31. See now also Schironi (2009) 122–23.
73. ο 70 + μ 40 + ο 70 + ρ 100 + κ 20 + α 1 = 301; σ 200 + ε 5 + λ 30+ η 8 + ν 50 + η 8 = 301.
74. Burstein (1978) 14 n.14. See also de Breucker (2010) ad F 1b.
treatment of his nation’s creation legend. It is tempting to view what Berossus

did in isolation, as though the incorporation of the Babylonian Genesis was
an inevitable or even required element in his history—indeed, so it may have
been. But the fact that a prominent member of the Aristotelian Peripatos had
encountered the Enuma Elish and made his own accounting of it a generation
or so before Berossus is of paramount importance and should not be forgot-
ten. It raises the possibility that Berossus knew the creation story of his own
culture to be familiar to the Greeks, at least in learned circles, and felt the need
to correct or at least supplement Eudemus’ text with his own, superior version.
It is again instructive to remember Clearchus’ journey to the further reaches
of the Seleucid domains: another member of the Peripatos with knowledge of
Near Eastern cultures, he brought Greek wisdom to the environs of what is now
Kunduz, Afghanistan.75
More securely, even if we cannot be confident of a direct line of contact
between Eudemus’ text and Berossus,76 the priority of Eudemus’ text provides
a context for Berossus’ own engagement in the allegorical staging of the cre-
ation story: it does not now seem so far fetched, given that Eudemus’ version
predated his own by as many as fifty years.77 As we have seen, allegoresis was
pioneered by Aristotle and his school, especially in the area of divine combat
stories. Simply put, Eudemus’ version of the Babylonian creation story sug-
gests fairly robust contact between learned Greeks and Babylonians around
the time Berossus was working on the Babyloniaca. An accurate translation
of the Enuma Elish into Greek implies both hellenophone Babylonian priests
and Greeks receptive to the wisdom, all about fifty years before the completion
of Berossus’ history. It has been very credibly suggested that the translation
was even made for “school use” in the Peripatos, “a systematic or allegorical
discussion” aimed perhaps at presenting “a synoptical collection of the genea-
logical narratives of the ‘theologians’.”78 Hecataeus of Abdera, who was singled
out by Murray as perhaps an inspiration for Berossus in other ways,79 is alleged
to have approached Egyptian prehistory in the very same spirit that we see in
evidence in Berossus’ handling of Oannes’ recitation: Hecataeus maintains that
the Egyptians provide “physical explanations” in their account of the cosmos
(FGrH 264 F 1 = D.L. 1.11: φυσιολογεῖν). I note, too, just as a sidenote, that
75. See above, pp. xxvii–xxviii.

76. Cf. Burstein (1978) 30 n.132.
77. Cf. Betegh (2002) 345 for our passage; though Betegh treats the allegory as being, in the
first instance, Damascius’, he does end up suggesting that the seeds for allegorical interpretation
were already to be found in Eudemus (see esp. 353–55).
78. Betegh (2002) 354–55.
79. Murray (1970) 166–67; (1972) 208–9.
one of the words used in Syncellus/Berossus for the generation of monsters is

ζωογονηθῆναι, a term that, according to LSJ, is first and best attested in Aristo-
tle and Theophrastus.80
It is important to evaluate also the odd doublet at the end of Berossus’ cre-
ation story. Several warning flags should alert us to problems. Bel is glossed
as “the one whom they call ‘Zeus’,” even though his name is used three times
before without explanation. The same actions in the conflict with Tiamat and
the formation of humans are described, though with the variation that the min-
ions of Tiamat are not killed by Bel but perish because of the light, and the
self-decapitation of Bel is replaced by his request of an unnamed god to do
this, after Bel sees the world deserted and without fruit. The creation of the
heavenly bodies is also mentioned, a detail that is absent in the first treatment
of the destruction of Tiamat. Finally, there is a great deal more abstraction and
philosophical language throughout the doublet. Indeed, this last point is worth
looking at in detail.
Bel splits in half not the “woman” but, rather, “darkness”; he “orders the cos-
mos”; creatures of darkness perish “having not borne the power of the light”;
and Bel forms humans and “beasts that are able to bear the air.” It is very pos-
sible that this more philosophically inspired iteration of the conflict of Bel and
Tiamat and its aftermath is due to the same Jewish perspective in evidence else-
where.81 But one senses that a later, Gnostic interpretation of Berossus’ creation
narrative might also be in play here. A quick glance at the Corpus Hermeti-
cum reveals instantly the importance of the contrast of light and dark and of
emanations from the “wet darkness” of beings that are opposed to the light
(see esp. CH 1, also known as the Poimandres). Babylonian texts were impor-
tant especially to the Gnostic Manicheans and played a part in the formation
of Hermetic writings,82 and Eusebius is, in turn, famous for his opposition to
Gnostics.83 It seems reasonable to imagine that Syncellus has preserved a later,
Gnostic contamination of Berossus in the second version of the destruction of
Tiamat and its aftermath: “And Bel, seeing the land deserted and not bearing
fruit, ordered one of the gods to remove his own head and to mix the earth
with the blood flowing out and to form humans and beasts capable of bearing
the air.” Therefore, though it is tempting to view it as such, it is unlikely that
the statement regarding Bel’s solicitude for the barren earth as the cause for the
creation of humans was genuinely part of Berossus’ account. Were the passage
80. LSJ sv ζωογονέω.

82. Dalley (1998c) 164–70.
83. Rudolph (1983) 275–76.
really Berossus’, one could view Bel-Marduk as a somewhat benevolent ruler,

whose image was becoming so important in the Hellenistic period. Indeed, this
passage would take on a great deal of significance, given that the more standard
view of the creation of humanity in Mesopotamian literature was that it was the
result of the gods’ need for laborers and servants.84 In fact, such is the case in
the Enuma Elish: “Out of his [i.e., Kingu’s] blood they fashioned mankind. He
[i.e., Ea] imposed the service and let free the gods. After Ea, the wise, had cre-
ated mankind, had imposed upon it the service of the gods . . .” (Tablet 6.33–37,
ANET3 68). Drijvers has even gone so far as to argue that Berossus’ Babyloniaca
and the focus on Bel in particular ought to be connected to the interest of the
earliest Seleucid rulers in the cult of Bel and Nebo, the main deity at Borsippa.85
Mention of the model of the benevolent Hellenistic king lurking behind the
image of the strangely kind Bel-Marduk creating humanity, even if probably
not the work of Berossus, helps to prompt a larger point. Why did Berossus
incorporate the creation story into his history? Was it to address contemporary
issues through the images and ideas of the traditional literature of his land?
Why did he go to such lengths to historicize the creation legend by providing
it with the historical frame of Oannes’ presentation of it at the beginning of
human history?
In answering these questions, it is perhaps useful to pose another: what
would the Babyloniaca have looked like at its start without the framing story
of Oannes? Or, to borrow the wording of Roger Schank, “what is the point of
telling a story instead of just saying what we want to say directly?”86 Without
its frame, the divine action of the creation story would have occurred in the
temporal space created by Berossus’ narrative and would have been articulated
in Berossus’ own voice; it would have been part of “history.” Obviously, Beros-
sus did not want this. Without wanting to cast any doubt on Berossus’ own
belief in the essential elements of the Babylonian Genesis, I think it nonetheless
important to observe that the start of the Babyloniaca, after the introductory
material, is technically a quoted narrative—a narrative of a narrative, if you
will. Starting the text this way has several important effects. First, it marks off
sacred time from human time: it is on the authority of Oannes that the events
from before the commencement of human history are told to the first humans.
Second, the first act reported in Berossus’ history is Oannes’ civilizing mis-
sion to earliest humanity, and the most important and detailed element of this
mission is Oannes’ report of the creation story. Focus is thereby brought to
84. Cf. Burstein (1978) 15 n.16.

85. Drijvers (1980) 60–61.
86. Schank (1995) 40, cited in Cohen (2009) 235, from which I take the remark.
issues of acute importance to Berossus, namely, that the remote past was ac-
cessible through texts that were themselves the products of primordial sage fig-
ures endowed with great wisdom. In the beginning, quite literally, was the text.
Written, scholarly wisdom that is also unmistakably Babylonian in origin and
outlook is thus enshrined as the essential foundation of the human past and hu-
man society—a significant claim from a Babylonian priest-historian from the
earliest period of Seleucid rule. It is tempting, in this context, to wonder what
the story of Gilgamesh would have looked like in Berossus’ account, if it was in
fact to be found there, as some scholars have suggested.87
Berossus and “Ps.-Berossus of Cos”: The Need for

Astronomical Narrative in the Babyloniaca
Before concluding the discussion of the surviving narrative from book 1 of the
Babyloniaca, it is important to take up the issue of the presence (or not) of as-
tronomical and astrological wisdom in Berossus’ history. I think it is safe to say
that no other controversy has so dogged the study of Berossus in the modern
era than this: was Berossus responsible for the astronomical and astrological
fragments attributed to him in antiquity, and if so, where did they go in his
Babyloniaca, or were they contained in separate work(s)? I do not wish to go
over well-trodden ground,88 but it is important here to set forth my own view
of the matter and my reasons for holding it and then discuss the implications
of my position for the larger issue of the interpretation of Berossus’ narratives.
I believe that Berossus’ Babyloniaca did contain astronomical material. An-
cient testimony states that this was the case. Furthermore, the incorporation of
matters relating to astronomy and astrology would have been consistent with
other features of the Babyloniaca, with this material most likely being found
in book 1. Ever since the late nineteenth century, scholars have worried about
the authenticity of references both to heavenly phenomena in the fragments
attributed to Berossus and to testimonia by the Roman author Vitruvius sug-
gesting that Berossus settled on the Aegean island of Cos later in life and taught
“Chaldaean” astrology and astronomy there (Vitr. 9.6.2 = T 5a).89 This concern
culminated in Jacoby’s handling of Berossus in his great collection (FGrH). Ja-
87. Cf. George (2003) 1.69. In general, see Haubold (2013) 148.
88. Good summaries of the scholarly debate are Drews (1975) 51–52; Burstein (1978) 31–32
(app. 1); Kuhrt (1987a) 36–44.
89. Schwartz (1897) 316, citing Maass (1892) 226, 327; also Kuhrt (1987a) 37. Note, however,
that Schwartz believes in the authenticity of the astronomical and astrological fragments. See also
Burstein (1978) 31 n.2; Rochberg (2010) 6.
coby posited a “pseudo-Berossus of Cos” (FGrH 680 FF 15–22),90 and his views,
imperfectly articulated because he did not live to provide the commentary to
the fragments, subsequently won considerable acceptance.91 The main reasons
for doubting the authenticity of FF 15–22 are that (1) there are no traces of
Babylonian mathematical astronomy from post-500 BC in the securely attrib-
uted fragments of Berossus’ work;92 (2) instead, there are several mentions of
concepts that seem much more Greek in outlook (e.g., very like cyclical ekpyro-
sis); and (3) the later notoriety of Berossus and his reputation as himself a sage
figure would have served as a magnet, attracting the views of others on astron-
omy and astrology—areas thought to be the preserve of “Chaldaean” experts.
After all, Berossus not only seemed to be one of these but was an exemplar.
According to the elder Pliny, the Athenians set up a statue of Berossus in their
gymnasium “because of his divine predictions” (Pliny NH 7.123 = T 6), and
Pausanias reports that the Hebrew Sibyl “Sabbe” was the daughter of Berossus
and Erymanthe (Paus. 10.12.9 = T 7a).93
There are both particular and more general reasons not to reject all of the
fragments at issue. To start with the particular, it is important, in the first place,
to pay close attention to Josephus’ well-known testimony at Against Apion 1.129
(= T 3): “Berossus is a witness to these references [viz. to the Jews in Babylo-
nian literature], a Chaldaean man by birth but known to those versed in paid-
eia, since on astronomy and on matters studied by the Chaldaeans he himself
brought out his writings for the Greeks.”94 As Gutschmid, Schnabel, and others
have noted, this testimony makes clear that Josephus knew Berossus for work
that combined astronomy and “matters studied by the Chaldaeans”: the title
Babyloniaca or any other suggesting historical writing of some sort in connec-
tion with Berossus is missing in Josephus.95 Josephus also notes that Berossus
treated one postdiluvian sage whom Josephus believes was Abraham; his name
90. The relevant fragments are printed by Jacoby after the “genuine” ones, under the heading
“(Pseudo-) Berossos von Kos.”
91. I am thinking esp. of Kuhrt (1987a) 36–44. See also Brinkman (1968) 227 and n.1433; cf.
35 n.158; de Breucker (2010) ad T 9 and FF 15-22. Lambert (1976) 171 attempts to correct certain
views of Drews (1975) but nonetheless endorses the claim that “no doubt Berossus did write on
this subject [viz. “traditional astronomy cum astrology”], either in his Babyloniaca or elsewhere.”
92. Neugebauer (1963) 529; cf. (1969) 157. Lambert (1976) 171 and n.2 follows Neugebauer.
Cf. Burstein (1978) 16 n.21. For the importance of developments in Mesopotamian astronomy and
astrology after 500 BC, see esp. Britton and Walker (1996) 51–52.
93. See esp. Potter (1994) 75–77, 190–91, for later traditions about Berossus. See also Kuhrt
(1987a) 37; Dalley and Reyes (1998) 113; Lightfoot (2007) 215 n.40.
94. μάρτυς δὲ τούτων Βηρῶσος, ἀνὴρ Χαλδαῖος μὲν τὸ γένος, γνώριμος δὲ τοῖς περὶ παιδείαν
ἀναστρεφομένοις, ἐπειδὴ περί τε ἀστρονομίας καὶ περὶ τῶν παρὰ Χαλδαίοις φιλοσοφουμένων
αὐτὸς εἰς τοὺς Ἕλληνας ἐξήνεγκε τὰς συγγραφάς.
95. Gutschmid (1893) 491; Schnabel (1923) 19–20. Note that Bouché-Leclercq (1899) 37–38
n.2 expressed a similar view. See also Drews (1975) 52; in general, Burstein (1978) 31–32.
aside, this sage figure is clearly identified as “a just and great man and knowl-
edgeable in heavenly matters” (F 6 = Jos. AJ 1.158: δίκαιος ἀνὴρ καὶ μέγας καὶ
τὰ οὐράνια ἔμπειρος). Another fragment of Berossus, albeit late, refers to his
work by the Latin title In Procreatione (F 17)96 in the context of matters that
are clearly astrological—a testimonium that connects nicely with the details
in Berossus’ creation narrative that, after the slaughter of Tiamat, Bel “ordered
the cosmos” and, a little later, as his final creative act, established the stars, sun,
moon, and five planets (Syncellus Chron. 30 M; the authenticity of the fragment
is problematic).97 Seneca also provides a piece of key, though also contested,
evidence. At book 3 of his Natural Questions, he writes,
There are those who think that the Earth also is shaken and uncovers
new river-heads after the soil is removed that pour forth more abun-
dantly as though without restriction. Berossus, who translated Belus,
says that those things happen because of the movement of the stars. In-
deed he is so sure of this that he assigns a time similarly to the Confla-
gration and the Flood. (Sen. Nat. 3.29.1 Hine = F 21)98
Seneca goes on to say that Berossus assigns the Conflagration to the alignment
of the planets in Cancer and assigns the Flood to their alignment in Capricorn.
Seneca concludes with the remark that these constellations are “signs of great
power,” signaling as they do the annual summer and winter solstices (illic sol-
stitium hic bruma conficitur; magnae potentiae signa, quando in ipsa mutatione
anni momenta sunt). Seneca’s evidence is further supported by a remark in Pliny
the Elder, who states quite clearly that Belus was the “inventor of the knowledge
of the stars” (NH 6.121: inventor hic [sc. Belus] fuit sideralis scientiae).
It is best to begin with Seneca’s identification of Berossus: he “who trans-
lated Belus” (qui Belum interpretatus est). What could it mean for Berossus to
have “translated Bel”? Some have even disputed this meaning of interpretatus
est: it is the most common rendering, and the Oxford Latin Dictionary cites this
very passage as an instance where interpretor means “[t]o expound in another
language, translate” (OLD s.v. 6), but some scholars have argued that the mean-
ing of the phrase is “Berossus, the interpreter of Belus,” implying not just trans-
lation but interpretative commentary and gloss as well.99 This further meaning
96. Anon. In Arat. Phaen. Isag. II p. 142 Maass. See, further, Maass (1892) xii; (1898) xxx.
97. Schnabel (1923) 18.
98. quidam existimant terram quoque concuti et dirupto solo nova fluminum capita detegere,
quae amplius ut e pleno profundant<ur>. Berosos, qui Belum interpretatus est, ait ista cursu siderum
fieri. adeo quidem adfirmat ut conflagrationi atque diluuio aeque tempus adsignet.
99. Burstein (1978) 15 and n.19, following Lambert (1976) 171–72. Note also van der
Waerden (1952) 140; Schnabel (1923) 17–18.
of interpretor may indeed be warranted here, but it seems to me that Seneca at

least believed that Berossus translated a work ascribed to Bel-Marduk. Drews
tentatively proposed that Seneca meant something more along the lines of
“[Berossus] who explained the doctrines concerning Belus.”100 Drews appears
to be troubled, rightly, by the fact that Bel-Marduk seems to be thought of in
the passage as an author: could Babylonian deities in Berossus’ time (or any
other) be thought of as authors or authorities on astronomical or other matters?
As Lambert himself noted, citing one of his own earlier articles, the answer is
most emphatically yes.101 In the same catalogue from the library of Ashurba-
nipal that listed works attributed to Oannes-Adapa as speaker (see above, p.
223)—indeed, just before that entry—we find the following titles and ascription
of authorship of them:
[The Exorcists”] Corpus, The Lamentation Priests’ Corpus, When Anu

and Enlil, [If a] Form, Not Completing the Months, Diseased Sinews; [If]
the Utterance [of the Mouth], The King, The Storm (?), whose Aura is He-
roic, Fashioned like An; [These] are by Ea. (K 2248, lines 1–4, Lambert
trans. [1962] 65 [my emphasis])
Clearly, here is a case of a god identified as the author of not one but several
treatises. As regards the interpretation of F 21, it might still be objected that it
was one thing to attribute the authorship of traditional wisdom texts to Ea, a
benevolent god of wisdom and magic,102 but quite another to attribute works to
Bel-Marduk, who was best known as a warrior god and patron of Babylon.103
But Burstein has countered that the concept of Bel-Marduk as an author would
not be strange if one assumes that Berosos, qui Belum interpretatus est means
that Berossus translated and commented on the Enuma Elish, major portions of
which are attributed explicitly to Bel, some of which deal with his establishment
of the heavenly bodies and related matters (Tablet 5.1–10, ANET3 67: the so-
called Great Year), and where he can even be found speaking (Tablet 5.11–24,
ANET3 68 + 501: the moon and its cycles) and is thus, in a sense, the author of
a “text” for Berossus to interpret.104
100. Drews (1975) 51 n.58.

101. Lambert (1976) 172 and n.4, citing (1962) 64, lines 1–4; note also Rochberg (2004) 181.
102. Cf. Rochberg (2004) 181: “the selection of Ea as the ultimate source for the collections
about exorcism, incantations, and celestial divination, is fitting”; Oppenheim (1977) 195.
103. Cf. Lambert (1976) 172: “Thus according to these two Latin authors [sc. Seneca and Pliny]
Marduk was an authority on astronomy and astrology, presumably as an author. This is not perhaps an
impossible idea, since the god Ea is regarded as the author of sundry texts in a Babylonian catalogue,
but Marduk is not the obvious god for astronomy and astrology in any case, and the lack of such an
idea from cuneiform texts does make the testimony of Pliny and Seneca suspect in this matter.”
104. Burstein (1978) 15 nn. 17, 19.
I do not know if I can agree with Burstein in this regard. For one thing, it
is important to remember that the creation account as it is framed in Berossus
is the report of Oannes: “Oannes wrote about Creation and government and
transmitted to humanity the following logos.” If the words are anyone’s here,
as Berossus has staged the scene, they are, in the first instance, actually those
of Oannes. Secondly, while Berossus’ creation story is indeed very close to the
Enuma Elish, even containing the detail that Bel created the heavenly bodies,
we have seen that it is not merely a copy or summary of it. Putting these con-
siderable difficulties to one side, however, I believe that Burstein has put his
finger on a larger interpretation that I will take up shortly below: by giving such
prominence to the Babylonian Genesis at the start of book 1, including astro-
nomical and astrological information, Berossus was participating in a view of
the past that put him squarely within his native scholarly tradition; indeed,
the astronomical material provides a key insight as to Berossus’ basic historio-
graphic view.
We should also not lose sight of another important detail in F 21: that, ac-
cording to Seneca, Berossus assigned great importance to the movement of
the stars—indeed, that he assigned specific dates to the “Conflagration and the
Flood” through their movement. This must mean that Berossus was thought to
have used astronomy and astrological prediction to date these world catastro-
phes and that he presumably also forecasted when they would occur again. I
have already noted elsewhere that in the accepted fragments of his work, Ber-
ossus dated the Flood to 15 Daisios—a dating remarkable in itself because the
Deluge was never given a specific date in Mesopotamian literature and because
the date Berossus employed came from the Macedonian calendar used by the
Seleucids (see above, pp. 77–78). It should be further noted, in this context,
that if Seneca is to be believed, astronomical and astrological lore evidently
had a historical application for Berossus, namely, in the dating of events and,
apparently, in the prediction of their recurrence. This is a very controversial
matter to which I will turn immediately below. It is important to note here
that the fragment from Seneca would also seem to suggest that at least some
of the astronomical material was to be found in connection with the Flood,
which, of course, is the subject of book 2.105 Most scholars who believe that the
Babyloniaca had information relating to astronomy and astrology place that
information in book 1, most logically after the notice of Bel’s establishment of
the heavenly bodies.106
105. Cf. Tubach (1998).

106. Schnabel (1923) 17–19; Burstein (1978) 15 and n.18, objecting to Drews’ placement in
book 3: see Drews (1975) 53. Cf. Samuel (1965) 9; Davila (1995) 206.
F 21 is also central to the claim that Berossus adhered to a doctrine akin

to Stoic cosmic regeneration, or ekpyrosis. As a consequence, opinions divide
sharply on whether Berossus could really have been responsible for the views
that Seneca attributes to him.107 Stoics, from their founder, Zeno of Citium
(335–263 BC), onward, asserted that the “phenomenal world” was not eter-
nal and that, instead, there was a never-ending cycle of worlds that underwent
birth, growth, decay, and destruction, similar to the changes that were every-
where in evidence in nature.108 They thought that the eternal and active prin-
ciple in the universe was pyr technikon (effective fire), and they understood the
world as we know it to be periodically dissolved into fire (ekpyrosis).109 If we
compare this admittedly bald summary of Stoic doctrine with Berossus F 21,
we find a clear overlap but also major differences. According to Seneca, Beros-
sus can envision a time when the end of the world will occur by fire (when the
planets align in Cancer), as well as a time when it will end by a deluge (when
they align in Capricorn)—indeed, remember, in this connection, that Berossus
gives a month date for the Flood. Also relevant is the fact that Berossus used
the term sar to measure very large periods of time (see below), perhaps imply-
ing an interest in measuring large temporal units or cycles (sometimes identi-
fied as the “Great Year”).110 Many scholars have rejected F 21 as authentically
Berossan precisely because the Great Year and regular cosmic destruction do
not otherwise appear in Babylonian material of any date.111 If one does believe
that Berossus wrote something like what appears in F 21, one could say that
Berossus and the Stoics agreed that the world is destroyed periodically. But
for Berossus, this process involves water as well as fire, and the dates for the
Conflagration and Deluge are determined astrologically—both details that are
not found in Stoic views. It seems reasonable to conclude that Berossus did not
propose a Stoic-inspired view of a cyclical cosmos: he nowhere uses the term
ekpyrosis, and he seems to have two mechanisms whereby the earth is periodi-
cally destroyed.
While it seems a good idea to reject the possibility that Berossus was in-
spired by Stoic thought on the subject of world destruction and renewal or
even by one of their notional inspirations for the idea (i.e., Heraclitus), which
107. Cf. Drews (1975); Lambert (1976).

108. Cf. Long (1975/76) 142 = (1996) 44. For Stoic views of cosmic destruction and renewal,
see Long and Sedley (1987) 1.274–79, 2.271–77.
109. Long (1975/76) 138 = (1996) 40–41.
110. See esp. van der Waerden (1952) 140–43. See also, e.g., Cumont (1911/1956) 176–77; Boll
et al. (1931/1966) 200–205.
111. E.g., Lambert (1970) 177; id. (1976) 172–73; Kuhrt (1987a) 39–40, 43; Lightfoot (2007)
116 n.86; de Breucker (2012) 59–60.
is a more credible possibility chronologically speaking,112 we should not pass

by the implications of Berossus’ cyclic views for his history in silence. Simply
put, if authentic, F 21 would transform Berossus’ Babyloniaca from a proto-
apocalyptic work into an apocalyptic one. If implicit in the treatment of past
kings are lessons for the current ones, particularly models for how not to rule
that can be gleaned through becoming familiar with the misdeeds of old rulers
(the proto-apocalyptic element), to imagine an “end-time” that will witness the
destruction of the world to be followed by the establishment of a new one (an
apocalyptic element) clearly has enormous potential for articulating a politi-
cal stance, especially regarding the foreign rule of one’s land and its possible
demise. While surely no Stoic, Berossus could nonetheless have given voice to
strong nationalist sentiment through a cyclical view of the past.
Before turning to the general reasons for accepting the astronomic and astro-
logical fragments of Berossus as authentic, it is important to review quickly some
other details that support this view. We have already had occasion to note that in
the course of Oannes’ rendition of the Babylonian Genesis in book 1, he noted that
Bel’s final act of creation was the establishment of the “stars, sun, moon, and the
five planets” (Syncellus Chron. 30 M lines 19–20) though this may come from the
problematic second creation account.113 We should also not omit notice of three
of the suspect fragments that deal specifically with the waning and waxing of the
moon (FF 18–20). Although skeptical in other regards, Lambert is prepared to
accept these fragments as authentic, on the grounds that their connection to Ber-
ossus “is attested so widely in both Greek and Latin writers.”114 Relatedly, evidence
has come to light that Babylonian lunar theory was known in provincial Egypt in
the Greco-Roman period, raising the distinct possibility that Babylonian astro-
nomical thinking was disseminated much further and perhaps earlier than was
thought.115 Finally, an important detail in Vitruvius’ notice of Berossus has also
received documentary support. An astrologer identified (evidently) by Vitruvius
as a follower(?) of Berossus, one “Antipater Chaldaeus,” originally from Hierapolis
in Syria, has now shown up in an inscription from Thessaly in mainland Greece,
dating from the middle second century BC.116 Certainly, one of the most eminent
modern historians of science accepts Vitruvius’ testimony without cavil.117
112. Cf., in general, Long (1975/76) = (1996) 35–57.

113. ἀποτελέσαι δὲ τὸν Βῆλον καὶ ἄστρα καὶ ἥλιον καὶ σελήνην καὶ τοὺς πέντε πλανήτας. Cf.
Davila (1995) 206.
114. Lambert (1976) 171 n.2.
115. Jones (1997).
116. Bowersock (1983). Cf. Lightfoot (2003) 74 and n.198: “. . . an influential Hierapolitan
astrologer of the second century BC, called a Χαλδαῖος ἀστρονόμος and placed in the tradition of
Berossus of Babylon.” There is a textual difficulty with Vitruvius in the description of Antipater’s
relationship to Berossus, but the identification is certain. See also Woolf (2011) 49.
117. Pingree (1998) 133 and n.107.
It is time to consider the general reasons for accepting the disputed astro-
nomical fragments of Berossus and, thereby, to take up a major issue relating
to the historiographic vision of Berossus, namely, the connection between as-
tronomy/astrology and the use of history to predict future events. Lambert and,
independently, Drews have stressed that the keeping of chronicles at Babylon
should be understood in its proper context. Both argue that the Babylonian
Chronicle Series, while the most inherently historiographic enterprise of the
Babylonian scholarly tradition, was “only the historical part of astronomical
diaries”118—that is, that the practice of historical writing was subordinated to
the practice of astronomy and astrology. As Lambert has put the matter tartly,
“[b]y the ancient Mesopotamians’ standards a list of kings was in the same cat-
egory as a list of eclipses or fish-names.”119
A considerable scholarly debate among students of the Near East has de-
veloped regarding precisely whether we should understand the Babylonian
Chronicle Series fundamentally as an outgrowth of astronomical activity that
happened to have a historiographic orientation or as a historical set of materi-
als that were allied to astronomical texts.120 In the end, answering this question
does not affect my interpretation of Berossus terribly much: it is important,
rather, to see that history and astronomy were inextricably linked in Babylon in
later periods, however the two scholarly pursuits were related to each other in
a notional hierarchy. Hence, I think we can conclude that the scholarly culture
in which Berossus participated as a priest of Bel assumed a fundamental con-
nection between astronomy/astrology and the recording of the past. It would
be surprising, then, had Berossus’ history not contained material relating to
astronomy and astrology.121 Powerful corroboration for my view comes from
Alan Samuel and (more tentatively) Peter Brunt, who have both shown that the
notorious Ephemerides that concern Alexander’s last days ought to be linked
precisely to astronomical records kept at Babylon that also contain historical
material relating to the activities of the king.122 Samuel went the further step
and adduced Berossus as proof that the mixing of astronomical and political
information was found at roughly the same period as the Ephemerides.123
Indeed, it is instructive to note that in the astronomical diaries for the years
118. Lambert (1972) 71; id. (1976); Drews (1975) esp. 48. Cf. Ellis (1989) 162–63. But note
already Finkelstein (1963) 471: “The Mesopotamians . . . never dared to sever completely the course
of human events from what they conceived to be their cosmic matrix.”
119. Lambert (1972) 71.
120. Cf. Gerber (2000) 553–54 and the bibliography cited there; important also is van der Spek
(1993) 94, citing Rochberg-Halton (1991a) and (1991b).
121. Cf. Schnabel (1923) ch. 10.
122. Samuel (1965) 9–12; Brunt (1976/1983) 1.xxv–xxvi. Cf. Green (1991) 562–63 n.85. Lane
Fox (1973) 548–49 rejects this connection.
123. Samuel (1965) 9.
contemporary with Berossus, historical narrative and astronomical recording

could be found cheek by jowl. Thus, for Seleucid Era 38, that is 273 BC, after the
customary notes relating to the position of the planets relative to the constel-
lations, as well as the water level of “the river” (i.e., the Euphrates),124 we find a
very elaborate description of events in Babylonia from the second year of the
First Syrian War, exactly contemporary with Berossus:125
That year, the king left his . . . , his wife, and a famous official in the land
Sardis to strengthen the guard. He went to Transpotamia against the
troops of Egypt that were encamped in Transpotamia, and the troops
of Egypt withdrew before him. Month XII, the twenty fourth day, the
satrap of Babylonia brought out much silver, cloth, goods and utensils
(?) from Babylon and Seleucia, the royal city, and 20 elephants, which
the satrap of Bactria had sent to the king. That month, the general gath-
ered the troops of the king, which were in Babylonia, from beginning to
end, and went to the aid of the king in month I to Transpotamia. That
year, purchases in Babylon and the (other) cities were made with cop-
per coins of Ionia. That year, there was much ekketu-disease in the land.
(Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 1.345 no. 273 Rev. 29–33)
This text is indicative of the sort of historical writing that was being composed
in Berossus’ midst. Sachs and Hunger have characterized as follows the histori-
cal portions of the astronomical diaries, which started to be kept only from the
mid-seventh century BC and continued until 61 BC:
The historical sections of the diaries are of remarkable unevenness:

sometimes they record events of ephemeral importance from the city
of Babylon, in other cases events of political significance. The reason for
this is that the compilers of the diaries lived in Babylon and depended
for their historical remarks on whatever they happened to hear. This is
frequently expressed by the word alteme “I heard.” So it is understand-
able that sacrifices in the temple of Marduk provided by royal officials
are often mentioned because the observers were connected with the
temple. Similarly, they would know about fires in some city quarter or
about the spread of diseases. For events in other parts of the empire they
124. On the regularity of these features in the diaries, cf. Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.24–
26 (planetary phenomena), 1.34–36 (river level).
125. Cf. van der Spek (1993) 97; Van De Mieroop (1999) 33–34.
had to rely on hearsay. Even if we had the diaries complete, historical

information from them would be very Babylon-centered.126
No doubt, there are similarities with Berossus in the astronomical diaries: Bab-
ylon is central in both, and there are, as a consequence, holes and underrepre-
sented areas. What seems to be missing in the historical notices from the astro-
nomical diaries, though, is anything like Berossus’ sense of a larger vision and
purpose for his narrative of the past. For one thing, Berossus’ temporal struc-
ture was different: the scaffolding of the king list permitted him a much larger
sweep of time than what we see in the diaries; indeed, in this regard, Berossus’
history was much nearer the Babylonian Chronicle Series. Furthermore, the
historical portions of the astronomical diaries have the look of afterthoughts;
pride of place goes, not surprisingly, to the reporting of astronomical and natu-
ral phenomena.127 It does not seem that astronomical material was constantly
featured throughout the Babyloniaca; rather, it was reserved for the end of book
1 and may have also made an appearance, either implicitly or explicitly, in the
dating of the Flood.128
At this juncture, it is important to take stock of what I have just been saying
and put it into context. In many ways, the degree to which Berossus incor-
porated astronomical material into the Babyloniaca might perhaps be seen to
bear directly on the question of the Hellenization of his historical writing: the
more there is of it, the more Babylonian it is in orientation; the less there is, the
more Greek its orientation. But this is to put the matter too crudely. One could
just as easily say that no matter the degree of Hellenization that took place in
the choices Berossus made in his composition of the Babyloniaca, attention to
astronomical matters had to be present to some extent. It has been recognized
for some time that the impetus in Babylonian astronomical texts to include
historical details—sometimes to write in a historiographic register—came from
the desire to establish patterns of cause and effect that could be used to predict
126. Sachs and Hunger (1988/1989) 1.36. I have reservations about their interpretation of the
historical notices, on grounds quite separate from my investigation of Berossus. It strikes me as
inherently unlikely that the pose of oral information actually means that the majority of what the
diarists produced was hearsay. Similarly, that there was a focus on the temple activities of Babylon
simply because that was the extent of their own experience also seems incorrect; I believe, rather,
that the temple defined the world for the diarists, thus rendering the report of its activities central
to their understanding of the cosmos; things that happened elsewhere were immaterial.
127. Lehoux (2007) 112 notes that Alexander’s death is reported along with the fact that the
same day was “cloudy”: the “mundane” and “monumental” are reported as if they were of equal
importance.
128. Cf. Burstein (1978) 15 n.18.
future events.129 This orientation strikes me as similar to what Marshall Sahlins

has called “mythopraxis”—to which I will return below.
Thus the recording of events that were thought to be linked to the recur-
rence of an eclipse was of interest to Babylonian scholars not because such
events were important in their own right but because they could be regarded
as the regular epiphenomena of an eclipse, to be grouped with other like phe-
nomena from other eclipses. Court astrologers were already predicting lunar
eclipses in the Neo-Assyrian period, and the so-called Saros period, or lunar
eclipse cycle of eighteen years, was in use at least from the fifth century onward,
possibly as early as the eighth.130 As van der Spek has succinctly put the matter
in relation to historical notices in astronomical diaries, “[t]he reason for the
recording of historical events probably was to present a relationship between
events in the sky and on earth.”131 Certainly, since the Achaemenid period at
least, Babylonian priests, as their understanding of the regularity of astronomi-
cal phenomena improved, were increasingly elaborating apotropaic ritual that
was designed to avert evil that was thought to be connected to recurrent astro-
nomical events such as lunar eclipses.132 In effect, this was history in reverse:
“it seems possible to propose that, should the event [i.e., a lunar eclipse] which
initiates the enactment of an apotropaic ritual become predictable, then the
ritual which is designed to avert the evil of that event may change.”133
It is in light of this situation—the inherently astronomical nature of histori-
cal consciousness in Babylon in the periods predating Berossus and contem-
porary with him—that we need to think about Berossus, the presence of astro-
nomical information in his narrative, and his conception of historical epochs.
If it is true, as Drews, Lambert, and others have suggested, that the historical
consciousness we find embedded in astronomical texts is there not because
the Babylonians were groping toward history writing but because they needed
historical data for their astronomical work, it is vital to recognize Berossus
for the innovation he achieved in his own culture: if to some degree an astro-
nomical presence is to be expected in the Babyloniaca, this should not detract
129. Cf. Lehoux (2007) 113 and n.73, citing Rochberg (2004). I am encouraged by the find-
ings of Steele (2013), who arrives at similar but not identical conclusions to mine regarding the
authenticity of the astronomical fragements. I have not been able to incorporate his observations
completely here. See also Haubold (2013) 146.
130. Rochberg (2004) 138–39; id. (2010) 13–14; Stern (2012) 105. Brinkman (1968) 227 n.1434
argues that the first eighteen-year cycle may have begun with the year 747, the first year of Nabû-
nasir; note also Grayson (1975a) 196.
131. Van der Spek (1993) 94. Note also Bouché-Leclerq (1899) 39. Now see also Liverani
(2011) 45.
132. Beaulieu and Britton (1994) esp. 77–78. Cf. Brown and Linssen (1997).
133. Brown and Linssen (1997) 155, following Beaulieu and Britton (1994).
from the fundamental point that Berossus was first and foremost attempting
to write history, saw the historiographic perspective latent in his astronomical
and chronicle sources, and exploited it on a scale heretofore without parallel in
Babylonian scholarly literature. Indeed, we should not forget what is said in F
16a: if authentic, it suggests that Berossus could not write “real” history until he
came to the period of Nabû-nasir (ruled 747–734 BC), because that king had
destroyed the records and astronomical observations of earlier kings down to
his own reign, precisely so that “history,” built on the record of the movement of
the stars, could only begin with him134—a detail incidentally borne out by the
fact that the Babylonian Chronicle Series begins precisely with Nabû-nasir.135
Of paramount importance to an understanding of Berossus’ historical writ-
ing is the closely related matter of his view of the large-scale divisions of histori-
cal time and the possibility of the recurrence of events. Drews laid the ground-
work for precisely such an approach to Berossus, and Lambert both endorsed
the main outlines of Drews’ characterization of Berossus and objected to im-
portant elements in it.136 Much hinges on what Berossus meant by the term
saros and on whether he had a cyclical view of history—or, indeed, if a cyclical
view of the earth’s history had ever been an accepted Mesopotamian belief.
As Otto Neugebauer demonstrated some time ago, the Sumerian sign sar
means “universe,” among other things, and stands for “3,600” when it is used
as a numeral. The first uses of it in its “special meaning” of “3,600 years” are in
Berossus and, dependent on him, Abydenus and Syncellus. An astronomical
meaning for saros occurs for the first time in the Suda, with a different value
(222 months, or eighteen and a half years), a number that was changed in the
modern era (AD 1691) by the English astronomer Edmond Halley on the basis
of Pliny the Elder (NH 2.56: 223 months) and that became understood falsely
as an authentic standard unit for Babylonian astronomy thereafter.137 It is clear,
however, that Babylonian scholars did not use the term sar for astronomical
measurement; they did employ an eighteen-year eclipse cycle, whereby months
with lunar and solar eclipse possibilities were identified, and they had done so
for quite a while by Berossus’ time, as I have already noted.138
134. Brinkman (1968) 226–27 and nn.1433–36.

135. See above, p. 82 and n.111.
136. In addition to Lambert (1976), see also id. (1970) 177. Cf. Lightfoot (2007) 116 n.86, col-
lecting the relevant bibliography.
137. Neugebauer (1969) 141–42. Cf. Grafton (1983/1993) 2.44; Rochberg (2004) 138 n.57.
Note also Kraeling (1947) 178; Koenen (1994) 20 and n.49.
138. See above, p. 250 and n.130. Note also Aaboe et al. (1991) 5: the oldest period of eclipse
possibilities that they publish is in Text A (BM 36910, 36998, 37036), covering at least the years
490–374 BC (year 31 Darius I to year 30 Artaxerxes II), divided into eighteen-year groups. On the
difficulty of dating the composition of these texts, see Aaboe et al. (1991) 2.
So we are left to ask why Berossus opted for this meaning of sar, especially
considering that there is no evidence for massive epochs or of temporal recur-
rence otherwise from the ancient Near East. I think we are inevitably driven
to the conclusion that Berossus needed sar to mean thirty-six hundred years
and, thus, to have at his disposal a metric for charting vast temporal spaces
and perhaps recurrences, precisely because he wanted to talk about the past
in these ways: although vast, it was nonetheless measurable and, hence, per-
haps even susceptible to recurrence in ways that could be seen once the correct
chronographic tool was to hand. If this is so, we can see Berossus’ creation of a
vast temporal space and a unit to measure it by as a way to give expression to
his understanding of extremely remote time and its connections to the present,
that is, his present. To be sure, we may look at Berossus’ use of sar as a way of
putting early history very far away. But we may also see it in the opposite way:
sar makes the remote past remote but, paradoxically, also brings the remote
past closer to the present, by providing a unit of measurement that can make
comprehensible vast stretches of time while simultaneously compressing them.
Thus Berossus’ unparalleled use of sar permits us to see with great clar-
ity that he was innovative by the standards of his own scholarly culture, but
perhaps in ways that ancients and moderns find not surprising. The Greeks
of his day and before expected the “Chaldaeans” to be expert precisely in the
areas of astronomy and the wisdom connected with it.139 Of course, as we have
already seen, the later reception of Berossus in antiquity certainly styled him as
a wisdom figure associated especially with astrology and the prediction of the
future.140 Indeed, we should not dismiss the possibility that Berossus’ historical
writing contained a good amount of astronomical material precisely because
it was expected—that the astronomical detail in the Babyloniaca would be a
case of David Frankfurter’s “stereotype appropriation,” whereby an indigenous
culture “embrace[s] and act[s] out the stereotypes woven by a colonizing or
otherwise dominant culture.”141 Whatever the case, it would be a mistake to
let cultural logic—casting Berossus as a typical “Chaldaean” sage and casting
his work as necessarily privileging astronomical and astrological knowledge—
dictate our understanding of his work, as we would then risk losing sight of
what makes it distinctive. It could be argued that the innovations of Berossus in
the use of time reckoning and sar in particular were the result of his desire to
139. Dalley and Reyes (1998) 110–11, citing the activity and writing of Eudemus, Callisthenes,
and Eudoxus. Note also Pingree (1998) 132–33 (in the same volume).
140. See above.
141. Frankfurter (1998) 225; note also Dieleman (2005) 254, 287–88. But the point can already
be made out in Bouché-Leclerq (1899) 36.
give priority to the writing of history over astronomical and related matters—
that, in a sense, his “disembedding” of historiography from his native scholarly
tradition consisted at least partly in his repositioning of history ahead of as-
tronomy in his text.
Berossus on the Flood
Mention of vast stretches of time and the unit to measure them by leads natu-
rally to the concept of epoch and the most important epochal marker in Near
Eastern tradition: the Flood. In chapters 2 and 3, I dealt extensively with several
details from Berossus’ account of the Deluge. I will limit myself here to how the
tale works as a narrative, picking up some of the relevant points I made earlier.
As it appears in Syncellus, Berossus’ story of the Flood runs about a page
and a half in the Teubner edition. I shall discuss each significant portion of nar-
rative, beginning at the end of the account and then returning to the start. At its
close, Syncellus reports that the account is “from Alexander Polyhistor, on the
authority of Berossus, the one who fabricated the Chaldaïca” (Syncellus Chron.
32 M: ὡς ἀπὸ Βηρώσσου τοῦ τὰ Χαλδαϊκὰ ψευδηγοροῦντος). Syncellus is less
precise in his attribution in the introduction to the narrative but provides more
details about its original location and chronology:
In the second book [are found] the ten kings of the Chaldaeans and the
extent of their rule, namely, 120 saroi, or 432,000 years, until the cata-
clysm. For the same Alexander [Polyhistor], on the basis of the record of
the Chaldeans [ὡς ἀπὸ τῆς γραφῆς τῶν Χαλδαίων], going farther down
in time from the ninth king, Ardates, to the tenth, called by them “Xi-
southros,” again says: “When Ardates died, his son Xisouthros ruled for
18 saroi. During his reign, a great cataclysm occurred. The narrative has
been recorded as follows [ἀναγεγράφθαι δὲ τὸν λόγον οὕτως].” (Syncel-
lus Chron. 30 M)
Syncellus is very clear: the Flood narrative was found in the second book of the
Babyloniaca and was dated by its occurrence in the reign of the tenth king, Xi-
southros. Strangely, Syncellus does not mention Berossus as Polyhistor’s source,
only “the record of the Chaldaeans,” in contrast to what he says later. But the
phrase is interesting in its own right because of the stress it puts on the docu-
mentary nature of the narrative, “the graphe of the Chaldaeans”—their “writing
up” of the event. The written nature of Berossus’ Flood account is again stressed
in the phrase introducing the tale itself: “the narrative has been recorded
[ἀναγεγράφθαι] as follows.”142 The clearly annalistic nature of Berossus’ report-
ing is evident in the spare framing of the episode: “when Ardates died, his son
Xisouthros ruled for 18 saroi. During his reign, a great cataclysm occurred”
(Syncellus Chron. 30 M: ἐπὶ τούτου μέγαν κατακλυσμὸν γενέσθαι). This is pre-
cisely the formula one finds in the Listenwissenschaft orientation of chronicles
when a significant event needs to be signaled: Manetho uses this same phrase,
as does the Marmor Parium, sources that are contemporary with Berossus.
As for the start of Berossus’ Flood narrative proper, comparing it with other,
like Near Eastern texts reveals some surprises:
Kronos [τὸν Κρόνον] appeared before him [i.e., Xisouthros] in his sleep
[κατὰ τὸν ὕπνον] and was saying that mankind will be destroyed by a
flood on the fifteenth of the month Daisios. He bid him therefore to dig
and bury in the city of the Sun, Sippar, the beginnings, middles, and
ends of all writings. (Syncellus Chron. 30–31 M)
It is vital to consider both what is here and what is not (at least to judge by
the parallel narratives of the Flood). Of great importance is the detail that
“Kronos” appeared to Xisouthros in his sleep. Elsewhere, Berossus normally
uses transliterated Mesopotamian divine names (e.g., Βῆλος and Ὁμόρωκα/
Θαλάτθ), making his choice here of “Kronos” for “Enki/Ea” noteworthy.143 No
doubt, Berossus’ choice was partly due to the simple fact that Kronos, being a
Titan, comes from the intermediary generation between the primordial gods
and Zeus (= Bel);144 significantly, Philo of Byblos later also styled his second-
generation god El as “Kronos” (FGrH 790 F 2 = Euseb. PE 1.10.16), for precisely
the same reasons, though Philo’s choice led to significant elaboration on his
part that exploited the Hesiodic Kronos.145 There is no such embroidering here
in Berossus.
It needs also to be pointed out that in our Mesopotamian parallel texts, the
coming of the Deluge is not the work of a single god. Rather, in the Atrahasis
epic, Enlil is disturbed by the noise of humanity as it multiplies, as are the pri-
meval gods in the creation story of the Enuma Elish (cf. Tablet 1.21–27, ANET3
61);146 Enlil consults the other gods, devises a number of ways to reduce the
142. See Schnabel (1923) 182.

143. In the rationalized summary of the creation story that follows the fuller version, Berossus
refers to “Zeus” and not “Bel.”
144. Cf. Gressmann (1911) 214 n.3.
145. Baumgarten (1981) 180, 189–90.
146. On the theme of “noise and din” in Atrahasis, see Kvanvig (2011) 72–82.
population of the earth, and only as a last measure engineers a flood to wipe out
all humans. The god Enki warns the Flood hero Atrahasis, who then builds his
boat and escapes with his family.147 In Utnapishtim’s summary of the Flood to
the hero Gilgamesh in the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is even clearer that the Flood is
the work of many gods.148 Similarly, in the Sumerian version, it seems the gods
as a group decide to destroy humanity; only later do a few regret this decision
and assist Ziusudra.149 In other words, Near Eastern traditions make the plan-
ning of the Flood the work of many gods, a plan that is then revealed to the
human hero by one or more of the gods acting as rebel figures (cf. Prometheus,
father of Deucalion), and the Flood itself is clearly represented as a punishment
of mankind.150 I should add that, given the story’s connections with elements
from the creation narrative, that the Flood was the necessary precursor to a
“second creation” was clearly a widespread belief, unmistakably present in the
Atrahasis epic, as well as, of course, in the biblical story of the Flood (cf. Gen.
6–8).151
It was suggested some time ago by Kraeling that the deviations from the
basic narrative pattern at the start of Berossus’ Flood story were due to his
wish “to modify the crude polytheism of the original story out of consideration
for enlightened Greek taste. In place of having the gods at cross purposes he
makes the supreme God Kronos the sole divine figure in the drama.”152 Krael-
ing’s value-laden terms (“crude” and “enlightened”) need revising, but his basic
observation remains accurate. Many of the standard details of the myth of the
Flood simply are not present in Berossus’ account: one god, not many, decides
to bring about the Flood; no reason for it is given; and the plan is not betrayed
to the Flood hero by a philanthropic deity or group of deities.153 Given that
elsewhere, in his version of the Babylonian creation story told by Oannes, Ber-
ossus seems to have engaged in a similar sort of allegorizing interpretation of a
traditional Near Eastern myth, it is reasonable to suppose that he approached
the Flood in the same way. But even if we do not want to accept that Berossus
in some way presented an allegorizing narrative of the Flood, it is beyond doubt
that he constructs a much less complicated Flood story. As such, it is fair to ask,
if Berossus has indeed simplified the narrative of the Flood, what has he cho-
147. Lambert and Millard (1969) 5, following the reconstruction of Læssøe (1956).
148. Tablet 11.14, ANET3 93: “. . . when their heart led the great gods to produce the flood.”
149. See the remarks at ANET3 42.
150. Cf. West (1997) 490–93.
151. Cf. Lightfoot (2007) 411.
152. Kraeling (1947) 178.
153. Note already Gressmann (1911) 213: “[d]er Bericht des Berossos . . . weicht von den
Keilschrifttexten in mancher Beziehung ab.”
sen to emphasize? Here there can be no mistake: for Berossus, the story of the
Flood is really the story of the preservation of written knowledge, specifically
at Sippar. Indeed, this is an element that is missing in the traditional Flood nar-
ratives. Berossus has both streamlined his account and added this new feature.
Equally significant is Kronos’ appearance before Xisouthros “in his sleep,”
that is, in a dream. In the Atrahasis epic, it seems that the Flood hero is alerted
to the coming of the Deluge by Enki in a dream; in the Sumerian version, it is
explicitly stated that the hero Ziusudra was not warned in a dream.154 This may
be a matter of some significance, because, as I have noted elsewhere, Beros-
sus seems eager to align his flood account with the Sumerian narrative by his
choice of hero, namely, Xisouthros (Sum. Ziusudra), yet consultation with the
Flood hero in a dream is specifically ruled out in the Sumerian version. It seems
to me that this disjunction can be read in a couple of ways. First, there may be
no importance to it at all: perhaps Berossus either did not catch the apparent
discontinuity or simply did not care. I find this reading hard to believe. Would
an author who is otherwise so scrupulously engaged in building textual traces
to his sources not be aware or not care that he was giving mixed signals, as it
were, that his narrative of the Flood both followed and contradicted the oldest
version? Second and more likely, it is possible that Berossus wanted his hero to
have the Sumerian name but also wanted him to be warned in a dream, despite
the fact that the detail was excluded in the Sumerian version. Furthermore,
it is possible that Berossus, in addition to adhering to the Babylonian tradi-
tion in this matter, also saw the chance to naturalize his text for Greek readers:
dreams conveying divine “messages” are common in the Iliad and Odyssey and
are found in virtually all the later genres of Greek literature.155
Another major issue to note in Berossus’ framing of the Flood is the precise
dating he provides. I have already discussed elsewhere how this is almost en-
tirely without parallel in Near Eastern literature; furthermore, that the dating
is made on the basis of the Seleucid calendar is a matter of great importance.156
It is enough here to consider only what the narrative effect of dating the Flood
precisely might have been. It may seem to us that neither Berossus’ Greco-
Macedonian audience nor his Babylonian scholarly one would have required
or even expected a legendary event to receive so precise a date, that their reac-
154. “Atra-hasis opened his mouth / And addressed his lord, / ‘Teach me the meaning [of the
dream], / [. . .] . . . that I may seek its outcome’” (Lambert and Millard [1969] 89, III.i.11–14). Cf. the
parallel passage from the Sumerian version: “It was not in a dream, coming out and spea[king . . . /
Conjured by heaven and the underworld” (Civil [1969] 143, lines 149–50). This difference is noted
by Burstein (1978) 20 n.51; see also George (2003) 1.519. Lambert (1960) 119 traces the evolution
of how the coming of the Flood was communicated to the Flood hero.
155. West (1997) 185–90. Cf. Nock (1933) 154; Veyne (2010) 55 and n.26.
156. Above, pp. 77–78, 244.
tion may well have been similar to ours when we hear of Archbishop Ussher’s
date for Creation as “the evening before Sunday 23 October 4004 BC.”157 Yet, on
the Greek side, a nearly contemporary text (264/3 BC), the inscription known
as the Marmor Parium (Marble of Paros), dated the flood that occurred during
the life of Deucalion by year (by our reckoning, to “1528/7 BC”: A, lines 6–7;
Jacoby [1904a] 3–4) and dated the fall of Troy even more precisely, to “the eve-
ning of the seventh of Thargelion [an Athenian month], in the year 1209/8, in
the twenty-second year of the reign of Menestheus [a king of Athens]” (A, lines
39–40; Jacoby [1904a] 9–10).158 Duris of Samos and Timaeus of Tauromenium
also provided dates for the fall of Troy, and not too much later, the scholar
Eratosthenes (born c. 285, died 194 BC) established the canonical date for the
fall as “1184/3 BC.”159 In other words, in both public inscriptions and learned
circles in the Greek world at roughly the same time as Berossus, Greeks were
giving precise calendar dates to mythical events.
As I suggested in chapter 2,160 the dating of the Flood to “Daisios 15” places
this quintessentially Near Eastern myth in the Greek past. But we need to be
careful interpreting what this might have meant for Berossus. The Deluge is
also dated by the reign of Xisouthros, so that we have both a calendar date
(Seleucid) and a (rough) year date (Berossus’ king list). Alternatively, if F 21
reflects the real views of Berossus, the Flood was dated in his history because
that was his understanding of world destruction and renewal: they could be
predicted by astrology. At the very least, we can say that the Babylonian date
for the Flood tells us that it happened many years ago—indeed, thousands of
years removed from the present. But it happened also to fall not in Aiaru (the
Babylonian equivalent of Daisios) but in a Seleucid month. I noted above that
Daisios happened to be an especially sacred month for the Macedonians, when
their kings could not take the field (cf. Plut. Alex. 16.2), due probably to the fact
that the month was simply packed with sacred days on which several holidays
were observed. Could this fact have influenced Berossus’ choice of calendar
date—for he clearly was making it up on his own?161 Furthermore, it ought to
be pointed out that Alexander the Great died at the end of Daisios, either to-
ward the evening of the twenty-eighth, according to Plutarch (Alex. 76.9, 75.6),
or, on the twenty-ninth, according to an entry from the Babylonian astronomi-
157. Cf. Brice (1982).

158. Cf. Grafton and Swerdlow (1988) 27.
159. See esp. Feeney (2007) 142–43; Asheri (1983). See also Pfeiffer (1968) 163; Möller (2005);
Kokkinos (2009). For the evidence, see esp. Jacoby (1904a) 146–49.
161. Berossus was surely not guessing on the basis of when in the year the heaviest rains fell:
rainfall amounts are negligible for May/June in modern Iraq.
cal diaries (Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 1.207 no. 322 B Obv. 8).162 The last
days of Alexander formed the subject of the notorious Ephemerides, a body of
texts that, in turn, served as the source for the final illness and death of Alexan-
der in both Plutarch and Arrian.163 As has already been noted above, keeping
track of the “doings of the king” was routine at Babylon, and such specifically
Babylonian records probably formed the backbone of the Ephemerides.164
Might not such an interest in Alexander’s last days, as well as knowledge of
it, also be ascribed, then, to Berossus?165 Indeed, it has recently been suggested
that the origins of the Flood narrative in the ancient Near East can be traced not
to one or a series of actual floods in this (admittedly) flood-prone area but to
the political and social upheaval that characterized the Old Babylonian period
when the story was first composed.166 It would be very significant if a similar
interest in the symbolism of the Flood could be ascribed to Berossus. Perhaps
it could thus be argued that Berossus saw Daisios as the month that witnessed
two profound changes in the world order: in primeval times, the Flood and the
destruction of the antediluvian world; in Berossus’ “modern” times, the death
of Alexander. Both catastrophes left room for the establishment of new and
lasting regimes; but even more important, both events were literally “epochal,”
ushering in new historical eras for Babylon.167 Certainly, Alexander’s date of
birth was coordinated with another event, the burning of the temple of Artemis
at Ephesus (Plut. Alex. 3.5).
I must admit that this is all highly speculative. What can be said with con-
fidence, as I noted above, is that, at the most basic level, giving the legend-
ary Flood a date with a Greco-Macedonian month name puts the event on the
grid of the Greek past. This move by Berossus could be seen as emblematic of
his process of “disembedding” the Babylonian past and making it “historical.”
What better way would there have been to do this than by giving the event a
precise date, something that contemporary Greek scholars were experimenting
with when it came to giving sharper historiographic lines to their own remote
162. Cf. Lehoux (2007) 112.

163. Samuel (1965) 8–12; Brunt (1976/1983) xxiv; Bosworth (1988) 158.
164. Brunt (1976/1983) 1.xxv–vi. I note that Droysen (1833/1952) 1.465 located the start of
Alexander’s final and fatal carousing (the arrival of Medios and the beginning of the heavy drink-
ing) to the evening of 15 Daisios, but his math seems to me to be wrong; the drinking began on the
evening of 16 Daisios. For reconstructions of Alexander’s last days, see Bosworth (1988) 160–61;
Atkinson et al. (2009) 42–43.
165. Indeed, from a different perspective, this is precisely the point of Samuel (1965) 9.
166. Van De Mieroop (2004) 110; note also Chen (2009), who has made a strong case for link-
ing the development of the Flood narrative to the fall of Ur III.
167. In this regard, it is interesting to compare the ending of the Greek Alexander Romance,
where Alexander’s death is treated as similarly epochal and dated by month name (Ps.-Callisth.
3.35.3–4 van Thiel).
past? But once we accept this interpretation, there is a problem that poses con-
siderable difficulties for someone trying to make sense of Berossus’ purposes
in telling the story of the Flood. An allegorizing or rationalizing tendency,
very probably in evidence in Berossus’ stripped-down Flood account, seems
to move us in one direction, namely, toward seeing a Berossus who does not
want to take the story to be literally true, much as he seems to have done with
his allegorizing physikos logos that treated Bel’s slaughter of Tiamat and his self-
decapitation. But if that is the case, what do we make of Berossus’ insistence
on a precise date for the Flood, even in contrast with the scholarly practice of
his culture; does this move not take us back in the direction of seeing a Beros-
sus who wants to anchor the event at a real point in the real past? I think this
is a very significant discontinuity. There is a parallel from Berossus’ version of
the Babylonian Genesis: its more gory and extravagant details are explained
away as allegory in connection with a tale told to us by a sage figure with the
lower body of a fish, the apkallu Oannes. It could well be that the same two
trajectories are “bumping heads” in the Flood narrative as was the case in his
creation account: he wants to historicize the Deluge and locate it in time—to
disembed its historical meaning—but he must simultaneously lend authority
to his version of this central and epochal event by telling it in such a way that
shows it to be still true and intelligible within the tradition of his own scholarly
practice. Seen in this way, the tendency to simplify or even allegorize is, in fact,
attributable to Berossus’ Babylonian perspective. Recall that in connection with
his creation story, while the vocabulary he used to explain it was to be traced
to current Greek scholarship, it has long been recognized that an allegorical or
rationalizing tendency was already built into many Near Eastern narratives.
It is essential to follow up on the idea of Berossus’ authorization of his Flood
narrative and, in this connection, to return to the issue of what is stressed
in Berossus’ account of the great “cataclysm,” given that so much else seems
stripped away from the “standard” narrative. As I already observed above, if
there has been a corresponding expansion or, rather, an insertion of a new topic
by Berossus into the story of the Flood, it is not hard to identify: it consists of
the textual origins of the Flood narrative itself and its treatment of the preserva-
tion of antediluvian written knowledge. I have already pointed out that, strictly
speaking, Berossus offers not a record of the Flood in his own voice but a record
of the Flood story that has already been written up (Syncellus Chron. 30 M:
ἀναγεγράφθαι δὲ τὸν λόγον οὕτως). Once launched, his story focuses, first,
on Xisouthros’ divinely inspired mission to gather all writings and bury them
at Sippar and, then, on the eventual fulfillment of this mission by the shad-
owy “friends of Xisouthros” who were also on the ship. Technically, Kronos
instructed Xisouthros “to dig [a hole] and place [in it] in the city of the Sun,
Sippar, the beginnings, middles, and ends of all writings” (Syncellus Chron. 30–
31 M: κελεῦσαι οὖν γραμμάτων πάντων ἀρχὰς καὶ μέσα καὶ τελευτὰς ὀρύξαντα
θεῖναι ἐν πόλει ἡλίου Σισπάροις).168 As we have seen, this phrase is noteworthy
for being a scholarly idiom in Akkadian texts for, essentially, the concept “all”
or “entirety,”169 so at least to a hellenophone Babylonian priest like Berossus,
referring to “the beginnings, middles, and ends of all writings” was redundant.
Berossus was striving to make a point. Indeed, while the phrase has a perfectly
good pedigree in Near Eastern texts, the detail of burying any sort of text, be
they beginnings, middles, or ends, is not in fact found in connection with sto-
ries of the Flood before Berossus.170
One does not have to be especially alert to the scholarly resonance of this
phrase to register the larger point of Berossus’ Flood narrative: it tells the story
not so much of how the human race survived the Flood but of how antediluvian
wisdom escaped destruction and came to form a part of Berossus’ own account.
This theme that Berossus imported into the story of the Deluge is of paramount
importance. To be sure, some of the standard details are there: the ark, its build-
ing and precise measurements; the rescue of animals and birds, as well as hu-
man beings; the test of the birds to verify the receding of the floodwaters, as
well as the help they provide with making landfall; the deification of the Flood
hero. But the idea of saving texts is otherwise absent in Near Eastern Flood sto-
ries, and we do not ordinarily have the participation of nonfamily members, or
“friends” of the hero—just the hero and his kindred. Herein is a point of great
significance that will link the two innovations in Berossus’ narrative.
A. R. George has made a very acute (indeed, vital) observation in connec-
tion with Berossus’ version: “Berossus tells of the Flood hero’s disappearance
from the point of view of those left behind.”171 Indeed, after Xisouthros and his
kin disappear, the voice from heaven instructs that the remaining survivors are
to “make their way back to Babylon” (Syncellus Chron. 31 M: ἐλεύσονται πάλιν
εἰς Βαβυλῶνα), which has not been singled out in the narrative before, and that
it was fated for them (not, by implication, Xisouthros) to retrieve the writings at
Sippar and “distribute” them to humanity (διαδοῦναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις), another
detail that is now mentioned for the first time. I think that Berossus introduces
these other survivors of the Flood precisely to allow for an appreciation and,
hence, valorization of the antediluvian texts by persons within the narrative, as
168. Following Jacoby, who deletes διὰ before γραμμάτων.

169. See above, pp. 70, 140.
170. De Breucker (2010) ad F 4b.
171. George (2003) 1.509 n.223.
well as a plausible explanation for the survival of the texts themselves. In the
language of narratology, the survivors of Berossus’ story of the Flood permit
there to be an “embedded focalization” of the texts buried at Sippar, which are
later rescued and distributed to all humanity.172
As often occurs in cases of embedded focalization, the “internal observers
model the perspectives and reactions of the external audience”:173 there is a
blurring between the internal and external audiences; in a sense, we all become
witnesses to the first crucial stage of the preservation of antediluvian wisdom,
even (vicariously) participants in it, thanks to Berossus’ narrative. Because the
perspective changes in Berossus’ narrative of the Flood, from the omniscient
narrator reporting Xisouthros’ activities to the nameless survivors and then
back again to the narrator, the audience for the story is also invited in to ob-
serve Xisouthros’ disappearance and the subsequent recovery of the texts. The
survivors become the bridge between the legendary time of the Flood and later
human, historical time. In this context, we should recall that one of the pur-
poses behind Berossus’ focus on the written texts saved from the Flood was to
establish for his own work a physical “trace” to antediluvian history. It is really
thanks to the nameless survivors that antediluvian wisdom is both connected
to Babylon and disseminated to the rest of humanity. The very last time we
see the survivors, we are told (yet again) that they “made their way to Baby-
lon and dug up the writings from Sippar, and founding many cities and hav-
ing set up again sacred places, they refounded Babylon” (Syncellus Chron. 32
M: καὶ πόλεις πολλὰς κτίζοντας καὶ ἱερὰ ἀνιδρυσαμένους πάλιν ἐπικτίσαι τὴν
Βαβυλῶνα). The new, postdiluvian and Babylon-centered world and the survi-
vors’ civilizing mission in it are now front and center. Notice also the revealing
slip: Babylon is not an antediluvian city, but it is nonetheless “refounded,” as
though it had existed.174
Mention of Babylon invites a brief look at the problem of locality in the
final section of Berossus’ story of the Flood. The narrative cannot seem to make
up its mind which place is most important, Babylon or Sippar? This tension
plays out in the confusion we see in the activities of the nameless survivors of
the Flood: the divine voice instructs that they are to go back to Babylon and
that it was fated for them to retrieve the antediluvian writings from Sippar and
172. Cf. de Jong (1987) 101.

173. Clay (2011) 3.
174. The Greek is admittedly ambiguous: LSJ defines ἐπικτίζω as “found in addition or anew,”
though neither of its lemmata supports the definition. However here πάλιν seems to disambiguate
the many options that the prefix ἐπι-offers; since the survivors found many other cities first (πόλεις
πολλὰς κτίζοντας), their founding Babylon “in addition” cannot be ruled out, but then, of course,
it would be hard to see how to render πάλιν.
distribute them to humanity. They hear these commands, sacrifice to the gods,
and make their way to Babylon (there is no mention of Sippar being visited
first). Having arrived at Babylon, they dig up the writings at Sippar (though
we are not told how they got there), found cities, set up shrines, and, finally,
refound Babylon (Syncellus Chron. 31–32 M). Although the narrative stresses
that the ark came to rest in Armenia, it does not make clear why the survivors
had to return to Babylon first, presumably bypassing Sippar as they made their
way South; and if they later refound Babylon, what was there when they first
got back? How did they get back to Sippar, having first passed it on their initial
return journey to Babylon?
To be sure, this is a mythical narrative, and we should not be too exacting:
but the internal timeline of actions taken by the survivors either just does not
make sense or, at the very least, is hopelessly lacunose. The answer to the ques-
tion why there is such confusion is not hard to find: as has been stressed at sev-
eral points already, Berossus’ is the only account to mention Sippar.175 So, de-
spite the fact that its presence leads to such confusion, Sippar’s inclusion is not
at all required or even wanted: what, then, could have been Berossus’ purpose?
We have already noted the utility of Sippar for those at Babylon who were
concerned with the remote past. Lambert has drawn our notice to two cases in
particular; indeed, we have already encountered them: Nebuchadnezzar’s claim
of descent from the seventh antediluvian ruler, Enmeduranki, king of Sippar,
and the fixation on Sippar as the storage place for antediluvian texts in Beros-
sus’ Flood narrative. As Lambert explains, “Babylon’s lack of any really remote
antiquity necessitated that origins be sought elsewhere,” and the place to find
them was Sippar. It “had very early traditions and considerable influence in
matters of ideology,”176 as we have seen. Lambert, who assumes that Berossus
was following a Sipparian source for the Flood, furthermore implies that this
favoring of Sippar is remarkable in a figure so late (from his point of view)
in the history of scholarly culture in the ancient Near East.177 But it seems to
me distinctly possible that Berossus simply invented the details linking Sippar
to the events of the Flood, that the emphasis on the “City of the Sun” is testi-
mony not to Sippar as Berossus’ source but to the city as an enduring symbol
of ancient learning conveniently close to Babylon. As Dalley has pointed out,
it is clearly stated in the myth Erra and Ishum (in its known redaction dating
175. Lambert and Millard (1969) 137.

176. Lambert (1967) 127.
177. Lambert (1967) 127: “Although he was priest of Babylon as late as Alexander the Great
he gives a version of the flood which is clearly derived from Sippar, since it is said that all writings
were preserved during the flood by being buried in Sippar. Obviously Babylon had never had a lo-
cal version of the flood story.”
probably to the eighth century BC) that Sippar was spared from destruction in
the Great Flood.178 The detail that Babylon itself is “refounded” after the Flood
reveals the perspective from which Berossus has composed his narrative: for
Berossus, the Flood story is a part of Babylonian wisdom, and its account of the
preservation of knowledge is intimately bound up with the physical reality of
Babylon and its culture of scholarship, in which Berossus was trained.
Perhaps more than any other narrative that survives from the Babyloniaca,
I sense Berossus’ own presence as a scholar in the fabric of the Flood story he is
reporting, and the narrative correspondingly becomes emblematic for me of his
overall task in his history. The wisdom of Babylon, Oannes’ perfectly complete
wisdom as well as subsequent “discoveries” and the rest of antediluvian his-
tory, had to be preserved and spread to later generations and eventually even
other peoples. This was the purpose of Xisouthros’ divine mission, carried out
by the nameless survivors of the Flood. But this central task of preservation
was also the purpose, at least in part, of Berossus’ own history. For Josephus,
Moses and Berossus are equivalent figures who both preserve the tradition of
the Flood (Jos. Ap. 1.130)—though, obviously, one is an ancient figure and the
other is from a much later, historical period, a contemporary of Alexander and
the Seleucids. Yet Josephus treats Berossus as if he were, for him, an ancient
patriarchal authority. That is a revealing detail, because Berossus precisely gives
one the sense of actually reading the ancient sage authority (is it any wonder
that Berossus was later treated as the father of Sabbe?). Those armed with the
scholarly legacy and background of Berossus could make out for themselves
that a physical connection existed between the Sipparian tablets and the Baby-
loniaca: ultimately, the later texts were derived from the older. If we can trust
Syncellus, Berossus claimed to have found at Babylon ancient, antediluvian re-
cords (Syncellus Chron. 14 M; cf. 28 M)—a powerful suggestion that his text
and these primeval ones were connected.179 Remember, too, Berossus’ care in
telling us that parts of the ark were still surviving to his own day, providing
external proof, as it were, for the textual trace he has drawn—arguably a gesture
he has borrowed from Herodotus, and in any case a distinct narrative move that
again manages to create a Babylonian and Hellenic “feel” or texture, at once
178. Dalley (2000) 6; for the reference, see 305. See also above, pp. 65 and n.38, 144 n.89.
179. “[Berossus] found in Babylon the writings of many [authors? cf. Adler and Tuffin (2002)
19] well preserved [εὑρὼν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι πολλῶν ἀναγραφὰς φυλασσομένας ἐπιμελῶς] that covered
about 150,000 years [sic] and a little more, certain histories about heaven and earth and sea and the
antiquity of kings and their deeds, about the situation of the Babylonian land and its fertility and
of certain creatures that appeared out of the Red Sea contrary to nature in their form, and certain
other matters of a mythical nature” (Syncellus Chron. 14 M). Cf. van der Horst (2002) 145–46. See
also above, pp. 143–44; now Haubold (2013) 159.
both Greek historiographic and yet also capturing the Babylonian concern for
physical connection or “trace.”180
Part 2: The Nonmythical Narratives
It is time that I moved on to the later, nonmythical narratives of Berossus. The

remaining texts to consider from the Babyloniaca all come from book 3. This is
perhaps a good point at which to step back and consider the textual economy of
Berossus’ history in terms of its book divisions. Book 1 dealt with primeval and
antediluvian history, and book 2 chiefly treated matters relating to the Flood.
Thus book 3 had to cover a great deal of ground: essentially, all of postdiluvian
history. Given that we possess a good deal of Oannes’ creation account, as well
as a listing of subsequent kings and apkallus, and given, furthermore, that we
have the bulk of Berossus’ Flood account, it seems safe to say that we have siz-
able and representative portions of books 1 and 2. The same cannot be said of
book 3. Obviously, if the books were of roughly the same size, book 3’s material
must have been presented in much more cursory fashion than was the case in
the first two books. But even given that fact, those sections of book 3 that we do
have must constitute a smaller percentage of the whole than is the case with the
other two books. The most significant stretches of narrative that survive come
from Josephus’ Against Apion, as was noted above; correspondingly, most of my
attention will be taken up on them. But there are other fragments from earlier
in book 3 that should not be overlooked. This investigation of the later narra-
tives of Berossus will show that his contemporary political and military world
was never far from view in his treatment of past times.
Remember that for Josephus and Alexander Polyhistor before him, Ber-
ossus was the representative of Chaldaean wisdom par excellence. At chapter
128 of Against Apion, Josephus moves on to “the matters recorded and re-
searched by the Chaldaeans about us” (τὰ παρὰ Χαλδαίοις ἀναγεγραμμένα καὶ
ἱστορούμενα), and his sole “witness” (μάρτυς) for these Chaldaeans is Berossus
(Ap. 1.128–29).181 It is best to begin by comparing Josephus’ treatment of Beros-
180. On the “even still in my day” (ἔτι καὶ νῦν) perspective, see above, pp. 73–74, 139, 224.
181. See also above, p. 203 and n.30 and n.224. Cf. Barclay (2007) 77, though when he says that
“as with Egypt, [Josephus] draws on only one author,” this is, strictly speaking, incorrect, inasmuch
as many authors are cited by Josephus for Egyptian testimony on the Jews. Manetho is easily being
the most important source but not the only one. Havet (1873) made the similarities between the
two the cornerstone of his assertion that Berossus and Manetho are simply later fabrications and
sus with that of Manetho at the most general level. It has long been recognized,
as far back as 1893 and Gutschmid’s groundbreaking article, that Josephus saw
a fundamental kinship in scholarly type between Berossus and Manetho: both
were priests who wrote national histories of their lands and who did so in the
Greek language because they themselves were imbued with Greek learning or
paideia (Ap. 1.129; cf. 1.73).182 But despite their striking similarities as helleno-
phone priest-historians, Josephus treated them differently. Most significantly,
while Josephus is quite deferential toward Manetho and builds him up as a reli-
able source for the Hyksos I narrative and the Sethos and Harmais narrative, he
treats Manetho (naturally) as a “hostile witness” for Hyksos II. Berossus is never
attacked by Josephus; rather, Josephus quotes him verbatim (Ap. 1.134), thus
clearly demonstrating his trust in him; endorses Berossus’ findings and notes
that they are in accord with “our books” (Ap. 1.154: ταῖς ἡμετέραις βίβλοις); and
finds in Berossus a like-minded critic of Greek error on his nation’s past (Ap.
1.142). While Josephus responds to Manetho with a mixture of acceptance and
rejection, he finds no reason in Berossus for dissent or criticism.
Josephus demonstrates that he is aware of more of Berossus’ narrative than
he actually quotes. Thus he knows at least some details that Berossus provides
in connection with earliest history, namely, the Flood and the ark of Xisouth-
ros, though he reports only that a portion of the vessel is still existing in his
day (AJ 1.93 = F 4c; cf. Ap. 1.130).183 Josephus preserves in extenso only two of
Berossus’ narratives, both concerning events from the Neo-Babylonian period
that were of major importance to the history of the Jewish people. Josephus
tells the story of the battle of Carchemish, the end of the reign of Nabopolassar
(605 BC), and the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, because it relates to the origin
of the Babylonian captivity of the Jews; it is to be found in both the Antiqui-
ties (10.220–26) and in Against Apion (1.135–41). The other narrative concerns
the fall of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty with the defeat of Nabonidus by Cyrus
and the Persian capture of Babylon (539 BC); these events involve, of course,
the ending of the Babylonian captivity for the Jews, and the narrative is only
found in Against Apion (1.146–53). Josephus’ interest in both narratives is self-
evident, and his reason for deploying texts from Berossus is identical to the
thus can be compared to earlier figures who even manufactured narratives and attached them to
their names (Annius of Viterbo).
182. Gutschmid (1893) 491. Cf. Schnabel (1923) 15.
183. Admittedly, the report of the surviving part of the ark and of bits of bitumen taken from
it as talismans could come from almost anywhere in the Babyloniaca. However, the wording that “a
part [of the ark] is still surviving” (ἔτι μέρος τι εἶναι) makes the detail look more like an aside from
the main narrative of the Flood, the “still” indicating that Berossus’ attention had been focused
elsewhere but on the same topic. Relatedly, Jacoby places Berossus’ treatment of the Sacaea festival
in book 1 (F 2 = AJ 14.44), but this passage could go almost anywhere. See above, pp. 46, 78.
motive behind his treatment of Manetho, namely, the incorporation into his
Against Apion of the Hyksos I and II narratives, on the grounds that they tell
the story of the biblical Egyptian captivity and exodus.
While we should never underestimate the power of chance and the whim of
later users of Berossus’ text to distort the view we have of his work, especially
regarding the textual economy of the Babyloniaca (i.e., how much “time” he
spent on a given topic), I find it extremely important that the main narrative
panels that we can still make out from the “fragments” of his work all concern
the transitions of imperial power in Babylonia: Sennacherib and the establish-
ment of lasting Neo-Assyrian rule (705–627 BC); Nabopolassar, his son Ne-
buchadnezzar, and the early years of the short-lived Neo-Babylonian dynasty
(626–539); and, finally, Cyrus and his defeat of the last Neo-Babylonian ruler
(Nabonidus), followed by the coming of Achaemenid dominion (539). Indeed,
there is even evidence from Polyhistor’s treatment of Berossus, as reported in
the Armenian Eusebius, that Berossus understood the history of Sennacherib
to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar as precisely a single, recognizable epoch: in his
summation of reigns, he writes, “from Sennacherib to Nebuchadnezzar there
are 88 years” (F 7c section 33 = Schoene [1875] 27).184 Considering that Ber-
ossus had just himself lived through the fall of Persia, Alexander’s conquest
and his death at Babylon, and the fraught beginnings of Seleucid control—
interrupted as it was by Antigonid invasion—the lesson in the fragility of impe-
rial power in the region would presumably not have been lost on him.
It is clear from the Armenian translation of Eusebius (F 5.27 = Schoene
[1875] 26) that Berossus at least mentioned the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king
Tiglath-pileser III (ruled 747–727), whom he calls “Phulos” (= Pulu), a name
whose significance is lost to us.185 Although Brinkman is cautious regarding
the possibility that there was a nationalist Babylonian reason for the choice
(Tiglath-pileser being the Assyrian name, Pulu the Babylonian), that Berossus
should use the name that occurs almost exclusively in the Babylonian and later
noncuneiform traditions is suggestive. If he was not taking a nationalist stance,
he also was not following the lead of virtually all the documentary records, As-
syrian and Babylonian. He must have been making a point of some sort, even if
we cannot tell any longer what it was.
As I discussed in chapter 3, the reign of Sennacherib (ruled 704–681) must
have held a place of special importance in Berossus’ text: it was under this non-
native ruler that Babylon came under permanent Assyrian control until the
184. A Sinecherimo usque ad Nabukodrossorum comprehenduntur anni omnino lxxxviii.

185. Brinkman (1968) 61–62, 240 n.1544; Burstein (1978) 23 n.68; Kuhrt (1995) 2.580. Cf.
Schnabel (1923) 142.
advent of Neo-Babylonian rule with the accession of Nabopolassar (626).186

We have to reconstruct most of what Berossus wrote about Sennacherib from
the Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, itself dependent on Alexan-
der Polyhistor’s abridgment of Berossus—not a very promising situation, to be
sure. But I think we can get a good idea of what Berossus wrote about Sennach-
erib, and it was fairly substantial, including his accession, conquest of Baby-
lon, western campaign that included the siege of Jerusalem and the invasion of
Egypt, Cilician campaign, and assassination by one of his sons.
The Armenian version of Eusebius’ summary of Polyhistor on the early years
of Sennacherib is extremely confusing, but this is largely due to the fact that the
period in question was a volatile one, marked by several regime changes and po-
litical upheaval. Sennacherib inherited from his father, Sargon II, a Mesopota-
mian region that was only partly under Assyrian control. Babylon in particular
saw many rulers come and go until permanent Assyrian dominion was violently
established in 689 after Sennacherib’s siege and destruction of the city. About
two years after he took the throne of Assyria, one local ruler of Babylon arose
(703), only to give way to another (Marduk-apla-iddina), who was backed by
Elam and, in turn, was replaced by an appointee of Sennacherib named Bel-ibni,
who promptly revolted himself (700). Sennacherib crushed the revolt and estab-
lished his own son, the crown prince Ashur-nadin-shumi, as king of Babylon.
With Sennacherib’s attention directed elsewhere, the Elamites invaded northern
Babylonia, sacked Sippar, and captured Sennacherib’s son. Another local ruler
backed by the Elamite king filled the vacuum, and for a brief period, Elam held
the Assyrians at bay (note esp. the indecisive battle of Halule in 691 or 690). But
Babylon soon came under siege and fell to Sennacherib’s forces in 689.187
According to the account in the Armenian Eusebius (F 7c section 29 =
Schoene [1875] 27), Sennacherib succeeds his brother, not his father;188 one
Akises is overthrown as ruler of Babylon by “Marudach Baldan,” who, in turn,
is killed by “Belibos.” This Belibos is ruling Babylon when Sennacherib attacks
and conquers the city. Sennacherib establishes his son “Asordanios” as king and
returns to Assyria. The events covered in this garbled summary take us only to
186. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.589; also Zawadzki (1989).

187. I have followed closely the narratives of Kuhrt (1995) 2.582–86 and Grayson (1991a) 105–
9. Note also Brinkman (1973); Brinkman and Dalley (1988); Porter (1993) 16 on Ashur-nadin-sumi
specifically. The chronology in the remains of the Babyloniaca for the period from Sennacherib to
Esarhaddon is extremely problematic: see Burstein (1978) 36–37 (app. 3), with the correction in
Wiseman (1981) 218.
188. Olmstead (1911) 96 and n.6 speculated on the basis of Berossus that Sennacherib may
have appointed a brother as king of Babylon, thereby anticipating the policy of his son and succes-
sor Esarhaddon. Cf. Burstein (1978) 23 n.70. Cf. also Cyrus designating his son Cambyses as king
of Babylon.
the early 690s and not to the final destruction of Babylon. This is not to say that
Berossus did not cover this traumatic event, but it simply is not part of the ma-
terial that remains to us. Immediately following this first reduction of Babylon
by Sennacherib in the Armenian Eusebius is the account of his campaign into
Cilicia, dealt with above, in chapter 3.
But if there is silence in the extant remains of the Babyloniaca regarding the
final fate of Babylon under Sennacherib, that is not the case for Sennacherib
himself. At the end of the summary of his Cilician campaign in the Armenian
Eusebius, we are told that “[Sennacherib] remained in power for 18 years and
departed life in an ambush [insidiis; cf. Jacoby’s “hinterhalt”] hatched by his
own son Ardumuzan” (F 7c section 32 = Schoene [1875] 27). Abydenus, follow-
ing Berossus, gave slightly different and more information: Sennacherib was
killed by “Adremelus,” the half brother of Esarhaddon (called “Axerdis”), who,
in turn, killed Adremelus and succeeded his father (FGrH 685 F 5 section 7 =
Schoene [1875] 35).189 While other sources mention two or more sons in the
assassination plot, it seems extremely significant to me that the narrative of
Berossus/Polyhistor is in agreement on this point with only Chronicle 1 of the
Babylonian Chronicle Series (Chronicle 1.iii.34–35; Grayson (1975a) 81).190 It
is tempting to speculate that there was at Babylon a semiofficial version of the
death of the hated Sennacherib to which both Chronicle 1 and Berossus were
witnesses.
Having said that, it is important also to note how Berossus was different
from his documentary sources for the reign of Sennacherib. As was the case
with his Cilician campaign of 696, Sennacherib’s invasion of Egypt and battle at
Pelusium in 701 are not attested in the Babylonian Chronicle Series; the related
siege of Jerusalem is found on the so-called Sennacherib Prism (ANET3 287–
88), together with the defeat of the Egyptian army at Altaqu (Eltekeh) in south-
ern Canaan, but no actions in Egypt proper are recorded there. Yet, to trust
our sources for Berossus, the Babyloniaca featured these events. When minor
kings in Phoenicia and Palestine (including Hezekiah of Judah) revolted from
Assyrian control in 701, they obtained crucial and significant backing from the
Egyptian pharaoh, Shabataka. This state of affairs led to Sennacherib’s invasion
of Palestine and Egypt, though the precise details are poorly understood.191 In-
189. De Breucker (2012) 64 and n.40.

190. “On the twentieth day of the month Tebet, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was killed by his
son (lit. his son killed him) in a rebellion” (Grayson trans.). My knowledge of this crucial detail
comes from Burstein (1978) 24 n.84. Other sources for the assassination are 2 Kings 19:37 and
inscriptions from the reign of Essarhaddon. Cf. also Grayson (1991a) 120; Porter (1993) 23 and
n.41; Dalley (2007) 42.
191. Kitchen (1986) 154–55; Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.99–100; Grayson (1991a) 111; Kuhrt (1995)
2.499. But see still also Langdon (1903) esp. 272.
deed, some scholars, unwilling to accept Berossus’ account, assume that the
campaign in question ought to be assigned to Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon.192
Hence, not only should we feel grateful to Berossus for preserving a re-
cord of these matters, even if they are now little more than bare notices, but
we should also stand back and think why he was out of step with a tradition to
which he otherwise cleaves pretty closely. The answers are not hard to find: (1)
if the battle was anything like what Josephus and Herodotus report, it will have
been a mixed success or even a defeat for Sennacherib—something that would
perhaps have encouraged its omission from the Babylonian Chronicle Series
but its inclusion in a history written by a Babylonian priest; and (2) the cam-
paign took up peoples and areas of immediate concern to the political world
Berossus lived in—Mesopotamia and Egypt.
In fact, the first fragment Jacoby lists for book 3 of Berossus’ Babyloniaca
is F 7a, another notice that comes to us from Josephus, but this time from his
Jewish Antiquities. At Antiquities 10.18, Josephus begins his discussion of the
nonbiblical authors who treated the campaigns of Sennacherib as part of his
larger account of the reign of Hezekiah and, specifically, Sennacherib’s defeat at
Pelusium. Josephus retells Herodotus 2.141: Sennacherib attacked the king of
Egypt, who happened also to be a priest of the god Hephaestus (Josephus does
not give the name: Sethos = Shabataka; Hdt. 2.141.1),193 and laid siege to Pelu-
sium. He was forced to give up the siege because mice came in the night and
ate up the quivers, the bowstrings, and even the shield handles of his troops—a
miraculous event that bears similarities to the biblical account of the siege of Je-
rusalem in the same campaign (2 Kings 19:35; 2 Chron. 32:21). Josephus takes
Herodotus to task for identifying Sennacherib as the king of the Arabs instead
of the Assyrians (Jos. AJ 10.19; cf. Hdt. 2.141.3). The reference to Herodotus
leads him on to Berossus: “Herodotus provides this account, but Berossus the
writer of the Chaldaïca mentions King Sennacherib and that he ruled the As-
syrians and that he launched an expedition against all Asia and Egypt, saying as
follows . . .” (AJ 10.20 = F 7a). Unfortunately, a direct quote, of uncertain length,
came next but is now lost.194
What is unmistakably clear to me, but what I do not think has yet been suf-
ficiently understood, is that Josephus seems to have used Berossus’ narrative to
correct Herodotus: Josephus, at pains to show that Herodotus was wrong about
Sennacherib’s domain and quite possibly also about the extent of his military
192. Bichler (2004) 511.

193. See Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.100: “Sethos is probably a corruption of S3-b3-t3-k3” and com-
pares Manetho’s Sebichos.
194. Marcus (1937) 167 n.e; Begg and Spilsbury (2005) 211 n.82.
ambitions,195 deploys Berossus to set the record straight. Even the rhetoric of
Josephus’ Greek could be read to support this possibility (καὶ Ἡρόδοτος μὲν
οὕτως ἱστορεῖ, Βηρωσὸς δὲ . . .). It is further important to note, as others have,
that Josephus’ criticism of Herodotus is unfair:196 at 2.141.2, Herodotus de-
scribes Sennacherib as the “king of the Arabs and Assyrians,” though he later
abbreviates and speaks of the priest-pharaoh being encouraged by a divine
dream to meet “the host of Arabians” (2.141.3). What could account for Jose-
phus’ gross error in reading Herodotus? It seems distinctly possible that he was
reading his Herodotus here through the lens of Berossus. Either Berossus also
cited Herodotus’ version of events, which led to Josephus’ misrepresentation, or
he engaged with the text of Herodotus piecemeal.
Such a situation has important implications for our understanding of Beros-
sus’ historical (as opposed to mythical or legendary) narratives: where Herodo-
tus covered the same ground, it was very possible that one would encounter
in Berossus a polemical engagement with Herodotus, in addition to Berossus’
own findings. If right, this interpretation of Josephus’ Antiquities 10.20 permits
a view of Berossus arguing with Herodotus on fairly detailed points, as well,
no doubt, as large ones.197 More important, we can glimpse also how correct-
ing Herodotus could be an integral part of Berossan narrative. As such, it is
tempting to see in Berossus’ engagement with Herodotus the workings of Ber-
ossus’ conversion of Babylonian historiographic materials into “history”—his
“disembedding” of it, if you will. We might pose the question this way: if Beros-
sus wished to counter claims Herodotus had made in the course of describing
Sennacherib’s invasion of Egypt, how better could he do this than by providing
his own narrative of the same events, with the divergences suitably noted? Nar-
rative is the stimulus and the response. Finally, in connection with Herodotus
2.141, we should not lose sight of a fundamental fact: inasmuch as the story
Herodotus tells is obviously written from an Egyptian point of view and from
Egyptian sources,198 Berossus can be seen to challenge this Tendenz in his own
version. To be sure, he was no apologist for the Neo-Assyrians or for Sennach-
erib in particular (as I have already noted), but we should not underestimate his
desire to promote a view of the past that challenged Egypt’s primacy in political
195. It is possible to read correcting polemic in the phrase “against all Asia and Egypt,” since
Herodotus only treats Sennacherib’s invasion of Egypt.
196. Marcus (1937) 167 n.c; Begg and Spilsbury (2005) 211 nn.76, 77. Note Lloyd (1975/1988)
3.101 and (2007) 343 ad Hdt. 2.141.2, observing that it was standard practice for the Assyrians to
employ troops from subject nations.
197. Cf. Bloch (1879) 65.
198. See below, pp 340–41. But note here esp. Baumgartner (1950) 89; Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.99–
100. On the Egyptian literary tradition regarding the Assyrian invasion, see Ryholt (2004).
and military matters, a perspective that would also align him with the aspira-
tions of his new overlords.
Indeed, I sense the nearness of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic worlds when
we turn to the conclusion of the same testimonium from the Armenian Euse-
bius that gives us the name of Sennacherib’s successor, Axerdis (= Esarhaddon:
FGrH 685 F 5 section 7 = Schoene [1875] 35). There, after a curious and doubt-
less erroneous mention of a campaign against “the city of the Byzantines,”199 we
hear of Esarhaddon’s larger military achievements: “Axerdis, on the other hand,
taking Egypt and regions of Coele Syria, held on to them [sc. as parts of his
empire]” (FGrH 685 F 5 section 7 = Schoene [1875] 35).200
The noun-adjective pair “Coele Syria” is key here. Were this the only oc-
currence in texts deriving from Berossus’ Babyloniaca, we might well doubt its
authenticity and dismiss it from further consideration; after all, it comes to us
by that same painfully circuitous path we have already seen—the Armenian
translation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, which is dependent on intermediaries going
back to Polyhistor and Abydenus, who were themselves summarizing the work
of Berossus. But the description also shows up twice in Josephus—in passages
concerning Nebuchadnezzar that are clearly also derived from Berossus (AJ
10.220 and Ap. 1.135; see immediately below). If Berossus really did use this
toponym in his text, it would be a matter of tremendous importance. Although
much controversy surrounds the term, Coele Syria (“Hollow Syria,” Gk. Κοίλη
Συρία) seems to have been the technical designation in the Hellenistic period to
describe the area roughly from Egypt to Phoenicia.201 I find it extremely signifi-
cant that among the earliest witnesses to the term are the works of two mem-
bers of the Peripatos: Clearchus (F 6 Wehrli) and Theophrastus (HP 2.6.2), men
whose views reflect much about the state of the Greek and non-Greek exchange
of knowledge and information in the early years of the Seleucids.202 Although
the events Berossus is describing come from the pre-Greco-Macedonian past,
the space in which they take place is nonetheless defined by his present, under
Seleucid rule.
Precisely this orientation comes out even more forcefully in the narrative
of Nebuchadnezzar told twice by Josephus.203 As always, it is important to keep
199. This is probably an error for “Bushshua” (Burstein [1978] 25 n.90) or “Buzanta” (Lehmann-
Haupt [1934]; cf. Jacoby FGrH 685 F 5 section 7 app. crit. ad loc.).
200. Axerdis autem Egiptum partesque Syriae inferioris (s. Coelesyriae) capiens acquisivit. Cf. Ja-
coby’s translation: weiter nahm Axerdis Egiptos und die gegenden des Hohlen Syriens erobernd in Besitz.
201. See below, pp. 281–82 and n.237.
202. For Clearchus, recall his inscription at Ai Khanum, with Robert (1968); for Theophrastus
(esp. his Historia Plantarum), see Fraser (1994).
203. See esp. Eddy (1961) 125–26. See also Burstein (1978) 26 n.102; Wiseman (1985) 7, 15
n.108.
in mind that Josephus had his own purposes in quoting Berossus’ text and that
there are significant problems attending his relationship to the Berossan mate-
rial. As we have noted elsewhere, it is likely that Josephus was reading Beros-
sus not directly but, rather, from a summary made by Alexander Polyhistor.
Even granting that Josephus’ version of Berossus was considerably abridged,
he abridges it further by a massive “telescoping” with which he introduces this
treatment of Berossus in Against Apion: in one sentence (Ap. 1.131), he manages
to describe the contents of the Babyloniaca as extending from the Flood down
to the reign of Nabopolassar.204 In his eagerness to treat the historical event
with which he is centrally concerned—namely, the destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem—Josephus incorrectly places it in the time of Nabopolassar and as-
serts that the episode is brought up in the upcoming quotation from Berossus’
Babyloniaca, a detail that, in fact, is not found there (the matter does not come
up in Josephus’ parallel treatment in the Antiquities).205 In an admittedly gar-
bled testimonium from Syncellus (F 7d = Syncellus Chron. 248–49 M), which
comes to us by way of Abydenus (FGrH 685 F 5) and is attributed to Polyhistor,
it is reported that Nabopolassar was known to Greek authors as Sardanapalus,
that he allegedly married a daughter of Astyages, and that he revolted from the
Assyrian king Sarakos, who was so terrified by Nabopolassar’s attack that he
committed suicide by burning himself up together with his palace. It seems fair
to say, without accepting any of the details of this account, that Berossus will
have treated the revolt and accession of Nabopolassar in some detail and that he
may have crafted it in a way that was familiar to his Greek audience: as the self-
destruction, together with his palace, of a great Eastern king or commander.206
But for all its manifest faults, Josephus’ introduction to and quotation of
Berossus/Polyhistor is extremely illuminating. In his introduction and précis
of the quote, Josephus provides us with the impression that this section of the
Babyloniaca had on him: he thought Berossus treated the destruction of the
Temple (but he did not). Josephus continues, “[Berossus] says that the Babylo-
nian conquered [κρατῆσαι δέ φησι τὸν Βαβυλώνιον] Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia,
Arabia, surpassing in his deeds all [πάντας ὑπερβαλόμενον ταῖς πράξεσι] those
who had ruled the Chaldaeans and Babylonians before him” (Ap. 1.133). This
description revisits details Josephus related just before: that it was Nabopolassar
who sent his son Nebuchadnezzar “against Egypt and our land [τὴν ἡμετέραν
204. “Then listing the descendants of Noah [sic] and supplying their years, he comes round to
Nabopolassar [ἐπὶ Ναβοπαλάσσαρον παραγίνεται] the King of the Babylonians and Chaldaeans.”
205. Cf. Thackeray (1926) 215 n.c; Reinach (1930) 26 n.2. Cf. also Labow (2005) 135–36 ad
loc.; Barclay (2007) 81 n.439.
206. Cf. Hdt. 7.107.2 (Boges), 7.167.1 (Hamilcar); Bacchyl. 3.23–63 (Croesus, whose death
there is voluntary). Notable also is the attempted burning of Croesus in Hdt. 1.86.2ff. See How and
Wells (1928) 1.98–99; Asheri (2007b) 142.
γῆν] . . . with a great force, since he had heard that they had revolted, and he
conquered everyone and burned the temple that is in Jerusalem, and having
thoroughly removed the entire host of our people, he transported them to Bab-
ylon” (Ap. 1.132). That this description is framed from Josephus’ perspective
is clearly revealed by the first-person plurals (“our land” and “our people”).207
Less clear is the identity of the conqueror. Grammatically, it must be Nabopol-
assar, as is confirmed by the detail that he sends Nebuchadnezzar to Egypt and
Josephus’ country to quell revolt. But when we are told that “the Babylonian
conquered Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia” and that he thereby surpassed
all the former rulers of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, to whom does Jose-
phus claim Berossus was referring? In the quote that follows, purporting to be
Berossus’ actual words, it is clear that the dynast responsible for these actions
is Nebuchadnezzar. The lack of clarity in Josephus’ summary is probably due
to the fact that the identity of the world conqueror was so obvious to his audi-
ence that it did not need explaining.208 Comparison with the actual quotation
from Berossus yields further valuable information: the focus of the narrative
is, in fact, on a battle fought in Egypt (as it seems; in actuality, Carchemish),
one that emphasizes Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign as putting down a revolt of a
rebellious satrap of “Egypt, Coele Syria, and Phoenicia”; only a little later do we
hear about the forced resettlement of prisoners, who include the Jews (and as
we have seen, there is no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem).
It is, I think, very important that while we can see Josephus’ filtering in his
summary, we can spy in the quote precisely those details that encourage the
view that Berossus imagined a past that was defined by his present—that is,
by the Seleucids: it is a satrap who has revolted from Babylon, and he was in
charge of Egypt, Coele Syria, and Phoenicia. Josephus seems to have viewed
these items, like the obvious identity of the conqueror, as unremarkable. But
the presence of these precise technical terms at so early a date is crucial to
an understanding of Berossus’ thought world. I have already spoken of “Coele
Syria” and will again below. As we shall also see below, the use of the term satrap
is just as important. In origin an Achaemenid administrative term, it persisted
as a word for the highest-ranking regional official (“governor”) through the
reigns of Alexander the Great and the Diadochs and well beyond, most promi-
nently in the Seleucid realm, even in cuneiform documents (see the astronomi-
cal diary entry for 273 BC above, on p. 248).209 Indeed, the term was scarcely
207. Cf. Barclay (2007) 81 nn.433, 438.

208. Cf. Barclay (2007) 81 n.439: “The subject is presumably Nebuchadnezzar, but the change
is not clear in the Greek, as Josephus compresses the narrative severely.”
209. Chantraine (1983/1984) 2.989; Beekes (2010) 2.1310. OIran. *xšaθra-pa, “protecting the
empire.” See also Schmitt (1976); Stolper (2005) 19. Note Hornblower (1982) 145–54 and Briant
(2002) 65–67 for discussions of the role of the Achaemenid period satrap.
used in Ptolemaic Egypt:210 although Ptolemy is referred to as a “satrap” early

in his rule—in Greek (P. Eleph. 1.1) and in hieroglyphic (“Satrap Stela,” Rit-
ner [2003d] 395)211—the vastly more typical title for officers of high rank was
strategos (regional governor) and compounds of that noun, namely, epistrategos
(governor-general).212
It is best to begin by translating the whole of Josephus’ first Berossan narra-
tive (Ap. 1.135–41), after which I will address a major textual problem and then
move on to an interpretation of the text:
I shall quote Berossus’ words having this form: (135) “His father, Na-
bopolassar, when he heard that the assigned governor [ὁ τεταγμένος
σατράπης] in Egypt and the places about ‘Hollow’ Syria [τὴν Συρίαν
τὴν Κοίλην] and Phoenicia had become a rebel [ἀποστάτης], not able
himself to endure hardships any longer, assigned to his son Nebuchad-
nezzar, being in the prime of his life, certain parts of his force and sent
him out against him [the rebel]. (136) Nebuchadnezzar encountered the
rebel, and having drawn up in battle order, he defeated him and brought
the land back under their royal power. To his father, Nabopolassar, it
happened at this time, having grown weak in the city of the Babylonians,
to give up his life; he had been king for 21 years.
(137) Learning not much later of the death of his father, Nebuchadnez-
zar settled the affairs of Egypt and the rest of the land, and the prisoners
of the Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, and the peoples throughout Egypt he
assigned to certain ones of his friends [τισὶ τῶν φίλων] to convey with
his heaviest forces and the remaining spoil to Babylonia, while he him-
self, having set out with a small force, made it to Babylon through the
desert.
(138) Finding that matters were being managed by Chaldaeans and the
kingship looked after by the best of them, he took possession of his fa-
ther’s rule in its entirety. He arranged to assign to the prisoners now
present habitations in the very best lands of Babylonia. (139) He himself,
from the spoils of the war, zealously decorated [κοσμήσας φιλοτίμως]
the temple of Bel and the rest, and he restored anew the preexisting
210. Lehmann-Haupt (1921) 162.
211. Cf. Fraser (1972) 2.12 n.28, 366 n.216; P. Eleph. 1.1: Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου
βασιλεύοντος ἔτει ἑβδόμωι, Πτολεμαίου σατραπεύοντος ἔτει τεσσαρεσκαιδεκάτωι, μηνὸς Δίου;
also Klinkott (2000) 103 for the Greek literary sources and for the satrap Cleomenes before Ptol-
emy.
212. Mooren (1975).
city and beautified, in addition, another outside and, so that no longer

would besiegers be able by turning the river against the city to raze it,
put up three circuit walls for the inner city and three for the outer, and
of these walls the inner ones were of baked brick and bitumen, and the
outer from brick alone.
(140) Having walled the city in noteworthy [ἀξιολόγως] fashion, and

having decorated the gateways in a manner befitting sacred space, he
built next to the palace of his father another adjoining it, the extent of
which and the rest of its magnificence, if one were to describe, would
be probably too long, except that, though so great and splendid in its
extravagance, it was completed in 15 days. (141) In this palace, hav-
ing built up lofty stone substructures and made their appearance look
very much like mountains, he planted them with all manner of trees,
and he completed and fitted out the garden that is called ‘hanging’ [τὸν
καλούμενον κρεμαστὸν παράδεισον], because of his wife’s desire for
mountain scenery, having been raised in the regions of Media.”
A major textual problem occurs in section 139. Reinach ([1930] 27– 28)
prints the following: αὐτὸς δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ πολέμου λαφύρων τό τε Βήλου
ἱερὸν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ κοσμήσας φιλοτίμως, τήν τε ὑπάρχουσαν ἐξ ἀρχῆς πόλιν
⟨ἀνακαινίσας⟩ καὶ ἑτέραν ἔξωθεν † προσχαρισάμενος [καὶ ἀναγκάσας] πρὸς τὸ
μηκέτι δύνασθαι τοὺς πολιορκοῦντας τὸν ποταμὸν ἀποστρέφοντας † ἐπὶ τὴν
πόλιν κατασκευάζειν †, περιεβάλετο τρεῖς μὲν τῆς ἔνδον πόλεως περιβόλους,
τρεῖς δὲ τῆς ἔξω. I follow Reinach and others in accepting the insertion of
ἀνακαινίσας, and I accept also the deletion of καὶ ἀναγκάσας.213 As for the
larger problem in the next line, I believe that if we replace the nonsensical
κατασκευάζειν with a suitable verb such as κατασκάψαι,214 not only is the sense
preserved, but the subsequent section also becomes a lot clearer: the detail that
only Babylon’s outer walls were made from baked brick and bitumen suggests
that Berossus viewed them as designed by Nebuchadnezzar to be waterproof
against the possibility of the Euphrates River being diverted against them, the
bitumen being used as a waterproof mortar, especially in the lower courses of
the wall.215
213. Proposed by Naber on the basis of a reading found in two manuscripts of the correspond-
ing section in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities.
214. It takes great effort to make κατασκευάζειν mean “gain access to” or the like: no such pos-
sibility is offered in LSJ s.v. Note, too, the use of both προσκατεσκεύασεν and κατεσκεύασε later in
the same passage, which may have led to the change of κατασκάψαι or the like to κατασκευάζειν.
Note the parallel at Jos. Ap. 1.152. Also above, p. 159 and n.160.
215. Forbes (1936) 67–73; (1955) 59. Cf. Wilson (2006) 942; George (1992) 356.
Three different frames of reference for this passage need to be taken into
account. Most obviously, it treats the acme of the Neo-Babylonian period, and
Berossus was clearly eager to represent it as such in his presentation. There is
also the contemporary world of the Seleucid court, which has influenced the
language Berossus has used to describe this idealized past. Finally, it is clear
that Berossus is engaged with the legacy of Greek historical writing on Babylon.
We have to untangle these three elements and then put them back together in
order to come up with a comprehensive interpretation.
We must never lose sight of the crucial fact that Berossus was specifically
a Babylonian author—not simply a “Mesopotamian” or “Near Eastern” one.
While Greek authors did not distinguish between Assyrian and Babylonian
rulers, Berossus was the first hellenophone historian in antiquity to observe the
difference, and this was surely no accident.216 The final capture and destruction
of Babylon by the great Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 was a shattering and
deeply traumatic event for the Babylonians, as was the subsequent period of
direct Assyrian rule (indeed, see Berossus F 7c sections 29–30); remember that
later texts refer to Sennacherib’s rule of Babylonia as a “kingless” period be-
cause of his “neglect of the gods.”217 Scholarship indicates that Berossus’ narra-
tive of Sennacherib’s conquest of Babylon is particularly close to a documentary
treatment of the same events:218 Assyria’s victory over Babylon was total. When,
finally, Assyrian hegemony was thrown off by Nabopolassar in 626, Babylon
entered a brief period of independence until 539, when Cyrus defeated Na-
bonidus; according to modern scholars, the intervening years constituted the
“Neo-Babylonian” period, also called the Chaldaean dynasty, the dynasty of
Bit-Yakin, or the Third Dynasty of Sealand.219 For Berossus, this world became
the ideal past.220
That this period would play such a role for Berossus was natural for several
reasons. First, it is important to think of the overall economy of text in the
Babyloniaca. While Berossus can trace history back beyond the Flood to the
first kings of Babylon and, through the narrative of the fish-man sage Oannes,
even to the origins of the world, one senses that a new historical horizon was
detected by Berossus with the reign of Nabû-nasir. Much, of course, depends
216. Lenfant (2004) lii n.168. Cf. also Asheri (2007b) 148–49 ad Hdt. 1.95.2.
217. See above, 151 n.124.
218. Above, 151 n.125.
219. Wiseman (1991) 229.
220. Cf. Kuhrt (1987a) 56 and n.43.
on the problematic F 16a of Berossus,221 but if we accept that what is said there
belongs to him222 and represents the actual state of the availability of historical
texts at the time when Berossus himself traced Babylon’s history, the years im-
mediately after the Flood and before the ascendancy of Assyria would simply
not have then had much, if any, coverage: the records for these had been gath-
ered together by Nabû-nasir and “destroyed” by him “in order that the counting
down of the Chaldaeans kings be from him.”223 Whether or not this claim was
true is not particularly important here. Rather, scholars are quick to point out
that “a new era in Babylonia” did occur with the accession of Nabonassar and,
specifically, that the documentation of the past received attention both unprec-
edented and precise: both the Babylonian Chronicle Series and the astronomi-
cal diaries begin at this time.224 Quite simply, when Berossus got to this epoch
in Babylonian history, there was more for him to utilize. Additionally, this fact
probably contributed to the formation of the view that since there was more
documentation, more events had happened that were worthy of record. As we
read in F 3 (= Schoene [1985] 7): “in the second book [of his Babyloniaca] Ber-
ossus described the kings, one after another, until he says ‘Nabonassaros was
king’” (Burstein trans. [1978] 22, adapted). In other words, in Berossus’ account
of postdiluvian history, there was simply a skeletal listing of kings until Nabû-
nasir, then the text expanded massively.
This leads me to another point. While charting the past received a major new
impetus in Babylonia in the eighth century, it underwent another significant
change with the advent of permanent native Babylonian rule in the last quarter
of the seventh. Scholars have detected a major reorientation in Babylonian his-
toriography. If Assyrian annals stressed the activity of the kings from an obvious
propagandistic standpoint, “the Babylonian chronicles look objective: they re-
cord both victories and defeats; they do not add propagandistic notations, liter-
ary embellishments, evaluations, or comments; they simply record events in a
disinterested way.”225 The Babylonian chronicles were, furthermore, often writ-
ten with a distinctly local, Babylonian audience in mind, as, for instance, when
the performance (or not) of the Akitu (New Year’s Festival) is noted.
221. Jacoby assumes it to be the work of “Ps.-Berossus of Cos.” See, e.g., Brinkman (1968) 227
and n.1433 (cf. 35 n.158); Kuhrt (1987a) 36–44; de Breucker (2010) ad T 9, FF 15-22, (2012) 59–60.
222. For a defense of the authenticity of the fragment, see esp. Burstein (1978) 22 n.66.
223. Syncellus Chron. p. 245 M: Ναβονάσαρος συναγαγὼν τὰς πράξεις τῶν πρὸ αὐτοῦ
βασιλέων ἠφάνισεν, ὅπως ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἡ καταρίθμησις γίνεται τῶν Χαλδαίων βασιλέων.
224. Brinkman (1968) 226–27; note also Liverani (2011) 45.
225. Liverani (2011) 44–45. See also Beaulieu (1989) 2; Van De Mieroop (2004) 259.
Taking these two points together, the influence of Berossus’ native histo-
riographic tradition would have led him naturally to favor the Assyrian and
especially the Neo-Babylonian periods: it was with these periods in mind that
the curating of the past was put on a new footing in Mesopotamia, and this fact
would have carried great weight with Berossus. But we should also not lose sight
of an even more salient fact. As I alluded to above, the Neo-Babylonian period
will have held a special place in the imaginations of those at Babylon respon-
sible for recording the past of their city. Native rule was restored, and the physi-
cal space of the city was massively rebuilt. In general, the period was animated
by a spirit of renewal, whereby the remote past—the past of Hammurabi—was
very much brought into the present: old buildings were renewed and expanded,
the city’s walls were restored, and historical records were discovered or, rather,
in not a few cases, actually invented.226 The old Babylonian past was used to
bring legitimacy and meaning to the new Babylonia. Moreover, texts from the
kingship of Nebuchadnezzar II reveal his hope and wish that his deeds not be
forgotten, that future kings respect his monuments and statutes, and, in gen-
eral, that Marduk may see to it that “my name be remembered in future days
in a good sense” (ANET3 307; cf. Weissbach [1906] 34). There was thus even a
charge upon men like Berossus to look after the legacy of this greatest period
of Babylon’s independent past. From Berossus’ perspective, after more than two
centuries of Persian rule, the relatively peaceful conquest of Alexander, and the
violent and fraught years leading up to the establishment of lasting Seleucid
control, the Neo-Babylonian epoch must have looked like a golden age, with
Babylon ascendant, independent, materially wealthy, and having a long and
storied past of its own that had a handy, built-in archaism to inspire men like
Berossus.
But when we turn to the details of the Nebuchadnezzar narrative, we are
immediately confronted with a major puzzle: there are a number of discrepan-
cies between the chronicle version of the battle of Carchemish (reported at the
start of Berossus’ fragment) and Berossus’ account, and several linguistic details
in Berossus’ story reveal a distinctly Greek orientation to the narrative. Let us
first take a quick look at the sections from the Babylonian Chronicle Series that
correspond to Berossus’ report (Chronicle 5 Obv.; Grayson [1975a] 99–100):
1 [The twenty first-year]: The king of Akkad stayed home (while)

Nebuchadnezzar (II), his eldest son (and) the crown prince,
2 mustered [the army of Akkad]. He took his army’s lead and marched
to Carchemish which is on the bank of the Euphrates.
226. See esp. Dalley (1998) 29–30; Beaulieu (2003). Note also Goossens (1948).
3 He crossed the river [to encounter the army of Egypt] which was en-
camped at Carchemish.
4 [. . .] They did battle together. The army of Egypt retreated before him.
5 He inflicted a [defeat] upon them (and) finished them off completely.
6 In the district of Hamath
7 the army of Akkad overtook
5 the remainder of the army of [Egypt
6 which] managed to escape [from] the defeat and which was not over-
come.
7 They (the army of Akkad) inflicted a defeat upon them (so that) a
single (Egyptian) man [did not return] home.
8 At that time Nebuchadnezzar (II) conquered all of Ha[ma]th.
9 For twenty-one years Nabopolassar ruled Babylon.
10 On the eighth day of the month Ab he died. In the month Elul
Nebuchadnessar (II) returned to Babylon and
11 on the first day of the month Elul he ascended the royal throne in
Babylon.
12 In (his) accession year Nebuchadnezzar (II) returned to Hattu. Until
the month Shebat
13 he marched about victoriously
14 in Hattu.
13 In the month Shebat he took the vast booty of Hattu to Babylon.
14 In the month Nisan he took the hand of Bel and the son of Bel (and)
celebrated the Akitu festival . . .
To be sure, the correspondences between Chronicle 5 and Berossus are self-

evident and significant: Nabopolassar, unable to campaign himself, sends out
his son to meet the threat; Nebuchadnezzar scores a signal victory over the
Egyptians; the old king dies while Nebuchadnezzar is on campaign; Nebuchad-
nezzar returns to Babylon and assumes the throne. But there are also profound
differences: the battle site is clearly identified in Chronicle 5 and described as
being not in rebellious Egypt but on the Euphrates River; there are two battles
in the campaign, not one; there is no discussion of the capture and transporta-
tion of the enemy—indeed, “not a single man” is left from the Egyptian army at
the end of the second battle. Also absent from the chronicle is any mention of
Nebuchadnezzar’s building program at Babylon. The format of the two texts is
different, and Berossus’ narrative is clearly a compressed compilation of several
years’ activities. As a matter of fact, later in Chronicle 5, we do hear of Nebu-
chadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem in his seventh year and the taking of “trib-
ute” (not prisoners specifically) to Babylon (Chronicle 5 Rev. 12–13; Grayson
[1975a] 102). But even making allowances for the different scope of Berossus
and the chronicle, the two accounts, while doubtless obviously related, are still
quite different.
It seems to me that we see in the difference the distinct outlines of what
Berossus was attempting to do with his narrative of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule. For
one thing, the battle section is streamlined in Berossus. Two battles evidently
were not needed or not wanted in his account. Indeed, Berossus’ simplification
precisely reveals an odd feature of the version of events in the chronicle: if the
first battle at Carchemish was as decisive as it is made out to be (he “finished
them off completely”), why was a second in Hamath needed at all, unless the
first was not the triumph it is characterized to be? Perhaps Berossus saw this
very duplication himself and the problems it raises for seeing the first conflict
as decisive.
Other major differences between the two accounts need also to be noted.
The chronicle account is very clear about the location of the battles between
Nebuchadnezzar and the Egyptian, with the first being identified as “Carchem-
ish which is on the bank of the Euphrates.” By contrast, Berossus states that the
battle is against the rebellious governor of “Egypt” and “the places about Coele
Syria and Phoenicia.”227 Indeed, these regions “were brought back” under the
power of Babylon as a result of the single victory, making it plain that they had
earlier been provinces of a Neo-Babylonian empire in Berossus’ conception of
events.
It is hard to resist the impression that the events that Berossus imagines
as taking place in connection with the battle of Carchemish during the Neo-
Babylonian empire of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar look rather more
like they are happening in the world of the early Hellenistic kingdoms. In-
deed, precisely in the period immediately after the assassination of Seleucus I
Nicator and contemporary with Berossus’ composition of the Babyloniaca, the
Seleucid realm experienced the so-called Crisis or Syrian War of Succession
(280–279).228 The events of this conflict are poorly understood. At a minimum,
we know from an inscription (OGIS 219) that “the Seleukis,”229 a region just
north of Coele Syria containing the tetrapolis of the great cities of Antioch in
Pieria, Seleucia in Pieria, Apamea, and Laodicea, rose in revolt.230 In precisely
227. Cf. Wiseman (1985) 15.

228. See esp. Will (1979/1982) 1.139–42; Heinen (1984) 412–16; Jones (1993) 90–91.
229. Cf. Str. 16.2.4; OGIS 1.340 n.4; Jones (1993) 77.
230. Note esp. lines 5–7: ἐζήτησε [Antiochus] τὰς μὲν πόλεις τὰς κα⟨τὰ⟩ τὴν Σε|ευκίδα,
περιεχομένας ὑπὸ καιρῶν δυσχερῶν διὰ τοὺς ἀποστάντας | τῶμ πραγμάτων, εἰς εἰρήνην καὶ τὴν
ἀρχαίαν εὐδαιμονίαν καταστῆσαι. See also Memnon, FGrH 434 F 9.1. There is a considerable de-
bate over the dating of OGIS 219. Since the date of the text is established only by reference to
this same period, Ptolemy II also made inroads into the Aegean and Asia Minor
by winning over key cities and regions (Miletus, Samos, parts of Caria). Schol-
ars are unsure whether Ptolemy was in fact behind the revolts that occurred
after Antiochus I’s accession as sole ruler in 281,231 but Will concluded that he
certainly profited by the turmoil created by Seleucus I’s death.232 It is tempt-
ing to see these events reflected in the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s victory over
the rebellious Egyptian satrap: the geography of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign
in Berossus and the War of Succession is similar, and the circumstances virtu-
ally identical. Indeed, the crucial point in both is the concept of “rebellion”—a
detail that is totally absent from the chronicle’s version of events, as well as
modern discussions: the battle of Carchemish resulted in Pharaoh Necho II’s
eventual abandonment of Asia Minor but obviously had nothing to do with
Egypt itself.233 The Babylonian Chronicle Series does know of the end of the
reign of Seleucus and the battle of Corupedion (Chronicle 12),234 so it is easy
to imagine it covering the events of the next few years with equal attention. Of
course, the War of Succession was just the start of on-again off-again warfare
between the Ptolemies and Seleucids over Coele Syria; conflict between them
for control of the region would continue for years, already flaring up again with
the First Syrian War (274–271).235
But this suggestion is admittedly very speculative. We are on much firmer
ground when we turn to the vocabulary Berossus uses in the passage. It has
been acknowledged for some time that Berossus’ choice of names and ter-
minology for this episode seems likely derived from the realities of Seleucid
rule.236 As I have already noted above, the term Coele Syria (“Hollow Syria,”
Gk. Κοίλη Συρία) was the technical designation in the Hellenistic period for
the area roughly from Egypt to Phoenicia.237 The usage of the term satrap is
“Antiochus, son of Seleucus,” the king could also be Antiochus III: see Ma (2000) 254–59, 217; he
favors a date from the reign of Antiochus I, as does Jones (1993).
231. See, e.g., Dittenberger’s note ad loc. (OGIS 1.341 n.6).
232. Will (1979/1982) 1.140.
233. Cf. Yoyotte (1958) 385; James (1991) 716–17.
234. Grayson (1975a) 27, 121–22.
235. Will (1979/1982) 1.146–50; Heinen (1984) 416–17. Note also Koepp (1884); Jähne (1974).
236. Burstein (1978) 25 n.93, 26 n.102; Wiseman (1985) 7, 15 n.108; Kuhrt (1987a) 56. Note
also Eddy (1961) 125–26, which Burstein follows; de Breucker (2010) ad F 8a.
237. For the prevailing view, see Bosworth (1974) 49; (1980–) 1.225 ad Arr. An. 2.13.7. See, fol-
lowing him, Brunt (1976/1983) 1.172 n.4; Bigwood (1980) 200; Hornblower (1981) 82 n.27. Note
also Welles (1934) 362; Bengtson (1937/1952) 2.159–76; Bikerman (1947); Shalit (1954);Walbank
(1957/1979) 1.564–65 ad Plb. 5.34.6; Stern (1974/1984) 1.14. The phrase first occurs for certain
in the Periplus of Ps.-Scylax (104.3: see Shipley [2011] 182 ad loc.); “Coele Syria” is unknown to
Herodotus and Xenophon. Diod. 2.2.3 (= Ctesias F 1b Lenfant) could be an earlier case, if genuine.
Sartre (1988) reviews the earlier scholarship and attempts to cast doubt on the communis opinio; cf.
Lenfant (2004) 233–34 n.96. Rey-Coquais (2006) 115 proposes that Κοίλη Συρία was only employed
similarly extremely significant. As we have already noted, it is an Achaemenid

administrative term for “governor”238 and became the standard word for the
highest-ranking regional official through the reigns of Alexander the Great and
the Diadochs239 and well beyond, particularly in the Seleucid realm.240 It may
be objected that Berossus could have known the term satrap directly from the
long Persian occupation of Babylon and not from the Seleucids, but Achaeme-
nid governors of Babylonia were normally identified by the Babylonian titles
LÚ.EN.NAM (= bel pihati) or LÚ.NAM (= pihatu, pahatu) and not “satrap.”241
As it happens, in the Assyrian and Babylonian chronicle series, the word satrap
is not found in texts of the Achaemenid era. But as soon as we turn to Chronicle
10 (the so-called Chronicle of the Diadochoi, from the reign of Philip III), we
read of the “office of satrap” and of the king doing “battle with the satrap of
Egypt” (Chronicle 10 Obv. 3–4; Grayson [1975a] 115, where the word used is
GAL.UKKIN.242
We also need to take note of the term philoi (friends) in Berossus’ account.
To be sure, those “certain ones of [Nebuchadnezzar’s] friends” who are charged
with bringing back the slower parts of the prince’s army to Babylon may have
been just that: “friends.” But it is distinctly possible that another technical ad-
ministrative meaning is intended here: royal “friends,” that is, high-ranking of-
ficials and courtiers of the king.243 OGIS 219 refers precisely to the king making
use of “his friends” in the suppression of the revolt,244 and they are mentioned
a number of times elsewhere in the same text, always linked with the noun
dunameis (probably meaning “troops”), a collocation that is often found else-
where in documentary texts.245 Jane Hornblower has made a similar argument
regarding the vocabulary of Diodorus 17, namely, that inasmuch as Alexander’s
systematically after the Seleucid reconquest of Syria in 200 BC; note also Rey-Coquais (2006) 104
n.13, citing Sartre (1988) with approval. Cf. SEG 56.1882. See, e.g., OGIS 224 line 6, 230 line 2 (now
dated after 197: see Bagnall [1976] 15 n.23; Ma [2000] 321–23, citing earlier bibliography).
238. See above, p. 273 and n.209.
239. E.g., SIG3 302.4 (Alexander); Welles (1934) no. 11, line 3 (Antiochus I). Note now also
Klinkott (2000). Cf. the language of Arrian An. 7.9.8—admittedly a spurious speech of Alexander
to his men, yet illustrative of the associations of “satrap.”
240. Lehmann-Haupt (1921) 162–76; Beloch (1925/1927) 2.356–65; Bikerman (1938) 197–
207; Bengtson (1937/1952) 2.12–29; id. (1988) 268.
241. Stolper (1985) 58. Cf. Brosius (2000) 73–75; Briant (2002) 64–65, 484, 890.
242. Grayson (1975a) 115. For further discussion, especially of the seventh year of Philip III
from Chronicle 10, see Boiy (2010).
243. See esp. Habicht (1958/2006); Walbank (1981) 75–77; more recently, Müller (2009) 156–
59, with the relevant bibliography listed in her notes.
244. Walbank (1981) 76, discussing the role of philoi in general in the Hellenistic period and
citing OGIS 219 as a particularly illustrative case.
245. Lines 10–11: καὶ ⟨λ⟩αβὼν οὐ μόνον τοὺς φίλους καὶ τὰς δυνάμεις εἰς τὸ διαγωνίσασθαι
περὶ | τῶμ πραγμάτων αὐτῶι προθύμ⟨ου⟩ς. Note also lines 16–17, 23–24, 46. See Jones (1993) 78
and n.13.
associates are referred to throughout that book as “friends” (philoi), the term
must be Diodorus’ own and a reflection of “general Hellenistic practice,” since
Cleitarchus would more likely have used the correct contemporary term “com-
panions” (hetairoi) if he had been responsible for the passages in question.246
Did Berossus deliberately employ Seleucid concepts and terms in describ-
ing the Neo-Babylonian exploits of Nebuchadnezzar II, or was this simply the
result of his way of viewing the world? We cannot definitively answer these
questions, of course. But either of the two scenarios would be deeply illumi-
nating for an understanding of Berossus’ historical vision. In the first case, he
would have meant to fashion the most famous hero and monarch of the Neo-
Babylonian period in the manner of a Seleucid king suppressing a revolt in his
territories, areas that included Egypt. In the second, the new political realities
of Seleucid rule in Babylonia would have become so ingrained in Berossus’ so-
ciety that when he thought about empire and conquest, he could not conceive
of these things but in Seleucid terms. This line of inquiry leads me to a further
set of important words used by Berossus, ones that describe not Nebuchadnez-
zar’s military activities but, rather, what he does once he returns to Babylon as
king. As with the terms already discussed, these will suggest not just the bor-
rowing of words but also the incorporation into Berossus’ narrative of concepts
and cultural values that derive from the society of his new overlords.
Since, upon his return, Nebuchadnezzar found the affairs of state well man-
aged by the Chaldaeans and found the throne in particular cared for by the best
of these men, all that he needed to do was take possession of his father’s rule “in
its entirety.”247 Significantly, if also mere coincidence, almost the same word-
ing is found in the description in OGIS 219 of Antiochus taking up his father’s
power.248 That the kingdom should be found in such a condition thanks to the
efforts of the Babylonian priesthood should perhaps not come as a surprise to
us when the account is being written by a member of that group, but it should
still be noted nonetheless. Of greater interest is the language Berossus uses in
the passage that follows: from his war booty, Nebuchadnezzar “decorated zeal-
246. Hornblower (1981) 34.

247. Ap. 1.138: κυριεύσας ὁλοκλήρου τῆς πατρικῆς ἀρχῆς. The use here of ὁλόκληρος is note-
worthy. Normally, the term is used in connection with “soundness” or phyiscal integrity and is a
byword for good health, commonly found in Greek epigraphic texts: see Robert (1955) 97–103.
Josephus himself uses it in that sense several times elsewhere, of both sacrificial victims and priests
who are (or ought to be) “unblemished”: see, e.g., AJ 3.228, 3.278–79, 10.207 (curiously, of the
statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, interpreted by the prophet Daniel); BJ 1.271 (= AJ 14.366).
This sense is common, too, in Greek inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Roman periods (see, e.g.
SIG3 736 line 10; SEG 55.926 line 6). In our passage, ὁλόκληρος must mean something like “in its
entirety”; there may be a parallel for this usage at OGIS 519 line 14.
248. Lines 8–9: ἀνα|κτήσασθαι τὴμ πατρώιαν ἀρχήν.
ously the temple of Bel and the rest” (Ap. 1.139: τό τε Βήλου ἱερὸν καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ
κοσμήσας φιλοτίμως), i.e., the other shrines of Babylon. The family of φιλοτιμ-
words is ubiquitous in Hellenistic inscriptions and forms a central component
in the linguistic register of euergetism.249 Furthermore, in Greek inscriptions
of the period, the verb κοσμέω is the mot juste for the actions of a benefactor
who repairs or renovates temples and other cult objects (e.g., statues).250 A few
examples will have to suffice to demonstrate the point. An early case of both
these words can be found in the same passage of an honorific decree (Rhodes
and Osborne [2003] no. 46, lines 3–5) used to describe the benefactions of one
Polystratus of the Attic deme Halai Aixonides, honored for work he sponsored
on the temple of Apollo Zoster in around 360 BC: καὶ [λί]αν φιλοτίμ[ω]ς [ἐπ]
(with foregoing) ε|σκεύακεν τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ τὰ ἀγάλματα κεκόσμηκεν μετὰ τῶν
αἱρεθέντων | ἐκ τῶν δημοτῶν (“and [Polystratus] equipped the temple in ways
that displayed extreme love of honour, and has, with those elected from the
demesmen, adorned the statues”; trans. Rhodes and Osborne).251 Another par-
ticularly illustrative text is SIG3 1050 from Eleusis at the end of the fourth cen-
tury. The aptly named “Tlepolemus son of A[?” is thanked for his benefactions
to the cult: ἐπειδὴ Τληπό]|λεμος Α[. . . 17 . . . κα]λῶς καὶ φι[λοτίμως252 καὶ
εὐσεβῶ] (with foregoing) ς τ|ῶν ἱερ[ῶν ἐπιμελεῖται καὶ τ]ὸ το[ῦ]| Πλούτωνος
ἱερ[ὸν καλῶς ἐκ]όσμησεν (lines 2–6: “since Tlepolemus son of (?) . . . well and
zealously, and piously cares for the sacred things and decorated beautifully the
temple of Pluto”). Of much greater relevance and therefore also significance
is OGIS 219 again. While not about Antiochus I’s upkeep of temples, the text
does employ the same sort of language in connection with his actions securing
peace for the cities of the Tauric region of Asia Minor: μετὰ πάσης σπουδῆς
καὶ φιλοτιμίας ἅμα καὶ ταῖς πόλεσιν τὴν εἰρήνην κατεσκεύ|ασεν . . . (lines
14–15:“with all eagerness and zeal, he both secured peace for the cities . . .”).
These examples should suffice to show that the words Berossus chose to
249. Note the relevant entries from the index “Res et verba notabiliora” in OGIS 2.719:
“φιλοτιμέομαι passim, φιλοτιμία passim, φιλότιμος passim.” Evidently, the term φιλότιμος was so
common that it could even become a title and, in some regions, was so well known that it could be
abbreviated φιλ, φι, or simply φ: see Robert (1955) 40; (1987) 225–26 with n.14. On the develop-
ment of the concept from the classical into the Hellenistic periods, see esp. Whitehead (1983); id.
(1986) 241–52; Hornblower (1981) 187 and n.18. Cf. Dover (1974) 230–33 on the older sense of
the concept. Note also Ma (2000) 191, 216; Ma does not examine φιλοτιμία per se but does discuss
“zeal” in euergetical language.
250. Robert (1970) 348–49 and n.1.
251. Rhodes and Osborne (2003) 232–33, while noting the text’s alignment with the develop-
ments discussed by Whitehead (see n. above), do note that the actual collocation λίαν φιλοτίμως
“is unique.”
252. I am not unaware that φιλοτίμως here is almost entirely “between square brackets” (a
supplement by Hiller von Gaertringen); but, given its and allied forms’ ubiquity and their certain
presence in my other examples, the parallel with Berossus’ text still seems valid.
describe Nebuchadnezzar’s work on the temple of Bel and the other shrines of
Babylon are familiar from the language of euergetism found in Greek inscrip-
tions from the late classical and early Hellenistic eras, some of which even ema-
nated from the Seleucid rulers themselves. Such language must have pervaded
the Seleucid court and thus would have been known throughout the official-
dom and elites of the empire, in which circles Berossus doubtless moved. But,
again, the main point of interest is that in using these terms, Berossus either
deliberately characterized Nebuchadnezzar as a beneficent Hellenistic ruler or
did so out of habit.
With the very next section of Berossus’ narrative of Nebuchadnezzar, we
run into yet another way that we can see the historian’s engagement with the
new dominant culture of his land. In this case, he is engaged not with the official
language of his new masters but, rather, with the Greek historiographic legacy
of writing on Babylon and its marvels. The tip-off comes at the start of Apion
1.140, where Berossus summarizes Nebuchadnezzar’s building of Babylon’s
walls and then turns to his palace constructions, which culminate in Berossus’
mention of the famous “Hanging Gardens.” I quote again the end of Berossus’
first narrative on Nebuchadnezzar, beginning with the passage in question:
(140) Having walled the city in noteworthy [ἀξιολόγως] fashion, and

having decorated the gateways in a manner befitting sacred space, he
built next to the palace of his father another adjoining it, the extent of
which and the rest of its magnificence, if one were to describe, would
be probably long, except that, though so great and splendid in its ex-
travagance, it was completed in 15 days. (141) In this palace, having
built up lofty stone substructures and made their appearance look very
much like mountains, he planted them with all manner of trees, and
he completed and fitted out the garden that is called “hanging” [τὸν
καλούμενον κρεμαστὸν παράδεισον], because of his wife’s desire for
mountain scenery, having been raised in the regions of Media.
The word that catches the eye is, of course, that translated “noteworthy,”
ἀξιολόγως. At one level, the term can be seen to derive from the same lin-
guistic register of euergetism I have just been discussing: so, in OGIS 229, we
hear, at line 9, of Seleucus II’s philotimia toward Magnesia on the Maeander
and, in lines 10–11, of the deified Antiochus II and Stratonike “honored with
noteworthy honors” (τιμωμέ|νους τιμαῖς ἀξιολόγοις). But in the context of the
passage in the Apion, I believe ἀξιολόγως carries a special valence, one that, I
should add, need not replace the more conventional sense but can work along-
side it. The walls of Babylon had captivated the imaginations of Greek authors
for centuries before the time of Berossus. The construction of Babylon’s brick
walls attracted Herodotus’ minute attention (1.178–79),253 and his description
was picked up by later authors, notably Aristophanes in his Birds of 414 (lines
552, 1125–41).254 Perhaps even more important for the present discussion is
the fact that the construction of Babylon’s walls—the nature of the bricks, the
height of the walls—was also of great importance to historians of Alexander,
particularly Cleitarchus (FGrH 137 F 10 = Diod. 2.7.3–4). Greek authors often
asserted that the wall and many of the city’s other marvels were built by the
legendary Queen Semiramis, a point that Berossus was keen to dismiss (F 8 =
Jos. Ap. 1.142; see also below).255 Cleitarchus, too, accepted the standard view
that Semiramis was the builder of the walls of Babylon, perhaps countering
Berossus specifically, which would make Cleitarchus’ notice the first external
testimonium to Berossus’ Babyloniaca.256 But, as will be seen below, it is more
likely that Berossus was reacting to what Cleitarchus wrote. Cleitarchus seems
also to have rejected Bel as the one responsible for Babylon’s walls (cf. Curt.
5.1.24, following Cleitarchus), a claim that Berossus does not make, though he
has the city present at the beginning of time (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. p. 29 M)
and later has the survivors of the Flood refound it (F 4 = Syncellus Chron. p. 32
M). Whatever Cleitarchus may have said, Babylon’s walls and their bituminous
bricks (see above) were of great interest to Greek authors from Herodotus on-
ward, including the historians who treated Alexander’s conquest of the city.257
Hence it is distinctly possible that when Berossus wrote that Nebuchadnez-
zar had fortified the city of Babylon ἀξιολόγως, he may well have meant, quite
literally, “in a manner worthy of record,” acknowledging thereby the celebrity
of the wall’s construction among later Greek authors, as well as, no doubt, in
native Babylonian sources such as Nebuchadnezzar’s rock-cut inscription at
Wadi Brissa (esp. col. 6, lines 46ff.).258 Herodotus and others helped to establish
Babylon’s walls as one of the great wonders of the world.259 Presumably, Beros-
sus had no quarrel with this estimation. In a sense, Berossus could be seen to be
responding to expectations on the part of his Greek reader in much the same
253. See esp. Rollinger (1993) 67–68, 106–37, the latter section surveying modern discussions
of Herodotus’ treatment of Babylon’s walls.
254. See above, n.XXX. For a general statement on the enduring view of Babylon as a marvel
among Greek authors, esp. its walls, see Henkelman et al. (2011) 449; Foster (2005) 207.
255. Cf. Baumgartner (1950) 73.
256. Cf. Pearson (1960) 230–31.
257. See Van De Mieroop (2003) esp. 265; also Sack (1982) 114–15.
258. Weissbach (1906) 26; cf. 4. See, more generally, Kuhrt (1987a) 53 on the engagement of
Berossus with Greek historiography.
259. The walls of Babylon were included in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the first
complete list for which is dated to the late second century BC (Philo of Byzantium): see Brodersen
(1992) 60.
way Manetho did when, having drawn notice to “Souphis . . . who raised up
the greatest pyramid,” another wonder of the world, he then went on to cor-
rect Herodotus (F 2 = Syncellus Chron. pp. 63–64 M).260 Our hellenophone
non-Greeks writing priestly history at the beginning of the Hellenistic period
knew what the new rulers of their lands wanted to hear about. Moreover, we
should not forget that ἀξιόλογος, –ον/ἄξιος, -α, -ον λόγου is a marked historio-
graphic term for Greek writers, signaling not just what is “worthy of record” but
the competitive assertion that whatever is ἀξιόλογον is “memorable” or “most
memorable,” despite what others say.261
Thus it is with some surprise and consternation that we read the “teaser” in
Berossus’ next sentence: “[Nebuchadnezzar] built next to the palace of his fa-
ther another adjoining it, the extent of which and the rest of its magnificence, if
one were to describe, would be probably too long, except that, though so great
and splendid in its extravagance, it was completed in 15 days.” Why do we find
reticence here, if Berossus’ plan was to highlight the celebrated monuments
of Babylon? The language of wonder and paradox is unmistakably in play: al-
though a vast addition to the urban space of Babylon, this “second palace” was
built in only fifteen days. The attention to the speed with which the structure
was built participates in the Greek ethnographic topos of the potentate’s ability
to construct and manipulate fabricated space on a great scale thanks to access
to unimaginable levels of labor. Similar are the descriptions of great works in
Herodotus: for example, the inscription containing the report of expenditures
for the pyramid of Cheops (2.125.6–7) or the record of Xerxes’ canal at Athos
and bridge across the Hellespont, the former even identified by Herodotus as
built “because of Xerxes’ megalophrosyne” (7.24).262 Berossus may also have
meant for something of a contrast to be felt here, inasmuch as this massive
structure would literally take up too much “space” in his description if he were
to report on it in detail. The enormous size of Babylon was proverbial in Greek
circles: compare the silly stories passed on by Herodotus and Aristotle that it
260. Σοῦφις . . . ὃς τὴν μεγίστην ἤγειρε πυραμίδα, ἥν φησιν Ἡρόδοτος ὑπὸ Χέοπος γεγονέναι.
Manetho corrected Herodotus in two ways. First, he rendered as Greek “Souphis” the all-important
fourth name of the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, Khufu, which would have been Shufu
in the late pronunciation of Manetho’s day; for Egyptian hw.f-wi pronounced “Shufu” in the Late
Period, see Lloyd (2007) 329 ad Hdt. 2.124.1. Cf. Beckerath (1999) 52. Second, Manetho placed the
pyramid builders in the right place in his king list (unlike Herodotus) and thereby created temporal
space where there had been none in Herodotus’ narrative.
261. Most famously, at Thuc. 1.1.1, the Peloponnesian War is identified as the “most worthy of
record [ἀξιολογώτατον] of the [wars] that had happened before.” But see also Xen. Hell. 5.1.4 and,
more relevant, Hdt. 2.148.2–3, where “notable” (ἀξιόλογος) temples at Ephesus and Samos, as well
as walls and public works throughout the Greek world, pale in comparison with the pyramids and
especially the labyrinth near Lake Moeris. Cf. Bakker (2002) 25; Ferrucci (2007).
262. Cf. Munson (2001) 240–41 on ethnographic “bigness” as a signifier of wealth and power.
was so large that Cyrus’ capture of its outskirts during a festival went unnoticed
for a considerable period of time (Hdt. 1.191.6; Arist. Pol. 1276a29). Could Ber-
ossus deliberately have chosen “not to give notice” to Nebuchadnezzar’s palace
partly to play off his text against Herodotus and others?
Of course, this suggestion is speculative in the extreme. More secure is
Berossus’ handling of the “Hanging Gardens,” yet another “wonder” Babylon
provided the ancient world.263 They are the one detail from Nebuchadnezzar’s
palace complex that Berossus permits himself to report on in any kind of detail:
“In this palace, having built up lofty stone substructures and made their ap-
pearance look very much like mountains, he planted them with all manner of
trees, and he completed and fitted out the garden that is called ‘hanging’ [τὸν
καλούμενον κρεμαστὸν παράδεισον], because of his wife’s desire for moun-
tain scenery, having been raised in the regions of Media.” As with ἀξιολόγως,
I think that καλούμενον reveals Berossus’ intention to acknowledge a feature
of Babylon that had achieved celebrity among Greek authors. It could per-
haps be argued that Berossus is being polemical through his use of the term
καλούμενος—that, in fact, the gardens in question were not really “hanging”
but were called that by misinformed writers.264 This may be so, but the net ef-
fect would be the same, if with an additional note of criticism: the gardens were
not “hanging” but planted on platforms with substructures or even in a sunken
area. But by whom were they mistakenly called “hanging” if not by ill-informed
Greek writers on Babylon? While still noting the celebrity of the marvel, Beros-
sus would also be correcting.
A major issue is connected to Berossus’ notice of the Hanging Gardens.
Stephanie Dalley has suggested that Berossus was the first ancient authority
to situate these gardens in Babylon, based on a misreading of an inscription
of Sennacherib in which that king advertised his responsibility for elaborate
works at Nineveh, at a location briefly known as “Babylon.”265 This proposal is
in line with her larger argument that the absence of the Hanging Gardens from
Herodotus is due to the fact that they were never at Babylon but were, rather,
at Nineveh. While in sympathy with her strong and often expressed support
for the veracity of Herodotus,266 I cannot follow her on this point. Quite apart
from the legitimately troubling issue of the absence of the Hanging Gardens in
Herodotus, I believe that by Berossus’ time, Greek historical writing had most
263. They are the first item in Philo of Byzantium’s list of the Seven Wonders: see Brodersen
(1992) 22. Cf. Finkel (1988).
264. Cf. Foster (2005) 216.
265. Dalley (1994) 55–57; cf. Dalley and Reyes (1998) 105.
266. See esp. Dalley (1996), (2003).
assuredly taken notice of them and located them in Babylon. The chief figure
responsible for this was Cleitarchus.
Our evidence comes from Diodorus. At Diodorus 2.10.1, we are told that
“there existed also next to the acropolis the so-called Hanging Garden which
Semiramis did not build, rather a later Syrian king, for the sake of a mere con-
cubine” (ὑπῆρχε δὲ καὶ ὁ κρεμαστὸς καλούμενος κῆπος παρὰ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν,
οὐ Σεμιράμιδος, ἀλλά τινος ὕστερον Σύρου βασιλέως κατασκευάσαντος χάριν
γυναικὸς παλλακῆς).267 It has long been recognized that though Ctesias is the
main source for Diodorus for this portion of book 2, this sentence cannot derive
from him. In our passage, Diodorus employs the term “Syrian” to mean “Assyr-
ian,” just as Cleitarchus had done, though Diodorus elsewhere uses Ἀσσύριος
to mean “Assyrian”; significantly, Q. Curtius Rufus, commenting on the same
circumstances of the origins of the Hanging Gardens, speaks of a Syriae rex
(Curt. 5.1.35), and he seems to be following Cleitarchus as well.268 This linguis-
tic detail needs to be set in the larger context of Ctesias’ and Cleitarchus’ views
on Semiramis. On the one hand, to judge from his fragments, Ctesias was a
strong advocate for the importance of Semiramis in Babylonian history, count-
ing her the founder of the city (Diod. 2.7.2ff. = Lenfant F 1b; Stronk [2010]
212–18), as well as a world conqueror. On the other hand, as I have already
noted, Cleitarchus also promoted Semiramis’ role in the building of the city.
Several scholars, most notably König, attribute the whole of Diodorus 2.10, not
just the first sentence, to Cleitarchus.269
However we decide the question of Diodorus’ source for the Hanging Gar-
dens, it is incontrovertible that they were an important topic in Greek histori-
cal writing and, moreover, a topic of concern either a generation before the
time of Berossus or contemporary with him, if Cleitarchus is responsible for
the description at Diodorus 2.10.270 Thus it is distinctly possible, even probable,
that Berossus was taking part in a current debate among Greek historians: who
was responsible for the Hanging Gardens, Semiramis or “another monarch” ? I
267. It is worth paying particular attention to the phrase χάριν γυναικὸς παλλακῆς: γυνή and
other substantives can be used as attributive adjectives (Kühner-Gerth [1966] 1.271–72), and the
usage here emphasizes the remarkable fact of the inspiration for such an important structure in
so unimportant a person, hence my translation “mere.” Note, by way of contrast, that in the cor-
responding section of Berossus/Josephus, the woman in question is clearly described as Nebuchad-
nezzar’s wife (Ap. 1.141: τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ).
268. Jacoby (1875) 590–91; Krumbholz (1895) 223; Schnabel (1923) 35; Schwartz (1931) 385
n.12; Jacoby Komm. to FGrH 137 F 2; Pearson (1960) 230; Bigwood (1980) 199 and n.20; Boncquet
(1987) 95–96 and n.406.
269. König (1972) 143 n.1. Note also Boncquet (1987) 95 and n.405; Stronk (2010) 155 n.8.
270. See Fraser (1972) 2.717–18 nn.3 and 4 with bibliography, for the dating of Cleitarchus:
probably c. 315–300 BC, though perhaps as late as 287–60, and very probably before Ptolemy I’s
own Alexander history. See now also Prandi (2012).
cannot help noting in this connection that very nearly the same phrase is used
at both Diodorus 2.10.1 and Apion 1.141 (ὁ κρεμαστός καλούμενος κῆπος/
τὸν καλούμενον κρεμαστὸν παράδεισον). For this reason, I have a hard time
accepting Dalley’s argument that Berossus was responsible for wrongly placing
the Hanging Gardens in Babylon. Berossus could not have originated the claim
that the gardens were located in Babylon. What would have been his motive
in inventing the gardens if they did not really exist? Either they really were in
Babylon and Greek authors had noted them, or there were structures in Baby-
lon that Greek writers thought were the Hanging Gardens.
Perhaps there is a larger problem lurking in the one major difference be-
tween Cleitarchus’ and Berossus’ wording (if theirs, of course): κῆπος versus
παράδεισος. While not exclusively so, κῆπος is mostly found in poetry and is
a true Greek word; παράδεισος is a loanword from Persia (cf. Avestan pairi-
daêza-, MIran. •pardez), was used for the first time in Greek literature by Xe-
nophon (e.g., An. 1.2.7), and is thereafter quite rare, occurring in Theophrastus
(e.g., HP 4.4.1), the LXX, and the New Testament, as well as other documents,
especially from the Ptolemaic world (e.g., SIG3 463 line 8; OGIS 90 [the Ro-
setta Stone] line 15; P. Rev. Laws 33.11; P. Cair. Zen. 33.3).271 From at least the
perspective of Xenophon in a passage from his Oeconomicus (4.13), while all
paradeisoi were kepoi, not all kepoi were paradeisoi; furthermore, curiously, the
participle kaloumenos is also used in this passage from Xenophon, but to help
account for the term paradeisos, not kremastos.272 The Persian word denoted a
“park”—a large space that would presumably take up a lot of room in an urban
setting and thus be hard to miss.273 A kepos need not be so big but could be an
“orchard” or “garden” even, which a later author could exaggerate into a full-
blown “park.” In any case, would Berossus have really disabused the Greeks of
the error if there was one? It seems to me much more likely that he would have
gone along with the misunderstanding inasmuch as it redounded to Babylon’s
credit. Saying the city had been founded by Semiramis was quite another mat-
ter; that did require correction (see below).
Toward the end of her groundbreaking article of 1987, Amélie Kuhrt can-
vassed several reasons why Berossus wrote the Babyloniaca, the last being “to
provide the Seleucid dynasty with an ideological support.”274 Essentially en-
dorsing this view, Kuhrt proposed two ways that Berossus could have provided
271. See Chantraine (1983/1984) 2.857; Beekes (2010) 2.1151; LSJ s.v.; also Gautier (1911) 71.
For further documentary examples from the Zenon archive (early Ptolemaic Egypt), see P. Lond.
2043.9, 2164.57.
272. οἱ παράδεισοι καλούμενοι. See Briant (2002) 443; Pomeroy (1994) 247–48 ad loc.
273. For another urban paradeisos, note Xen. Oec. 4.20: τὸν ἐν Σάρδεσι παράδεισον.
274. Kuhrt (1987a) 55.
this support with his narrative of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II in par-

ticular. As an “integral element” in the process of consolidation of Seleucid rule
in Babylonia, Berossus’ account could have offered a “counterbalance” to the
view, from Hecataeus of Abdera’s Aegyptiaca, of Egypt’s Sesostris III as a world
conqueror; not only was the magnificent rebuilding of Babylon by the first two
Neo-Babylonian rulers stressed, but so was their mastery, historically impos-
sible as we have seen, over Phoenicia, Coele Syria, and even Egypt. The tandem
of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar could also have been meant to act as
specific “models” for the father-son team of Seleucus I and Antiochus I.275 Simi-
larities, real and imagined, linked both sets of rulers, particularly the fact that
both were the first rulers of new regimes in Babylonia needing to establish their
legitimacy by making telling links with the past. This merging, if we can call
it that, of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar with Seleucus I and Antiochus
I goes a long way toward explaining the anachronisms of Berossus’ narrative
of the first two Neo-Babylonian rulers, as well as the language the historian
used to characterize the achievements of Nebuchadnezzar in particular. Taken
altogether, the terminology Berossus uses in the Nebuchadnezzar stories, both
the euergetistic and historiographic, provides a distinctly Hellenic texture to
the accounts.
Coming immediately after the long quotation of Berossus’ treatment of Ne-
buchadnezzar’s main achievements is a summary by Josephus of other topics
taken up in book 3 of the Babyloniaca. Evidently, to Josephus’ eyes at any rate,
there was much else to be found in the book:
Thus [Berossus] recorded these things regarding the aforementioned

king and much else in addition in his third book of his Chaldaïca, in
which [sc. book] he takes to task Greek historians for foolishly thinking
that Babylon was founded by the Assyrian Semiramis and for having
written falsely that the wonders connected to the city were built by her.
(Jos. Ap. 1.142)
It is very important that we pay attention to the details of this passage. Despite
the apparent range of material in book 3 of the Babyloniaca, Josephus singles
out two items for special attention in his summary: the deeds of Nebuchadnez-
zar and the refutation of Semiramis as founder of Babylon and builder of its
wonders. It is true that the wording at the start is vague: “much else in addition
to these things” (πολλὰ πρὸς τούτοις) could refer to items unrelated to Nebu-
275. Kuhrt (1987a) 56.
chadnezzar, but as Josephus goes on to explain, I think we must assume that

he meant “much else [about Nebuchadnezzar] in addition to these things.”276
Josephus says in the very next section:
and as regards these things, one must consider as reliable the report of
the Chaldaeans; indeed, in the ancient records of the Phoenicians [κἀν
τοῖς ἀρχείοις τῶν Φοινίκων],277 accounts in agreement with the things
reported by Berossus have been written about the king of the Babylo-
nians, that that ruler subdued both Syria and all Phoenicia. Indeed, re-
garding these matters, both Philostratus is in agreement in his Histories
when he recalls the siege of Tyre, and Megasthenes in the fourth book
of his Indica, through which he tries to reveal the aforementioned king
of the Babylonians to have been superior to Heracles in manliness and
greatness of deeds [ἀνδρείᾳ καὶ μεγέθει πράξεων]; for [Megasthenes]
states that he conquered the majority of Libya and Iberia. (Jos. Ap.
1.143–44; cf. AJ 10.227–28)
It is clear from this discussion that Josephus has Nebuchadnezzar in mind

when summarizing the contents of book 3 of Berossus’ Babyloniaca, for he says
virtually the same thing at Apion 1.133. Here at 1.143–44, he is concerned to
show that Berossus’ portrait of Nebuchadnezzar’s status as a world conqueror is
confirmed by Phoenician records and two other historians: Philostratus (FGrH
789 F 1b) and Megasthenes (FGrH 715 F 1a). In other words, on Josephus’
reading, Berossus considered Nebuchadnezzar the archetypical ruler, simply
“the king of the Babylonians.” Moreover, it appears that Megasthenes attempted
a similar portrait of Nebuchadnezzar278 or, rather, one even grander than Ber-
ossus’, insofar as Megasthenes had Nebuchadnezzar actually conquer regions
of the far West. If true, this would have been a remarkable state of affairs: a
Greek historian attached to the Seleucid court would have actually outdone a
Babylonian one in describing the military exploits of Nebuchadnezzar.279 This
suggests, in no uncertain terms, that the Seleucids regarded Nebuchadnezzar
as an important predecessor and model, a suggestion further supported by the
king’s apparent importance later: an entry from the astronomical diary for 187
276. Cf. Gutschmid (1893) 523 ad loc.

277. Gutschmid (1893) 525 ad loc., thinking that Josephus had in mind especially the archives
in Tyre, looks back to Jos. Ap. 1.107 and 111.
278. Schnabel (1923) 166–67, following Gutschmid, believes that Josephus did not have direct
access to Megasthenes but, rather, relied, as elsewhere, on the summary of Alexander Polyhistor;
Reinach (1930) 29 n.3 concurs.
279. See esp. Bosworth (1996) 122 and n.47.
BC makes prominent mention of Antiochus III performing important religious

actions in the Esagila, including taking up (?) “the purple garment of king Ne-
buchadnezzar” (Sachs and Hunger [1988/1989] 2.333 no.187 Rev. 11).280
If Josephus is correct in his reporting, we have to ask why Berossus’ refuta-
tion of Greek accounts of Semiramis’ foundation of Babylon was found in book
3 and not in book 1. The answer, I think, must be connected to Berossus’ treat-
ment of Nebuchadnezzar II. Recall that Semiramis is identified as Assyrian.
Berossus would have been keen to reject a female outsider as founder of his city
and to install not a mythical figure but a later, historical native ruler (“the king
of the Babylonians”) who virtually refounded the city. It is tempting to specu-
late precisely how Berossus managed all this in the course of his narrative of
book 3. I think it is reasonable to imagine that at some key point in his account
of Nebuchadnezzar, perhaps most suitably at the end of it, Berossus would have
stated that it was Nebuchadnezzar and not Semiramis who had conquered
much of the known world and that this king, not the nonnative queen of leg-
end, was responsible for much of what one regarded as the wonders of Babylon.
Berossus would have found confirmation for such a claim in native sources.281
Thus, in one fell swoop, Berossus would have been able both to counter errone-
ous Greek views and to activate and commandeer the glory assigned to the As-
syrian and female Semiramis and direct it toward the figure from the national
past of Babylon who was truly deserving. Berossus seems most polemical with
the pairing of Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar on the foundation of Babylon
and, more generally, in connection with his advocacy of the same king and not
Semiramis as the true kosmokrator or world conqueror. At the risk of stating the
obvious, it is there that one senses he is most engaged or preoccupied with the
political realities of his own day.
It is time to turn to the last preserved fragment of Berossan narrative in
Josephus’ Against Apion. Precisely after his summary of the achievements of
Nebuchadnezzar, Josephus blunders with his false backward reference to the
destruction of the Temple to be found in Berossus (Ap. 1.145), and this error
leads naturally to the mention of the rebuilding of the Temple by Cyrus the
Great and so forms the introduction to the last narrative of Berossus, taking
up, as it does, events from the death of Nebuchadnezzar to the overthrow of
the Neo-Babylonians by Cyrus. Before turning to the narrative, however, it is
worthwhile glancing briefly at the introduction of Cyrus:
280. See Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) 216, 97.

281. Wiseman (1985) 64 and n.121, citing Langdon (1912) 7.ii.11.
The things that were said above about the Temple in Jerusalem, that it
was burned down by the Babylonians having attacked and that it be-
gan again to be rebuilt when Cyrus had taken up the kingship of Asia
[Κύρου τῆς Ἀσίας τὴν βασιλείαν παρειληφότος], will be demonstrated
clearly from the words of Berossus when they are set out. For he speaks
as follows in his third book . . . (Ap. 1.145)
The key phrase here is τὴν βασιλείαν παρειληφότος, “had taken up the king-
ship.” The verb παραλαμβάνω means “to take up in turn” or “inherit” and is the
favored expression for the proper transfer of monarchic power, typically of a
royal son “taking up in turn” the rule of his father. Examples from all periods can
be adduced to bear this out, where the verb governs as its direct object the noun
βασιλεία. Thus we read at the start of Herodotus’ book 2, “when Cyrus died
Cambyses took up the kingship” (2.1.1: τελευτήσαντος δὲ Κύρου παρέλαβε τὴν
βασιληίην Καμβύσης). More to the point, in what must count as one of the very
earliest Hellenistic inscriptions (i.e., after Alexander, who died in 323 BC), we
find the following dating formula relating to Alexander the Great’s successors,
Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV: “when Alexander gave up his life among
men, Philip the son of Philip and Alexander the son of Alexander inherited the
kingship [τ[ὰ|μ βασιλεί]αν παρέλαβον]” (OGIS 4 lines 4–6).282 Similar are in-
scriptions from the Ptolemaic realm.283 There are also parallels from texts con-
cerning Seleucids, but they do not contain the precise formula seen above.284
To be sure, in our passage, the phrase τὴν βασιλείαν παρειληφότος belongs
to Josephus, not Berossus. But if we can say that Josephus’ summary of events
reflects Berossus’ treatment of the conquest of Cyrus—a treatment that, we will
see below, is strikingly positive in places—then Cyrus’ “taking up” of the rule of
Asia implies an orderly succession of power and not a violent usurpation. We
are thus encouraged to view Berossus’ understanding of Cyrus’ rule as one of
kingship, not imperial rule (basileia vs arche). I shall return to this point below.
The last section of narrative from the Babyloniaca follows this summary and
deserves to be quoted in full:
282. The inscription records honors for Thersippus, from Nesos near Lesbos.
283. OGIS 54 lines 6–7 (the titulus Adulitanus): Ptolemy III παραλαβὼν παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς |
τὴν βασιλείαν Αἰγύπτου καὶ Λιβύης καὶ Συρίας κτλ; OGIS 90 line 1 (Rosetta Stone, Ptolemy V):
βασιλεύοντος τοῦ νέου καὶ παραλαβόντος τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ πατρός κτλ. See also SIG3 463.1–3.
284. Tracy (1982) 61, text 3, lines 7–8, with the corrections of Habicht (1989) 13 n.33 (=
[2006] 161 n.33) and Robert and Robert (1982): Antiochus IV παρὰ προγόνων or παρ’ αὐτῶν]
παρειληφὼς τὴν [πρὸς τὸν δῆμον εὔνοιαν (Athens). Note also IG XII Supp. no. 142, lines 141–42
= OGIS 335 (Pergamon), with the correction of Robert (1934) 523 (= [1969] 3.1572): Eumenes I
παραλαβὼν τὰ πράγ[ματα τὰ or παρὰ Σε]λεύκου, that is, Seleucus I. It does not record a transfer of
power from father to son but is important nonetheless; for discussion, see Savalli-Lestrade (1992).
(146) Nebuchadnezzar, after beginning the aforementioned wall, fell ill

and gave up his life; he ruled for forty-three years. His son Evilmaraduch
[= Amel-Marduk] became master of the kingship. (147) This man, hav-
ing taken charge of the state illegally and with wanton violence [προστὰς
τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνόμως καὶ ἀσελγῶς], was plotted against by his sister’s
husband, Neriglissar, and murdered, having ruled for two years. After
the murder of this man, the one who plotted against him, Neriglissar,
took the rule and reigned four years. (148) The son of this man, Laboro-
soardoch [= Labashi-Marduk], possessed the kingship for nine months,
being only a child; he was plotted against on account of his demonstrat-
ing many bad character traits and was cudgeled to death by his friends
[διὰ τὸ πολλὰ ἐμφαίνειν κακοήθη ὑπὸ τῶν φίλων ἀπετυμπανίσθη].
(149) With this one killed, the plotters against him came together and
jointly handed the kingship over to Nabonidus, who was one of the Bab-
ylonians from the same plot [ἐπισυστάσεως].
During the reign of this man, the walls of the city of Babylon beside the
river were constructed with baked brick and asphalt. (150) When his
rule was in its seventeenth year, Cyrus, who had come out of Persis with
a great force and had subdued the rest of Asia, all of it [καταστρεψάμενος
τὴν λοιπὴν Ἀσίαν πᾶσαν], attacked Babylonia. 151 Perceiving his ad-
vance, Nabonidus met him with his army and deployed. Defeated in
the battle and forced to flee with a few men, he was trapped in the city
of the Borsippans. 152 Cyrus seized Babylon and arranged to demolish
the outer walls of the city, because [otherwise] the city seemed to him
to be too strong and difficult to capture [πραγματικὴν και δυσάλωτον].
He then moved camp against Borsippa in order to lay siege to Naboni-
dus. 153 Since Nabonidus did not hold out against the siege, but, rather,
surrendered himself beforehand, Cyrus treated him with generosity
[χρησάμενος Κῦρος φιλανθρώπως αὐτῷ] and gave him Carmania as a
place to live and sent him away from Babylonia. Nabonidus spent the
remainder of his days in that land, and there he died. (Ap. 1.146–53)
Three major points emerge from this narrative: (1) the importance (again) of
the walls of Babylon; (2) the degeneracy and poor leadership of the later Neo-
Babylonian rulers; and (3) the successes of Cyrus the Great.
I have already spoken at some length about the outer walls of Babylon (see
above, pp. 158–60, 285–86). Suffice it to say here that they seem to be integral
to Berossus’ conception of Babylon—indeed, an emblem of its greatness and
independence. They were begun by the greatest of the Neo-Babylonians; in-

deed, our last view of Nebuchadnezzar is precisely as initiator of the walls: “af-
ter beginning the aforementioned wall,” he “fell ill.” They are completed by the
last native ruler of Babylon, Nabonidus. Cyrus himself recognizes their great
power and orders their destruction: “Cyrus seized Babylon and arranged to
demolish the outer walls of the city, because [otherwise] the city seemed to
him to be too strong and difficult to capture [πραγματικὴν και δυσάλωτον].”
This quality of being “strong” or even “formidable” (pragmatikos) is, in a sense,
what all Hellenistic rulers and communities sought: simply “to matter,” to be
worth reckoning—here, thanks to fortifications. The Arcadian town of Pso-
phis as described by Polybius during the Social War (218 BC) provides a tell-
ing parallel—to compare the small with the great. An ancient community (Plb.
4.70.3), Psophis stood on the banks of a famous river about which many tales
(πολὺς . . . λόγος) are told, the Erymanthus (Plb. 4.70.8), and was extremely
well protected, not least by a steep and fortified hill that served “very efficiently
as a natural citadel” (Plb. 4.70.10: ἄκρας εὐφυοῦς καὶ πραγματικῆς λαμβάνων
τάξιν);285 its strength was even obvious to its enemy Philip V, who was at a loss
as to how to capture the town (Plb. 4.70.6), though he eventually did. Walbank
was troubled by the reference to the storied river Erymanthus,286 but surely the
point is cumulative: legend, natural advantages, and man-made fortifications
all made Psophis into a noteworthy community and a tough nut to crack: it
certainly received Polybius’ notice.
But if Babylon was formidable, virtually all of its last native rulers evidently
were not. Berossus’ list of kings after Nebuchadnezzar, at least down to Na-
bonidus, who oversaw an expansion of Babylonian power, is a litany of court
intrigue and murder. The impression Berossus gives of inner weakness and tur-
moil in the royal house seems, in fact, to be an accurate picture of the last years
of the Neo-Babylonian court.287 It is interesting that he has not made any effort
to disguise that the later Neo-Babylonian kings were so weak and their rules so
short. Indeed, quite to the opposite, Berossus seems to justify the murders of
both Amel-Marduk and Labashi-Marduk by pointing to their moral failings,
though there are reasons, in both cases, to suspect Berossus’ assessment. Amel-
285. The similarity between Berossus and Polybius is noted at LSJ s.v. pragmatikos V. My trans-
lation comes from Paton et al. (2010/2012) 2.513. I am not unaware of the broader significance of
the term pragmatikos in connection with Polybius; I view the two uses, here at 4.70.10 and else-
where modifying historia in particular, as distinct. Cf. LSJ s.v. II.1. Cf., more generally, Walbank
(1972) ch. 3; Pédech (1964) 21–32.
286. Walbank (1957/1979) 1.524 ad Plb. 4.70.8. It is true that the verb (τεθρύληται, “babbled”)
is negative and implies censure.
287. Cf. Kuhrt (1995) 2.597.
Marduk “took charge of the state illegally and with wanton violence” (προστὰς
τῶν πραγμάτων ἀνόμως καὶ ἀσελγῶς), yet he was also the son of Nebuchad-
nezzar and so, presumably, had as good a right to the throne as anyone else, if
not better. As for the unfortunate Labashi-Marduk, Berossus himself notes that
he was a mere boy when assassinated by conspirators, yet this act is justified
because the king managed still to demonstrate “many bad character traits” (διὰ
τὸ πολλὰ ἐμφαίνειν κακοήθη), despite his tender age. Cyrus comes off surpris-
ingly well in Berossus’ treatment. He is the master of the rest of Asia when he
attacks Babylon, and he acts decisively and with prudence. Most notably, he is
very generous (χρησάμενος Κῦρος φιλανθρώπως αὐτῷ) to Nabonidus in de-
feat, giving him an entire region (Carmania) to live in. It bears noting here that
philanthropia is, like philotimia and other concepts discussed above, a common
virtue of Hellenistic dynasts.288
Two larger and interrelated points need to be emphasized in connection
with Berossus’ treatment of the later Neo-Babylonian kings. First, manifestly,
Berossus was not a blind apologist of Babylonia: if Babylon’s last native rulers
were a bad lot, that is how he showed them to us. Second, Berossus could not or
would not present these rulers in a positive light, because there was obviously
a record of their character and actions that ultimately lay behind his narra-
tive. Far from being a propagandist for the Neo-Babylonians, he was guided,
in some sense, by whatever evidence there was concerning them and did not
invent material.
These conclusions need modification when we turn to Nabonidus and
Cyrus. The Babylonian tradition concerning Nabonidus was complex. It seems,
on the basis of texts like the “Nabonidus Chronicle” (Chronicle 7 in the Baby-
lonian Chronicle Series), that he was shown as “an able and vigorous ruler,”
if also one preoccupied with the gathering threat of Persia as well as with the
conquest of a region called Tema in Arabia.289 But in the aftermath of the Per-
sian conquest of Babylonia, a definitely hostile view of Nabonidus developed.
Represented by the so-called “Verse Account” and the Cyrus Cylinder (ANET3
312–15 and 315–16, respectively), it focused on him as an impious ruler who
was rightfully ousted by Cyrus, who, in turn, was depicted as an agent of the
gods and the rightful ruler of Babylon—the product, no doubt, of Achaemenid
propaganda and a willing local, priestly elite at Babylon.290 Intriguing about
288. See, e.g., Hornblower (1981) 55, 206, 210 (“a recurring theme” in the Letter of Aristeas);
also Ma (2000) 172 and nn.216, 217. Cf. Welles (1934) 373 s.vv. φιλανθρωπέω, φιλάνθρωπον.
289. Kuhrt (1990b) 131 (quote); see also Grayson (1975a) 21–22; Briant (2002) 40.
290. See esp. Kuhrt (1990b) 141–45; (1983); (1987b) 49–50. See also Briant (2002) 43–44. The
cylinder is now known to have been composed as a public proclamation (something that doubtless
could have been guessed), by the text BM 47176 (see above, p. 43 n.177).
Berossus’ version of events is how it seems to steer a middle course: neither

Nabonidus nor Cyrus are obviously villains, but Cyrus is not embraced as the
avenging hero of Marduk either. Put another way, while Berossus’ narrative is
somewhat pro-Cyrus, it is also not anti-Nabonidus.
This is a surprising state of affairs, I think, especially in Berossus’ treat-
ment of Cyrus. It would have been easy to present Cyrus as a cruel invader and
usurper of the Babylonian throne. Berossus presumably had nothing invested
in presenting him as a humane conqueror.291 Indeed, other Achaemenid kings
came off badly in subsequent tradition, notably Xerxes, whose alleged destruc-
tion of temples at Babylon was meant to contrast with Alexander’s rebuilding
of them in Greek authors.292 I think that the best explanation for Berossus’ ap-
parently evenhanded treatment of Nabonidus and Cyrus is to see it as springing
from a view of Babylon’s past that was simultaneously determinist and nation-
alist, with these two perspectives together forming a “deuteronomic” one that
we see also in Manetho’s narratives: national pride is spared if past (and, by im-
plication, present) conquest can be explained either as having to have happened
or even to have been preordained in some way. Simply put, at some level in Ber-
ossus’ mind, the Persian conquest of Babylonia happened because it had to hap-
pen. We might note, in this connection, that Cyrus’ earlier conquest of “the rest
of Asia, all of it” (καταστρεψάμενος τὴν λοιπὴν Ἀσίαν πᾶσαν) perhaps made
his defeat and mastery of Babylonia fit a pattern of previous military success
in the region and thus made the legacy of Persian dominion more palatable.293
Two further points follow naturally from this conclusion. The first is that
Berossus’ narrative may well be betraying a subtly pro-Persian orientation. As
we already have had occasion to note, Alexander and the Diadochs wanted
to appear simultaneously as the adversaries to but also the inheritors of the
Achaemenid realm—in short, as the Achaemenids’ competitors, whether as en-
emies or heirs. Second and more important for this study, Berossus’ determin-
ism can be seen to rely on the notion of succession, the view that the transfer
of imperial power was an ordered process working through time and not (by
291. Naturally, if there is significant manipulation by Josephus at this point, characterizing

Cyrus as such a figure would confirm the view of him that comes from the Hebrew Bible: cf. Mitch-
ell (1991a) 426–27.
292. See above, ch. 1, pp. 44–45 and n.184.
293. The totality of Cyrus’ control over all the region with the exception of Babylon is stressed
by the word πᾶσαν (“all of it”), not required because of “the rest of Asia” (τὴν λοιπὴν Ἀσίαν); strictly
speaking, πᾶσαν is a “Tail constituent, a unit of additional, clarifying information that follows the
main clause” (Dik [2007] 100; cf. 35–36, 69). There are other Josephan parallels (pas placed after
the noun, reinforcing attributive loipos), perhaps calling into question the purity of the quote of
Berossus: AJ 3.80, 4.287, 7.100, 8.105, 18.23; BJ 3.25. I owe the grammatical explanation and further
Josephus references to my colleague C. George.
implication) a spasmodic series of violent upheavals. To be sure, the specta-

tors of the succession could be surprised and even troubled by what they saw
(Demetrius of Phalerum and Polybius especially come to mind).294 But above
all, recognizing a succession of empires was, in the end, fundamentally a way
to order the past, often providing the formulator of the list with a context that
explained his own culture’s loss of autonomy. It is hard to resist the impression
that this is precisely what Berossus was doing in his Babyloniaca, at least as far
as we can make out from his Neo-Babylonian narratives, as they follow from
his treatment of the Assyrians and lead to that of the Achaemenids.295
As such, Berossus anticipated, by some one hundred or more years, the au-
thor of the Book of Daniel, who similarly incorporated into his view of Near
Eastern history the succession of empires.296 The crucial point here, if we can
trust the findings of scholars such as A. Momigliano and F. Millar, is that the
concept of a succession of world empires was a Greek development,297 one that
was picked up by figures such as Berossus and the author of Daniel. This is a
crucially important point, for if true, this essential tool of historical explana-
tion and, I might add, national justification on the largest possible scale was an
import into the cultures of these men. In Berossus’ case in particular, the adap-
tation of this Greek structure of explanation represented a radical departure: in
the words of H. Tadmor, “the succession of empires . . . is so far unattested in
the chronographic, the historical and the ‘prophetic’ literature of Assyria and
Babylonia.”298 But, tellingly, Tadmor notes that this perspective is found in one
late text from Mesopotamia: the Dynastic Prophecy.299 Remarkably, just as Ber-
ossus does, its survey of the transfer of power in Mesopotamia (thus the des-
ignation “Dynastic”)300 stresses the humane treatment of Nabonidus by Cyrus
294. Stork et al. (2000) F 82A, Wehrli F 81 = Plb. 29.21.1–9. Cf. Momigliano (1987) 40: “This
was not only an intellectual perception, but an emotional finding. The fall of an empire is to Poly-
bius an occasion on which a dignified man is entitled to let himself go, to be disturbed and even
to cry.”
295. Momigliano (1987) 43: “In telling the history of Babylonia to the Greeks, Berossus was
able to fit it into the scheme of four successive monarchies.”
296. Twice: Dan. 2:31–45, 7:1–14. The date of Daniel and its various redactions is hotly de-
bated: I follow Millar (1997) 94–96 = (2006b) 56–59.
297. Momigliano (1987) 42, citing Herodotus (1.95, 130), Ctesias, Demetrius of Phalerum, and
Polybius; Millar (1997) 103–4 = (2006b) 66. Cf. Asheri (2007a) 36; (2007a) 148–49 ad Hdt. 1.95.2.
For the later history of the topos, see the pioneering work of Swain (1940) and Mendels (1981). Cf.
Potter (1994) 187, 263 n.7, arguing for a strong Zoroastrian element.
298. Tadmor (1998) 322, referring back to (1958) esp. 26–33.
299. Tadmor (1998) 322–23.
300. Cf. Grayson (1975b) 24: “[the Dynastic Prophecy] is a description, in prophetic terms,
of the rise and fall of dynasties or empires, including the fall of Assyria and rise of Babylonia, the
fall of Babylonia and the rise of Persia, the fall of Persia and the rise of the Hellenistic monarchies.”
(col. ii, lines 19–21), with settlement “in another land.”301 Insofar as Grayson
has characterized the Dynastic Prophecy as “a crucial step in the evolution of
apocalyptic literature in the ancient Near East,” based on its staging of real, his-
torical episodes as prophetically envisioned future events ex eventu,302 so must
we also appreciate the significance of this orientation for Berossus. As we shall
also see with Manetho, central to Berossus’ historiographic vision is a “histori-
cized” apocalypticism; or, to borrow Jonathan Z. Smith’s interpretation of the
Babyloniaca, Berossus offers us a “proto-apocalyptic” view,303 whereby the his-
torical text can become admonitory. We should also be appreciative here of
Berossus’ innovative strategy in terms of his own culture’s usual ways of curat-
ing the past for presenting the transfer of imperial rule. Really for the first time,
Berossus’ Babyloniaca fundamentally “periodized” the past of the ancient Near
East, breaking it into temporal units defined by the transfer of dynastic power.
301. “He [i.e., Cyrus] will take the throne and the king who arose <from> the throne ([. . .]) |
The king of Elam will change his place ([. . .]) | He will settle him in another land ([. . .])” (Grayson
trans.). The parallel between Berossus and the Dynastic Prophecy in connection with Cyrus’ treat-
ment of Nabonidus is noted in Grayson (1975b) 25 and n.8; also Kuhrt (1995) 2.660.
302. Grayson (1975b) 22; for the circumstances of the composition of the prophecy, see 18–19.
303. Cf. Smith (1975) 134–35 = (1978) 70.
Chapter 6
Manetho’s Narratives
When Herodotus set out to write his history of the Persian Wars, he had to
create the master narrative of the conflict. To be sure, oral and written versions
of it already existed; further, some of the events were celebrated in visual art
of various types and were even remembered in state cult and other communal
performance.1 But the story of the entire war had to be created by Herodo-
tus. Similarly, it has been cogently argued that insofar as he wrote about the
Peloponnesian War, which was actually two phases from a series of conflicts
between Athens and Sparta from the middle of the fifth century to its end,
Thucydides also created it.2
By comparison, Manetho had at his disposal the framework of virtually all
of Egyptian history in the form of lists of kings and, in some cases, royal annals.
Further, he had written, narrative accounts of many of the important events
from Egypt’s past already to hand. Like his Greek contemporaries practicing
local history of various sorts, he had the task not so much of discovering the
past of Egypt but, rather, of sorting and shaping material that already existed.3 It
may be useful to put some particulars to the situation faced by Manetho. All of
the narratives from the Aegyptiaca that come to us from Josephus and virtually
all that remain of any length, concern the Hyksos period and the Second Inter-
mediate Period. There were a multitude of Egyptian texts treating the Hyksos
period and its aftermath.4 Of particular note were two monumental stelae at
Karnak, relating to the reign of Kamose (1555–1550 BC) and set up some time
shortly after his death; their texts have been published and detail that mon-
1. For poetic treatments of the Persian Wars, see esp. Boedeker (2011) with bibliography. On
oral traditions of the war (and their fragility) at Athens, see Thomas (1989) 131, 201 n.14, 205, 216;
(1992) 110–11. For visual media, also at Athens, see, e.g., Camp (1992) 66–72; Hölscher (1998)
on monumental art; Boardman (1975) 222 for vases. For annual cultic celebrations, see Mikalson
(1975) 47–48, 50, 143–44; Burkert (1992a) 260; Parker (1996) 187 for Athens. For Sparta, see, e.g.,
Wide (1893) 358, 369 (hero cult of King Leonidas).
2. Loraux (1986) 146; Hornblower (1991/2008) 1.4.
3. Cf. Dillery (2011) 206, 209.
4. Note the useful compendium of sources in Redford (1997).
301
arch’s expulsion of the Hyksos.5 Moreover, it is clear that another version of the
same texts was made on wooden tablets in hieratic—the so-called Carnarvon
Tablet. This last detail is most important because it shows that in addition to
the monumental accounts concerning the expulsion of the Hyksos, there was a
“scribal” one that (a) would have been portable and (b) could have been itself
responsible for or at least an exemplar of an archival or “historical” version that
might well lay behind a scholarly tradition about the Hyksos with which Mane-
tho would have been familiar in his own House of Life.6
Be that as it may, Manetho would presumably have had ready access to royal
narratives concerning the Hyksos, of the same type as the Carnarvon Tablet, if
not a text derived from the tablet itself. There is no doubt that he would have
had available to him a whole battery of allied, prophetic texts that either dealt
with the Hyksos explicitly or employed tropes and themes derived ultimately
from the Egyptian reaction to their invasion and rule—a deeply traumatic set
of events that “scarred” Egyptian historical consciousness.7 The early contro-
versy concerning the Carnarvon Tablet is instructive in this regard: while con-
sensus was essentially established supporting the idea that it was “historical,”
some scholars viewed it as a “romantic” or “fictional” tale—a Königsnovelle if
you will.8 This old controversy raises specific and general problems for assess-
ing Manetho’s narratives. Specifically in relation to his Hyksos stories, to what
degree was Manetho’s version of events aimed at being simply a historical nar-
rative, and to what degree did it incorporate “proto-apocalyptic” elements from
the prophetic traditions inspired by the Hyksos episode? To put the matter
clearly, how did Manetho manage when he met with events from Egypt’s past
that were richly documented in what we might crudely style both the “histori-
cal” and the “prophetic” or “romantic” traditions.
My own view is that it simply would not have been possible for Manetho to
keep separate the two strands of tradition on the Hyksos or any other impor-
tant subject from the history of Egypt. Positing such a choice for him begs the
question whether Manetho viewed these two types of text differently. It is not
clear to me that he did. Indeed, there is strong evidence to the contrary—all
of it already discussed elsewhere in this book. Consider, first, the reference to
5. See esp. Smith and Smith (1976) with earlier bibliography: in particular, Gardiner (1916);
Lacau (1939); Beckerath (1964) 26–27; Habachi (1972).
6. “Historical tablet” is the term employed in Newberry (1913) 117; Gardiner ([1916] 95–96,
109–10) and Lacau ([1939] 267) concur. Cf. Smith and Smith (1976) 75; see also now Baines (2011)
69. Redford (1986) 227 believes that Manetho found the “Osarsiph Legend,” as he styles it (= Hyk-
sos II), “in his temple library”; note also Redford (1970).
7. Cf. Assmann (2002) 197–98; Dillery (2007b) 226.
8. See n.6 above.
Manetho’s Narratives 303
the appearance of the talking lamb under Bocchoris, a reference that implies
the presence, I think, of the Oracle of the Lamb in Manetho’s chronography at
that point. There are other “tags” that may well indicate similar “legendary”
or prophetic texts elsewhere in the Aegyptiaca. Even more decisively, consider,
too, the nature of Josephus’ criticism of Manetho (which I previously cited in
chapter 4):
Now this Manetho—the one who promised to translate [μεθερμηνεύειν]

Egyptian history from sacred writings [ἱερῶν γραμμάτων], having
stated that our ancestors came to Egypt with many tens of thousands
and conquered the inhabitants, then admitting himself that thereafter,
in time, they later fled and held what is now Judaea, founded Jerusa-
lem, and built the Temple—up through these events he followed records
[ἀναγραφαῖς]. Then, giving himself the opportunity through saying
that he would write up legendary and oral material [τὰ μυθευόμενα
καὶ λεγόμενα] about the Jews, he inserted [παρενέβαλεν] unreliable
accounts [λόγους ἀπιθάνους], wishing to mix us up with a crowd of
Egyptian lepers and people condemned for other infirmities to exile, as
he says. (Jos. Ap. 1.228–29)
While Josephus can support the essential historicity of Manetho’s Hyksos I nar-
rative by referring to its basis in the historical “records” of Egypt (ἀναγραφαί),
he dismisses Manetho’s Hyksos II narrative as “myths and oral material” (τὰ
μυθευόμενα καὶ λεγόμενα). He repeats the same observation later in the trea-
tise, after he has demonstrated what he considers to be the narrative illogi-
calities of Hyksos II (Ap. 1.287). Granting that there is the massive problem of
the nature of the text of Manetho before Josephus, this observation on the two
types of material that underlay Manetho’s accounts of the Hyksos makes abun-
dantly clear that Manetho combined what seemed like historical and legendary
narratives with no difference in treatment—evidently no Herodotean product
warning to the effect that “I’m just reporting what I heard” (cf. Hdt. 2.123.1,
7.152.3: γράφειν/λέγειν τὰ λεγόμενα).
I do not mean for Josephus’ difficulties to serve as our criticism of Mane-
tho’s methods; for one thing, Josephus had his own very particular reasons for
not approving of the contents of Hyksos II, and it would be foolish to endorse
his characterization of Manetho’s sources for it uncritically. But I believe the
larger point still remains: as will be seen below, in his close analysis of Hyksos
II, Josephus put his finger on precisely those details that reveal the narrative’s
origins in the Chaosbeschreibung tradition of the “prophetic Königsnovelle.”
Even in Josephus’ treatment of Hyksos I, one can see the same process. Thus
when he writes, “in some other book of the Aegyptiaca, Manetho says the same
people, the ones called ‘shepherds,’ have been recorded as ‘prisoners’ in their
[i.e., the Egyptians’] sacred books (Jos. Ap. 1.91), one senses that Josephus is
alert to Manetho cross-referencing at least two distinct types of sources on the
Hyksos—one that he has followed for the bulk of his account and another (“the
sacred books”) that is used to furnish yet another meaning of the term Hyksos
elsewhere in the Aegyptiaca.
It is appropriate and necessary to take up here the question of the nature
of historiography in ancient Egypt. This is a massive issue about which it is
presumptuous of me to speak, both because I am a historian of Greek antiquity,
not Egyptian, and because it is no doubt mistaken to imagine that any culture,
ancient or modern, has just one historiography uniquely fitted to it that articu-
lates the facts of the world in a way specific to it. Despite these reservations,
the problem of how the Egyptians viewed their past and especially the deeds
of their kings is central to what they wrote and, consequently, what was avail-
able to Manetho, to say nothing about how it shaped his own historiographic
attitudes. Simply put, the chief sources that Manetho had at his disposal, in ad-
dition to the chronology of the king list, were the tales of Egypt’s kings.9
I have to defer to specialists who have written on the problem of the Egyp-
tian view of the past. Caution is obviously in order, for it is easy to slip unthink-
ingly into threadbare clichés regarding Egypt that are “orientalist” and even
racist:10 members of an inert, monolithic, and antique culture, the Egyptians
did not really have a view of the past but lived in a timeless present. In an
epochal article from 1966, Eberhard Otto identified a difficulty at the heart of
Egyptian writing about the past: “a relationship of tension between the world of
facts and of ideal historical representation.”11 This tension was focused primar-
ily on the figure of the king. The concept of the pharaoh was especially impor-
tant and biform: in reference to his divine power as, for example, the issuer of
decrees, the one who appoints officials, or the one who acts as representative for
humanity before the gods, the word used in Egyptian texts is nswt, translated
“king”; in reference to the mortal person who happened to be king at any given
point in time, the word used is ḥ̣m, translated “his majesty” or “incarnation”—
that is, of royal power.12 This distinction would seem to find a natural correla-
9. Cf. Meyer (1904) 79. Note also Beckerath (1964) 12 and n.2; Ryholt (2004) 505–6; more
generally, Ryholt (2009a), (2012).
10. Cf. Said (1978) 55–58.
11. Otto (1964/1966) 161: “Spannungsverhältnis zwischen der Welt der Tatsachen und dem
idealen Geschichtsbild.”
12. Silverman (1995) 64; Allen (2000) 31. Cf. Gardiner (1957) 74–75; Loprieno (1996) 279
n.10.
tion in the two basic Egyptian understandings of time itself: neheh, or cyclical
time of eternal becoming; and djet, or linear time, which concerns that which is
immutable and permanent.13
Thus, when the king is described in Egyptian texts as engaged in some ac-
tivity or other, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is sym-
bolic or ideal action and what is “real” historical action. Therein is the tension
Otto identified.14 Some royal actions became expected or even conventional
elements of the pharaonic ideal and were repeated over and over again in texts.
Baines has put the matter well. Discussing a series of inscribed texts concerning
the solar cult, probably originating in the Middle Kingdom (c. 1975–1700 BC),
he observes: “the king’s entire role is ritualized, so that there is no sharp dis-
tinction between his performance of the cult, which is presented in the treatise
cited, and his actions toward the outside world; the significant difference is in
the location and the sanctity of what is done.”15 Spalinger has similar things to
say about the war councils that were reportedly held by Thutmose III at Aruna
and by Ramesses II at Kadesh: they are stock and formulaic scenes in military
narratives and “should not be considered a genuine account, even though there
may have been a historical basis for such a scene.”16 Cultic or conventionalized
action of the king and his historical action merge and are not separable. The
temporally bound king and the timeless monarch come together.
The problem of distinguishing between symbolic, ahistorical action and his-
torical action becomes acute when we turn to prophetic or proto-apocalyptic
texts—the very narratives that lay behind the extant stories told via Josephus
by Manetho.17 Because it is seemingly natural and unremarkable, it is seldom
noted that all of Manetho’s narratives, even those we can only guess at through
the tags in the chronography suggesting their presence in Manetho’s Aegyp-
tiaca, are royal narratives.18 This fact is of primary importance. To be sure,
nonroyal figures, especially priests, are often visible and even play significant
roles, and prophecy can even occlude the figure of the king;19 but Manetho’s
stories are all, at some level, about royal actions—the doings of kings. Insofar
as Manetho’s history is built on the back of a king list, perhaps we should not
find this surprising. In theory, there were other possibilities open to him: non-
royal narratives and allied texts. Further, one might think to add mythical texts
13. Cf. Assmann (2002)18–19; (2005) 371–74.

14. See also the helpful remarks of Van Seters (1983) 140; Hornung (1971). One sees the ten-
sion discussed already in Hermann (1938) 8 and De Buck (1929) 17. Cf. Redford (1986) xvii–xxi.
15. Baines (2007) 182, referring to Assmann (1970); note also Loprieno (2003) 140.
16. Spalinger (1982) 101, following De Buck (1929). Cf. Diod. 1.47.6 (Hecataeus).
17. Cf. Otto (1964/1966) 176 and n.28, citing the Demotic Chronicle.
18. For a convenient listing of the “tags,” see Redford (1986) 207–9.
19. Cf. Dillery (1999) 105.
analogous to the Babylonian creation epic that Berossus has Oannes retell, but
even in the corresponding Egyptian texts, either these prominently feature
the figure of the king, or royal ideology is very much in play. In any case, the
apparent kinglessness of Berossus’ genesis narrative is misleading, since the
victory of Bel over Tiamat is fraught with meaning for royal ideology, and
the text was read out at the annual Akitu festival, in which the king’s rule was
reviewed and renewed for the new year. To return to the main point, it seems
unrealistic—indeed, impossible—that Manetho’s stories are about any figure
other than the king.
In this context, we must take up the issue of the Königsnovelle, or “king’s
story,” and related matters. In 1938, Alfred Hermann identified a distinct type
of royal text that was focused on a memorable act of a king that followed upon
his special planning, formed with or, not infrequently, without the recommen-
dation of his royal council—a significant group of related texts that seemed to
follow a set pattern. Dubbed the Königsnovelle, the story in these texts typically
would begin with the pharaoh sitting in his majesty and informed of a matter
requiring his attention, either by a messenger or through a dream; often, he
holds a council at which he forms a plan of action, which may be confirmed
or questioned by the council, or the plan may simply be articulated in a speech
that the pharaoh gives, with no audience specified; there follows a narrative of
the pharaoh’s actions that, without exception, have a positive outcome, thereby
confirming the correctness of the king’s plan.20 Naturally, the “correctness
of the king’s plan” stresses the all-important role of the pharaoh in securing
the welfare of Egypt—indeed, ultimately securing the cosmic order, or Ma’at.
This confirmation is arguably the most crucial element in this literary form.
It was convincingly shown by Georges Posener and others that the origins of
the Königsnovelle can be traced back to texts of the Middle Kingdom era, spe-
cifically the efforts by the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty, Amenemhat I, to
legitimate his rule through literary texts such as the Prophecy of Neferty and his
own posthumous “Instruction of King Amenemhat” for Amenemhat I’s son
Senwosret.21
Although not free of controversy, the further development of the König-
snovelle is essential to consider, as it bears directly on the narratives of Ma-
netho. Not surprisingly, for a literary form that stressed the excellence of the
20. See esp. Hermann (1938) 19; Spalinger (1982) 102 and n.6. Note also Herrmann
(1953/1954); Van Seters (1983) 160–64; Frankfurter (1998) 241–48. Vinson (2004) has very useful
observations on the problem of genres in ancient Egyptian literature.
21. Posener (1956); Spalinger (1982) 104. See also Goedicke (1977) 3 and the bibliography
cited there, though Goedicke does not accept Posener’s findings.
pharaoh and his infallibility in planning, when adverse political and military
events occurred and particularly when nonnative rulers took up the position
of pharaoh, changes in the Königsnovelle were inevitable. To put it another way,
with the diminishing fortunes of Late Period Egypt came a reorientation of
the Königsnovelle into an apocalyptic or proto-apocalyptic form, and the key
difference was the treatment of prophecy.22 In the original form of the king’s
story, prophecy could be used ex eventu to legitimate a “future” king as viewed
from a past perspective by predicting the coming of his rule after a period of
turmoil. In the hands of Manetho, prophecy still looked forward and was simi-
larly ex eventu—a pseudo-prophecy written after the fact—but rather than offer
legitimacy, it was now potentially admonitory: future pharaohs needed to be
on guard lest their reigns become of a sort as to bring into question whether,
as rulers, they were acting as the true inheritors of Osiris and the guardians of
Egypt’s Ma’at or had become the agents of chaos, akin to the paradigmatic il-
legitimate kings of Egypt, the Hyksos.
The Hyksos II narrative is the longest of Manetho’s three narratives by quite
a long way; significant portions of it are also repeated in paraphrase by Jose-
phus in his extensive critical attack on the account after it is directly quoted.
What distinguishes Hyksos II from the other two narratives is its frame. It has
the most authentic feel of a true Egyptian Königsnovelle, with a few telling dif-
ferences. But before we look at the two Hyksos narratives, it is important to
look briefly at the Sethos and Harmais story (quoted in full in chapter 4 above,
pp. 210–11) and to note especially its Hellenizing features.
Manetho’s Sethos and Harmais narrative is his most illuminating for how
narrative was “fastened” to chronology. At the same time, it is the most self-
contained and narrow in scope of Manetho’s stories, covering essentially only
one episode from the reign of a single pharaoh and its aftermath. Although
these things are admittedly difficult to measure, the Sethos and Harmais nar-
rative is arguably the most clearly indebted to Greek historiographic tradition.
It is built around the theme of peripeteia, or sudden reversal, so common in
Herodotus and Attic tragedy, among other Greek authors.
Sethos and Harmais: A Herodotean “Novella”
The narrative of Sethos and Harmais is an artful and dynamic passage, though
not at all large. It is built around the motifs of a sudden change of fortune and
22. See, above all, Koenen (2002), citing his earlier work as well; see also Smith (1975).
fraternal treachery. As such, it looks a great deal like a specific type of Herodo-
tean logos discussed by, for example, Aly and Trenkner: short, sharply drawn
narratives that they call “novellae,” in which characters experience a sudden
reversal of fortune and which can be compared especially with tragic plots.23
To be sure, the essentials of the story are old folk motifs and must be counted
almost universal concepts: the overconfidence of the king, the treachery of a
brother.24 On closer inspection, though, certain forms of expression become in-
stantly recognizable—indeed, they fairly jump off the page. At the level of single
word or concept, Manetho’s use of the word diadem as the symbol of royal
power worn on the head is deeply significant. As R. R. R. Smith has put it, “the
only invariable attribute of the [Hellenistic] kings was the diadem,”25 almost
certainly Greek in origin and intimately associated specifically with Hellenistic
Macedonian-Greek kingship early on in the Hellenistic period: In 306, Antigo-
nus Monophthalmus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes took up the diadem as
part of the their claim to the legacy of Alexander the Great, and they were im-
mediately imitated by the rest of the Diadochs.26 If diadem is a term genuinely
used by Manetho for Harmais’ usurpation of power, his taking up of it here
would be particularly apt as a description of the competitive power politics of
the early Hellenistic period but wildly anachronistic from the point of view of
pharaonic Egypt. Of course, in general, it is dangerous to build too much of an
argument or interpretation on the basis of one word, and I hesitate to press the
point. Elsewhere, Josephus himself uses the term diadem in similar contexts—
pharaonic Egypt—where Manetho is clearly not a source.27
More promising is the phrase Manetho uses to describe the official who
informs Sethos of his brother’s treachery: “the one who had been placed in
charge of the priests of Egypt” (ὁ δὲ τεταγμένος ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερέων τῆς Αἰγύπτου).
23. Aly (1921); Trenkner (1958) esp. 24. See also Gray (2002). I am not unaware that the term
novella is problematic: see esp. de Jong (2002) 257–58. Important for my purposes is not the termi-
nology but, rather, that Herodotus and others clearly deployed such short, moralizing tales (what-
ever one wants to call them) as a distinct subset of narratives.
24. In connection with the figure of Harmais only, we find in Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of
Folk Literature, for example, K 2211 (“the treacherous brother”), K 2242 (“the treacherous stew-
ard”), and K 2248 (“the treacherous minister”). Cf. Dillery (1999) 100. Of particular relevance here
is the Egyptian story dating to the reign of Sety II (1200–1194 BC), “The Tale of the Two Brothers,”
“a sort of fairy tale . . . draw[ing] richly upon mythological and folkloristic themes”: see Wente
(2003b) 80. See also Hollis (1990). Note, however, that the tale is essentially nonroyal, with the king
playing a relatively “minor” and “inconsequential” role: see Silverman (1995) 53.
25. Smith 1993: 207. In general, consult Smith (1988) 34–39; Ritter (1965). Note also Müller
(2009) 76–81.
26. Smith (1988) 37; cf. Ritter (1965) 31–78. The conclusion of Grenze (1921) that the royal
ornament derived from Achaemenid practice has been shown to be incorrect.
27. Jos. AJ 2.233, 235 (the infant Moses and the “diadem” of Egypt). Cf. Ritter (1965) 13 and
n.2.
For some time, it has been recognized that the phrase can be interpreted in two
ways: as a translation of an old Egyptian formula, “overseer of the priests of
Upper and Lower Egypt”; and as an almost word-for-word borrowing of a Ptol-
emaic description, exactly contemporary with Manetho, for the high priests
of Egyptian temples—οἱ ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερῶν τεταγμένοι (P. Rev. Laws 51.9 = Sel.
Pap. 2.26; cf. Bagnall and Derow [2004] 192; Austin [2006] 529).28 The phrase
here at Apion 1.101, whether reading “temples” (ἱερῶν) or “priests” (ἱερέων), is
unique in the whole of Josephus’ large corpus, so the temptation is to see it not
as coming from Josephus’ idiolect but as a bit of genuine Manetho.29 Indeed, if
Manetho himself was high up in the priestly administration at Heliopolis—an
admittedly late testimonium from a hostile source even refers to him as “high
priest of the accursed temples in Egypt” (T 11 b = Syncellus Chron. 18 M; cf. T
11a and T 1)—it is not too far-fetched to think that he may have been similarly
addressed himself in official correspondence.
Finally, at the level of detail, it is worth repeating here a point I made origi-
nally in my article of 1999.30 In the crucial section in which we learn of Sethos’
preparations, the instructions given to Harmais before the king’s departure are
carefully listed:
This [king] made his brother Harmais the overseer of Egypt and gave
over to him all the rest of the kingly authority, only he bade him not to
wear a diadem or to do injustice to the royal mother of his children, and
to keep away from the other royal concubines. The king himself, having
made expeditions against Cyprus, Phoenicia, and again against the As-
syrians and the Medes . . . (Ap. 1.98–99)
The Greek needs to be quoted here as well:
Τὸν μὲν ἀδελφὸν Ἅρμαιν ἐπίτροπον τῆς Αἰγύπτου κατέστησεν, καὶ

πᾶσαν μὲν αὐτῷ τὴν ἄλλην βασιλικὴν περιέθηκεν ἐξουσίαν, μόνον
28. Waddell (1940) 104 textual n.3 (“cf. Revenue Laws . . .”) and explanatory n.1 (“[a] frequent
title from the Old Kingdom onwards”) reveals the overlap. Cf. Dillery (1999) 99–100 and n.21.
Note also the Canopus Decree, OGIS 56 line 73: ὁ δὲ ἐν ἑκάστωι τῶν ἱερῶν καθεστηκὼς ἐπιστάτης
καὶ ἀρχιερεύς. In general, consult Clarysse (1999). Note that the emperor Augustus inaugurated
a policy of installing a Roman official as “high priest of Alexandria and Egypt”: see Frankfurter
(1998) 27.
29. The nearest parallel is Jos. BJ 6.121, of Jewish rebels placing artillery on their battlements:
ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερῶν πυλῶν τούς τε ὀξυβελεῖς . . . διέστησαν. Note, in particular, that ἱερῶν is clearly used
here as an attributive adjective, not substantively, and, in general, that the description is of a mate-
rial structure, not a priestly office.
30. Dillery (1999) 99.
δὲ ἐντείλατο διάδημα μὴ φορεῖν μηδὲ τὴν βασιλίδα μητέρα τε τῶν

τέκνων ἀδικεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων βασιλικῶν παλλακίδων.
Αὐτὸς δὲ ἐπὶ Κύπρον καὶ Φοινίκην καὶ πάλιν Ἀσσυρίους τε καὶ Μήδους
στρατεύσας . . .
Hard to see in the English translation but manifestly evident in the Greek is
the extremely artful way Manetho has deployed the particles men and de. An
external (or outer) men/de pair (indicated in the preceding quote with single
underlining) tells us what actions Sethos did himself, and an internal (or inner)
grouping of men and three des (indicated with double underlining) itemizes the
instructions Sethos gave to his brother. While a simple element of the compo-
sition of Greek sentences, the men/de particles have been used precisely as an
index of Greek style in other non-Greek authors,31 a point that is all the more
notable when it is observed that Egyptians writing Greek typically leave out
particles altogether.32 Hence this passage would suggest a more than superficial
mastery of written Greek by Manetho.
Words and phrases perhaps betraying more than a passing knowledge of
contemporary Greek are one thing; a deeper incorporation of Greek narrative
mannerisms is quite another. But how on earth can a distinctly “Greek” way
of telling a story be identified, and what does one do with such knowledge if it
can be established? The honest answer is that we cannot determine what a truly
Greek narrative is, but I do think it is worthwhile to compare Manetho’s Sethos
and Harmais story with Greek narratives, especially historical ones, to set the
stage for looking at his two Hyksos stories, which I take to be significantly more
indebted to native Egyptian traditions.
I mentioned just above that Manetho’s narrative of royal brothers has dis-
tinct folktale motifs. With that said, I think we can go further when we turn to
the summation of Sethos’ achievements while on campaign and his plans for
future conquest that were derailed by news of his brother’s treachery. It is worth
quoting the passage, together with the Greek:
Having grown ambitious because of his successes, he was proceeding

still more boldly against the cities and lands of the East, conquering
them. (Ap. 1.99)
31. Tuplin (2013) 182 is much less sanguine than I about the reliability of men/de in connection
with Manetho. But see Norden (1915/1918) 2.485, using the Gospel writer Luke’s usage of men/de
precisely as an index of the “Greekness” of his Greek; also Clarysse (2010) 41. Cf. Dillery (1999) 99.
32. Clarysse (1993) 199–200; (2010) 41.
[καὶ μέγα φρονήσας ἐπὶ ταῖς εὐπραγίαις ἔτι καὶ θαρσαλεώτερον

ἐπεπορεύετο τὰς πρὸς ἀνατολὰς πόλεις τε καὶ χώρας καταστρεφόμενος.]
The phrase “having grown ambitious because of his successes” (μέγα φρονήσας
ἐπὶ ταῖς εὐπραγίαις) is key. The verb “think big” (mega phronesai) and its al-
lied noun “thinking big” (megalophrosyne) are familiar from Herodotus, where
they are central to the characterization of Xerxes in particular (note esp. Hdt.
7.24, 136.2; cf. Artabanus’ remarks at 7.10.ε and 46.3).33 Three points are worth
drawing out here. First, while it might be objected that Xerxes is clearly a deeply
flawed and tyrannical ruler in Herodotus’ eyes, whereas Sethos would seem to
be a good one in Manetho’s treatment, it should be noted that megalophrosyne
leading to calamity might imply not “wrongdoing” on the part of the ruler but
“greatness” of ambition that is scuttled by an unforeseen circumstance.34 Sec-
ond, it is essential to observe that the working out of the implications of the
ruler’s “grand thinking” is not an isolated moment but itself creates a narra-
tive arc of explanation, something that stretches out for the last three books of
Herodotus’ History in the matter of Xerxes’ megalophrosyne.35 The whole set of
events that form the context of Sethos’ “big thinking,” those that lead up to it
and those that are somehow connected to it subsequently, constitutes a distinct
narrative pattern; mega phronesai and the things that happen in connection
with it is a way to tell a story, not just an isolable detail of a story. Perhaps this
narrative manner precisely gives a Hellenic “texture” to an account. Finally, it is
possible to see megalophrosyne and its narrative pattern of human calamity in
the context of great success not just in Herodotus but in other Greek historians
(Thucydides, Xenophon) and in Greek poetry and oratory.36 It is a widespread
and typically Greek way of telling a story. In essence, the man who believes he
is at the height of success and, because of that confidence, plans still more am-
bitious enterprises only to have those plans go awry undergoes a peripeteia of
sorts—a mode of explanation that overlaps with universal themes, to be sure,
but that is worked out in ways that are recognizable in a host of Greek authors.37
33. Immerwahr (1966) 177.

34. A point well made in Munson (2001) 185, in language I have adapted here; see, too, the
excellent discussion of Baragwanath (2008) 254–69, particularly 264 and n.75; also van Ophuijsen
and Stork (1999) 120. Cf. Dillery (1999) 100–101.
35. Often noted, this is particularly well put in Solmsen (1974) 149 = (1982) 87.
36. Note LSJ s.v. φρονέω II.2.b and the lemmata cited there; also Munson (2001) 185 and n.132.
Pelling (1991) 120–22 has an excellent discussion of how themes articulated by Herodotus’ Artaba-
nus and Thucydides’ Archidamus are prefigured in earlier Greek literature, especially Homer and
tragedy.
37. Cf. Dillery (1999) 100–101. On the megalophrosyne of Xerxes at the start of Hdt. 7 and the
concept of the peripeteia of the Persians, see Solmsen (1974) 149 = (1982) 87. Cf. Dion Hal. Thuc. 5.
At the core of peripeteia, as Aristotle knew, was a causal link between the
circumstances of a person of interest, a sudden change of fortune, and the per-
son’s recognition of that change: “the peripeteia and recognition should arise
just from the plot, so that it is necessary or probable that they should follow
what went before [ὥστε ἐκ τῶν προγεγενημένων συμβαίνειν ἢ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἢ
κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς γίγνεσθαι ταῦτα]; for there is a great difference between happen-
ing next and happening as a result” (Arist. Po. 1452a).38 So, to borrow Aristotle’s
own exemplum, the messenger in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus should have
provided the hero “comfort”—that is, a solution to his troubles—but instead
“he did the opposite.” Sethos’ successes buoyed him up and encouraged him
to form even more daring plans; it was precisely at this moment that Harmais’
treachery was reported to him. This narrative fashioning looks to me as though
Manetho was influenced by specifically Greek ways of telling stories and their
implicit narrative texture. In particular, the History of Herodotus, whom we
know Manetho read closely (remember T 7a = Jos. Ap. 1.73), is simply fes-
tooned with such narratives. Focusing just on the theme of calamity attending
great success brought about through treachery within the royal family, I can cite
from the very start of Herodotus’ History the story of Candaules, his wife, and
Gyges (Hdt. 1.8–12). More to the point, there are logoi in Herodotus that even
feature destructive strife between royal brothers, as well as infidelity and the
betrayal of trust: Cambyses suspects his brother Smerdis (wrongly, of course:
Hdt. 3.30), and Xerxes notoriously intrigues to seduce first his brother Masistes’
wife and then Masistes’ daughter, with tragic results for Masistes, who almost
succeeds in doing serious harm to Xerxes in his revolt from the king (Hdt.
9.108–13). Xenophon may provide an even closer parallel to Manetho’s Sethos
and Harmais story: at the height of her success, with a sizable mercenary army
under her control and the complete confidence of her liege lord Pharnabazus,
the governor of the Troad, a woman named Mania, is assassinated by her own
son-in-law Meidias—he, just as Harmais, stirred to this action by his hangers-
on (Xen. Hell. 3.1.10–15).39 If Manetho did take up such a narrative device from
Herodotus or some other Greek writer, it would be not evidence of a trivial or
incidental borrowing but the adaptation of a large-scale narrative feature.
It remains, finally, to take account of the parallel account of Sesostris and
his brother at Hdt. 2.107. While the story we find there is clearly related to
38. Hubbard trans. (1972) 104.

39. It is significant that Gray has detected in the Mania story distinct Herodotean overtones,
especially from the story of Queen Artemisia: see Gray (1989) 29–32. Cf. Cartledge (1993) 8–9;
Hornblower (2006) 311. For Xenophon’s debt to Herodotus, see, as well as Gray (1989), esp. Rie-
mann (1967) 20–27. The Herodotean and Xenophontine parallels with Manetho are cited in Dillery
(1999) 100–101.
Manetho’s tale of Sethos and Harmais in broad outline—the brother of the

world-conquering pharaoh, to whom the kingdom has been entrusted, proves
disloyal—the differences of detail and tone are significant and argue against Ma-
netho responding specifically to Herodotus in his version of events. In Herodo-
tus’ tale Sesostris is not called back in the midst of successful campaigning to
deal with his brother’s treachery, rather he encounters it upon his return from
action; he is directly attacked by his brother (his residence at Daphnae near
Pelusium is set afire), together with his family; and perhaps most importantly,
there is no sense of peripeteia in the account. Rather, the focus in Herodotus is
on the extremity of Sesostris’ method of escape from his brother’s trap: on his
wife’s suggestion, Sesostris sacrifices two of their sons by using them as a bridge
out of the burning building in order to save himself and the rest of his family.
The theme of salvation won through the death or serious injury of a loved one
or even oneself is a favorite of Herodotus: recall, e.g., the brother of the thief of
Rhampsinitus (2.121.β), the self-mutilation of Hegesistratus (9.37.2), and the
wife of Intaphrenes (3.119.3-6).
This is a good place to remember that the activities of the semi-legendary
pharaoh Sesostris (also known as Sesonchosis and Sesoosis) must have bulked
large in the Aegyptiaca (see above, ch. 3, p. 179).40 If Berossus had his Nebu-
chadnezzar II, then Manetho will have deployed Sesostris in much the same
way, namely, as a great world conqueror. Accordingly, we must I think assume
a large narrative devoted to him, much as is implied in Ryholt’s findings on the
basis of the remains of the Tebtunis library.41 It was noted in ch. 3 that because
of its mention of the stelae of Sesostris that identify the warlike nations that
were defeated by the pharaoh on his campaign of world conquest by male geni-
tal parts, and unwarlike ones by female parts, the chronicle entry for Sesostris
(F 2 = Syncellus Chron. 66 M) seems to show that Manetho had his eye on Hdt.
2.102.3–5, as well as Hecataeus of Abdera (if Diod. 1.55.7–8 can be connected
to him). It is essential to see that Manetho has taken up a narrative about the
greatest of the pharaohs, indeed the world-conqueror, from Greek sources, and
yet at the same time stated that his conquests were of such a kind “so that, af-
ter Osiris, he was considered first by the Egyptians” (ὡς ὑπὸ Αἰγυπτίων μετὰ
Ὄσιριν πρῶτον νομισθῆναι). We know from Herodotus that already in the fifth
century the Egyptians were comparing Sesostris specifically with Darius, with
the great Persian king coming off as much inferior: Herodotus (2.110.2–3) re-
ports that a priest of Ptah would not permit a statue of Darius to be put up in
40. Cf. Murray (1970) 162 and n.1.

41. See above, ch. 5, pp. 170–71. It is important here to note the Greek language novels Ninus
and Sesonchosis.
front of one of Sesostris, inasmuch as “deeds had not been done by him such as
were achieved by Sesostris the Egyptian.” I note in this connection that there are
elements in the description of Sesostris’ conquests in Manetho that seem to derive
from Darius’ and Cyrus’ campaigns, most notably, that he “subdued all Asia in 9
years and the parts of Europe until Thrace”—a claim that rolls Cyrus the Great’s
exploits together with Darius’ (Cyrus founded the Achaemenid empire and con-
quered Media, Lydia, Babylonia, and invaded parts of C. Asia; Darius conquered
Scythia and Thrace; Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt will not have figured in the
implied comparison!).42 And if we can assume that the sources for the Alexander
Romance by Ps. Callisthenes go back to the period of Alexander himself, similar
sorts of comparisons were being made between Alexander the Great and Seso-
stris: the Romance speaks of Alexander being hailed by the prophetai of Egypt
as “the new Sesonchosis, world-conqueror” (νέον Σεσόγχωσιν κοσμοκράτορα
Kroll 1.34.2).43 Significantly, in an earlier episode from the same section of the
Romance, Alexander sees obelisks put up by Sesonchosis and inquires whose they
were; after being told that they were Sesonchosis’, he is visited by a dream that
initiates a series of actions that result in Alexander founding his great city of Alex-
andria (Kroll 1.33.6ff.). It is notable that Alexander is assimilated to Sesostris and
that he never contemplates trying to show any disrespect, even inadvertently, to
the great pharaoh’s monuments as Darius did; rather, these monuments become
physical links for Alexander to the glorious Egyptian past and help to legitimate
his establishment of its new capital. Important too is the existence of the novel
Sesonchosis (P. Oxy. 1826, 2466, 3319).
The propaganda associated with Sesostris must have been intimately known
by Manetho. But it is important not to lose sight of the salient fact that, for Ma-
netho, “after Osiris, Sesostris was considered first by the Egyptians.” If Manetho
has adapted nonnative stories about Egypt’s greatest military ruler, he was also
careful to connect him specifically to Egyptian royal ideology by noting his
inferior status relative to the prototypical pharaoh, Osiris. This maneuver can
be seen as a kind of cultural re-appropriation by Manetho. Of course in Syncel-
lus we have only the digest of what would have been a much fuller treatment,
so it is risky to push my analysis too far. But it is safe to say that the explicit
connection of Sesostris with Osiris would have firmly removed him from the
ambit of nonnative uses of the great, world-conquering pharaoh and put him
unambiguously back into the world of Egyptian kingship. Manetho would have
thus at a stroke both accepted the tradition that Sesostris had no human equal
42. Cf. Lloyd (1982b); Ivantchik (1999).

43. For this and what follows: Dillery (2004c). Cf. Diod. 1.55.3 (Hec. of Ab.).
as a great military ruler, indeed he would have in some sense embraced the
nonnative portrait of him and thereby given it his stamp of approval (given the
characterization, why would he not?), but at the same time would have also
reasserted the pharaoh’s fundamental Egyptian identity as the greatest of the
successors of Osiris—all in a sense incarnations of Horus, the son of Osiris.
Hyksos I
Josephus begins his treatment of Manetho with an elaborate introduction that

is meant to bolster the case for the reliability of the Egyptian historian: while
an Egyptian by birth, he knew Greek and Greek culture and, thus, was ideally
suited to produce “a national history” (Ap. 1.73: πάτριος ἱστορία) in the Greek
language from sacred texts. For Josephus, it was important that Manetho be
seen both to have had access to the native records of Egypt and also to have
been conversant enough with Greek and Greek paideia to communicate this in-
formation to a hellenophone audience who might wish to check for themselves
what Josephus had written on the authority of Manetho. In fact, precisely in
this same context, Josephus observes that Manetho made a point of noting his
own translation of sacred texts and that he often refuted Herodotus for errors
about Egypt committed through ignorance (and not malice or another mo-
tive). Although I cannot prove it, this collocation of information—Manetho’s
background, his familiarity with Greek paideia, his claim to have translated
the records of Egypt himself, and his polemic against Herodotus—would have
formed an admirable proem to the Aegyptiaca.44
When Josephus actually turns to the matter at hand, Manetho’s handling of
the Jewish past, he makes a point of noting that Hyksos I comes from specifi-
cally the second book of the Aegyptiaca, but the quote itself is precisely in keep-
ing with the portrait Josephus has just given of him: a Greek-speaking Egyptian
priest-historian intimately familiar with the native forms of curating his na-
tion’s past. Indeed, in a certain sense, while the Sethos and Harmais episode
shows us most clearly how narrative was married to chronological frame by
Manetho, the start of Hyksos I, though exceedingly spare, also shows how Ma-
netho can use the listing of kings’ names as the motivator for narrative:
Tutimaeus. During this king’s reign, for reasons I do not know, god blew
a contrary wind [ἀντέπνευσεν], and against expectation [παραδόξως],
44. Cf. Dillery (1999) 97–98.
out of the regions to the East men unmarked in their race [τὸ γένος
ἄσημοι] became bold and launched a campaign against our land and
easily, without a fight [ῥᾳδίως ἀμαχητί], took this land by force [ταύτην
κατὰ κράτος εἷλον]. Having defeated the ones who were leaders in the
land, they then savagely [ὠμῶς] burned down our cities and demolished
the temples of the gods [τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἱερὰ κατέσκαψαν] and in gen-
eral treated all the inhabitants in the most hostile fashion (ἐχθρότατα),
slaughtering some and taking the children and wives of others into slav-
ery. (Jos. Ap. 1.75–76 = F 8, Waddell F 42)
Military invasion, regime change, the destruction of cities, and assault on the
native population—this is an all-too-familiar narrative arc and, perhaps for that
reason, not a promising place to discover what was distinctive in Manetho’s
historiography. But a second look at some of the details of the opening of the
story reveals an orientation that connects the text to the thought world of the
Egyptian priest in Late Period Egypt. Eduard Meyer and, following him, W. G.
Waddell considered the story so conspicuous in its adherence to traditional
Egyptian narrative details that they thought it would not be surprising “if Ma-
netho’s description reappeared word for word one day in a hieratic papyrus.”45
That said, it must also be admitted that the name of the king involved here,
Tutimaeus, is a deeply problematic one that may correspond to the Egyptian
name Dedumose, but significant difficulty attaches to this particular detail of
Manetho’s account.46 For one thing, it has long been recognized that the Greek
text for the name is nonsensical in its transmitted form (του τιμαιος ονομα)
and has to be emended to Τουτίμαιος.47
It is important to note at the outset that the divine is the first to act and
that it does so against Egypt in the form of a “blast,” that is, a windstorm. In
substance, this blast will in fact be an invasion of Easterners. It is also note-
worthy that the conquest of Egypt is brought off by the invader “easily” and
“without a fight,” suggesting, again, the involvement of the divine in Egypt’s
humiliation. These are extraordinary details that would benefit from explana-
tion, but none is forthcoming.48 Evidently, these facts explain themselves for
45. Meyer (1953/1958) 1.2.313; Waddell (1940) 79 n.2. The quote is from Waddell; Meyer actu-
ally wrote that the new “text” would be a papyrus from the New Kingdom.
46. Ryholt (1997) 156–57, 201 n.1055, following Bülow-Jacobsen (1997). Note also Gozzoli
(2006) 213 with n.104.
47. Gutschmid (1894) 421. Cf. Bülow-Jacobsen (1997) 328.
48. Dillery (2007b) 227. I note here that ἀμαχητί may have had a distinct Herodotean valence
for Manetho: while by no means limited to him (indeed already in the Iliad, 21.437), Herodotus
uses the term with much greater frequency than any other Greek author Manetho would have
known: cf. Powell (1960/1938) 17 sv. The use, though, at Hdt. 2.102.5 of the weak nations who
capitulate to Sesostris will not I think have been wanted here.
Manetho. In contrast to the informed reader of Manetho’s text who can appar-
ently decode these significant details of his narrative, the narrative itself implies
an ill-informed and, indeed, a surprised witness to the events: with the term
παραδόξως (“against expectation”), the narrator focalizes the invasion through
the eyes of someone surprised by the attack.49 Finally, it is crucial also to see
that the destruction of Egyptian places includes prominently the temples of the
gods (τὰ τῶν θεῶν ἱερά) and that the assault on the people of Egypt is charac-
terized as conducted in “the most hostile fashion” (ἐχθρότατα), that is, in a way
typical of an especially violent and determined enemy (ἐχθρός).
Each of these details requires unpacking, and in so doing, we shall see that
the introduction of Hyksos I could only have been fully intelligible to other
elite priests of Egypt such as Manetho or (crucially) those who had access to
their knowledge. The use of παραδόξως is our gateway into the text, inviting a
reading that brings with it knowledge of the “code” that comes from being an
Egyptian priest conversant with texts such as Hyksos I. This word, translated
“against expectation” or “contrary to expectation,” is left unglossed in Manetho.
By contrast, the equivalent phrase in Herodotus is always explained, with the
surprised party’s reaction carefully identified in a pleonastic expression: “In-
asmuch as for him [Croesus] matters turned out contrary to expectation from
what he was expecting” (Hdt. 1.79.2: ὥς οἱ παρὰ δόξαν ἔσχε τὰ πρήγματα ἢ
ὡς αὐτὸς κατεδόκεε).50 The difference between Manetho’s practice and that of
Herodotus brings out the function of παραδόξως at the start of Hyksos I. An
unmotivated detail, the adverb will help to distinguish the reader from the his-
torical agents of the narrative, as one for whom the details of the invasion will
turn out to be completely understandable—not contrary to expectation.
A “blast” from the East connects Manetho’s account to the central Egyptian
myth of the conflict of Horus and Seth, a story that became crucial in helping
the Egyptians to define notions of kingship and legitimacy during the Late Pe-
riod, especially during the Persian and, later, the Greco-Macedonian domina-
tions of Egypt.51 Seth was the god of storm and also represented chaos and ab-
sence of legitimate rule. The ease with which the invaders gain control of Egypt
(ῥᾳδίως ἀμαχητί, “easily, without a fight”) is to be connected to the sponsorship
49. Cf. de Jong (1987) 34. See, more generally, de Jong (1999).
50. Cf. Hdt. 8.4.1 (virtually the same wording as 1.79.2): “since for [the Greeks] the matters
of the barbarians were turning out contrary to expectation than what they were expecting” (ἐπεὶ
αὐτοῖσι παρὰ δόξαν τὰ πρήγματα τῶν βαρβάρων ἀπέβαινε ἢ ὡς αὐτοὶ κατεδόκεον). Look also at
8.11.3. Cf. Bowie (2007) 93 ad Hdt. 8.4.1, citing Kühner-Gerth (1966) 2.586. Thucydides seems
more in line with how Manetho has used παραδόξως. He both has the expression παρὰ δόξαν and
coined a new term with great importance for him, ὁ παράλογος, meaning “unpredictability” or the
“unpredictable element” itself, perhaps most famously at Thuc. 1.78.1. See Finley (1967) 140–49. I
owe these references to Thucydides and Finley to A. J. Woodman.
51. Assmann (2002) 389, 411. See also, in general, Griffiths (1960).
of the campaign by Egypt’s own gods. Although it had not been the case earlier,
calamity in Egypt had to be divinely authorized since at least the Late Period.
The foreign domination of Egypt had to be accounted for and yet the notion of
lawful kingship also preserved, with its vital role as intermediary between di-
vine and human in insuring the cosmic order (Ma’at) and the favor of the gods.
To borrow the terminology of Assmann, the divine authorization of calamity
for Egypt involves both “deuteronomism” and “messianism”: deuteronomism
explains the evil that befalls Egypt as punishment for the wrongdoing of bad
kings, whereas “messianism” offers the promise that a lawful king will return to
Egypt to restore Ma’at.52 We see this dual orientation in Egyptian texts from the
Persian through the Greco-Roman periods: the Demotic Chronicle, the Oracle
of the Lamb, and the Oracle of the Potter especially come to mind.53
Of particular interest in connection with Manetho’s Hyksos I narrative
are the opening to Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Alexander Romance, the Dream of
Nectanebo,54 and the introduction to Manetho’s own other Hyksos narrative,
Hyksos II. In the Alexander Romance, the magician-pharaoh Nectanebo is in-
formed by scouts that “a great cloud” of barbarians from the East is on its way
against Egypt (Ps.-Callisth. 1.2); when Nectanebo holds a mantic session in
which he sees that the gods of Egypt are in fact steering the ships of the invad-
ers, he realizes that the end of Egyptian kingship is immanent, and he flees to
Macedonia (1.3), there to father Alexander the Great (1.7); as for the Egyp-
tians, they are told that “the king who has fled as an old man will return as a
youth”—Alexander will in fact be the “new Nectanebo” (1.3 and 34). In the
Dream of Nectanebo, the pharaoh Nectanebo II incubates in a temple and has
a dream warning him to complete the inscription of a small chapel; he confers
with a priest and prophet to determine the truth of the dream and then calls
an assembly of hieroglyphic carvers to find a suitable person to complete the
carving; one Petesis volunteers but gets sidetracked in his commission by the
pleasures of life (wine and a woman). In the concluding sections (now lost) of
the Greek version of this tale, it is likely that Petesis would have prophesied that
Egypt would be neglected by the gods just as he had neglected his work, that the
enemies of Egypt (the Persians) would conquer the land, and that evil would
befall Egypt for a period of time, until the god sent a good king who would re-
52. Assmann (2002) 377–85. Cf. Vinson (2004) 48–50.

53. For excellent recent discussions and presentations of these texts, see the papers in Blasius
and Schipper (2002)—a volume that includes Koenen (2002) and Ryholt (2002). Note also Smith
(1978/1993) 75–76.
54. For the thematic connections between the Alexander Romance and the Dream of Nec-
tanebo, see Koenen (1985) 192–93.
store Ma’at.55 A demotic version of the Dream, published recently, makes clear
that Petesis dies after giving his prophecy and that Nectanebo then turns his
attention to making preparations to repel the invader—no doubt in vain.56 Two
naoi, or small chapels, have been found in the temple of Onuris at Sebennytus
referred to in the Dream, both dedicated by Nectanebo II; significantly, as in
the case of the one chapel in the Dream narrative, the hieroglyphic inscrip-
tion on each is incomplete, probably left unfinished because of the invasion
of Artaxerxes III.57 It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the tale of
Nectanebo’s dream sprang from these actual historical conditions.
Of particular importance in the subsequent narrative of Hyksos I concern-
ing the first years of the Hyksos dynasty, once we are past the preliminaries, is
the reference to the first king Salitis’ efforts to secure his eastern frontier: “and
in particular he fortified the districts to the East, foreseeing, with the Assyrians
at some point growing stronger, that there would be an attack out of desire for
his kingdom” (Ap. 1.77).58 Commentators, universal in noting the historical
impossibility of Manetho’s remarks, express varying degrees of surprise that
Josephus did not attack Manetho for his gross chronological error:59 Assyrian
imperial expansion took place about a millennium after the Hyksos, and the
Assyrians’ actual invasion of Egypt was undertaken even later (by Esarhaddon
in 671 BC). Eduard Meyer suggested long ago that Manetho may well have
been misled by Greek stories of the “Assyrian” rulers Ninus and Semiramis and
their efforts at conquest, particularly of Egypt.60
If Meyer’s suggestion is correct, a pair of important and interrelated points
emerges: either Manetho was reading Greek historians on Babylon, or he was
reading hellenophone Babylonians on Babylon; in either case, he was allowing a
non-Egyptian source to shape his own understanding of the first Hyksos king’s
motivations for fortifying his eastern frontier. This is a truly remarkable state of
affairs. We are certain that Ctesias dealt extensively with Ninus and Semiramis
and, furthermore, asserted that both Ninus (F 1b Lenfant p. 24 and Stronk p.
204 = Diod. 2.2.3) and Semiramis (F 1b Lenfant pp. 41–42 and Stronk pp. 222–
55. Koenen (1985) 185, 191–92.

56. Ryholt (1998a), (2002).
57. Ryholt (2002) 240–41 with plate viii.
58. Μάλιστα δὲ καὶ τὰ πρὸς ἀνατολὴν ἠσφαλίσατο μέρη, προορώμενος, Ἀσσυρίων ποτὲ μεῖζον
ἰσχυόντων, ἐσομένην ἐπιθυμίᾳ τῆς αὐτοῦ βασιλείας ἔφοδον. It is important to note that ἐπιθυμίᾳ is
an emendation by Bekker for ἐπιθυμίαν.
59. Reinach (1930) 16 n.2; Waddell (1940) 80 n.2; Van Seters (1966) 123; Labow (2005) 77 n.74;
Barclay (2007) 53 n.302.
60. Meyer (1953/1958) 1.2.312. Cf. Reinach (1930) 16 n.2; Waddell (1940) 80 n.2; Labow
(2005) 77 n.74. Note, too, that, to some degree, Manetho saw the Assyrian invasion in terms of the
Hyksos: see Van Seters (1966) 123.
24 = Diod. 2.14.3–15) conquered Egypt and neighboring areas.61 Significantly,

Herodotus made no such claims for either figure, both of whom are almost
only names to him (Ninus: Hdt. 1.7.2; Semiramis: 1.184, 3.155.5), though they
presumably would have received significant treatment in Herodotus’ planned
Assyrioi Logoi (Hdt. 1.184; cf. 1.106.2). Alternatively, if Manetho was follow-
ing a hellenophone Babylonian writer of history, who could it have been other
than Berossus? Yet we know that Berossus rejected Semiramis as a founder
of Babylon. Would Berossus otherwise have noticed her activities or those of
the equally legendary Ninus? As we have seen, Berossus promoted the great
Neo-Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II as something of a world conqueror
(battle of Carchemish) and, before him, also treated Esarhaddon’s rule, but it is
difficult for me to believe that Berossus subscribed to Greek legends about As-
syrian rulers from near the start of Babylonian history. This is what we would
have to believe about Manetho and his own charting of a significant period of
the Egyptian past if we were to accept Meyer’s suggestion, as it seems we must
if we follow Josephus’ reporting of Hyksos I.
We should also not lose sight of an obvious but nonetheless important detail
in the subsequent narrative, that Salitis founds (as well as finds) the Hyksos
capital Avaris:
Having found in the Sethroite nome a most opportunely sited city

[πόλιν ἐπικαιροτάτην], located to the east of the Boubasitic channel,
called, after some ancient religious lore, “Avaris” [καλουμένην δ’ ἀπό
τινος ἀρχαίας θεολογίας Αὔαριν], this place he founded [ἔκτισεν] and
made most redoubtable with its walls, having stationed there also a mass
of heavy troops, upwards of 240,000, as a garrison. (Ap. 1.78)
Two interconnected details require explanation: how can Salitis both find and
found the same place, and what does it mean for the city he finds/founds to be
called “Avaris according to ancient religious lore”? It must first be observed that
archaeological investigation supports Manetho’s claim: before Avaris became
the dynastic capital of the Hyksos, it was a temple town, founded sometime at
the end of the third millenium BC, to which immigrants from the Levant came,
in all likelihood soldiers, beginning in the later years of the Twelfth Dynasty;
it then eventually became the capital of the Hyksos (the Fifteenth Dynasty).62
It may well be that the problem of Salitis’ finding and founding of Avaris is
61. Cf. Boncquet (1987) 37–39 with bibliography.

62. Bietak (1996) esp. 6–14, 49–54, 63–67; cf. Beckerath (1964) 113–19.
reflected in the multiple stages of occupation of the site of Avaris/Tell el-Dabca.

But I wonder, too, if there is also or even chiefly a duplication here—though it
is impossible to know whether it is an element of Manetho’s original narrative
or the product of the misunderstanding of Josephus or even some intermediary
figure (Polyhistor?). Certainly, Avaris is mentioned again later, as though for
the first time, in the text quoted from Hyksos I (Ap. 1.86); and much later still,
when the text of Hyksos II is quoted, we read again of Avaris, this time with
an additional gloss and a clear indication that the place has been mentioned
before. Acknowledged as an earlier settlement of the “shepherds” that was later
abandoned, Avaris is identified in the third passage as follows: “the city is, ac-
cording to priestly lore, Typhonian from long ago” (Ap. 1.237: ἔστι δ’ ἡ πόλις
κατὰ τὴν θεολογίαν ἄνωθεν Τυφώνιος). With this quote, we seem to have re-
turned to what we encountered at Apion 1.78, but with the addition now that
Avaris was “Typhonian.”
So Avaris seems to have had two foundations and is referred to three times
in the extant fragments of Manetho, at least one of which—not the first—is
presented as though we had never heard of the place before. I think that the sec-
ond reference to Avaris in its current form cannot be originally Manethonian.
It does not seem to me at all impossible, though, for Manetho to have twice
referred to Avaris as a place “spoken about” or well known thanks to “religious
lore” (kata theologian). Of these two references, it is tempting to place most
confidence in the second: it adds the detail about what the priestly lore actually
said about the place—namely, that it was “Typhonian.”
Following the death of Salitis and the listing of the subsequent Hyksos dy-
nasty of kings, we are told that all six rulers were “always desirous ever more to
remove the root of Egypt” (Ap. 1.81: ποθοῦντες63 ἀεὶ καὶ μᾶλλον τῆς Αἰγύπτου
ἐξᾶραι τὴν ῥίζαν)—I take “ever more” in the sense of successively more vio-
lent and hostile. But how should we interpret the idea of “removing the root
of Egypt”? There are, to be sure, roughly comparable Greek parallels for this
expression. Heracleides of Pontus, a prominent member of the Aristotelian
Peripatos (flourished mid-fourth century), attributes the great animosity to-
ward the Milesians to their unusual practice of annihilating their enemies (F
50 Wehrli, F 23 Schütrumpf = Athen. 12.523 F): “[the Milesians], not accepting
the customary practice, destroyed their enemies utterly [literally “by the roots”
or “from the roots up”]” (οἳ τὸ ἐπιεικὲς οὐκ ἀγαπῶντες ἐκ ῥιζῶν ἀνεῖλον τοὺς
ἐχθρούς). As this passage implies and as is often noted by modern historians of
63. This is the reading in the editio princeps of Against Apion; the MS reading is πορθοῦντες
and is universally rejected.
ancient Greek warfare, the Greeks did not typically “wipe out” their enemy.64
Furthermore, it is one thing to speak of a people “destroyed by” or “down to
their roots,” but “removing the root of Egypt,” a nation and a place, seems to be
something different altogether. Gutschmid suggested long ago that use of the
verb ἐξαίρω (ἐκ + αἴρω) in the sense “annihilate, destroy (utterly)” is typical of
Alexandrian Greek, showing up, for instance, in the LXX, whereas Heraclides
has the more standard classical Greek ἐξαιρέω (ἐκ + αἱρέω).65
As we have seen, the concept of destruction as extirpation or eradication,
literally understood (destruction by the roots), is not absent from Greek authors
but is much more prevalent in the Old Testament, for example, and thus is to
be found throughout the LXX—precisely as Gutschmid had observed, though
with attention to the verb involved. Josephus has a very similar formulation
of the concept at Jewish Antiquities 9.181, where he is paraphrasing 2 Kings
13:19: “had you shot more arrows, you would have destroyed the kingdom of
the Syrians by its roots” (ἐκ ῥιζῶν ἂν τὴν τῶν Σύρων βασιλείαν ἐξεῖλες). Jose-
phus here very clearly expresses the concept of destroying the “the kingdom
of the Syrians,” as opposed to its people or its army. But note that he uses the
verb ἐξαιρέω. Several translators of Against Apion 1.81 assume that the “root
of Egypt” is another way of saying “the Egyptian people.”66 But I would like to
raise here the distinct possibility that Manetho (if these are his exact words)
meant what he wrote and that his words can be seen to have a special Egyptian
valence or texture.
The use of grain as a symbol of fertility and rebirth can securely be attested
in Egypt from the Middle Kingdom onward.67 Although it is a matter of some
contention, so-called Osiris beds have been found in royal tombs dating from
this period: figures fashioned out of mud and planted with seeds that were ex-
pected to germinate were left in the tomb. In Coffin Spell 269, the nonroyal
deceased is imagined as becoming a shoot of barley that springs from the body
of Osiris and so lives on after death and helps to nourish gods and mortals:68
64. See, e.g., Rüstow and Köchly (1852) 145; Walker (1926) 166; Adcock (1957) 7–8. In general,
consult Connor (1988); cf. Dillery (1996) 222–23 and n.16.
65. Cf. Gutschmid (1893) 430 ad loc.
66. Thus translations closer to the Greek are “plus avides de détruire jusq’à la racine le people
égyptien” (Blum in Reinach), “[t]he continually growing ambition . . . was to extirpate the Egyptian
people” (Thackeray), “ever more and more eager to extirpate the Egyptian stock” (Waddell), and
“continual and ever increasing desire was to annihilate the native stock of Egypt” (Barclay). Cf.
Labow (2005) 80 n.85.
67. Scharff (1947) tried to push the concept further back in time, to the Old Kingdom period,
but was decisively countered by Raven (1982) 9–10. Note also Gardiner’s (1915) discussion on the
“dynamical” evolution of the cult of Osiris.
68. Wiedemann (1903) 114, 120; Rundle Clark (1959) 118, 255; Raven (1982) 11.
Becoming barley of Lower Egypt. [The deceased] is this bush of life

which went forth from Osiris to grow on the ribs of Osiris and to nour-
ish the plebs, which makes the gods divine and spiritualizes the spir-
its . . . [the deceased] lives and grows fat on the ribs of Geb, the desire
of [the deceased] is in sky and earth, in the water and in the fields. Ben-
eficial is Isis to Horus her god, she is friendly to Horus her god. [The
deceased] lives as Osiris. (Faulkner trans. [1973] 205)
Beginning with the Third Intermediate Period, the practice of fabricating and
depositing “corn mummies” became still more common.69 Potentially most im-
portant for the purposes of elucidating Apion 1.81 is the cultic burial of a “grain
Osiris” or “corn Osiris” during the rites of Khoiak (the month of the Nile inun-
dation), during a festival called Khebes-Ta, or the “Hacking up of the Earth.”70
This practice is first attested in a text of the Ptolemaic era, the famous Papyrus
Jumilhac,71 but it presumably developed first in the Late Period, and the festi-
val as a whole was certainly known to Herodotus (Hdt. 2.61–62).72 A “canopic
procession,” in which the different parts of the body of the slain and dismem-
bered Osiris were reconstituted, was an important element of the festival and
is depicted on the roof of the Osiris chapels at Dendera dating to the Roman
period.73 It should be added that the new king, representing Horus, was always
crowned on the first day of the first month of the Season of Prt, the day of the
New Year Feast of Horus the Behdetite, immediately following the conclusion
of the festival of Khoiak: Ma’at had been restored to Egypt, and lawful rule had
been perpetuated.74
Thus the importance of these rites of Osiris cannot be overstressed, espe-
cially as an expression of national identity in the face of foreign domination. As
Assmann has put it:
The political-sacramental explanation of these festivals and rituals, and

especially those of the rites of Khoiak, articulated a nationalistic reac-
tion to the foreign rule of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The rites
of Khoiak attempted to stave off the “death” of Egyptian culture, unit-
ing the forty-two nomes into the body of Osiris and preserving the im-
69. See, recently, Raven (1982); Centrone (2005); Schulz (2005). Cf. Bonnet (1952) 391–92.
70. Assmann (2005) 363–64; cf. Griffiths (1970) 35–38.
71. Vandier (1961). Cf. Sauneron (2000) 146; Assmann (2005) 363; Manning (2010) 98.
72. See esp. Lloyd (1975/1988) 2.277 ad loc.: “[b]eyond doubt the Festival of Khoiak,” citing
earlier bibliography; also (2007) 278. Note also Gardiner (1915) 123 and n.2. Cf. also Hdt. 2.122.2–
3, 132.2 (with 129.3), and 171.1.
73. Chassinat (1966/1968); Cauville (1997).
74. Lloyd (1975/1988) 1.97.
mense cultural knowledge that had been assembled in these nomes by

maintaining their presence in lists and liturgies.75
Inasmuch as a central image of these Osirian rites, one symbolic of the con-
tinual return of Osiris/Egypt, was the shoot of barley, to speak of an enemy
attempting to eradicate Egypt, literally “to remove the root of Egypt” (τῆς
Αἰγύπτου ἐξᾶραι τὴν ῥίζαν), could be construed as a particularly apt symbolic
representation of what the wholesale elimination of Egypt meant: the removal
by the roots of the barley shoot that sprang from Osiris/Egypt or that was in
fact the god himself and the nation he represented. In case this interpretation
seems far-fetched because the cultic material seems recondite or unrelated to
the realities of Ptolemaic rule, it is good to recall that the best textual evidence
for the rites comes precisely from the Ptolemaic period. Furthermore, it is im-
portant to note that a case has even been made that a Greek contemporary
with Manetho made extensive use of this same matrix of Osirian images in
his Ptolemaic court poetry, namely, Theocritus in his Idyll 15—“the Syracusan
Women or Adoniazousai.”76 Richard Hunter has emphasized the strong con-
nections to the royal Ptolemaic court found in this poem, especially through
Adonis, a figure with obvious overlaps with Osiris.77 It is distinctly possible that
the Ptolemies knew full well what it meant when the dynasty of Hyksos became
ever more desirous over the years “to tear out the root of Egypt.”
It is time I moved on to Manetho’s etymology of the crucial term Hyksos.
At Apion 1.82, the people who invaded Egypt are at last identified and given a
name:
Their people in its entirety were called “Hyksos,” and this means “king-
shepherds.” For the “hyk” element means, in the sacred tongue, “king,”
and the “sos” is “shepherd” and “shepherds” in the common speech, and
thus joined together, they form the word “Hyksos.”
[ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ τὸ σύμπαν αὐτῶν ἔθνος Ὑκσώς, τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν βασιλεῖς

ποιμένες· τὸ γὰρ ὕκ καθ’ ἱερὰν γλῶσσαν βασιλέα σημαίνει, τὸ δὲ
σως ποιμήν ἐστι καὶ ποιμένες κατὰ τὴν κοινὴν διάλεκτον, καὶ οὕτω
συντιθέμενον γίνεται Ὑκσώς.]
Several observations are in order. First and most important, the etymology pro-
vided is not correct. The term Hyksos comes from ḥq3-h3swt, not ḥq3w-s3sw;
75. Assmann (2005) 367.

76. Reed (2000) esp. 330–31.
77. Hunter (1996) 123–38. He does not argue for a connection between Adonis and Osiris.
the latter term is sometimes explained as a “popular” or “folk” etymology.78

But this explanation prompts an important question: if ḥq3w-s3sw is a “folk”
etymology of Hyksos and incorrect, why would Manetho have provided it and
not the correct one? This question is further complicated by an issue with the
Manethonian narratives of Josephus that we feel at all times but acutely here:
whether what we have in Josephus’ version of Manetho’s etymology are in fact
Manetho’s words or Josephus’ (or perhaps even an intermediary’s?).
Let us take up these matters first separately and then together. I do not be-
lieve that Manetho would have deliberately provided an incorrect etymology
for Hyksos, whether a plausible “folk” etymology or not, without identifying it
as such. If he knew the correct etymology, why would he not have provided it?
I find it equally improbable that Manetho did not know the correct explanation
of the term, for he must have had an expert knowledge of ancient Egyptian in
all its forms (as the passage itself implies). We have to assume, then, that what
we have in Against Apion is not what Manetho originally wrote. John Barclay
has come to a similar conclusion, but he provides a different and (I believe) an
incorrect solution. Barclay notes quite rightly that the application of the name
Hyksos to the whole people seems strained and perhaps the result of Josephus’
desire to make the entire ethnos understood as the “king-shepherds,” rather
than to designate just the “leaders of the shepherds,” which he argues is the
more correct interpretation of the original Egyptian. A few chapters later (Ap.
1.91), Josephus endorses the interpretation that Hyksos designates “shepherds,”
and he adds the further meaning of “captive,” allegedly on the basis of Ma-
netho’s reporting, with both interpretations reflecting the biblical account of
Joseph and his brothers in Egypt, there clearly styled “shepherds” (Gen. 46:31–
34, 47:1–6).79 Barclay reconstructs Manetho’s explanation as follows: “Manetho
probably said that ‘these rulers [the subject of Ap. 1.79–81] were called ‘Hykous-
sos’, that is ‘kings of shepherds’ (cf. 1.84), and then explained why the people as
a whole were dubbed shepherds.”80 My difficulty with this reconstruction has to
do with what motive Manetho might have had to produce the etymology “kings
of shepherds” in the first place. Barclay puzzles this out earlier in the same note:
“Manetho may have invented this etymology or drawn it from tradition, but in
either case he shows off his knowledge of Egyptian for Greek readers.”81 But why
would Manetho have invented the etymology “king-shepherds” when there was
a perfectly good and accurate one already, or why would he have opted for a
78. See esp. Bietak (1977) 93. Note also Kemp (1983) 154; Rutherford (2000) 114 n.33; Labow
(2005) 80 n.86; Barclay (2007) 56 n.314.
79. Barclay (2007) 60 n.329. See below, pp. 373–76.
80. Barclay (2007) 56 n.314.
81. Ibid. On the “shepherds” (boukoloi) see esp. Rutherford (2000).
popular but inaccurate etymology if he knew better, and would a Greek reader
have been in a position to know the difference anyway?
For my part, I think that Manetho most likely wrote “rulers of foreign lands.”
This etymology would have put Manetho in line with documents such as the
testaments of Udjahorresne and Petosiris (see above, ch. 1, pp. 36–37, 39–41),
where, as Lloyd was right to stress, the terms ‹3 n h3st nb(t) and ḥq3 h3swt are
freighted with meaning. Only when a “foreign chief ” learns how to be pharaoh,
becoming conversant in the functioning of the two-way street of mutual benefit
between monarch and the priestly class, does he become the rightful, legitimate
“king,” “Great Ruler of Egypt” (ḥq3 ‹3 n Kmt).82 In point of fact, Posener drew
notice to the similarity in terminology between the testament of Udjahorresne
and the Satrap Stela: Cambyses, Darius I, and Ptolemy son of Lagus were all
known at one time or another by identical titulary.83 This reconstruction should
not surprise us; rather, it would have been surprising if Manetho had identified
the rulers of the Hyksos in some other way. But having said that, we should
also not lose sight of an essential point: that Manetho probably discussed the
Hyksos in terms that were appropriate also of the Ptolemies—“chiefs of for-
eign lands” who had become rulers of Egypt. Presumably, there was a lesson
to be learned in the titulary: the rule of the Ptolemies ultimately was provisional,
subject to the ongoing negotiation of power and legitimacy between them and
the Egyptian clergy. Regardless of his taking up of the royal diadem in 305, the
class of Egyptian priests, made up of men like Manetho, determined whether and
when Ptolemy son of Lagus went from being a “great chief of foreign lands” to
“Great Ruler of Egypt.” The story of the Hyksos was history but also admonition.
However we decide the particulars, another important point should be
registered here, one that is incontrovertible, regardless of how we reconstruct
Manetho’s etymology of Hyksos. That Manetho provided an etymology of any
sort is critically important. Wordplay and etymologizing had a long history in
Egyptian texts, extending from the Old Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period.84
Evidence comes to us by way of Plutarch in the De Isiride et Osiride that Mane-
tho gave other etymologies:85 the divine name Amun is explained at De Isiride
et Osiride 354 C (= F 19) as meaning “concealed” in Egyptian (which is correct),
and Bebon is identified as a byname for Seth/Typhon at 371 C (F 20), both on
82. Lloyd (1982a) 177–78; cf. Posener (1936) 11 note p. See also Dillery (2005a) 402.
83. Posener (1936) 11 note p: Udjahorresne text B 11 and E 43 (Cambyses and Darius, respec-
tively); Satrap Stela 7 and 13 (Ptolemy s. of Lagus). See also Allen (2000) 66.
84. Guglielmi (1986) 1288.
85. For a general statement about Manetho being responsible for Plutarch’s otherwise unusual
accuracy in treating Egyptian terms, see Griffiths (1970) 103–4.
the authority of Manetho.86 Both etymologies shed important light on Manetho’s

historiographic practice. Regarding Amun, Plutarch goes on to mention another
etymology that was provided by Hecataeus of Abdera (FGrH 264 F 4 = Plut. DIO
354 CD), one that explains the name as a form of greeting. This a significant
detail if it is remembered that Hecataeus of Abdera is often seen as an impor-
tant conduit of Greek historiographical principles to Manetho,87 and yet, if the
proximity of his explanation to Manetho’s in Plutarch indicates that the two were
to be found together in Manetho, then Manetho could be seen as correcting
Hecataeus (see immediately below). As for Bebon, Griffiths has observed that
Plutarch’s notice of Manetho’s claim that the term was another name of Seth/
Typhon can be connected to the Papyrus Jumilhac (16.22), a text that we have
seen, in another context, as allied in orientation to Manetho in some ways.88
It needs also to be remembered that etymologizing, particularly of names,
was enormously important in Greek historiography, to be found in Herodotus
and, even before him, in Hecataeus of Miletus.89 Indeed, Herodotus glosses a
number of non-Greek terms in his history, but with the exception of Persian,
he glosses no foreign terms more than Egyptian ones, and all of the Egyptian
glosses are in book 2.90 One is for khampsa, or “crocodile” (2.69.3), which comes
just before a section that is known to have been copied by Herodotus from Heca-
taeus of Miletus (Hdt. 2.70–73; cf. FGrH 1 F 324 a + b), raising the possibility
that it, too, derives from the older historian.91 It is surely no accident that both
Hecataeus (FGrH 1 F 322) and Herodotus (2.77.4) provide definitions for an
Egyptian barley loaf called kyllestis, a term popular enough to show up also in
a comedy of Aristophanes (the Danaids: F 267 K–A). Certainly, Hecataeus pro-
vided Greek rationalizations for Egyptian place-names (FGrH 1 FF 307–9).92
Simple glossing is not quite the same thing as etymologizing, of course, but there
are parallels for this particular type of gloss also in the cases from Herodotus
just mentioned. Especially close to what Manetho provided for Hyksos is the
etymology found at Herodotus 2.30.1: he tells us that the name for a community
86. Griffiths (1970) 106 (number 2), 109 (24), 285 and 489 ad locc. Donadoni (1947) 43 does
not point to Manetho’s authority; cf. Griffiths (1970) 106 n.2.
87. Murray (1970) 166–67; (1972) 208–9.
88. Griffiths (1970) 489.
89. In Hecataeus, see, e.g., FGrH 1 FF 15, 27, 115a, 128; the last two fragments are discussed
at Pearson (1939) 51. On names etymologized in Herodotus, often in the form of puns, see Powell
(1937); Ferrante (1966) 473–84. For general discussions, see Ferrante (1966); Woodman and Mar-
tin (1996) 492 (I owe my knowledge of this bibliography to Prof. Woodman).
90. See esp. Waterfield’s useful list in his translation of Herodotus: Waterfield (1998) 742–44.
There are eight etymologies of Egyptian terms, nine if one includes the erroneous one for “lotos” at
Hdt. 2.92; by comparison, ten Persian terms are explained.
91. Note the caution in Lloyd (2007) 284 ad Hdt. 2.68.1.
92. Cf. Fornara (1971b) 20 n.29.
of deserters living somewhat south of Elephantine, the Asmakh, or “Deserters,”

derives from “those who stand on the left of the king,” the left side being less
honorable than the right. Apparently, there is significant merit to this etymolo-
gy.93 Noteworthy also is Herodotus’ famous discussion of piromis (2.143.4), like-
wise situated closely to a section with connections to Hecataeus. But perhaps
most important, Herodotus seems to hint at the true etymology of the name
Amun when he refers to Zeus/Amun’s desire not to be seen by Heracles/Chonsu
(2.42.3).94 It seems to me distinctly possible that Manetho felt the need to pro-
vide his own etymology of Amun because Herodotus and Hecataeus of Abdera
differed precisely on this point; Manetho could thus present himself as adjudi-
cating between the two Greek historians, weighing in on Herodotus’ side with
his expert native knowledge and finding against the explanation of Hecataeus.
With Manetho providing expert Egyptian linguistic knowledge in find-
ing for Herodotus and against Hecataeus of Abdera in the matter of explain-
ing the divine name Amun, we come back to the all-important etymology of
Hyksos and to etymologizing more generally in the Aegyptiaca. First, it is vital
to see that the very impulse to give an etymology can be accounted for from
within both Manetho’s Egyptian scholarly practices and his Greek one. Second,
explaining the term Hyksos and bringing authorial scrutiny to it would have
helped to make the word one to look for subsequently, specifically in connec-
tion with the later occupiers of Egypt. In this sense, the etymology of Hyksos
could be seen as a way to highlight a crucially important term and to create
the opportunity of establishing connections with the later nonnative rulers of
Egypt. Indeed, it could reasonably be argued that this was an important pur-
pose, even the main one, for the Hyksos narratives themselves in their entirety:
the Hyksos become paradigmatic in Manetho’s account, the template for all the
unlawful foreign rulers of Egypt.
Hyksos II
It is time to turn to Hyksos II, the longest surviving of Manetho’s extant narra-
tives and one that caused Josephus much anxiety. Inasmuch as it features the
93. Cf. Lloyd (1975/1988) 2.128–29 ad loc.; (2007) 260 ad loc.. Note also the excellent discus-
sion of Griffiths (1955b) 144–49. It is interesting to note that a very similar story, with an emphasis
on the “left” being a sign of dishonor, is reported at Diod. 1.67.3–7 and so is perhaps an account
and etymology transmitted by Hecataeus of Abdera (cf. FGrH 264 F 25). For another etymology
of a whole people from Herodotus, consider Hdt. 4.110.1: the Scythian name for the Amazons,
“Oeorpata,” is etymologized as oior, “man,” and pata, “to kill.”
94. Ἡρακλέα θελῆσαι πάντως ἰδέσθαι τὸν Δία καὶ τὸν οὐκ ἐθέλειν ὀφθῆναι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. Cf. Fer-
rante (1966) 474.
role of prophecy prominently and, hence, will connect to some major themes of
this book, it is best to begin by considering the background to Hyksos II provided
by one of our best examples of Egyptian prophecy, the Prophecy of Neferty (To-
bin [2003a]; Lichtheim [1973/1980] 1.140–44; ANET3 444–46). That text’s sole
complete witness dates to the Eighteenth Dynasty, but the original was written
in the Twelfth Dynasty (during the reign or after the death of Amenemhat I). It
purports to be a composition from the time of King Sneferu, the first king of the
Fourth Dynasty, and predicts a time of woe and foreign invasion for Egypt that
will come to an end with the arrival “from the South” of a new king, “Ameny,” that
is, Amenemhat I himself.95 Insofar as this text has been seen as among the first
examples of a Königsnovelle, much effort has been expended by scholars in trying
to identify its purpose and the nature of the textual authority it attempts to cre-
ate for itself.96 Interpretations range from the record of an actual prophecy97 to a
“historical romance in pseudo-prophetic form.”98 Few accept what it purports to
be; rather, scholars interpret the text more along the lines of the other possibility
just raised: either during or after the rule of Amenemhat I, the author wanted to
locate in the revered and hoary past the transmission of a prophecy that predicted
both a period of turmoil caused by Asiatic invaders and the restoration of legiti-
mate rule and prosperity under Amenemhat.
I think that much is to be gained by comparing the frames of the Prophecy of
Neferty and the prophecy of Amenophis son of Paapis (Hyksos II) from Mane-
tho’s Aegyptiaca. The frame of Neferty, as I have already noted, provides a com-
plex history for the transmission of the prophetic text it contains. The courtiers
of King Sneferu assemble to pay him homage and then depart, only to be sum-
moned again by the king to bring him someone “who will speak to me a few
fine words and elegant phrases so that my Majesty may be pleased by listening
to them”; Neferty is brought before the pharaoh and, on being told to perform
this task, asks if he should speak “[a]bout what has come to pass, or about what
will come to pass, my sovereign Lord”; instructed to speak “about what will
come to pass,” Sneferu acts as his own scribe and “proceed[s] to record the say-
ing of the lector-priest Neferty”; a brief summary of the prophecy follows, and
then the prophetic text itself, concluded by the closing of the frame: “it has been
well transcribed” (Tobin [2003a] 215–16, 220). The frame of Neferty and its
prophecy are distinct elements. To be sure, in the end of the opening frame, we
95. See esp. Tobin (2003a) 214–15 for the textual history.
96. See Goedicke (1977) 3–24, esp. 15, though with the caveat that his own conclusions seem
to be incorrect and certainly not the consensus view.
97. The view that the prophecy is authentic seems restricted to the very earliest commentators,
though Goedicke’s understanding that it is not a prophecy but an actual report or complaint is not
that different.
98. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 1.139; cf. Goedicke (1977) 3 and n.11.
find a summary of the prophecy before it is quoted, and in other cases of pro-
phetic Königsnovellen, there can be internal “cross-references” between frame
and prophecy, especially in connection with the eventual fate of the prophet.
A quick comparison of Neferty with Manetho’s Hyksos II story is instructive.
But even as we turn to an assessment of the frame of Manetho’s second Hyksos
narrative, we confront a major difference with Neferty: whereas the frame was a
discrete element in the overall economy of the text of Neferty, the framing de-
tails that explain or motivate the prophecy in Hyksos II are spread throughout
the introduction and are in the prophecy itself; just as important, the ultimate
responsibility for the creation of the prophecy rests not with Amenophis the
king but with Amenophis the seer. Hyksos II seems to begin conventionally
enough when viewed from the lens of the Königsnovelle: “[Manetho] says that
this one [namely, Amenophis the king] desired to be an observer of gods, just
as Or, one of those who had ruled before him, and he brought his desire to the
man with his same name, Amenophis.”
At this point the narrative focus shifts. While Amenophis the king is given
little emphasis, Amenophis the seer’s background as a sage figure is stressed:
he is described as Amenophis “whose father was Paapis, who seemed to pos-
sess a divine nature thanks to his wisdom and foreknowledge of things to be”
(Jos. Ap. 1.232). The seer replies to the king’s request with the recommendation,
not in prophetic form, that the king must cleanse the land by quarantining the
lepers and other polluted persons. The king rounds up all the unclean persons
and “casts” them into the stone quarries to the east of the Nile. Presumably be-
cause leprous priests were included in their number, Amenophis the seer, again
identified as wise and possessed of mantic ability, “became fearful of the gods’
wrath toward himself and the king, if [the lepers] would be seen that they had
been violently treated” (Ap. 1.236). Manetho evidently wanted there to be no
confusion on this point: Amenophis the seer, not Amenophis the king, had this
dread of being discovered perpetrating what has turned out to be a gross injus-
tice. A textual problem found at this point obscures what happened next: either
“adding” to his earlier recommendation or “having foreseen” what was to befall
Egypt in the future, the seer Amenophis predicted that allies would come to the
aid of the polluted and take possession of Egypt for thirteen years. Not daring
to say these things directly to the king, the seer wrote them down and then
killed himself, putting the king into great despondency. Manetho follows by
drawing notice, in almost editorial fashion, to the incorporation of Amenophis
the seer’s prophecy itself: “and then word for word he has written thus” (Ap.
1.237: κἄπειτα κατὰ λέξιν οὕτως γέγραφεν). This sentence suggests that the
text that follows provides Manetho’s exact words quoting Amenophis’ proph-
ecy. But once the direct quote is launched, the prophecy proceeds as though a
historical narrative, with verbs indicating past action, not future ones, alternat-
ing with sections that provide bits of information that seem to belong more
properly to the introduction: “when a considerable amount of time passed for
the people who were suffering in the stone quarries, the king, asked to set aside
a resting place and a refuge for them, then granted to them the city of Avaris,
which had been abandoned by the Shepherds: according to religious lore, the
city is from long ago Typhonian” (Ap. 1.237).
No passage better illustrates the merging of prophetic narrative and frame
than the end of Against Apion 1.243. After a lengthy treatment in historical,
past-tense narration detailing the organization of the lepers into a political
community and their summoning as allies the shepherds, who eagerly answer
the call for help and invade Egypt, we are told that Amenophis was plunged
into deeper despair: “Amenophis the king of the Egyptians, when he learned
the details relating to the invasion of those men, was greatly troubled when
he remembered the prophecy from Amenophis the son of Paapis” (οὐ μετρίως
συνεχύθη τῆς παρὰ Ἀμενώφεως τοῦ Παάπιος μνησθεὶς προδηλώσεως). In Ma-
netho’s hands, not only have the details of Amenophis the seer’s prophecy been
made into historical narrative, but the prophecy (προδήλωσις) has become a
fact of the past, an artifact of reportage, itself remarkably even motivating ac-
tion in historical time. Frame and narrative have merged.
A way into the issue of the historicization of originally nonhistoriographic
narrative was offered some time ago by the acute and sensitive readings of Mar-
tin Braun (1938).99 Before taking up his analysis, however, it is necessary to
review carefully the plot of one of the narratives of Manetho preserved by Jo-
sephus and treated by Braun, one that we have already encountered a couple
of times. Josephus introduces Manetho’s long, second Hyksos narrative con-
cerning Amenophis and the lepers (Jos. Ap. 1.232–49; F 10; Waddell F 54)
with a number of objections, as we have seen. It is important for Josephus
to locate the “intrusion” of this narrative panel in Manetho’s chronographic
scheme very precisely, and in so doing, he also situates all the Manethonian
narratives he reports relative to each other: 518 years after the exodus of the
shepherds to Jerusalem (the first Hyksos narrative)—a period that includes the
reign of Sethos, who expelled Harmais and ruled for fifty-nine years (Sethos
and Harmais story), and a further sixty-six years for the reign of Sethos’ son
Rampses—Amenophis, the “intrusive king” (ἐμβόλιμον βασιλέα), “wished to
become an observer of gods,” as had Or, one of the kings who had ruled before
99. Cf. Johnson (2004) 96 and n.7, for a recent and largely positive critique of Braun’s methods.
him (Jos. Ap. 1.231–32). At Apion 1.230, in support of the point that the very
name Amenophis is “false,” Josephus even asserts that unlike for every other
king, Manetho does not attribute to Amenophis a reign length in years. This
is crucial for Josephus and underscores the fictitious nature of the personage
of Amenophis the king and of the entire narrative of Hyksos II. Not only is
Josephus’ assertion incorrect on the basis of what we know from the separately
transmitted king list (Syncellus Chron. 80 M),100 but Josephus has forgotten that
he himself has quoted Manetho’s regnal years for Amenophis at Apion 1.79 and
94.101 Let us turn to the narrative itself:
Amenophis brought his wish to his namesake, Amenophis the son of

Paapis, a man who seemed to possess a divine nature because of both his
wisdom and his knowledge of the future. This namesake told Ameno-
phis that he would be able to see gods if he made all the land of Egypt
clean of lepers and other polluted persons. The king did as he was in-
structed, and he threw a larger number of persons into the quarries to
the East of the Nile, including some learned priests afflicted with lep-
rosy. At this point, we are told that the seer Amenophis grew fearful of
the anger of the gods toward himself and the king if the leprous priests
were seen being treated with violence. Then he made a prediction: that
certain men would become allies of the polluted persons and would rule
Egypt for 13 years. He did not dare to speak these things himself to the
king, but having first left behind a copy of his prophecy, the seer killed
himself, and (we are told) the king became despondent.
After a considerable length of time in the quarries, the polluted per-
sons asked Amenophis that they be transferred to the deserted city of
the Shepherds, Avaris, a place associated with Seth/Typhon. The pha-
raoh agreed, and the lepers moved to Avaris, where they chose as their
leader one of the leprous priests, a man named Osarseph, who gave
them laws that required a style of life opposed to Egyptian practice and
who ordered that they rebuild the defenses of Avaris and prepare for war
against Amenophis. Then, having taken to himself certain of the priests
and fellow lepers as advisors, Osarseph sent ambassadors to the Shep-
herds who had earlier been expelled by the Pharaoh Tethmosis and had
100. Remember that the king list entry for Amenophis includes the identification of him as
Memnon of the vocal statue (see above ch. 2). This will not have been information provided by
Manetho.
101. Cf. Barclay (2007) 133 n.830 ad loc.; also above, p. xi.
founded the city of Jerusalem, promising to help them recover Avaris

and bring Egypt easily under their control.
When Amenophis learned that the Shepherds had invaded, he was
greatly distressed, recalling as he did the earlier prediction of Ameno-
phis the seer. Then he too gathered together a council, sent for the sa-
cred animals from throughout Egypt, and ordered the safe storage of
the images of the gods. He also sent his own son Sethos to Ethiopia.
After these preparations, Amenophis crossed the Nile with an army of
300,000 men and met the enemy. Remarkably he did not engage them in
battle, however; rather, having decided that he must not fight with gods,
he returned to Memphis, retrieved the Apis bull and the other sacred
animals he had gathered there, and himself set off for Ethiopia with all
his army and the people of Egypt, where he waited out the 13 years of the
foreign domination of Egypt. (Ap. 1.232–46)
This outline of events from Hyksos II contains within it a number of nar-

rative difficulties: unexplained actions, details without proper narrative moti-
vation, and odd duplications. All these difficulties can be accounted for if we
assume that a preexisting text of a very specific sort was adapted by Manetho to
fit into his history of Egypt. Braun noted some time ago that perhaps the most
puzzling detail from Manetho’s story is Amenophis the king’s decision, hav-
ing met the invaders with his army, not to fight but to retreat to Memphis.102
Manetho tells us that Amenophis did this because he did not think it right to
fight the gods. Insofar as we have not been told how resisting invasion would
constitute fighting the gods, we must assume that Amenophis is thinking of the
prophecy of Amenophis that allies of the polluted would come and rule Egypt
for thirteen years. But why, then, did Amenophis the king assemble an army
in the first place, especially given that when informed of the invasion of the
shepherds, he was distressed and remembered the prediction of Amenophis the
seer? If the prediction was enough to dissuade the king from battle later, why
did it not have the same effect earlier, before he assembled an army that, in the
event, he never used?
Braun was alert to all these narrative inconcinnities: “Is not this sudden
fear of fighting against the gods peculiar and insufficiently motivated? Some-
thing is wrong here, and this is often the case when certain components of a
story, especially when in abbreviated form, have been transferred into another
102. Braun (1938) 21.
narrative.”103 Braun implies that Manetho’s narrative we read in Josephus was in

fact built out of other narratives that were “transferred” into it. He states clearly
that one reason for the ensuing problems of narration that we detect was that
these earlier narratives were “in abbreviated form.” But he goes on to suggest
another reason too: difference of genre.
Comparison with the beginning of the Alexander Romance offers a situ-
ation similar to what we see in Manetho’s leper narrative. In the former, we
find the pharaoh Nectanebo II presented as a magician-king (τῇ μαγικῇ τέχνῃ
ἔμπειρος), accustomed to using magic to repel Egypt’s attackers. When he hears
of an impending invasion, without needing to make ready armies or engines of
war (Ps.-Callisth. 1.1.4),104 he fills a bowl with water and places in it models of
ships and men; speaking an incantation, the miniature men come to life, and
Nectanebo sinks the ships; the “real” ships of the enemy are then destroyed,
the invasion thwarted (1.1.5–6).105 But when scouts later alert him that a “great
cloud of war” (1.2.1: νέφος πολὺ πολέμου) made up of countless armed men is
marching against Egypt, the outcome is different. Not at all alarmed—indeed,
confident in his special powers—Nectanebo makes his customary preparations
for the magical repulse of the enemy, but this time, he sees the gods of Egypt
actually steering the ships against Egypt and guiding the hostile armies there
(1.2.2). “Being a man exceptionally experienced in magic and accustomed to
associating with his gods” (τῇ μαγείᾳ πολύπειρος ὢν ἄνθρωπος καὶ εἰθισμένος
τοῖς θεοῖς αὐτοῦ ὁμιλεῖν 1.3.2) and, furthermore, “having learned from the
gods that the end of the kingship of Egypt was near” (τὰ ἔσχατα τῆς Αἰγύπτου
βασιλείας ἤγγισεν), Nectanebo fills his clothes with gold, shaves his hair and
beard, and flees via Pelusium to Macedon (1.3.3), where he will go on to sire
the future world conqueror Alexander the Great. When the Egyptians ask their
gods what has become of their king, inasmuch as their entire land has been laid
waste by the enemy, they are told by the god of the Sarapeum that their king has
fled but will return, not as an old man but as a young one (i.e., Alexander), and
that this man will expel their enemies, the Persians (1.3.4).
To be sure, there are major differences between the opening story of the
Alexander Romance and the account of the lepers in Manetho, most crucially
that Nectanebo is both king and sage/magician and, as such, seems quite like
Amenophis the seer. Indeed, seen through the lens of the Romance, the obvi-
103. Braun (1938) 21 (my emphasis).

104. I follow the so-called L-manuscript of the β-recension in van Thiel (1974), employing his
citation numbers from his translation.
105. This procedure is a form of “water divination” (lekanomanteia), identified as such in the
text (1.1.4: ἐποίει λεκανομαντείαν). See Matthey (2012) 195–209.
ous and odd doublet of “Amenophis the king” and “Amenophis the seer” seems
less problematic; there are two nodes of agency in such stories, the military
king and the prophetic seer, and both need to be endowed with potent ability
or the expectation of it, even if, in the event, we see Amenophis the king fail
whereas we see the seer succeed. In the Romance, these roles are combined,
much as Anysis acts as both king and sage in Herodotus,106 waiting out the
requisite period of foreign rule in the marshes and returning after fifty years to
resume his reign (Hdt. 2.137, 139–40). We should also point out that the leper
fragment has two enemies of Egypt—on the one hand, the native lepers and
leprous priests and, on the other, their allies the shepherds, who had earlier
invaded Egypt in a way eerily similar to the “Persians” in the Romance (Jos. Ap.
1.75–92), as divinely assisted attackers described in the imagery of the storm
(note esp. Romance 1.2.1 and Jos. Ap. 1.75). But the similarities between the
Romance and the leper narrative of Manetho are nonetheless striking: the king
desires and obtains contact with the divine, from whom important knowledge
is gained about the security of Egypt; the king prepares to repel the enemy but
then elects to flee Egypt once the divine will supporting the enemy becomes
known to him or is finally understood; and the enemies of Egypt gain mastery
over the land without having to fight. Braun and others have suggested that this
remarkable outline of events, in which Egypt is voluntarily surrendered to the
outsider, is attributable ultimately to a prophetic orientation that explains the
conquest of Egypt as divinely ordained, indeed, by Egypt’s own gods; foreign
rule is thereby clearly circumscribed, ultimately to be replaced by the restora-
tion of native Egyptian rule,107 a theme that can be traced back to the Middle
Kingdom Prophecy of Neferty.108 But Braun further notes that there is a subtle
difference between Nectanebo’s activities and Amenophis’: “Nectanebo sees for
himself the Egyptian gods abandon his realm and become the guiding deities
for the barbarian invaders; Amenophis on the other hand does not see the gods
himself, though he wants to, rather he only later recalls the wisdom of the one
who did have access to the divine (namely the seer Amenophis), and therefore
decides not to ‘fight with gods.’”109
As Braun observed, it seems as though Manetho “has eliminated this epiph-
106. Anysis is blind (Hdt. 2.137); he is a lawgiver, doing away with the death penalty (2.137.3);
his enemy, the Ethiopian Sabacos, is told in a dream to hack in half the priests of Egypt, which he
refuses to do (2.139.1–2)—a typical crime in the Chaosbeschreibung tradition.
107. Braun (1938) 22. See also Perry (1966); Lloyd (1982b) 46–50; Frankfurter (1998) 242–43;
Ryholt (2002) 234–37. Cf. Assmann (2002) 377–81.
108. Meyer (1953/1958) 2.1.424 n.2. Note also Podemann Sørensen (1992) 166–67; Koenen
(2002) 172–79.
109. Braun (1938) 22. Note that Amenophis wants to be like Or (= Horus); cf. Dicaerchus F
58a, above p. 103.
any, perhaps because it did not fit in with the beginning of the legend, or be-
cause it appeared to him as being too mythical.”110 Braun speculated that a later
epiphany on the eve of battle with the invaders would have been out of place
when Amenophis’ earlier desire to see the gods was evidently left unfulfilled.111
This is correct. But the second possibility he raises, that Manetho was troubled
by the “mythical” nature of the episode, cannot be right, though it prompts an
important point. The suggestion cannot be right because Manetho elsewhere
admits into his history events of a supernatural kind: in Manetho, as we have
seen, pharaohs can be attacked by hippos, and lambs can speak prophecies;
most important, at the beginning of time, the gods themselves rule Egypt, fol-
lowed by the demigods. A thoroughgoing rationalist, explaining away the mi-
raculous, Manetho was not. But Braun was right to wonder how Manetho man-
aged the adaptation of the mythical to the historical.
What Braun did not see was that the epiphany in Manetho’s Amenophis
story was made to disappear because of a structural change necessitated by the
conversion of a prophetic “king’s story” into historical narrative. The events
in Manetho’s account do not transpire in a prophecy of future time. Rather,
the prophecy is itself made a historical event in past time that motivates ac-
tion: Amenophis the king summons Amenophis the seer, who foresees danger
and regrets the decisions based on his prophecy, and then the prophecy is later
remembered and truly understood by the king at the opportune moment. In-
deed, note that we have, in fact, a repetition of the prophecy in Manetho: the
prophecy is given once by Amenophis son of Paapis and then later remembered
on the eve of battle by Amenophis the king. In a notional prophetic version
of these same events, there would have been only prophecy or vision, likely
obtained by the king himself immediately before contending with the enemy.
The situation we see in the Dream of Nectanebo as reconstructed by Koenen
and Ryholt is similar to Amenophis’ in Manetho.112 Nectanebo has a dream in
which the god Onuris complains to Isis about sacred building that Nectanebo
has left undone. Nectanebo calls a council, at which Petesis, a glyph writer, is
chosen to complete the work; when Petesis fails to complete his task, he makes
a prophecy before the king and his council describing future ills for Egypt at
the hands of an invading foreigner, followed by the restoration of native rule
and the return of prosperity to Egypt. He very likely compared his own neglect
of his commission of completing the hieroglyphic carving on the naos to the
gods’ neglect of Egypt because of Nectanebo’s inattention (on the analogy of the
110. Braun (1938) 22.

111. Braun (1938) 22 n.1.
112. Koenen (1985) 185, 191–92; Ryholt (2002) 234.
potter who destroys his pots in the Oracle of the Potter). Following his proph-
ecy, Petesis dies and is buried. Nectanebo laments the death of Petesis and
makes his preparations to repel the invader, no doubt in vain—just as we see in
Amenophis’ case. The prophecy of Petesis is, in fact, what we possess in a Greek
version,113 whereas demotic texts give us the king’s response:114 his lamentation
for Petesis and preparation for defense. Crucial and arresting in this sequence
of actions is the breakdown in the connection of human and divine: Nectanebo
has not fulfilled his duty to Onuris, just as Amenophis is apparently unable to
see the divine for himself; difficulty must follow for Egypt, ended, finally, by the
restoration of native rule. As Ryholt notes, “the reason for the king’s demise is
the fact the he failed to complete the hieroglyphic inscriptions at the sanctu-
ary of the temple of Onuris in Sebennytus.” Significantly, the actual remains of
this structure include two chapels (naoi) dedicated by Nectanebo II that were
left incomplete from his reign. The return of the Persians under Artaxerxes III
probably prevented the completion of the works.115 The trauma of invasion and
its imagined end were spun from these historical facts.
Just as a historicized prophetic text can be related to the prose narrative of
the Alexander Romance, namely, the Dream of Nectanebo and the relevant por-
tions of the Demotic Chronicle,116 there may also be evidence for a historicized
prophetic version of Amenophis’ activities that can be connected to the leper
narrative of Manetho. I am thinking of P. Oxy. 3011. This important papyrus
text may refer to the retreat of Amenophis to Memphis, just as is reported by
Josephus at Apion 1.246, but if so, it is told, crucially, from a first-person per-
spective, as well as in third-person narration, suitable perhaps for a prophetic
text or Königsnovelle: an unnamed speaker is telling the king about the road to
Memphis; he then asks the king to put him on his shoulders, wade through wa-
ter, and travel the same road as “the great god Hermes and the thousand-named
goddess Isis, wandering . . . seeking the king (?) of the gods, Osiris”; then we
are told that “Amenophis (?), hearing this, rejoiced greatly.”117 The mention of
the search of Osiris by Isis is intriguing (if accurate; the presence of Hermes
is problematic),118 for it would connect the papyrus—and perhaps, therefore,
113. See esp. Koenen (1985).

114. Ryholt (2002) 228–30; cf. Ryholt (1998a).
115. Ryholt (2002) 240–41; see also Blasius and Schipper ed. (2002) plate VIII.
116. Felber (2002).
117. Parsons trans. (1974) 43. Cf. Quaegebeur (1986) 101; J. R. Morgan (1998) 3385; Verreth
(1999). Several problems attend this papyrus, chief among them that the reading “Amenophis” is
not certain. Parsons dates the papyrus to the third century AD.
118. See Parsons (1974) 43 note to lines 15ff.: Diodorus 1.17.3 does refer to Hermes being left
with other divinities to serve as a councilor to Isis during the absence of Osiris. Cf. Griffiths (1960)
100–101.
the story of Amenophis’ flight—to the mythical template for the departure and
return of legitimate rule, namely, the conflict of Seth and Horus, which had its
origins in Seth’s murder of Osiris and the subsequent search for his body parts
by Isis. Certainly, Amenophis features in another Egyptian account from the
Greco-Roman period that has a distinct prophetic orientation: the Oracle of the
Potter, one recension of which even bore the title “The Defense of the Potter
before King Amenophis” (note esp. the colophon at Oracle P2 54–55).119
The essential point to note in the comparison of the opening of the Alexan-
der Romance with Manetho’s leper account is that we can see robust written tra-
ditions of prophetic material converted into historical or quasi-historical narra-
tives in both cases. Not only are the details of future events plotted in historical
past time, but in the case of Manetho’s leper story, the transmission of Ameno-
phis the seer’s prophecy and its influence on him and the pharaoh Amenophis
become historical actions, just as we saw in the Dream of Nectanebo. This pro-
cess of historicization is the crucial development that we see in both Manetho
and Berossus: the textual register of traditional wisdom tales, prophecies, and
royal biographies is changed and made historical. To be sure, the preexisting
texts that went to make up the narratives of Berossus and Manetho must still
be imagined as fulfilling, at least in part, their original purposes, be they di-
dactic, admonitory, or even historiographic. Thus a text like the “Instruction
of King Amenemhat” as it was found in Manetho would still presumably have
performed all three functions: a record of the pharaoh’s murder, it could still
be seen as a text that sought to educate his son Senwosret I on how to be king
himself, as well as warn him of the dangers that went along with that office; it
was, of course, somehow also meant as a historical record—an act of the “cura-
tion of the past,” if you will. But in its new setting, it was not freestanding, and
its events would probably have been reported in the third person (unless the
first-person format of the original was kept). Its story thereby became a part of
the whole sweep of Egypt’s past. Its events could now have a “backstory” and
be seen in relation to future events—perhaps even causally related to them. A
historical continuum was thus created over a great expanse of time. “Disem-
bedding” the story from its original didactic and wisdom context permits its
“reembedding” in the fabric of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca.
At this juncture, it is vital to remember that Hecataeus of Abdera perhaps
told the story of the Hyksos/Jews in an outline very similar to what Manetho
119. ἀπολογία κεραμέως {μεθυρμενευμένη} | πρὸ[ς] Ἀμενῶπιν τὸν βασιλέα. See Koenen
(2002) 147; cf. Ryholt (2002) 233. See also Fraser (1972) 1.683–85; Parsons (1974) 41; Quaegebeur
(1986) 101–2; Frankfurter (1998) 242–44.
produces in Hyksos II (FGrH 264 F 6 = Diod. 40.3).120 We see the common peo-
ple (οἱ πολλοί) come to believe that the cause for pestilence in the land of Egypt
was the presence of foreign peoples practicing their own religion while native
Egyptian belief had been allowed to fall into disuse (Diod. 40.3.1). Further, the
“indigenous people of the land” (οἱ τῆς χώρας ἐγγενεῖς) come up with the so-
lution of the expulsion of the foreigners from their midst (Diod. 40.3.2). The
leader of the expelled is explicitly identified as “Moses,” a great deal of attention
is paid to the laws and customs he gives to the people who establish their main
settlement at Jerusalem, and mention is made of expeditions he led against
neighboring territory. Other leaders established other outposts—notably, “Da-
naus” and “Cadmus” (Diod. 40.3.2). Two points of contrast between Hecataeus’
account and Manetho’s Hyksos II need to be stressed. While Hecataeus focuses
on the activities of Moses, the leader of the expelled, he nowhere mentions a
king of Egypt doing anything at all. Correspondingly, there is no mention of
any prophecy either. Rather, by intuition and observation, the people of Egypt
sense what the cause is for their country’s difficulties and surmise that it is the
anger of the divine. There are, hence, no narrative inconcinnities produced by
adapting a prophetically oriented text to historical narration. It is thus difficult
to see the extent to which Hecataeus’ treatment would have influenced Ma-
netho in the incorporation of the Hyksos story into a historiographic frame-
work. The role of Amenophis the king is decisive in Manetho’s treatment, as
are the actions of Amenophis the seer. So while Hecataeus may well have sup-
plied some details to Manetho, especially in the form of the identification of the
Hyksos leaders (Danaus, Moses), his influence over the whole would have been
minimal, I think. More decisive was Herodotus.
It is instructive here to consider a pair of cases from Herodotus that parallel
Manetho’s Hyksos II account. Remarkably similar in many details to the narra-
tive of Hyksos II is the story of Anysis and Sabacos in Herodotus (2.137–40),121
briefly alluded to above. A blind and, thus, seer-like pharaoh,122 Anysis from
the town of Anysis (doublet), voluntarily withdraws into the marshes of the
Delta in advance of foreign invasion and concedes his rule to the Ethiopian
king Sabacos. At some point during Sabacos’ reign (in fact, as we soon learn, af-
120. See above, pp. 208–9.
121. Cf. Dillery (1999) 104; (2005a) 391–92, 397. See also Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.90–91; (2007)
339–42.
122. Note, too, the story of the king “Pheros,” whose sight was taken from him for a religious
crime (Hdt. 2.111; cf. Diod. 1.59). In a dream, he is told that his sight could only be restored by the
urine of a chaste woman applied to his eyes; in his search, he finds that his own wife is not one such
woman. The story is now known in a demotic papyrus (P. Petese II, col. 2, lines 3ff.), with slight
variations (forty women of the royal harem fail to produce the necessary tears and are killed): see
Ryholt (2006a) 31–33 and his commentary at 41–46; (2009) 311 and n.23.
ter he has served many years as king of Egypt), he is advised in a dream to mur-
der brutally the priests of Egypt, something he refuses to do—indeed, some-
thing he knew would be sacrilegious and would put him in danger of being
punished by gods or men (recall Amenophis the seer’s realization of the danger
of bringing harm to the leprous priests). Sabacos elects to flee Egypt rather than
commit this atrocity, and he is confirmed in doing so since, we are now told,
his own Ethiopian oracles had told him his rule of Egypt was destined to last
fifty years before he even set out to invade. Anysis returns to resume his reign,
having waited out the foreign rule of Egypt for the requisite period of fifty years.
I find intriguing about this parallel to Hyksos II that (1) insofar as it seems
patently to derive from the same tradition of prophetic Königsnovellen as Hyk-
sos II, it may have been a model for Manetho in how to go about bringing a
prophetic text into a historical narrative, and (2) there is a similar narrative
difficulty at the same points of the Anysis/Sabacos story as we see in Hyksos II,
precisely deriving from the same sort of problem, prophecy made into history.
At Herodotus 2.137.2, we are told that the blind pharaoh fled to the marshes
and did not resist Sabacos, but we are not told why. We are told that Sabacos’
rule of Egypt lasted for fifty years, but we are not told why it was thus tempo-
rally fixed. After an interlude dealing with tangential matters (the raising of
earthworks and the cutting of canals in the Nile around Bubastis),123 we skip
to the end of Sabacos’ rule and are told the story of his dream and decision to
leave Egypt, a decision that is confirmed for him by another set of divine com-
munications (the Ethiopian oracles) that we are only told about now, at the
end of the story. It turns out that Sabacos’ rule of Egypt and, therefore, Anysis’
forced withdrawal to the marshes had prophetically set limits of fifty years even
before the Ethiopian invasion. It is widely acknowledged that vital details are
often suppressed in Herodotus where we need and expect them and that this
narrative habit of his has good parallels in archaic Greek literature.124
While it is important to grant that Herodotus had very good reasons, stem-
ming from Greek storytelling techniques, to tell his tale of Anysis and Saba-
cos in the way he did, it is nonetheless important to see how prophecy as a
motivator for historical action causes temporal disruptions in his presentation
of events—those same sort of logical narrative inconcinnities that we saw in
Hyksos II. Another example from Herodotus, on a smaller scale, is one we have
already encountered in discussing Berossus and Sennacherib: the pharaoh
123. These matters are connected with Anysis because he is a pharaoh who is said to have built
up earthworks in the river.
124. See esp. Fraenkel (1950) 3.805, discussing a phenomenon noted in Illig (1932) 25 n.3. See
also Dillery (1999) 101 and n.28.
“Sethos” (Shabataka) is told by the divine, in a dream during incubation in a

temple, that he will be supported by special helpers (timoroi), but he nonethe-
less raises a scratch army of shopkeepers, craftsmen, and merchants and goes
out to meet Sennacherib in battle, after he has alienated the warrior class who
have refused to follow him (Hdt. 2.141.4).125 The mice that famously eat the
equipment of Sennacherib’s men will prove to be enough to repel the invader,
but that is prophetic detail. We must still see Sethos as a commander doing his
best in trying times—thus the narratively problematic raising of a scratch force
despite divine assurance. This is, to my mind, a textual trace of the difficulty of
incorporating prophetic material into narrative history. Precisely similar are
Amenophis’ actions that so puzzled Braun.
Prophetic story lines can be incorporated into history, but they sit uncom-
fortably there, especially if they are presented as prophecy—for they predict
action that must unfold in “real” time, yet they must motivate action too, action
that may well be connected to the very events they foresee. Thus, as in the case
of Herodotus 2.137–40, they are deposited in odd places, as a kind of after-
thought. I hasten to add here that Manetho seems to have treated the reign of
Sabacos quite differently: in the surviving section of the chronography, Sabacos
is reported as capturing the pharaoh Bocchoris and burning him alive (Syncel-
lus Chron. 83, 84 M).126
I must address here, briefly, the criticisms of Ian Moyer, who has disputed
an earlier formulation of my understanding of Hyksos II especially.127 He con-
tends (1) that there is no evidence for the type of text that I argue lay in the
background to Hyksos II, namely, the prophetic Königsnovelle; and (2) that
it is better to see what Manetho has done as his “effort to use and to make
comprehensible indigenous ways of explaining and representing the past in
the process of grappling with the contemporary problem of historical rupture
and continuity created by the end of native rule and the establishment of the
Ptolemaic dynasty.”128 Moyer’s first objection really rests on a matter of a dif-
ference in identification and typology. Moyer can argue that there is no extant
prophetic Königsnovelle because his categorization of the (standard) Königs-
novelle includes texts like the Oracle of the Lamb and the Demotic Chronicle.
125. See above, p. 269. This famous episode is dealt with in a number of places: the so-called
Sennacherib Prism (ANET3 287–88), Isaiah 37, 2 Kings 19, 2 Chron. 32, and Berossus F 7a. Note
Lloyd (1975/1988) 3.104.
126. Σαβάκων ὃς αἱχμάλωτον Βόχχωριν/Βόχχοριν ἑλὼν ἔκαυσε ζῶντα.
127. Moyer (2011) 134–35 and esp. n.159. I proposed a similar view, with more documentation
and a more thorough argument, in Dillery (2005a), and I do not understand why Moyer did not
take account of that essay in his critique of my position.
128. Moyer (2011) 135.
But my point is precisely that while these texts are indisputably related to the
old Königsnovelle type that had its origins at the start of the Middle Kingdom
with documents like the Prophecy of Neferty, foreign rule in the Late Period
required their standard form, such as it existed,129 to be changed, at least in
some cases. Simply put, national defeat and royal failure had to be accounted
for and thereby circumscribed; the Königsnovelle had to imagine a time in the
real future when foreign rule would be replaced by native rule and when true
Ma’at would be restored to Egypt. This is one way that Manetho can be seen as
“proto-apocalyptic,” in Jonathan Z. Smith’s formulation (see also immediately
below). I take the accounting of Cambyses’ conquest and rule of Egypt to be an
exemplary case of this process.130 Moyer’s second objection is not really based
on an argument but, rather, is a description of his understanding of Manetho’s
response to the establishment of Ptolemaic rule, and I have little quarrel with
it as such. No doubt, Manetho both “used” and “made comprehensible” Egyp-
tian ways of curating the past when he wrote up Hyksos I and II, but Moyer’s
analysis is missing an acknowledgment that what Manetho did was innovative
by Egyptian standards. To be sure, the elements of his Hyksos tales had their
antecedents in traditional Egyptian narrative forms, but that fact should not
be allowed to obscure the new things Manetho did: he told the narrative of the
prophecy of Amenophis the seer in historical time, made it itself a historical
object that others responded to (i.e., Amenophis the king), and worked out its
positive and negative elements—in short, he historicized it; he attached Hyksos
I and II to a chronological scheme based on the king list; and he made the nar-
ratives themselves conform to this scheme and so made them constituents of a
larger, grand narrative comprised of the whole of the Egyptian past.
The Privileging of the Priest in Manetho’s Narratives
In an earlier treatment of Manetho (Dillery [1999] 107–9), I made a point that

I think essential to draw out here as well: that priests or priestly figures have a
prominent role in the narratives of Manetho. In the novella of Sethos and Har-
mais, the person in charge of the priests of Egypt alerts the king of his brother’s
treachery. In Hyksos II, Amenophis the seer, not Amenophis the king, has ac-
cess to the divine and can foresee the divine plan for Egypt. Moreover, in the
same narrative, the offenses against the leprous priests constitute the gravest
129. Spalinger (1983) 101–11 has carefully shown that there are several subvarieties of the
Königsnovelle.
130. Dillery (2005a).
wrongdoing of the king that precipitates the seer’s prophecy that predicts the
period of thirteen years of nonnative rule. In other words, it could be argued
that priests and priestly figures are as or more important than the kings in the
surviving narratives of Manetho: their actions and their views have as much
or more historical consequence. This development is all the more notable pre-
cisely because of the increasing importance of the individual priest in Late Pe-
riod Egyptian art and texts, a process that gained yet more momentum in the
Persian and Greco-Macedonian periods.131
With this in mind, it is difficult not to connect these details to another point
suggested some time ago by Jonathan Z. Smith in connection with the idea of
“proto-apocalypticism.” Precisely in the context when a true, native monarch is
no longer available to an ancient society, one will see both the rise of an apoca-
lyptic orientation—an imagined restitution of the social order to the way it is
“supposed to be” at some end point—and the siting of this impulse in nonroyal
agents such as priests. As Smith has so wonderfully and succinctly put it, “I am
tempted to describe apocalypticism as wisdom lacking a royal patron.”132
Final Observations on Manetho’s Narratives:

Sahlins, Narrative Template, Variation
It is now time to take stock of all three extensive Manethonian narratives that
come to us by way of Josephus. Hyksos I begins with a veritable parade of tropes
that come directly from the Egyptian Chaosbeschreibung tradition: the divine
“blasts” Egypt unexpectedly with an invasion from the East of “unmarked” men
who gain control over Egypt “easily and without a fight,” and they subject Egypt
to the “most hostile” treatment. Thereafter the presentation is largely factual
and dynastic: the first Hyksos ruler, Salitis, rules from Memphis and exacts
tribute (δασμολογῶν) from Upper and Lower Egypt, fortifies the Delta against
Assyrian invasion, and founds a dynastic capital, a place known from ancient
religious lore as “Avaris”; after Salitis’ rule, five more Hyksos kings are identi-
fied together with their lengths of reign for a period totaling 511 years, and
all are characterized as successively more eager to root out the stock of Egypt.
The etymology of the name Hyksos follows, and the narrative concludes with
a description of the removal of the Hyksos to Judaea under pressure from the
Thebaid kings and their foundation there of the city of “Jerusalem.”
131. Dillery (1999) 107 and n.44, citing, in particular, Griffiths (1988) esp. 100–101. Cf. Baines
(2004); (2011) 61–65.
132. Smith (1975) 149 = (1978) 81 (emphasis original).
Even this bare summary suggests several important points. If Josephus’

treatment represents roughly what Manetho had, this first of the Hyksos stories
was a montage of at least three distinct panels of text, not all of which were,
strictly speaking, “narrative”: the invasion and establishment of Hyksos rule;
etymological interlude; expulsion of the Hyksos. Obviously what stands out in
the schematic summary of Hyksos I is the etymological interlude. I think it is
fair to ask where the motivation came from for Manetho to write such a section.
While the information he relays is emphatically Egyptian in content—the ety-
mology explains the meaning in the Egyptian language of the elements “Hyk”
and “sos”—the impetus to put this information into his account of the invad-
ers would seem to require a Greek audience or at least a hellenophone one.
Moreover, telling parallels for the practice of glossing critical terms with timely
etymologies come from the Greek historiographic tradition, not from Egyptian
texts. At the very least, in trying to reconstruct Manetho’s practice, we have to
see him attaching a preexisting account of the Hyksos to his chronographic
frame but simultaneously intruding into the narrative itself the etymological
digression on “Hyksos” that would not have been in the original narrative that
he was adapting. The more strictly narrative portions of Hyksos I read precisely
like a royal autobiography or military text.133
Here at the conclusion of my discussion of Manetho’s narratives, I want to
discuss in a more general way the matter I was treating just a couple of pages
above: prophecy and history as well as the instability that results when the two
are combined. While prophecy concerns the future, it is also, in a sense, time-
less. Prophecy often imagines a coming evil period that will end with the resto-
ration of an ideal condition. In the Egyptian thought world, that would be the
restoration of cosmic order, or Ma’at—the way things ought to be. It is useful,
I think, to examine these matters through a lens provided by Marshall Sah-
lins, who has written eloquently about the interplay between what we might
call “history” and “myth,” or, more specifically (to borrow from his 1981 title)
“historical metaphors” and “mythical realities.” The paradoxical pairings of the
“real” (“historical” and “realities”) with the “unreal” (“metaphor” and “mythi-
cal”) are very much to the point. Focusing on Oceania and Hawaii in particular,
Sahlins has proposed a powerful, if also controversial, analysis of the last voy-
age of exploration by Captain Cook and his violent death on 14 February 1779,
at Kealakekua Bay on the island of Hawaii.134 I do not wish to take part in the
controversy regarding the accuracy of Sahlins’ view of Hawaiian beliefs or to
133. Cf. Spalinger (1983).

134. Sahlins (1981) and esp. (1985). On the controversy, see the response in Obeyesekere
(1992/1997), followed by Sahlins’ (1995) rejoinder.
venture quite as far with him in his “semiphilosophical excursion.”135 I would

like to take up his insightful critique of Cook’s murder. Important for me here is
not whether it is accurate but, rather, the structure of his analysis, which I think
can also be applied to Manetho’s narratives and to his Aegyptiaca more broadly.
Cook made landfall twice at Kealakekua, and therein is the critical fact for
Sahlins. When Cook first appeared on the island of Hawaii, his arrival coin-
cided with the start of a religious festival, the Makahiki, which celebrated and
reproduced the arrival of a “lost god cum legendary king” who “returns to take
possession of the land,” a figure whom the Hawaiians called Lono.136 Sahlins
argues that the Hawaiians assimilated Cook to this god. Cook and his crew
exploited this circumstance to their advantage and remained on the island for
several weeks; crucially, the Hawaiian king Kalaniopu’u also profited by “Lo-
no’s” sojourn in the flesh. Some days after their departure, however, a mast on
Cook’s vessel broke and forced a return to Kealakekua for repairs.137 At this
point, the reappearance of “Lono” precipitated a profound “mythopolitical cri-
sis” (Sahlins [1985] 127), for the god was not due back for another year. Cook’s
second appearance eventually culminated in a final confrontation between
Cook and the Hawaiians, in which Cook was killed. Cook was not wanted as a
live hero a second time. Once dead, however, he was venerated again as the god,
and cosmic order was restored.
Sahlins looks at the two key moments of Cook’s fatal encounter and derives
from them a vitally important insight that is of use to me here. When Cook first
arrived coincidentally right at the time when the Makahiki festival was to com-
mence, his coming (a real historical event) was incorporated into the mythical
world and “cultural order” of the Hawaiians: as Sahlins tartly puts it, “Cook was
a tradition for the Hawaiians before he was a fact” (Sahlins [1985] 148). The
mythical template of divine action annually celebrated in the Makahiki festival
was made to take account of the actual, physical presence of “Lono” and was
changed and augmented by it. Later, this same mythical reality, far from being
augmented, was fundamentally challenged by Cook’s unfortunate return. This
disruption of the mythical framework had also to be addressed and made right,
first by Cook’s death and then by the incorporation of his remains into local cult.
Sahlins reconstructs these events to demonstrate how “history” that is tem-
porally bound can be made into myth and, correspondingly, how atemporal
mythical patterns can be made to adapt to historical realities. That seems to
me how the cores of the two Hyksos narratives of Manetho are also conceived.
135. Cf. Sahlins (1985) 145.

136. Sahlins (1985) 92–93.
137. Sahlins (1985) 126.
I believe that, for Manetho, history was indeed constituted of facts, but facts
that were ever deployed against the backdrop of the myth of the Hyksos and,
at an even deeper level, the mythical conflict between Horus and Seth—the
eternal struggle to secure for Egypt lasting order (Ma’at). The invasion, rule,
and expulsion of the Hyksos became the template for the Egyptian accounting
of all subsequent periods of foreign rule.138 The Hyksos period had a “scarring”
effect on Egyptian historical consciousness.139Another way of saying this same
thing is to conclude that all the facts of Egypt’s past were given meaning by
these mythical and legendary events. This is not to say that the resulting view
of the past was simplistic and/or mindlessly static. Precisely as Sahlins shows
in connection with Hawaiian history, there was a delicate and plastic interplay
between “myth” and “history.”
While, on the surface, it seems as though the template provided by myth
makes the “real” events of the past conform to it, subtle and not-so-subtle
changes are introduced into the mythic paradigm. Most notably, in the older
textual versions of the Hyksos period, the historical agency of the nonroyal
prophet and other persons is simply not important; only the king’s actions and
decisions are, in the end, historically significant. Similarly, earlier, Neferty’s
prophecy is important, to be sure, but not Neferty’s actions. By contrast, in
Manetho’s Hyksos II narrative, Amenophis the seer is important—indeed,
arguably more so than his namesake the pharaoh Amenophis. Not only his
standing as seer and his advice to the king (Jos. Ap. 1.233) but also his reac-
tion to the harsh treatment of the lepers, his prophecy that predicts the re-
turn of the shepherds, and his suicide are all deeply significant in Manetho’s
account. Perhaps the most telling detail is that Amenophis the seer has access
to the divine whereas Amenophis the king does not. I have traced the rise of
the priestly nonroyal figure in Late Period Egypt above, and it is crucial to see
it here, for it represents a fundamental change in the traditional template of the
Königsnovelle and its focus on the pharaoh and the steps he takes to address
the challenge(s) facing Egypt. Hyksos II is a prime example of what Sahlins
would characterize as “mythopraxis”: events in a notional “real” time are made
to conform to a mythical explanation, but they also simultaneously change the
mythical frame. It is a genuine interplay. And are we now that far away from
what was happening in the House of Life in Egypt? Remember Frankfurter’s
definition: “The activity of the House of Life consisted essentially of updating
ancient materials. Scribes would revise ritual texts to encompass new situations,
138. See esp. Assmann (2002) 197–98. Cf. Dillery (2007b) 226–27; (2005a) 390–91.
139. Cf. Dillery (2007b) 226–27; Ryholt (2009a) 237.
record events in such a way as to reflect ancient paradigms, and recast a diversity
of literary materials—oracles, spells, legends, mythography—in order to high-
light certain essential themes” (my emphasis).140
History must be of events—of things—but it must also have structure:
“[e]very practical change is also a cultural reproduction,” part of a “symbolic di-
alogue of history” whereby facts must be somehow represented so as to be made
meaningful.141 The legacy of the Hyksos as we glimpse it in the narrative frag-
ments of Manetho precisely shows us how events and the mythical frame that
articulates them interact. Strictly speaking, the Hyksos established the tradition
of accounting for foreign rule and, so, were the “fact” before the legend. But as
for the subsequent foreign kings, including the Ptolemies—the “chiefs of all for-
eign lands”—they were indeed legends before they were facts for the Egyptians.
Mutatis mutandis, this interpretation is not that far away from requiring an
astronomical component in Berossus or, for that matter, from tracing Berossus’
own Babyloniaca back to the wisdom revealed by Oannes at the beginning of
time: remember that the first fish-man apkallu “was giving to humanity all the
things relating to civilizing of life, and from that time nothing else in addition
has been discovered” (F 1 = Syncellus Chron. 29 M: πάντα τὰ πρὸς ἡμέρωσιν
ἀνήκοντα βίου παραδιδόναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου ἐκείνου οὐδὲν
ἄλλο περισσὸν εὑρεθῆναι). In a sense, according to Berossus, the mythical epi-
sode precludes any significant subsequent historical change. Events and their
“cultural ordering,” as Sahlins would style it, are inextricably bound together.
140. Frankfurter (1998) 241.

141. Sahlins (1985) 144.
Chapter 7
Conclusion to Narratives
How can we be sure that Greek historiography inspired Berossus and Manetho
to construct the narratives that formed part of their national histories? Is it not
possible that they were encouraged to marry narrative to chronographic frame
either by developments within their own native historiographic traditions or,
perhaps, by another external influence apart from Greek historical writing? A
few points are in order here in response to these final questions and by way of
introduction to this conclusion.
It remains incontrovertible that no Mesopotamian or Egyptian text con-
taining chronography and extended narrative existed before Berossus’ Babylo-
niaca and Manetho’s Aegyptiaca. While these texts’ constituent parts had been
in existence for, in some cases, millennia, Berossus and Manetho were the first
members of their respective cultures to undertake such histories. This is a vi-
tally important fact, for it suggests that there were no impediments, such as
unavailability of material or method, in the way of producing works like the
Babyloniaca and the Aegyptiaca. The building blocks and the procedures for
producing them individually were already there for Berossus and Manetho and
had been for some time. Moreover, while the influence of Achaemenid Persia is
observable in both historians (e.g., most obviously in the Sacaea festival or the
cult of Anahita at Babylon for Berossus and in Manetho’s listing of the Twenty-
Seventh Dynasty), it does not approach the perceptible effects of Greek culture
and, specifically, Greek historical writing on both authors. Continuous histo-
ries of Babylon and Egypt that combined chronography and traditional narra-
tive and were written, say, in Aramaic dating from the period of Achaemenid
dominion do not exist. At one level, this observation, couched in the negative,
is obvious and almost ridiculous. But at a deeper level, the absence observed
is highly significant, for it points to the Greco-Macedonian conquest of Meso-
potamia and Egypt as a transforming event in the historiographic practices of
both regions—indeed, a watershed.
Obviously, caution is required in interpreting the situation. As I have stated
348
Conclusion to Narratives 349
above, I am not claiming that the curation of the past, particularly the writing
of history, had not been practiced before Berossus and Manetho in Babylon and
Egypt; such a claim would, of course, be absurd. I am claiming that coincident
with the arrival of the Macedonians and Greeks to their lands during and after
Alexander’s conquest, a type of historiography—large-scale narrative and chro-
nography together—was written in both places for the first time. To think that
the two events are unconnected, especially taking into account the salient fact
that both the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca were written in the Greek language,
seems to me to be equally absurd. Thinking about the language and orienta-
tion of Berossus’ and Manetho’s work, as well as that of kindred later figures,
Maurice Sartre, whom I mentioned briefly at the start of this book, has put the
matter well, if also somewhat provocatively:
Men like Manethon the Egyptian, Berossus of Babylon, Philo of Alexan-

dria, and Flavius Josephus the Jew unquestionably helped enrich Greek
literature and thought, and helped introduce new ferments that led to
new conceptions. But the fact remains that each of them situated him-
self in relation to Hellenism. No Greek author felt it necessary to learn
Aramaic, Egyptian, or some other language spoken in the world that
emerged from the Alexandrian conquest in order to have direct contact
with the culture that it transmitted.1
Sartre notes that Berossus and Manetho “situated” themselves “in relation to
Hellenism,” which I take to mean, primarily, that both felt they had to learn
Greek, Greek paideia, and Greek historical writing in order to make their na-
tions’ pasts intelligible in the manner they wanted them told to a Greek audi-
ence or, at least, a Greek-speaking one. This seems to be Sartre’s implication,
since he goes on to imagine the counterscenario that did not happen:2 Greeks
learning other languages in order “to have direct access with the cultures they
transmitted.” In Assmann’s even more exact formulation, without Hellenism,
the “historiography” we encounter in Manetho, one element in a common “cul-
tural form of expression” between Egypt and the Greeks, would simply not have
occurred.3
Sartre’s concept of a “siting” by Berossus and Manetho of their work in re-
lation to Hellenism needs further unpacking. Exactly what was the nature of
1. Sartre (2009) 380.

2. Greek monoglottism is acutely observed also by Momigliano on several occasions: see esp.
Momigliano (1975a) 8; (1975d).
3. Assmann (2002) 424.
the relationship between them and Greek historiography? Very recently, Ian
Moyer has proposed a model of interaction between Manetho and earlier
Greek writers of Egyptian history that relies heavily on the postcolonial no-
tion of “counter-discourse,” in which the author whose work gives expression
to the formerly colonized culture “writes back” against a canon of European/
Western authors in such a way as to engage with them and appropriate their
work without being somehow subordinated to the aims, stated or otherwise,
of the “colonizing” authors.4 Significantly, this can take the form of an author
resisting colonizing structures of meaning by adhering to native methods of
expression. I do not have a quarrel with any of this. But, Moyer contends that
earlier scholars, including myself, have mischaracterized Manetho’s correction
of Herodotus in particular by viewing it as a way to “conceal” his debt to the
earlier Greek author, precisely missing the point that, in some sense, Manetho
was “writing back” against Greek understandings of his nation’s past and so
adapted them but was not in any sense in thrall to them. Not only is this a
misrepresentation of my earlier discussion of Manetho and Herodotus, but it
grossly misunderstands the nature of historiographic polemic, though in an
interesting way that will be useful for me here.
At no point do I (or, for that matter, Oswyn Murray, to whom the thought
is first attributed) assert that criticism of one’s historiographic predecessor was
designed to conceal debt. Indeed, Murray is on record as essentially arguing the
opposite.5 Such a view of my scholarship assumes that I see Manetho’s procedure
in writing the Aegyptiaca as a kind of clandestine cultural mimicry, in which
Manetho was dependent on Herodotus (and Hecataeus of Abdera) and, aware
of that dependence, tried to obscure this relationship through attack. This view
is wrongheaded for two reasons, one practical and one literary-historical. Why
would a later author who wanted to conceal dependence mention the earlier
author at all? More important, in all literary genres of Greco-Roman antiquity,
polemic defines a complex relationship between the author and the presumed
authority with whom the author is engaged. Above all, criticism of an impor-
tant predecessor was an essential aspect in a historian’s definition of his work’s
unique place in the tradition of history writing.6 Greek historians often correct
earlier writers, sometimes by name, sometimes not, but always in a way that
suggests both influence and independence. Essentially, Moyer attributes to me
and others an understanding of ancient writers like Manetho that allows the
4. Moyer (2011) esp. 103–4 and n.66, citing Tiffin (1987) and Ashcroft et al. (1989).
5. Murray (1972) 205, 209–10; cf. Dillery (1999) 102. Note also Armayor (1985).
6. See esp. Marincola (1997) 217–57; also Schepens (1990); now Baron (2013) 59–61 with n.6
(for further bibliography).
possibility of only complete dependence or complete independence and of at-

tempting to hide dependence through hollow assertions of independence. If
the same primitive approach were taken, say, to Vergil and his relationship with
Homer, the critic holding such an understanding would face universal ridi-
cule and censure. To put it bluntly, criticism in ancient Greek historiography
was meant not to conceal debt but, rather, to activate comparison and, through
comparison, the realization of the superiority of the later writer.
To be sure, Berossus and Manetho represent something of a special case
when it comes to their response to Herodotus, Ctesias (in the case of Beros-
sus), and (probably) Hecataeus of Abdera. Not only were these figures their
predecessors, but they were also members of the culture whose self-professed
champions had just conquered Berossus’ and Manetho’s lands as part of the
defeat of the Achaemenid Empire—arguably, Ctesias represented the legacy of
both the Hellenic and Achaemenid presence in the Near East. As Assmann has
observed, “[u]nlike Hecataeus [of Miletus] and Herodotus, Manetho was not
an outsider looking in, but a native exponent of Egyptian self-representation.”7
The relationship was thus not only one between the authority of a predecessor
and the reaction of a subsequent historian but also one in which Greek authors
on Babylon and Egypt were somehow answered in the Greek language by a
Babylonian and Egyptian, at a time when Greek culture was dominant in both
places because of the Macedonian conquest. But, to return to Sartre and his
notion of the historian situating himself “in relation to Hellenism,” Berossus
and Manetho precisely situated themselves not as uncritical followers of earlier
nonnative historiography of their lands who were eager to conceal this con-
nection but as historians engaged in corrective polemic with Greek authors of
histories of Babylon and Egypt, in the Greek language and through the adapta-
tion of preexisting native historiographic forms to the requirements of Greek
history writing. I contend that in the process of doing this, they became the first
to write continuous narrative histories for Babylon and Egypt.
While the resulting history shows an obvious and (I hasten to add) uncon-
cealed debt to Greek historical writing, it was not written to impersonate or
perfectly replicate Greek historiography. Both the Babyloniaca and the Aegyp-
tiaca retain major elements of traditional Babylonian and Egyptian historio-
graphic practice. The chief and best example of the fashioning of both works in
contrast to Greek historical writing is their attempt to present the pasts of both
regions comprehensively. Some time ago, Momigliano wrote eloquently of the
major differences between Greek historiography and the historical perspective
7. Assmann (2002) 424.
of the Hebrew Bible. He observed that one of the most important and distin-
guishing features of Herodotus’ methodology for history writing was his deci-
sion not to be comprehensive: “[Herodotus] did not claim to cover all the past.”
Herodotus, Momigliano argued, included events in his History on the basis of
intrinsic importance and availability of supporting information,8 whereas the
biblical historians aimed at a “continuous narration from the creation of the
world to about 400 BC.”9
We can expand Momigliano’s categories and include Berossus and Manetho
with the biblical writers: crucially, it will be remembered that Berossus and Ma-
netho also aimed at a comprehensive accounting of the past, beginning with the
very earliest periods and moving through all the subsequent epochs down to
their own time, roughly speaking. A massive difference in the underlying view
of the past is implicated in this difference in temporal scope. To Herodotus, not
all of the past of Egypt as represented by the actions of its kings was worthy of
record (Hdt. 2.102.1; cf. Hecataeus, Diod. 1.44.5). For Berossus and Manetho,
the entirety of Babylon’s and Egypt’s pasts were to be accounted for in their
histories. In other words, there was something intrinsically important about
reporting the whole past of both Babylon and Egypt for Berossus and Manetho:
the totality of the past of both civilizations meant something in and of itself,
distinct from the series of discrete events that constituted the histories of both
places in another sense.
I believe that recording the entire Babylonian and Egyptian pasts was re-
lated in both Berossus’ and Manetho’s minds to the preservation of the integrity
of both civilizations in the face of foreign domination. It is useful to enlist the
thinking of Jan Assmann again here, particularly his discussion of the Egyp-
tian response specifically to foreign rule during the whole of the Greco-Roman
period as embodied in the Khoiak rituals: “[i]n the Greco-Roman Period the
integrity of Egyptian civilization as a coherent system of meaning was increas-
ingly threatened by disintegration and cultural amnesia.”10 If we can project
these same problems to the earliest phase of Greco-Macedonian rule of Egypt
and, by extension, to the beginning of the Seleucid control of Babylon, what
better way could a historian combat the “disintegration and cultural amnesia”
of his “civilization as a coherent system of meaning” than by charting the entire
history of his nation? As a consequence of such a comprehensive approach,
the whole historical sweep of both Babylon and Egypt could be shown to be
marked, on the large scale, by several periods of foreign domination that came
8. Momigliano (1966) 14 = (1977) 190.

9. Momigliano (1966) 18 = (1977) 194.
10. Assmann (2002) 411; cf. Dillery (2005a) 387.
to an end when the invaders receded into obscurity and then native rule was
restored. The implication of such a view would have been hard to miss: the
“normal” or even “proper” form of governance in both regions—the “default”
in both places, as it were—would always win out in the end and would always
matter most, and that was native rule, ably assisted by a learned and native
priestly elite. Is it surprising, in this connection, to note that two of Jonathan Z.
Smith’s best cases for revealing the function of “Wisdom and Apocalyptic” are
precisely Berossus and Manetho?11
11. Smith (1975) 132–40 = (1978) 68–74 (Berossus); (1975) 140–41, 152–54 = (1978) 74, 83–84
(Manetho).
After Words
Ending with Demetrius
Demetrius the Chronographer
By way of a conclusion and afterword to this study, but by no means an after-

thought, I would like to look briefly at Demetrius the Chronographer, in the
hope that this somewhat later writer has much to tell us through his similarities
to and contrasts with the principal figures of this book—Berossus and Mane-
tho. In a couple of important ways, Demetrius was quite like Berossus and Ma-
netho. If in fact a Jew, probably living toward the end of the third century BC in
Alexandria, he was, like them, the first of his people to write a historical work
of his nation in the Greek language. Also, like the Babyloniaca and Aegyptiaca,
Demetrius’ work was centrally concerned with time; indeed, one could call it
his obsession.
In other ways, what Demetrius achieved was very different from what Ber-
ossus and Manetho wrote. Demetrius attempted a very specific type of “rewrit-
ten Bible”:1 an elaborate reworking and re-presentation, under a specific set of
desiderata, of a preexisting text. There was already a written version of the com-
plete sweep of Jewish history when Demetrius undertook his work. For all the
sources, narrative and chronographic, that Berossus and Manetho had at their
disposal—they doubtless had prodigious amounts of material from which to
build their histories—we should never lose sight of the essential fact that they
were both writing up the narratives of their nations’ pasts for the first time; there
were no complete historical narratives of either Babylon or Egypt before the
ones they wrote.2 By contrast, Demetrius most obviously had the Bible, which
itself contained significant “rewritings” of earlier narrative—I am thinking pri-
1. The term was coined by Vermes (1961/1973) 67–126, esp. 95; see Koskenniemi and Lindqvist
(2008) 11–20 for a recent methodological discussion of it and its use among biblical scholars. See
also, e.g., van Ruiten (2000) 3; Segal (2007) 4–5 and n.6; Lightfoot (2007) 243–45 (with extensive
bibliography).
2. Cf. Van Seters (1983) 30.
357
marily of the “Deuteronomistic historian” but also of 1 and 2 Chronicles (dated

to shortly after 333 BC), which cover events from King David to the Babylonian
exile but also include a genealogy that goes back to Adam and review the his-
tory of Israel from a “new” and “didactic” point of view.3 Moreover, Vermes
has argued that the tendency to “rewrite” biblical narrative outside of the Bible
itself can be traced back to the fourth or third century BC,4 and this tendency
would manifest itself in several works in antiquity in addition to Demetrius: the
Book of Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran (1QapGen), the Liber
Antiquitatum Biblicarum of Pseudo-Philo, and, of course, Josephus’ own Jewish
Antiquities. Demetrius wrote his version of events in order to remove inconsis-
tencies and, at the same time, to bring chronographic exactitude to the biblical
narrative. But note that, crucially, the text he was “rewriting” was authoritative
for him; its chronology and narrative were his starting point—something that
was not the case for Berossus and Manetho.5
Herein is another crucial point: not only was Demetrius “rewriting” what
had already been written, but he was doing so from a desire to “correct” an
established account of the past. This purpose of Demetrius’ work similarly dis-
tinguishes him from Berossus and Manetho, for if the Bible was authoritative
for him, it nonetheless left room, in his eyes, for correction and expansion.
While hard to make out from the fragments of Berossus and Manetho with
certainty, it is still fairly clear that both of those historians will have viewed
their sources for reconstructing the past as unimpeachable: Berossus’ earliest
history was spoken, after all, by none other than Oannes himself; and according
to Josephus, Manetho “translated sacred writings” in the establishment of his
narrative of Egypt’s past. We know that Berossus and Manetho were innovative
in treating their nations’ pasts and, indeed, sought ways to legitimize their in-
novations by appeals to tradition, precisely to mask the “newness” of what they
were doing. Hence a remarkable and paradoxical situation obtains when we
look at Berossus, Manetho, and Demetrius together. The two for whom con-
tinuous history had to be invented, Berossus and Manetho, strove hard to cre-
ate the impression of working in an ancient and traditional medium invented
by them, whereas the member of this group whose national history had existed
3. Driver (1913/1929) 518 (date), 534–35 (new perspective). Note the thoughtful discussion
in Knoppers (2004) 1.129–34, esp. 129 (citing both Deuteronomy and Chronicles); Knoppers cau-
tions against considering Chronicles “simply as a rewritten Bible” (I owe this reference to Blaire
French). See also Lightfoot (2007) 244 n.126.
4. Vermes (1961/1973) 228.
5. Cf. the acute remarks in Gruen (1998) 117–18: “Demetrius engaged in ratiocination, not
apologia. Nor did he offer an alternative to the biblical narrative. The authority of that narrative was
taken for granted by the historian for whom it was the sole source of his reconstruction.”
Ending with Demetrius 359
in a written narrative form for several centuries (Demetrius) essayed a substan-

tial revision of that history that he did not try to disguise. Here is where Greek
scholarship comes into play.
It was precisely Greek scholarly methods of critically reading and explain-
ing older texts that Demetrius adapted in his treatment of the Bible. As we
have seen, both Berossus and Manetho could be influenced, even profoundly,
by Greek approaches to the interpretation of text: Berossus borrowed allegory
from contemporary Greek scholarship to help with the presentation of the Bab-
ylonian Genesis story, and Manetho saw the utility of deploying synchronisms
at key points in order to subordinate the Greek reckoning of time, carried out
according the benchmarks of the Greek past (the fall of Troy, the foundation
the Olympic Games), to Egyptian reckoning. But I would argue that something
is different about Demetrius’ relationship to the Greeks. One senses that Beros-
sus’ and Manetho’s adaptations of Greek scholarly procedures—both allegory
and synchronism—were matters of convenience for them and that, in a sense,
the presence of these tools in their accounts did not, in the end, reveal a deep
process of Hellenization. Indeed, in the case of Berossus and the imagery of
divine combat in the Babylonian Genesis, it could be argued that a kind of alle-
gorization was always inherent in the account. But if we took away the scholarly
tools supplied to Demetrius from the world of Greek and, specifically, Homeric
scholarship, it is difficult to imagine how he would have approached his task
or even what he would have written. If Demetrius’ aims can be paralleled by
other attempts at “rewriting” the Bible within Jewish scholarly tradition, we
should also observe that Greek exegetical methodology is intrinsic to his way
of explaining texts.
So exactly who was Demetrius and when did he live? These are, unfortu-
nately, impossible questions to answer with certainty. I here present the facts as
best as we know them.
Introduction
We do not know exactly when Demetrius (FGrH 722), called “the Chronog-
rapher” in modern studies,6 lived. Nor do we know where he lived or even to
what ancient people he belonged. For reasons that will be made clear below,
many think that Demetrius was active in the last quarter of the third century
6. NB the seminal modern study of Demetrius, Freudenthal (1874/1875) 35: “Demetrios, der
Chronograph.” See also, recently, Mittmann-Richert (2006) 187 and n.3.
BC, probably fifty years or more after the floruits of both Berossus and Ma-
netho.7 He very probably dwelt in Alexandria and was almost certainly a Jew.
Demetrius wrote an analytical narrative summary of the Old Testament, with a
particular eye on chronological matters. What survives deals almost exclusively
with Genesis and Exodus, with one fragment surveying later events. Since he is
very likely the first writer from antiquity to make use of the Septuagint, we can-
not consider him the first Jewish literary figure to employ the Greek language,
for the translators of the Hebrew Bible must have been at least fairly competent
in Greek; but Demetrius is the first individual that we can identify in a long line
of Greco-Jewish authors in antiquity.8
Once we accept this thumbnail sketch, including the conjectures, a number
of contrasts with Berossus and Manetho are manifest right at the outset. First,
Demetrius was active almost two generations after they composed their works.
This simple fact has an important consequence; while the role of the local elite
in both Babylon and Egypt was, to some degree, still being worked out in the
time of Berossus and Manetho, the new regimes had already been governing
for several years in their lands by the time of Demetrius, and great changes lay
just ahead. Second, Demetrius was a member not of the native elite but, rather,
of an important but nonetheless subordinate and nonnative community, the
Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt. Third, he was not, strictly speaking, the first to relate
his nation’s past in Greek, for that had already been done with the Septuagint
(as I have just noted). Indeed, insofar as it appears that he did not have direct
access to the Hebrew Bible, it may well be that Demetrius, unlike Berossus and
Manetho, did not have a choice as to which language to use in his telling of his
nation’s past; he was very probably a monoglot, literate only in Greek.9 Fourth
and most important, as has been already observed, whereas Berossus and Ma-
netho showed knowledge of contemporary Greek historiography but chiefly
followed native scholarly principles in writing their histories, the critical and
interpretative methods of Demetrius are deeply influenced by Greek scholar-
ship. All these differences will have major consequences for our understanding
of Demetrius in relation to Berossus and Manetho.
Yet we should not lose sight of the similarities. The use of Greek obviously
7. Cf. Schürer (1973/1987) 513, noting that Demetrius was active “[a]bout sixty years after
Berossus wrote the ancient history of the Chaldeans and Manetho that of the Egyptians.” Niehoff
(2011) has proposed a radical and important new dating, which I discuss below.
8. Cf. Walter (1976) 282.
9. Jews who settled in Alexandria in the third century very probably went from bilingualism
to monoglottism in Greek in one generation or perhaps two; Demetrius was almost certainly a
monoglot in Greek and, hence, knew holy scripture only through the Septuagint. See esp. Janse
(2002) 340–41.
links all three figures together as the first intellectuals of their respective cul-
tures to compose a national history, and therein is a very important point.
Demetrius was not just the first Jewish intellectual to use Greek whose works
survive to us,10 if only in paltry fragments; he was the very first Jewish historian
of any sort. Again, there is a significant semantic issue in play here. I do not
mean to suggest that there were no historians or historical texts in the Jewish
tradition before Demetrius. But in his attempt to bring order to the biblical
narrative—indeed, by the mere fact that “he approached Scripture intellectu-
ally open to consideration of its inconsistencies”11—he is marked out as a fig-
ure not seen before in ancient Jewish scholarship: he is not shaping narrative
that will become holy writ (as was, for instance, the so-called Deuteronomistic
historian);12 rather, he is analyzing it in the course of his rewriting of it. Like the
work of Berossus and Manetho, Demetrius’ writing betrays a strong interest in
chronological exactness. Furthermore, to judge from the meager remains of his
text, he was clearly also interested in proposing solutions to problems raised
by scripture. These solutions seemed to be couched as answers to questions
posed of the text, permitting scholars to recognize in Demetrius’ work a Greek
scholarly practice based on “problems and solutions”—ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις or
ζητήματα καὶ λύσεις. Before pursuing these questions and comparing Deme-
trius with Berossus and Manetho, it is important to take stock of what we have
of his writing.
The Fragments (FGrH 722 FF 1–7)
All our fragments of Demetrius, with one notable exception, come to us from
Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, which depends, in turn, on the work of Alex-
ander Polyhistor.13 Hence, at the very least, we have to read Demetrius through
two editorial filters. With that said, it is often pointed out that Polyhistor was a
fairly faithful excerptor, so what we have of Demetrius is probably close to the
original in style and narrative mannerisms.
It is best to begin by looking at the one fragment preserved not by Eusebius
10. See esp. Schürer (1973/1987) 470–73 for a general discussion of Jewish literature composed
in Greek. I make no claim regarding early Jewish knowledge of Greek. There would obviously have
been many Jews before Demetrius who were hellenophone: see esp. Lewis (1957) = (1997) 380–82
(“the first Greek Jew,” 300–250 BC). Cf. Momigliano (1975a) 8, 86–87 (lack of interest in the LXX),
87 (“the first Greek Jew”).
11. Niehoff (2007) 169. See also Niehoff (2011) ch. 3.
12. Note, in particular, Van Seters (1983).
13. Cf. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 3–16; Fraser (1972) 1.691, 2.958 n.83.
but by another church father, Clement of Alexandria, who may well have been
dependent on Polyhistor as well, though we do not know. The fragment (FGrH
722 F 6 = Clem. Al. Strom. 1.141.1) is unique in another way too, because it
treats biblical events that fall outside Genesis and Exodus. It happens also to
provide us with the only evidence we have for the title and date of Demetrius’
work. Clement writes:
Demetrius says in On the Kings of Judaea [Περὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἰουδαίᾳ

βασιλέων] that the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi were not made
captive by Senacherim, but that there were, from this period of captivity
to the last, which Nabouchodonosor brought about from Jerusalem, 128
years and six months. From the time when the ten tribes from Samaria
became captives until Ptolemy the Fourth [Πτολεμαίου τετάρτου], there
are 573 years and nine months. But from the [captivity] from Jerusalem,
338 years 3 months.
As might be expected, problems attend even the simple details we can extract
from this piece of testimony. Why was Demetrius’ work called On the Kings
of Judaea, if he covered so much material, from Creation onward, that had to
do not, strictly speaking, with kings but, rather, with patriarchs and other he-
roes? Indeed, none of our extant fragments deals with a king of Israel or Judah,
sensu stricto. One answer to this question is that Demetrius wrote more than
one work and that Clement refers only to On the Kings of Judaea, whereas the
rest of the fragments of Demetrius come from other works whose titles we do
not know. But I doubt this. There are no indications in the text that Demetrius
wrote more than one work, and until we have evidence to the contrary, it is best
to assume that the title of that work was On the Kings of Judaea.14 That being the
case, perhaps we can explain Demetrius’ inexact use of the category “kings” as
a type of cultural translation on his part: possibly, to a scholar living in an age
of great and dynamic kings, figures such as Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, founders
and charismatic leaders themselves, were best assimilated precisely to kings. In
this regard, Demetrius would be anticipating later Jewish writers such as Arta-
panus, who regarded Moses as a world conqueror (FGrH 726 F 3).15
The issue of the dating of Demetrius’ work is also problematic. Although
14. Cf. Holladay (1983) 51. Gruen (1998) 113 n.12 favors the idea of more than one work.
15. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 205. In defense of treating patriarchs in a work entitled On the
Kings of Judaea, Schürer (1973/1987) 513 notes that Philo can call Moses a king (Mos. 2.3–6).
Gruen (1998) 113 n.12 does not believe this to be sufficient evidence to dispel doubt. Cf. Fraser
(1972) 2.958 n.80.
Gruen is right to stress that the mention of “Ptolemy the Fourth” (ruled 221–
204) can really only be read for certain as a terminus post quem,16 it also sug-
gests strongly that the work was composed in this period; if Demetrius was
active later, why did he pick the reign of Ptolemy IV as an end date in this frag-
ment? While a provisional dating to be sure, we have no reason to locate the
composition of Demetrius’ history at any other time.17 As for the regnal dating,
Jacob Freudenthal proposed in 1874 that the Ptolemy in question was not the
“Fourth” but the “Third” (replacing τετάρτου with τοῦ τρίτου).18 This change
has the advantage of providing the ordinal numeral with the definite article,
which makes better Greek, though it needs to be said that such an identification
is not the norm in the Ptolemaic period: documents from the period typically
use the more familiar epithets “Soter,” “Philadelphus,” and so forth, to distin-
guish the various Ptolemies. As Fraser has noted, however, it is more likely that
the reference to Ptolemy “the Fourth” is correct and the numerals incorrect,
inasmuch as figures are often garbled in transmission.19
Recently, Maren Niehoff, in a learned and thoughtful book, has proposed
a substantial redating of Demetrius, precisely on the grounds that F 6 gives us
extrabiblical information.20 She notes that this fragment of Demetrius is unique
when set beside the other fragments of his work; specifically, that F 6, coming to
us through Clement, reveals a historian who is interested in “political history”
from earliest times to the present, whereas the material that is preserved in Eu-
sebius (all the other fragments) shows no such impulse to situate biblical nar-
rative outside of the Bible, through external dating. For Niehoff, the Demetrius
of Clement is a “historian,” whereas the Demetrius of Eusebius is a separate
scholar, an “exegete” and of significantly later date than Freudenthal and others
have argued—namely, 160–131 BC.21 While Niehoff is surely right to stress the
differences between F 6 and the other fragments of Demetrius, I do not think
she has drawn the right conclusion. Her solution—to separate F 6 from the
rest of the fragments and posit another “Demetrius”—seems too radical. It is
rare indeed for Berossus and Manetho to take up external dating in their work,
and yet they do at specific points. As we have seen, Berossus dates the Flood,
something that is without precedent in his own Babylonian tradition, and does
so by the Seleucid calendar; Manetho, for his part, deploys a few synchronisms
16. Gruen (1998) 115.

17. Cf. Schürer (1973/1987) 515: “[Demetrius] clearly chose the time of Ptolemy IV . . . as the
terminus for his calculations because he himself lived during the reign of that monarch.”
18. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 59–62.
19. Fraser (1972) 2.961 n.94.
20. Niehoff (2011) 54–55 and n.52, following the work of Y. Gutman published in Hebrew.
21. Niehoff (2011) 55.
with significant Greek events and persons in his king list, though this, too, is a
procedure at odds with his nation’s conception of the past. If we followed the
same methodology in connection with these authors as Niehoff has advocated
in connection with Demetrius, we would have to discount these details as in-
authentic. Yet there is strong, if not probative, evidence to assume that they
did incorporate these dates. Unusual ought not to mean inauthentic: after all,
Herodotus employs Athenian archon dating only once—appropriately, when
the Persian seizure and burning of Athens is reported (Hdt. 8.51.1)22—and
Thucydides similarly employs his triple dating scheme by Argive high priestess,
Athenian archon, and Spartan ephor only once, at the start of the Pelopon-
nesian War (Thuc. 2.2.1).
It is important to see, with Freudenthal, that Demetrius’ numbers simply
do not work in F 6, both internally (using his own figures) and externally (us-
ing dates established by modern scholarship). Demetrius says that the number
of years from the conquest of Samaria to the reign of Ptolemy IV is 573 years,
whereas his figure for the period from the fall of Jerusalem to the same end date
is 338 years. On this calculation, the interval between the two captivities should
be 235 years, yet earlier in the same fragment, Demetrius lists the interval as
128 years. Samaria was conquered in 722, and Jerusalem fell in 586,23 so the
true interval should be 136 years.24 Scholars have tried to reconcile Demetrius’
figures, in order, at the very least, to bring coherence to his text, if not absolute
accuracy for his dates. The discrepancy between the two intervals he provides is
particularly disturbing. Freudenthal was doubtless right to suspect that such a
gross error in basic arithmetic suggests that the text is somehow corrupt.25 It is
regrettable but true that the dating in Demetrius’ text is probably irrecoverable.
Bickerman may well be right, furthermore, to wonder how Demetrius could
have known the relevant dates in any case.26
All these difficulties should not stop us from seeing two basic points. First,
Demetrius had an end date, the reign of Ptolemy IV, that suggests, if not proves,
that he worked during that period in Ptolemaic Egypt (most probably Alexan-
dria) or, perhaps more broadly, within the Ptolemaic realm.27 Second, the frag-
ment is concerned as much with periodization as it is dating. It was obviously
22. Bowie (2007) 138 ad loc.

23. For the accepted dates, see, e.g., the chronology in Coogan ed. (1998) 599.
24. Cf. Fraser (1972) 2.960–61 n.94. My own discussion relies on Fraser’s analysis.
25. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 58–59; cf. Fraser (1972) 2.960 nn.93, 94.
26. Bickerman (1976/1986) 2.356–57. Hughes (1990) 235–37 notes that Demetrius was not
alone in miscalculating the dates of the exile.
27. Cf. Holladay (1983) 51; note Schürer (1973/1987) 516, where Palestine and Cyrene are also
mentioned as possibilities.
a matter of great importance to Demetrius that the two conquests, of Samaria

and of Jerusalem, be kept separate and coordinated with (presumably) his own
time. It may well be that Demetrius is articulating an issue relating to his own
identity here, seeking to draw a sharp distinction between Jew and Samaritan.
It is certain that there was a village in the Fayum called Samareia by the middle
of the third century BC;28 although there is no proof, it is believed that it was
settled by Samaritans. Josephus says that when Soter settled Jews in Egypt, he
also settled Samaritan soldiers (AJ 11.345). He reports that under Ptolemy VI
Philometor (ruled 180–45), Samaritans and Jews asked the monarch to decide
which temple was built according to the laws of Moses, the one in Jerusalem or
the one on Mount Gerizim (AJ 13.74).29 More to the point, Josephus refers to a
similar dispute, among the Jews and Samaritans living in Egypt, falling some-
time between the initial settlements under Soter and Philometor’s arbitration
(AJ 12.10). It is tempting to speculate that the motivation for Demetrius’ elabo-
rate dating in F 6 reflects an ongoing debate among the Jews and Samaritans
in Egypt as to who were the superior people, the true inheritors of the legacy
of Moses. Although doubtless an accident of preservation, it is nonetheless im-
portant that one of the details Demetrius does transmit in his otherwise spare
narrative of Jacob is the rape of Dinah by Shechem and his punishment by
death at the hands of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi (F 1.9); Shechem is, of
course, the founder of the people who were to become the Samaritans.
F 1 (= Euseb. PE 9.21.1–19) is by far the longest fragment we posses of De-
metrius. It begins with Jacob’s flight to Haran and ends with his death in Egypt.
I translate the first two sections in order to provide a sense of the qualities of the
narrative. Eusebius quotes Polyhistor, who, in turn, quotes Demetrius:
Let us return again to Polyhistor. Demetrius says that Jacob, being 75

years old, fled to Haran in Mesopotamia, having been sent by his par-
ents on account of the secret hatred of Esau toward his brother, because
his father had blessed Jacob thinking him to be Esau, and in order that
he get from there a wife. Thus [οὖν] Jacob set out for Haran in Mesopo-
tamia, leaving behind his father, Isaac, who was 137, while he himself
was 77.
The first thing to note is that, as the text is found in the manuscripts of Euse-
bius, the numbers again do not agree: in the section on the background for
28. Schürer (1973/1987) 59 and n.58, listing several papyri. Fraser (1972) 1.285 accepts the
presence of Samaritans in early Ptolemaic Egypt; Schürer (1973/1987) 45 is more skeptical.
29. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.285–86.
Jacob’s departure for Haran, his age is listed as seventy-five, but in the conclud-
ing summary statement, it is seventy-seven. Modern editors correct the figures
in order to bring coherence to Demetrius’ account. It is also worth noting how
Demetrius mentions the same event twice (Jacob’s flight to Haran). A longer,
initial sentence explains the causes of his journey (Esau’s hatred; search for
wife), and the following sentence recaps the essential fact: “thus [οὖν] Jacob set
out for Haran.” The οὖν is of particular interest. The “resumptive” οὖν is a com-
mon narrative feature familiar from, for example, Herodotus, where it helps to
signal that the main story line is continued after an “embedded” explanation.30
This is to say not that Demetrius is imitating Herodotus at the start of F 1 but,
rather, that he is aware more generally of the way Greeks relate stories, even (in
this instance) at the microlevel of the deft management of narrative through
particle usage.
Of course, what is most striking about this passage is what is not there.
The passage recounts Genesis 27:41–28:22 in almost breathless brevity. Gone
are Esau’s threat to murder Jacob; Rebecca’s entreaty to Jacob to leave and her
manipulation of Isaac that results in him sending Jacob away in search of a
wife; Esau’s marriage to a daughter of Ishmael; and, perhaps most surprisingly,
Jacob’s dream of the ladder to heaven with angels going up and down (“Jacob’s
ladder”), the promise of the Lord to Jacob and his descendants that his prog-
eny will proliferate and spread over the whole world, and Jacob’s consecration
of Beth-El. It is most perilous to argue from a negative, but these omissions
seem extremely significant. We can perhaps explain some as springing from a
desire to streamline: the focus is clearly on Jacob, and the actions of Rebecca
and Esau would distract. But by the same token, it might also be said that this
pruning is something of a lost opportunity too, for it removes powerful charac-
terizations of Rebecca as a schemer and of Esau as almost pathetically eager to
please his father (he marries Ishmael’s daughter because he heard Isaac forbid
Jacob marrying any local women), features that make for a good story. Simi-
larly elsewhere, when Demetrius does recount famous biblical stories, such as
Abraham’s binding of Isaac in order to sacrifice him (F 7) or Jacob’s wrestling
with the angel of the Lord (F 1.7), his narrative is so spare and “unadorned”
that there is nothing to separate these signal and vivid episodes from the age of
Jacob when he left for the house of Laban. Demetrius has only one register in
the narration in his text, and that is “matter-of-fact.”31
30. See esp. Denniston (1954) s.v. οὖν III.4 (p. 428); Powell (1938/1960) s.v. ὦν II.3. See also
Slings (2002) 55–56 and n.9, 73–74 (on Hdt.1.8.1 and 5.26, respectively).
31. Cf. Bickerman (1988) 221; Gruen (1998) 116 and n.31. Gruen notes that F 7 (= Euseb.
PE 9.19.4) cannot be securely attributed to Demetrius. See also Schürer (1973/1987) 514; Han-
The absence in F 1 of Jacob’s ladder and the accompanying blessing of the

Lord upon Jacob and his descendants is really shocking. Other biblical digests
leave it in: Jubilees 27:19–27 is very close to the passage in Genesis, as is Jose-
phus’ Antiquities 1.278–84.32 Indeed, Josephus’ version helps us to see an im-
portant point of difference in Demetrius. Whereas Genesis and Jubilees both
explain Jacob’s sleeping out under the stars as simply a matter of necessity (the
onset of night), Josephus states that Jacob hated the people of Canaan and did
not want to lodge with them (AJ 1.278–79). Jacob’s contempt for the Canaanites
has the effect of making the Lord’s promise of rule over them seem connected:
Israel’s future dominion over Canaan and its own growth and spread are rooted
in Jacob’s recognition of his difference from the Canaanites. The whole passage
can thus be read as a type of nationalist apologia that asserts and justifies privi-
leged status by placing it in the past and that subtly alters the biblical text to help
make the point. Obviously, Demetrius did not do this, for the whole passage is
missing in his reworking of Genesis. Although an argument from silence, the
absence of Jacob’s ladder, with its potential for nationalistic exploitation, alerts
us to a fundamental feature of Demetrius: his text is not overtly apologetic,
seeking to demonstrate and justify the superiority of the Jews.33 However, it
should be noted that this interpretation does not exclude a more subtle form of
national advocacy (see below).
Absent from Demetrius’ account, then, are the dramatic and obviously na-
tionalist elements familiar in a great deal of later Jewish quasi-historical litera-
ture, such as the works of Artapanus and Eupolemus.34 What, then, was Deme-
trius attempting with his On the Kings of Judaea, and for whom? Demetrius’
text is so idiosyncratic that we must take stock of what is there and then attempt
to interpret the whole. It is best to begin by returning to his numbers. I think it
safe to say that Demetrius is obsessed with dating, specifically internal dating
by a person’s age at a particular time and, implicitly also, by generation. This
system of dating can be extremely exact, providing not only years but, in some
cases, even months for the biblical figures treated. The numbers themselves are
ludicrous: Jacob is 84 when he marries Leah and Rachel (F 1.3), Isaac is 180
son (1985) 848 n.a to his F 1. The terms “unadorned” and “matter-of-fact” are Gruen’s (ibid.). Cf.
also Bickerman’s conclusion (ibid.): “[i]t seems that Demetrius, like Berossus and Manetho, gave a
matter-of-fact abridgment of his materials.”
32. Philo (On Dreams 1.1–188, 2.3) offers a lengthy treatment of the same biblical text, but it
is unrelated to the issues important here (it is a sustained allegorical exegesis). Cf. also Philo Ques-
tions and Answers on Genesis 4.243–45 (Marcus).
33. Cf. Fraser (1972) 1.690: “Demetrius . . . is in fact much less of an apologist than a historian.”
See also Gruen (1998) 117. But I would argue that Berossus and Manetho were precisely both
historians and apologists.
34. Cf. Hanson (1985) 845.
when he dies (F 1.11), and so forth. A quick glance, however, at the correspond-
ing biblical narratives shows that Demetrius got his figures from scripture, with
a few notable exceptions. The most important dating section in the fragments
of Demetrius comes at F 1.16–18:
And they lived in the land of Canaan, from the time when Abraham
was chosen from out of the Gentiles and moved to Canaan: Abraham
for 25 years; Isaac 60 years, Jacob 130 years; and all the years in the land
of Canaan were 215. And in the third year when famine was in Egypt,
Jacob came to Egypt, being 130 years; Reuben was 45 years, Simeon 44
years, Levi 43 years, Judah 42 years and two months, Dan 42 years and
four months, Nephthali 41 years and seven months, Gad 41 years and 3
months, Asher 40 years and 8 months, Issachar 40 years and 8 months,
Zebulun 40 years, Dinah 39 years, Benjamin 28 years. [Demetrius] says
that Joseph was in Egypt for 39 years. There are from Adam until the
coming of Joseph’s brothers to Egypt 3,624 years, from the Flood until
Jacob’s arrival in Egypt 1,360 years; from the time when Abraham was
selected from the Gentiles and he came from Haran to Canaan, until
Jacob and his family came to Egypt, 215 years. (Euseb. PE 9.21.16–18)
These are very important calculations, because they link Demetrius directly
to the Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint (LXX = “the Seventy,” in
reference to the translators), as opposed to the Hebrew Bible (hereafter, HB).
At Exodus 12:40, the HB has 430 years for the time Israel spent in Egypt only,
whereas the LXX gives 430 years for the time spent in both Egypt and Canaan.
Clearly, Demetrius’ figure of 215 years for the patriarchs’ residence in Canaan
corresponds to the LXX. Indeed, this correspondence has been thought to be
decisive in proving Demetrius’ dependence on the LXX and not the HB.35 It
seems that a difficulty was felt in reconciling the genealogy of the house of Levi
found at Exodus 6:14–25 and the 430 years of total residence in Egypt found
at Exodus 12:40. There simply were not enough generations to make up all 430
years from Levi to Moses. The Canaanite years were needed to fill out the time
span. By following the LXX version of Exodus 12:40, Demetrius can be seen to
be tackling this problem head-on.36
A related problem can be seen in connection with the age of Jacob when he
married Leah and Rachel and his age when he fathered his various children.
35. See, e.g., Hughes (1990) 35; Hanson (1985) 851 n.d to his F 2.16.
36. I am entirely indebted here to Hughes (1990) 34–36.
While the text of Genesis 12–50 provides us with numerous specific age-based
datings for events relating to the patriarchs and their families (e.g., Abraham’s
age at the birth of Ishmael [Gen. 16:6] and his age at the birth of Isaac [Gen.
21:5]; Isaac’s age when he married Rebecca [Gen. 25:30] and at the birth of
Jacob and Esau [Gen. 25:26]), the Bible does not provide the age of Jacob when
he married Leah and Rachel or how old he was when he fathered his children.37
Demetrius can be seen precisely to fill this gap with the required age-based dat-
ings of Jacob in F 1.3–5 and F 1.10.
In both cases, that of adding the Canaanite years to the 430 years of Exodus
12:40 and that of supplying of Jacob’s age dates for his marriages and begetting
of children, we can see Demetrius protecting the logic of the scriptural texts,
though in different ways. The first case required outright correction in order
to make more plausible the number of generations filling out the 430-year
period—even if the ages Demetrius does provide are themselves implausible.
The second case is one where scripture seems to have been supplemented in a
way so as to provide dates where they were felt to be missing. In this latter case,
one is tempted to recall the Greek fascination, which grew to new heights in
the Hellenistic period, with “filling in the holes” of Homer’s text—such as the
people of Lindos elaborating significant extra-epic information relating to local
heroes who only get passing reference in the Iliad. To be sure, there is a differ-
ence in scale between adding a date in one case (Demetrius) and vouching for
the presence of an ancient artifact in another (Lindian Chronicle)—but I would
argue that the basic impulse is the same: to exploit a definite “gap” in informa-
tion in a revered text with apposite details.
As both Freudenthal and, following him, Fraser noted, the calculation of the
period of the patriarchs’ residence in Canaan (F 1.16) takes the place of telling the
story of their sojourn there in Demetrius’ text.38 This is a very important, if also
negative, point: Demetrius felt that it was his task to bring plausibility and coher-
ence to the chronology of the generations of the patriarchs through amplification
and correction, in the Greek language, of his nation’s sacred history; he did not
think it his job to retell that history in Greek. Indeed, it is hard to resist the im-
pression that Demetrius’ text was to be read as a kind of vade mecum alongside
scripture, just recently translated into Greek. Seen in this way, Demetrius’ work
also implies that there were people who were reading the Bible in Greek, noticing
its inconsistencies and problems, and desiring an explanation for them. As such,
it is difficult to see an audience for Demetrius outside the monoglot community
37. Hughes (1990) 31.

38. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 37; Fraser (1972) 2.959 n.88.
of Hellenized Jews who could not read the Bible in Hebrew. In this connection,
it is good to remember, by way of indirect proof for this supposition, that there is
relatively little evidence that the Greek version of Jewish scripture was known in
any detail to Gentile, non-Christian audiences.39
Given the otherwise spare nature of Demetrius’ narrative, we should be all
the more alert to take note and to explain (if possible) the few details, other
than chronological, that he does provide. A good case is F 1.4–5. In the midst of
accounting for Jacob’s children born from Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, Demetrius
remarks:
And again Leah, in return for the apples of the mandrake [ἀντὶ τῶν
μήλων τῶν μανδραγόρου] that Reubel [Ῥουβήλ]40 brought to Rachel,
conceived, and the handmaid Zilpah at the same time, in the third
month of the twealth year, and bore in the twealth month of the same
year a son and gave to him the name Issachar. And again Leah, in the
tenth month of the thirteenth year, bore another son, to whom was the
name Zebulun [and the same one gave birth in the 8th month of the
fourteenth year to a son named Dan].41 At the same time at which Leah
bore a daughter, Dinah, Rachel also conceived in her womb and bore
in the eighth month of the fourteenth year a son, Joseph, so that there
were born in the seven years at the house of Laban 12 children. (Euseb.
PE 9.21.4–5)
It is natural to ask why, when Demetrius has provided no details in the

rest of the same narrative other than the conceptions and births of children
of Jacob, he should make reference to the “apples of the mandrake.” The bibli-
cal text in question is Genesis 30:14–23: Reuben finds mandrakes and brings
them to his mother, Leah; Rachel asks Leah for them but is refused; Rachel then
proposes that she will again allow Leah to sleep with Jacob in return for Reu-
ben’s mandrakes; Leah sleeps with Jacob and conceives her fifth son, Issachar.
39. If recent studies have shown that citation of Genesis 1:3–9 at Pseudo-Longinus 9.9 is not as
exotic as it seems, that should not stop us from seeing that ancient non-Jewish and non-Christian
authors on the whole did not know or took no notice of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
For Pseudo-Longinus 9.9, see, now, West (1995b); Usher (2007); Heath (2012) 15–16. See also the
magisterial treatments of Norden (1923) and Russell (1964) 92–94 ad loc. For a general statement,
see Momigliano (1975a) 91–92.
40. Jacoby (FGrH 722 F 1.4) prints Ῥουβίν (?); I have followed the text of Mras’ edition of Eu-
sebius here, preserving the reading Ῥουβήλ; see main discussion below.
41. This section is thought to be a later interpolation designed to account for the birth of Dan,
which is missing from the transmitted text of Eusebius. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 56 argued that
notices of his birth and that of Naphthali have been left out of F 1.3, where they properly belong. See
Holladay (1983) 81 n.7; Hanson (1985) 849 n.c to his F 2.3 and n.a to his F 2.5.
We learn that later, after the births of Zebulun and Dinah to Leah, God at last
considers the plight of the formerly barren Rachel, hears her prayer, and gives
her a child, Joseph.
It has long been recognized that the story of Rachel and the mandrakes in
Genesis has problems of its own. In particular, the mandrakes of Reuben are
dropped as an item of interest in the narrative, and it is only some time later
that we hear of God’s compassion for Rachel and her conceiving a child, unre-
lated to the mandrakes—thanks only to the work of God, not the properties of
the magical plant. It is thought that the mention of the mandrakes is a vestige of
an original folktale in which Rachel ate them (or in some other way employed
them) and so conceived Joseph.42 What could Demetrius’ purpose have been in
keeping this detail? Before proceeding with an attempt at an answer, we should
note some textual issues that have a bearing on interpreting the passage. First,
the name Demetrius preserves for Reuben is, in fact, the variant “Reubel”; in
this, he is also followed by Josephus in his own retelling of the same episode (AJ
1.307).43 More important, at Genesis 30:14, while the HB has dûdâ’îm, which
means “love-apples” and is translated “mandrakes,”44 the LXX has “apples of
mandrake” (μῆλα μανδραγόρου), as does Josephus (AJ 1.307: μανδραγόρου
μῆλα); this is also the reading of Demetrius. In other words, the Greek versions
of the story offer a calque of the Hebrew dûdâ’îm, adding the word “apples” and
identifying the plant as the mandrake.45
We can only speculate, but it is nonetheless worth noting that Demetrius
is again allied in his reading with the LXX, something we have seen elsewhere.
Also, like the biblical narrative, Demetrius raises the topic of the mandrakes
but does not connect it to Rachel’s first pregnancy. But while it is true that De-
metrius does not connect mandrakes to Rachel finally conceiving a child, he
does state explicitly, unlike the biblical narrative, that Reubel/Reuben brought
the mandrake apples directly to Rachel, not to Leah. This detail suggests that
Demetrius felt it important to make explicit what can only be guessed at in the
biblical version of the story, namely, that the mandrakes were to be central in
42. See esp. Randolph (1905) 501–2; Skinner (1910) 388–89; Pata (1944) 117–18. Cf. Stol
(2000) 56–58; Louden (2011) 148.
43. It ought to be noted that Josephus seems to have direct knowledge of Demetrius’ work,
though he assumed that the Demetrius in question was Demetrius of Phalerum, a confusion due
probably to the Letter of Aristeas, which Josephus also knew and which mentions Demetrius of
Phalerum as responsible for Ptolemy I’s commissioning of the translation of the Penteteuch into
Greek: see Jos. Ap. 1.218, 2.46; AJ 12.12ff. Hence, Josephus may not be an independent witness
to the variant “Reubel” here. On Josephus’ probable confusion of Demetrius of Phalerum for our
Demetrius, see Jacoby FGrH 722 T 1 = 723 T 3; Schürer (1973/1987) 515.
44. “In the time of the wheat-harvest Reuben went out and found some mandrakes.”
45. Cf. Randolph (1905) 502; also Steier (1928) 1031.
ending Rachel’s barrenness, even if he does not alter the timeline of events. His
main purpose seems to be to account for the births of so many offspring to
Jacob in the seven-year period mentioned. Demetrius evidently was concerned
to show, with what is nothing less than mathematical precision, how such a
rate of births was possible for Jacob and the four women in question.46 The
mandrake apples help to explain this remarkable feat. Demetrius needed the
mandrakes in order for his calculations to be plausible. Further details touch-
ing on the issue of the fecundity of the other mothers of Jacob’s children were
not needed.
Other features preserved in F 1 of Demetrius’ history are worth looking at
for similar reasons. At F 1.7, as already mentioned, Demetrius provides a bland
summary of Jacob’s famous wrestling match with an agent of the Lord. While
the HB and the major manuscripts of the LXX refer to this figure as a “man”
(Gen. 32:25: ἄνθρωπος), Demetrius and two minor manuscripts of the LXX, as
well as a number of church fathers, identify him as an “angel” (ἄγγελος/-ον).47
It seems that, in essence, Demetrius has interpreted the biblical passage with his
word choice, for he understands the episode to be miraculous and requiring a
term less ambiguous than simply man; one could almost say it is a case where
Demetrius disambiguates the text, making plain what is left understated in the
passage from scripture.48 In this instance, he is at odds with the LXX. In a man-
ner similar to Demetrius, Josephus renders Jacob’s opponent a “phantom” (AJ
1.331: φαντάσματι). Later Jewish exegetical literature makes precisely the same
change, altering Jacob’s opponent into an angel in the shape of a man.49
In the remainder of the episode, Demetrius goes on to report, in reverse
order from the biblical narrative, the permanent wounding of Jacob’s thigh and
its function as an aition for the prohibition on eating “the sinew in the thighs of
cattle” (τῶν κτηνῶν τὸ ἐν τοῖς μηροῖς νεῦρον), as well as the change of Jacob’s
name to “Israel,” but significantly with no etymology such as we find at Genesis
32:28.50 Wacholder has observed that inasmuch as the injunction prohibits only
the consumption of the sinew of “cattle” (τῶν κτηνῶν), Demetrius is, in this
case, actually at odds with later Jewish interpretative tradition (here, the Mish-
nah), which applies the ban to all animals. Wacholder has further observed that
46. Gruen (1998) 113.

47. A (codex Alexandrinus) and B (codex Vaticanus) are the main manuscripts of the LXX. The
reading “angel” is found in Grabe’s collation of D and in the corrector to a minuscule MS 30: see the
apparatus of Weavers (1974) 314 ad loc. See Hanson (1985) 849 n.a to his F 2.7.
48. Cf. Wacholder (1974) 281 n.85.
49. Van der Horst (1988) 530.
50. For some reason not altogether clear, Demetrius repeats the change of Jacob’s name to
“Israel” at F 1.10.
Demetrius can be seen to “presuppose” Jewish readers, since the Bible specifies
that “the Israelites to this day do not eat the sinew of the nerve that runs in the
hollow of the thigh” (Gen. 32:32), while Demetrius simply declares that “there
is no eating of the sinew” (οὐκ ἐσθίεσθαι), without a subject stated.51
Two details of exceeding importance are found at the start of the narrative
of Joseph in Egypt (F 1.12–13):
Joseph, having interpreted the dreams for the king, ruled Egypt for
seven years, during which time also he married Aseneth, the daughter
of Pentephres the priest of Heliopolis, and he fathered Manasseh and
Ephraim. And two years of famine followed. Joseph, having done well
for nine years, did not send for his father on account of the fact that he
was a shepherd and his brothers too. To be a shepherd is considered hor-
rible by the Egyptians [ἐπονείδιστον δὲ Αἰγυπτίοις εἶναι τὸ ποιμαίνειν].
And that it was for this reason that he did not send [for his father], he
has himself made clear: for when Joseph’s relatives came, he told them
that if they were summoned by the king and asked what they did, they
were to say that they were cowherds. (Euseb. PE 9.21.12–13)
The corresponding passage in the HB regarding Joseph’s Egyptian wife and

family reads as follows: “Pharaoh gave him as wife Asenath, the daughter of Po-
tiphera priest of On” (Gen. 41:45). In the LXX, for the same passage, we read as
follows: “and he gave to him Asseneth, daughter of Petephres priest of Heliopo-
lis, as his wife.” Clearly, Demetrius is much nearer the LXX; indeed, several
manuscripts of the LXX have “Pentephres” instead of “Petephres.”52 Note, too,
that the identification of this figure as a “priest of Heliopolis” is another point
of similarity between Demetrius and the LXX.
Of surpassing importance in this text is the reference to the Egyptian abhor-
rence for shepherds. At the formal level, the detail is introduced to account for
Joseph’s delay in sending for his father and brothers. As such, it has been taken
as a clear case of Demetrius’ desire to explain or correct problematic passages
in scripture.53 One can easily imagine the question Demetrius posed: why did
it take so long for Joseph, who was enjoying such prosperity and success thanks
to his elevated station, to bring his family to Egypt and thereby to improve their
situation? So much is implied in the explanation Demetrius offers: “And that it
was for this reason that he did not send [for his father], [Joseph] has himself
51. Wacholder (1974) 281.

52. See Weavers (1974) apparatus ad loc.
53. Wacholder (1974) 281 and n.86; Bickerman (1976/1986) 2.352–53.
made clear.” It is significant that the corresponding passage in the Bible is found
in connection with Joseph’s instructions to his brothers after their arrival in
Egypt, while encamped at Goshen (Gen. 46:34).54 Indeed, as Freudenthal de-
tected many years ago and as has been restated recently with even greater clar-
ity, Demetrius has changed the point of the biblical narrative in his treatment:55
in the Genesis passage, Joseph and his family have already been reunited, and
Joseph is giving advice about what they should do in the presence of pharaoh;
Demetrius uses the same advice to account for the long separation of Joseph
and his family.
The timeline of the biblical story has been fundamentally and deliberately
altered. Freudenthal’s solution to this apparent tampering of scripture on De-
metrius’ part was to assume that Alexander Polyhistor has truncated Deme-
trius’ account and is inadvertently responsible for the gross repositioning of
the detail. This may be correct. But one of the consequences of this explanation
is that the language of Demetrius’ commentary must then be due to the later
adaptor of Polyhistor, Eusebius, who has smoothed over the inconsistency in-
troduced by Polyhistor’s hand. Such a solution involves far too much specula-
tion. It is easier to assume that Demetrius is responsible for what we read in
Eusebius and that he was motivated by a desire to account for a problem he
perceived in the biblical story of Joseph and the eventual settlement of his fam-
ily in Egypt.
Let us return to the crucial sentence in Demetrius’ explanation: “And that
it was for this reason that he did not send [for his father], [Joseph] has himself
made clear” (ὅτι δὲ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἔπεμψεν, αὐτὸν δεδηλωκέναι). In the bibli-
cal account itself, Demetrius finds proof of his explanation for why it took so
long for Joseph to send for his father and the rest of his family. This is an in-
terpretative procedure familiar from the Homeric scholia. There are numerous
examples, but I will cite just one case that has some formal similarities with
Demetrius’ treatment of Genesis 46:34. At Iliad 9.236–43, Odysseus describes,
in hyperbolic terms, the onslaught of Hector upon the Greek forces, in order
to persuade Achilles to return to the fighting. There are reasons to question
his assessment, and Zeus’ intervention in support of Hector seems “untoward”
54. “You must say this if you are to settle in the land of Goshen, because all shepherds are an
abomination to the Egyptians.” Note the wording of the LXX here: βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν Αἰγυπτίοις
πᾶς ποιμὴν προβάτων. βδέλυγμα is a much more visceral term than ἐπονείδιστον, which seems
almost technical here by comparison.
55. Freudenthal (1874/1875) 45. Holladay (1983) 84 n.32 writes that “Demetrius’ remarks alter
the point of Gen. 46:28–34.” Cf. Doran (1987) 251, noting that the distinction between shepherd
and cowherd is “not germane to the thrust of the biblical text.”
as Odysseus describes it,56 yet the T scholia find reason to defend the phrase
“[Hector] trusting/relying on Zeus” (πίσυνος Διί), which Odysseus uses at
9.238, in the following way: “‘relying on Zeus’: for Hector himself says (at 8.175
and 141), ‘I know that Zeus son of Kronos [grants to me] glory’” (πίσυνος Διί]
αὐτὸς γάρ φησι ‘γιγνώσκω δ’ὅτι μοι Κρονίδης Ζεὺς κῦδος). As with Deme-
trius, the scholiast defends a narrative difficulty by referring back to the text,
specifically the words of one of the main characters (cf. αὐτὸς γάρ φησι with
αὐτὸν δεδηλωκέναι), to rescue the sense of the passage in question. Indeed, it
is good to remember, in this connection, the dictum of Porphyry, doubtless
following Aristarchus, that the best Homeric criticism was to use “Homer to
clarify Homer” (Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν).57 Like Demetrius, the scholi-
ast can see the large-scale features of narrative and can comment in a way that
elides or explains away what appear to be temporal or other logical infelicities.58
Even the scholiast’s language shares points of specific similarity with what we
see in Demetrius’ explanation of Genesis 46:34.59 I will return to the similarity
between Demetrius and the Homeric scholia below, for it is of fundamental
importance.
I do not want to lose sight here of the broader significance of Demetrius’
notice of the Egyptian abhorrence of shepherds. One cannot help but wonder
if Demetrius was aware of the hostile Egyptian treatments of the Jewish exodus
story, such as is found in Manetho (the Hyksos narrative). Indeed, if he was,
in fact, an Alexandrian Jew active during the time of Ptolemy IV, it is hard to
imagine that he was not intimately conversant with it, as Josephus was to be
later. Of course, certainty is impossible,60 but it is nonetheless arresting that,
the detail that the Egyptians despise shepherds emerges in Demetrius’ other-
wise spare narrative, when such a connection between the Jews and shepherds
is at the center of Manetho’s Hyksos story. An allied point is the detail that
emerges in connection with Asenath’s father, Pentephres. Recall that, with the
LXX and against the HB, Demetrius identifies this figure as a “priest of Heliop-
olis”: Heliopolis was a leading center of Egyptian priestly learning, and in Man
etho’s Hyksos tale, the renegade priest Osarseph, who later becomes Moses,
56. See Hainsworth (1993) 96 ad loc.

57. See Pfeiffer (1968) 226–27; cf. 3–4. See also Porter (1992).
58. Richardson (1980) esp. 267–69.
59. I note the phrase “as [a character] says” from the scholia, e.g., in T’s remarks on Iliad 18.511,
referring to Hector at 22.120 (ὡς καὶ Ἕκτωρ φησί). For the use of δηλῶσαι and αύτός, which is
widespread in the scholia, see, e.g., the remarks of bT concerning Iliad 4.4, where “[the poet] him-
self made clear” elsewhere what is meant (ἐδήλωσε δὲ αὐτός, referring forward to Il. 9.224).
60. Though he raises the possibility that Demetrius was refuting Manetho, Fraser (1972) 1.694
observes that the fragmentary nature of what survives of both their work “makes it impossible to
answer the question.”
is a Heliopolitan.61 Gruen has objected that “apologetic purposes of any sort

seem distant indeed from the sober, dry and colorless narrative of Demetrius.”62
Gruen seems to think that apologia must be dramatic and peopled by clearly
delineated heroes; but apologetic purposes can be served in different ways, and
engagement with specific scholarly methodologies and genres is, I think, one.
I think here of Berossus’ offhand remark that the Flood survivors “refounded”
Babylon (Syncellus Chron. 32 M: πάλιν ἐπικτίσαι)—implying that the city was
an antediluvian one, an important claim for Berossus—and, more obviously,
Manetho’s observation that the name Avaris derived from “an ancient theologi-
cal tradition” (Jos. Ap. 1.78: ἀπό τινος ἀρχαίας θεολογίαν). These observations
are small—even “dry and colorless”—but nonetheless freighted with massive
national significance.
Greek scholarly method also seems very much in evidence in Demetrius’
exegetical procedure in the very next section of the same fragment. As found in
Eusebius, the text runs as follows (F 1.14):
A problem arises [διαπορεῖσθαι], why on earth [διὰ τί ποτε] Joseph gave

to Benjamin five times as much [πενταπλασίονα] for breakfast, when he
was not able to consume so much food. He did this because six sons where
born to his father from Leah, but from Rachel, his mother, only two; this
is why he gave to Benjamin five parts and he himself took one. This makes
six, as many as also the sons of Leah received.63 (Euseb. PE 9.21.14)
As has often been observed, the wording of this fragment, particularly at the
start, seems to point to the influence of Greek scholarly method on Demetri-
us.64 To start with, the verb διαπορῆσαι is especially important to Aristotle:
for example, at Historia Animalium 631b2, where a close parallel with Deme-
trius can be found, Aristotle writes in connection with the beaching of dol-
phins, “one problem about them is why they beach themselves on the land”
(διαπορεῖται δὲ περὶ αὐτῶν διὰ τί ἐξοκέλλουσιν εἰς τὴν γῆν)—note not just the
impersonal use of the passive διαπορεῖται but also the interrogative phrase διὰ
61. See Fraser (1972) 1.506, 508; 2.984 n.190.
62. Gruen (1998) 116 and n.29. He cites Freudenthal (1874/1875) 81, among others, as sup-
porting the view that Demetrius was answering Manetho. Cf. also Schürer (1973/1987) 516.
63. Note that the text I translate here is based on Jacoby, following Freudenthal’s correction,
which has the number “six” instead of “seven,” to bring the figures into line with πενταπλασίονα. In
his text of Eusebius, Mras prints ἑπτά. Cf. Holladay (1983) 84–84 nn.34–37; see also van der Horst
(1988) 530–31 and nn.63, 64. Note that Jubilees 42:23 has Joseph give Benjamin “seven times more
than any of [the other brothers’] portions.”
64. E.g., Walter (1976) 281; van der Horst (1988) 529–30; DiTommaso (1998) 81–82. For back-
ground on Greek scholarly practice and its influence, these discussions invariably cite Dörrie and
Dörries (1966). Noteworthy also is Lieberman (1962) 47–82. See also, now, Niehoff (2007) 169;
(2011) esp. 41–45.
τί,65 an Aristotelian formula.66 Relatedly, the concept of λύσις, in the sense of an

interpretative solution derived from the work itself, is also Aristotelian (NB Po-
etics 1454a37).67 More germane for our purposes is that διαπορῆσαι and its re-
lated noun διαπόρησις and adjective διαπορητικός, -ή, -όν were common criti-
cal terms in the vocabulary of Greek literary scholarship.68 Thus, for the second
half of line nine of the first book of the Iliad, we find the following problem
from the Geneva manuscript of the Homeric scholia: “‘for he [Apollo] was an-
gry with the king’: a difficulty arises with which king is meant, whether Achil-
les or Agamemnon, which is [the] better [reading]” (ὁ γὰρ βασιλῇι χολωθεὶς]
διαπορεῖται ποίῳ βασιλεῖ τῷ Ἀχιλλεῖ ἢ τῷ Ἀγαμέμνονι, ὃ κρεῖττον). Again, in
a remark on line 16 of Pindar’s Pythian 2,69 the scholiast queries: “a problem
arises, why on earth [Pindar] has introduced Cinyras into the praises of Hi-
eron” (διαπορεῖται δὲ, τί δή ποτε εἰς τοὺς τοῦ Ἱέρωνος ἐπαίνους τὸν Κινύραν
προσῆκται). What is most instructive about this parallel is that we have virtu-
ally the same word choice and sentence structure that we see in Demetrius
(and Aristotle, for that matter): impersonal passive διαπορεῖται, followed by the
interrogative phrase τί δή ποτε, which is here made emphatic by ποτε (“why on
earth”), just as in Demetrius (though not in Aristotle).
F 2 of Demetrius contains an important observation from Eusebius, as well
as further evidence for Demetrius’ indebtedness to Greek scholarly method.
The fragment, which concerns Moses’ life in Midian, begins as follows (F 2.1 =
Euseb. PE 9.29.1): “About the murder of the Egyptian and the argument with
the one who disclosed the murderer, Demetrius gave an account similar to the
writer of the sacred book” (ὁμοίως τῷ τὴν Ἱερὰν βίβλον γράψαντι ἱστόρησε). At
one level, this is illuminating and reassuring: Demetrius and scripture agree.70
But does not Eusebius’ remark also imply that there were times when this was
not the case? Indeed, as we push further into the fragment, more problems
emerge. According to Eusebius, Demetrius stated that after his crime, Moses
fled to Midian, where he married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro (συνοικῆσαι
ἐκεῖ τῇ Ἰοθὼρ θυγατρὶ Σεπφώρᾳ). This name for Zipporah’s father agrees with
the LXX at Exodus 2:16, 2:18 (Codex Alexandrinus), and 3:1. However, the Co-
65. Note also Arist. Metaph. 991a9, with Ross (1924) 198 ad loc.; Madigan (1999) xxi–xxii, 24–
25. See also Nünlist (2009) 11 for this and what follows.
66. Niehoff (2011) 42 and n.15.
67. See Porter (1992) 77.
68. Cf. Dickey (2007) 232, s.v. διαπόρησις and adjective διαπορητικός, -ή, όν, referring to Da-
limier (2001) 274–75: grammatical terms that refer to “dubitative interrogative expressions” (the
former) and “dubitative conjunctions” (the latter); see also Dalimier (2001) 449 s.vv.
69. Note that the Pindar scholia refer to this line by the older numeration, i.e., line 27b.
70. Cf. F 4 = Euseb. PE 9.29.15, on the waters of Marah and Elim: “from there [the Red Sea],
they traveled for three days, as Demetrius himself says and the Sacred Book in agreement with him”
(συμφώνως τούτῳ ἡ Ἱερὰ βίβλος; cf. Ex. 15:22–27.).
dex Vaticanus has not “Jethro” but “Reuel” at Exodus 2:18. The HB has “priest
of Midian” at Exodus 2:16, “Reuel” at 2:18, and “Jethro” at 3:1 (cf. Jos. AJ 2.258).
In all the biblical narratives, Jethro is only Moses’ father-in-law, Reuel can be
Jethro’s father, and a third figure, Hobab, can be Reuel himself and Reuel’s son;
there was clearly profound confusion.71 It is telling that Demetrius provided a
clearly delineated genealogy for Zipporah and thereby sorted out this problem
by assigning fixed identities to the men in her lineage: Reuel is her grandfather,
Hobab her uncle, and Jethro her father, and these names are used only of these
individuals.72 There is no room for confusion in Demetrius. In tracing Zippo-
rah’s family back to Keturah, whose identity in the Bible is similarly confused
(she is either the third wife of Abraham [Gen. 25:1] or his concubine [1 Chr.
1:32]), he seems to have constructed a plausible genealogy from the LXX text
of Genesis 25:1–4 (the descendants of Keturah down to the sons of Midian)
together with Exodus 3:1 (Jethro priest of Midian and gambros of Moses).73
At two key points in F 2, Demetrius’ debt to Greek scholarly method
emerges with great clarity, the first having to do precisely with the descendants
of Keturah. When he connected Zipporah to Keturah, Demetrius knew that
he was making an inference on the basis of unconnected biblical texts: “. . .
Zipporah, who was (to venture a guess on the basis of names) of the descen-
dants of Keturah” (Σεπφώρᾳ ἣν εἶναι (ὅσα στοχάζεσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν ὀνομάτων)
τῶν γενομένων ἐκ Χεττούρας). The term στοχάζεσθαι is important here. In
the Homeric scholia and elsewhere, that term is normally used to explain the
inferences that characters in the narrative make. But there are some telling
parallels for what we see here in Demetrius. In the scholia to the start of the
Hecuba of Euripides, we are told that some scholars prefer to read “Hecuba
born the child of Kissia” rather than “of Kisseus”; explaining that “they make
the guess [στοχάζονται] on the basis of a certain family of Phrygia or a vil-
lage thus named,” the scholiast cites in particular the Atthidographer Philo-
chorus (FGrH 324 F 91). Especially intriguing about this parallel is that it, too,
concerns a legendary matriarch whose origins were a matter of interest to a
third-century historian.74 But these similarities are surely due to chance. Per-
haps more relevant is a testimonium that comes to us by way of the scholia to
Apollonius of Rhodes. In a long commentary on Apollonius of Rhodes 4.257–
62, we are told that the shadowy fifth-century BC historian Hippys of Rhegium
71. Holladay (1983) 88 n.69. Cf. Hanson (1985) 853 n.b to his F 3.1; also Jacobson (1983) 86.
72. F 2.1: ἐκ δὲ Ῥαγουὴλ Ἰοθὼρ καὶ Ὀβάβ, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Ἰοθὼρ Σεπφώραν, ἣν γῆμαι Μωσῆν.
73. Hanson (1985) 853 n.c to his F 3.1. It does not help that gambros can be both “brother-in-
law” and “father-in-law” (indeed, even “son-in-law”).
74. See Jacoby’s commentary ad loc.
speculated (στοχάζεται) about the origins of the Egyptians, perhaps as the first
people to come into being (FGrH 554 F 6). Hippys (or his fourth-century BC
“epitomator”) is most important because, like Demetrius, he seems to have
been interested in early history and chronology, to judge by the titles of his
works (Sikelika; Ktisis Italias, or Foundation of Italy; Chronika).75
Toward the end of F 2, we see Demetrius’ main point emerge: “therefore
there is no discrepancy [ἀντιπίπτει] with Moses and Zipporah being alive at
the same time.” The whole of this fragment has been building to this claim. To
judge by Demetrius’ insistence to the contrary, a problem had arisen regarding
not only the lineage of Zipporah but also how she could be a contemporary of
Moses: Zipporah is the seventh in her line from Abraham, whereas Moses is the
sixth. The problem is solved by having Abraham beget Isaac when he was 100
and Zipporah’s forebear Jokshan at 142.76 The verb ἀντιπίπτειν has a very precise
meaning here: “tell against, conflict with (fact or theory)” (LSJ s.v. I.3).77 Techni-
cal language such as this encourages many to see in Demetrius a figure very like
a Homeric scholar finding solutions to various zetemata or scholarly problems.78
Perhaps most illuminating and most informative regarding Demetrius’ debt
to Greek scholarly practice are his comments on the arming of the Israelites
after the crossing of the Red Sea (F 5 = Euseb. PE 9.29.16). In his quotation of
Alexander Polyhistor’s narrative, just after a long citation of the Jewish trage-
dian Ezekiel’s account of the phoenix of Elim,79 Eusebius continues:
And a little later on: someone further asks [ἐπιζητεῖν δέ τινα], how did
the Israelites acquire weapons, having left [captivity] without arms; for
they said that having gone out a journey of three days and having sacri-
ficed, they would turn back? It appears therefore that the ones who were
not drowned made use of the weapons of those [who were].
Interpretation of this fragment is complicated by the fact that the quote as it

appears in Eusebius is unattributed. But having said that, most scholars believe
that it belongs to Demetrius.80 The exegesis has to do with a difficulty that arises
75. Hippys may have influenced the work of Hecataeus of Abdera, whose own work helped to
inspire the shape of Manetho’s history and perhaps also Berossus’: see Jacoby (1913b). But it may be
that Hippys is a fiction, the product of his later epitomator: see esp. Pearson (1987) 8–10.
76. See esp. van der Horst (1988) 530; Gruen (1998) 114.
77. To judge on the basis of the Homeric scholia, the term more often denotes an irregularity in
the form of a word, particularly its accentuation. Cf. Dickey (2007) 224, s.v. ἀντιπίπτω.
78. E.g., Walter (1976) 281.
79. For the fragment of Ezekiel, consult Jacobson (1983) 67, 152–66.
80. See esp. Freudenthal (1874) 36, 46–47; Hanson (1985) 854 n.a to his F 5. Cf. Holladay
(1983) 89 n.87; Niehoff (2011) 39 n.5.
because of the misunderstanding of a rare term in the description of the exodus

in the Hebrew of the HB. When the Israelites depart from captivity, they are de-
scribed as follows: “and the fifth generation of Israelites departed from Egypt”
(Ex. 13:18). But when the Amalekites attack at Exodus 17:8ff., the Israelites
evidently have weapons with which to fight them. Where did the Israelites get
their weapons? As it turns out, there is probably not an inconsistency in the HB,
for the term that is translated “fifth generation” (hamushim) may well in fact
mean “by fives” or “in battle military formation.”81 But the query lodged by De-
metrius is very significant for that reason. Josephus, too, was similarly misled:
at Antiquities 2.321, he speaks of the confidence the Egyptians have in victory
over the fleeing Israelites “inasmuch as the people were unarmed,” and he later
even describes how the weapons of the drowned Egyptians were washed up to
the Hebrew camp through the providence of God, thereby providing the Isra-
elites with arms (AJ 2.249). Demetrius was evidently troubled, as was Josephus
later, by what he took to be a narrative inconsistency, and he sought a way to
account for the problem through scripture itself. As Hanson has demonstrated,
this apparent difficulty in the narrative of the exodus drew much later attention
from Jewish scholars.82
That being the case, though, the problem is signaled in Demetrius’ com-
mentary in a most Greek manner, if Eusebius (and Polyhistor before him) pre-
served Demetrius’ Greek faithfully: “someone further asks [ἐπιζητεῖν δέ τινα],
how did the Israelites acquire weapons?” The formula “someone asks . . .” is
common in the Homeric scholia in particular (it is not found, by contrast, in
the scholia to Pindar or Apollonius of Rhodes).83 One example will suffice to
show that Demetrius’ use of the phrase is very close indeed to the conventions
of scholiastic commentary on Homer. In the bT scholia on Iliad 6.4, it is an-
ticipated that a difficulty will arise because of the use of the alternative name
for the Xanthus River, namely, the Scamander, which the poet employs gratia
metri, or, as the scholiast puts it, “in order that a question [ζήτημα] not seem to
exist.” The scholiast continues: “if someone inquires further [εἰ δέ τις ἐπιζητεῖ]
how in the subsequent lines [the poet] calls the river not only Xanthus but
also Scamander, let him know that never employing the proper term entailed
causing suspicion of falsehood.” I find it very significant that this discussion is
launched by the same formula that we find in Demetrius, explicitly character-
81. See esp. Holladay (1983) 89–90 n.88. Cf. Wacholder (1974) 282 n.90.
82. Hanson (1985) 854 n.a to his F 5.
83. See, e.g., A scholia to Iliad 5.256, 14.172, 21.141. Note also Hipparchus’ commentary on
Aratus, 1.3.1–4, quoting the earlier scholar Attalus on Aratus: “perhaps some will inquire further
[τάχα δέ τινες ἐπιζητήσουσι]: persuaded by what argument do we say that the correction of the
book has been made in conformity with the purposes of the poet? But we give in explanation . . .”
(Dickey trans. [2007] 188 no. 88; Greek text on p. 166).
izes a scholarly problem ( a zetema, no less), and concerns a matter of narrative

inconsistency just as in Demetrius.
In her acute analysis of Demetrius, Niehoff has proposed that we should
take quite literally the references to people proposing solutions and asking
questions—specifically, that “the someone” who asked a further question ac-
cording to F 5 was a real person, indeed “a colleague” of Demetrius, whose
views were then recorded and referred to here by him.84 She even goes so far as
to posit a whole group of such people: “Demetrius’ anonymous colleagues.” Of
course, Niehoff ’s suggestion may be true: perhaps Demetrius really was refer-
ring to other scholars whom he actually knew and whose views he recorded.
But it seems to me just as possible that the anonymous references to individuals
posing questions of biblical text are Demetrius’ way of asking his own questions
through the mouths of notional “others.”85 I would also observe that the refer-
ence to the critic in F 5 is not to “some others” (pl. τινές) but to “some other”
(sing. τις). To judge by the scholia to Homer, when singular τις is used, it often
signals a theoretical suggestion attributable to no one person.86 Be that as it
may, that Demetrius is working precisely and idiomatically with the language
of Greek scholarly exegesis seems to me incontrovertible.
This leads me to take up Gruen’s thought-provoking treatment of Deme-
trius. I see the merit of his basic skepticism regarding Demetrius’ incorpora-
tion of Greek scholarly tools in his biblical exegesis. The surviving fragments
of Demetrius do not show any trace of “texts or traditions outside the Septua-
gint”; his “narrative appears to be a rigorously internal one.” Such a person, it
is argued, would scarcely need Greek exegetical tools: that the interpretation of
the Bible along the lines Demetrius evidently followed can be projected (with
Vermes) as far back as the fourth century BC, and there are so many cases of
similar sorts of texts from antiquity, such as Jubilees, that show no knowledge
of Alexandrian learning.87 My main objection to Gruen’s evaluation of Deme-
trius’ exegetical methods is that it does not take account of the exact replication
of Greek scholarly terminology in Demetrius’ fragments. If Demetrius’ read-
ings and interpretations of the Bible were independent of Greek scholarship, it
should not reproduce almost exactly the idioms that we find in ancient scholia
84. Niehoff (2011) 39.

85. Cf. Lundon (2011) 170 n.66: τινές used to “refer to scholars or a scholar the commentator
can or will not name.” See also Slater (1989) in general on the difficulties associated with the precise
meaning of the vocabulary of the scholia; see 50 n.37 and 57 for related (but not identical) problems
specifically regarding τινές and ἔνιοι.
86. See A scholia to Iliad 1.120 (θαυμάσειε δ’ ἄν τις Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Ὀροάνδου τὴν ἀπειρίαν),
where an objection to another commentator is imagined, and A scholia to Iliad 1.152 (δύναται δ’
ἴσως τις λέγειν ὡς), where the scholiast queries whether one should adduce a passage from the
Odyssey for elucidation.
87. Gruen (1998) 117 and n.33 (citing Vermes). Cf. also Doran (2001) 103.
on older Greek literature. It could, I suppose, be objected that perhaps Deme-

trius’ own text has undergone deformation at the hands of a later reader (Poly-
histor?) who was familiar with Greek scholarly methods and made Demetrius’
exegesis conform to the language of Greek scholia. This does not seem to me to
be likely, and in any case, such a scenario of wholesale linguistic change would
make Demetrius merely a name to us and would make the material that is at-
tributed to him useless for revealing anything about his work other than the
grossest of generalities.
Contradiction and Convergence
We are left with a confusing picture perhaps, but one that I think is enormously
useful not only for coming to grips with the work of Demetrius but also for ap-
preciating the larger significance of Berossus and Manetho. On the one hand,
we can see in Demetrius a figure who can be securely placed in an ancient
scholarly and historiographic tradition that would seem to have very little to do
with the Greek world, save that his work was composed in the Greek language
and was dedicated to the explication of the Greek translation of the Hebrew
Bible. On the other hand, although we can only catch glimpses of his scholarly
method in detail, a couple important sections of his work seem to be heavily
indebted to Greek exegetical procedures—specifically, the imagined “question-
and-answer” form. What are we to make of this situation?
We could throw up our hands and say that what we have in Demetrius is a
set of contradictory data. But the information is only contradictory if we view
it from a reductive point of view—and here I would like to return to issues
I broached at the beginning of this book. If Demetrius must be either a Jew
so thoroughly Hellenized as to be intimate with Greek scholarly hermeneutic
practice or a Jew who only incidentally wrote in Greek while participating in a
completely internal, Jewish exegetical tradition, we are indeed left with an ir-
reconcilable contradiction. In fact, we are not that far from seeing Demetrius
simultaneously through the lenses of Peter Green, on the one hand, and Ian
Moyer, on the other. With Green, we see Demetrius as a figure who completely
assimilated the scholarly ways of the dominant society in which he lived—he
“sold out.” With Moyer, we see him as a proud member of an old tradition that
was completely sufficient to explain what he was doing; the fact that he wrote
in Greek verges on being a historical accident. To promote the adherence of a
Demetrius (or a Manetho or a Berossus, for that matter) to a particular native
scholarly tradition must, it seems, involve also the denial of his participation in
another, nonnative one—or vice versa.
What if we grant that Demetrius was working within a well-established Jew-

ish scholarly methodology and yet was also conversant with the latest exegeti-
cal practices of the Greeks in Alexandria? I would like to return to an idea I
tried to articulate some time ago in two separate papers, one on Hecataeus of
Abdera and one on Manetho.88 Instead of contradiction, the solution for which
requires the erasure of one aspect of the figure in question—either his own
culture’s scholarly tradition or that of the nonnative culture with which he is
engaged—why can we not assume that Demetrius saw for himself the conver-
gence of Jewish and Greek scholarly concerns? I find it inconceivable that a Jew
living in Alexandria, say, toward the end of the third century BC and already
committed to the project of rewriting his people’s sacred text for reasons spe-
cific to his coreligionists’ scholarly wants and needs would not have made use
of the techniques of literary analysis then being deployed in the same city by
Greek authorities in the exegesis of their own archaic texts. Of course, it may be
that the opposite was the case, that Demetrius was first inspired by Alexandrian
scholarly method to attempt his “rewrite” of the Bible—he comes early enough
in the tradition of the rewritten Bible that perhaps he was among the very first
to do this. But either scenario seems to me inherently more likely than one
wherein the scholarly cultures of Alexandria were so “balkanized” that men
working along similar lines in the same place would not have known the work
of each other. We need both Jewish and Greek interpretative traditions to ex-
plain Demetrius.89 Certainly, figures like Demetrius—or Berossus or Manetho,
for that matter—are easier to explain if we situate them in only one ancient
culture and its learned traditions, but that approach deprives us of seeing what
they achieved in all its fullness. I am not arguing for the cultural mixing or fu-
sion of Droysen; rather, I am arguing for the meeting or even intersection of
distinct cultural traditions.
In the End: Narratives
A quick glance at the fragments of Demetrius reveals an important point. De-

metrius wanted to provide precise details to support the biblical account. He
wanted to create an architecture of fact that would hold up the stories told of
the patriarchs. But as such, it does not make for good reading. Indeed, while an
ancillary to a narrative, Demetrius’ On the Kings of Judaea is not much of a nar-
rative itself. Remember that readers have noted how Demetrius’ work is so un-
88. Dillery (1998) 260; (1999) 111.

89. Indeed, this is the thrust of Niehoff ’s major contribution: Niehoff (2011), noting esp. 4–5.
Cf. Rajak (2009) 115.
like, for instance, Artapanus in this regard: in that later author, we see precisely
not just more drama and characterization and (frankly) narrative dynamism
but also (to borrow Pelling’s memorable phrase quoted in ch. 4 above, p. 198)
“big ideas [that] emerge through the narrative”: Abraham, Joseph, and Moses
are clearly all meant to be seen as culture heroes and, thus, champions of the
Jewish people and their faith. Demetrius’ one “big idea” that runs through his
work is that the events it recounts really happened and can be measured. One
senses that Demetrius’ work is animated more by Alt’s Listenwissenschaft than
by any muse of history or storytelling. His pursuit is one of word, detail, and
narrative logic, articulated through a careful listing of relative chronology, not
narrative for its own sake. As Arnaldo Momigliano observed some time ago:
the Greeks were basically not interested in the LXX; rather, they wanted the
Jews “to produce an account of themselves according to the current methods
and categories of ethnography”—along the lines of what Berossus and Manetho
wrote and what Hecataeus of Abdera modeled.90 Demetrius did not comply. He
insisted on writing something that was meant precisely to elucidate and cor-
roborate the Greek translation of his holy book—it was not really meant to re-
place it as the narrative of his people. I hasten to add that his rather more mun-
dane tasks need not have been completely devoid of apologia; shoring up the
foundational text of one’s culture and making it in some sense more internally
consistent—getting the facts right—can be just as apologetic as parading before
an audience a great hero from the past. Nonetheless, one senses that Demetrius
did not become the historiographic kindred of Berossus and Manetho—the
third brother, as it were. For those two did precisely provide the accounting
that Momigliano spoke of—a continuous narrative of their nations’ pasts, in the
Greek language, and inspired by Greek historical narrative, though built from
the blocks of native tradition. The years between Berossus and Manetho on the
one hand and Demetrius on the other are massively significant I think. By the
time we get to Demetrius, Greek methodology is not something to aspire to, or
engage with, or even reject; it has become a default of sorts. A good question
to raise here at the end is what happened to native historiography in Babylon
and Egypt after Berossus and Manetho. In Babylon there were no more native
writers like Berossus; in Egypt, there were several who followed Manetho (e.g.,
Ptolemaios of Mendes FGrH 611; Apion 616; Chaeremon 618), many of them
also treated by Josephus in the Against Apion. Why? I have no answer, but per-
haps the difference has to do with the staging of wisdom in Berossus. While
after Oannes there were other sages, nonetheless, one gets the sense that they
were not really needed; after all, since the first fishman, nothing further had
been discovered of importance for humanity. Berossus may have been similarly
90. Momigliano (1975a) 92.
definitive; there was no further need to account for the new political ordering
of Babylonia among the Babylonian elite. This was obviously not the case in
Ptolemaic Egypt. There native Egyptian historians were needed; they continued
to toil and to tell the story of the loss and restoration of Ma’at.
It is sometimes argued that among the ancient societies of the Mediter-
ranean and the Near East, only the Greeks and the Israelites developed what
we can call continuous narrative history.91 If, as I believe, Demetrius borrowed
heavily from contemporary Greek scholarly methodology in helping him to
articulate his concerns in On the Kings of Judaea, it most certainly did not help
him construct a narrative of the past. Rather, it helped him to document an
already established narrative of the past and bring it factual clarity, while shear-
ing away its very “narrativity.”
The opposite was the case for Greek influence, specifically historiographic,
on Berossus and Manetho. Both Berossus and Manetho were the inheritors of
a mass of textual materials for the writing of history: notably chronographies,
chronicles, and smaller narratives relating to the activities of specific kings. But
neither had to hand indigenous histories of their native lands that covered the
entire pasts of both civilizations. In the case of Egypt, something approach-
ing a complete narrative had been recently attempted, but by Greeks—two of
them, to be precise: Herodotus and Hecataeus of Abdera. On the side of the
Near East, one could argue that something similar had been essayed by Ctesias.
To be sure, those historians produced relatively summary treatments that had
major factual and structural shortcomings. But I believe that they provided the
model for continuous narrative history for Manetho and Berossus. The search
for why this happened is a complex one that I have tried to chart in this book. I
am convinced that the main reason has to do with the importance of nation and
(often) its champion, its priestly elite—or in the latter case, should I say “shep-
herds” (though I recognize that in Berossus’ name the shepherd element refers
to Bel). When a people and its priesthood, not a king or dynast, want or need to
explain their past to themselves and to account specifically for their hardships,
an argument has to be made, and such an argument would seem to have to be
made through narrative history.92
I would like to end this discussion in a completely different time and place from
the subjects of this book—far, that is, from the world of Babylon and Egypt
in the late fourth and early third centuries BC. Between the years 1527 and
91. See, e.g., Van Seters (1983), esp. his conclusion (354–62); also Momigliano (1977) 25–35.
Both view the development of historiography in Israel and Greece as spurred on by the formation
of the concept of “nation.”
92. Cf. Van Seters (1983) 359: “What is attempted is not merely a chronicle of events. [The Deu-
teronomistic historian’s] purpose, above all, is to communicate through this story of the people’s
past a sense of their identity—and that is the sine qua non of history writing.”
1561, Fray Bartolemé de las Casas, the famous Dominican friar who sought
heroically to defend the peoples of the New World from the violence of the
Spanish encomienda, composed his great History of the Indies. Greek authors
had proved very useful to the conquistadors: Herodotus had been the model
for Cortes’ associate, Gómara; for Las Casas’ great opponent, the scholar Ginés
de Sepúlveda, Aristotle was the main guide. Through the latter especially, the
Spaniards were armed with the concept that the people they encountered in the
New World were, as barbarians, best suited to being brought under the author-
ity of others as slaves. Las Casas needed a way to challenge the authority of the
defenders of conquest. His allies, curiously, were Manetho and Berossus.93
In the prologue to his History, Las Casas notes that the Greek historians were
interested more in style than in fact and that they often mixed fictions (roma-
nos) with true accounts. More reliable were non-Greeks: Berossus, Metasthenes,
and Manetho. In Berossus especially, Las Casas saw a completely reliable histo-
rian: he was a priest-historian (sacerdote historiador) who worked from public
archives—documents that could be checked by others.94 On the very next page,
Las Casas quotes a Latin translation of Josephus’ Against Apion; indeed, what
Las Casas said about the defects of Greek historians when compared to non-
Greek can be found in almost identical form in the pages of that treatise. But
while Las Casas may seem to have learned about Berossos and Manetho from
Josephus, his source was another Dominican, Annius of Viterbo, who, in 1498,
had produced a work entitled Commentaries on the Works of Diverse Authors
Who Discuss Remote Antiquity. Las Casas mentions Annius in the same context
in which he produces his list of non-Greek ancient historians. What Las Casas
did not know was that Annius had merely fabricated the material he ascribed to
Berossus and Manetho and had invented outright the Persian Metasthenes. An-
nius wanted to fill in some gaps: the chronologies of the Bible, when set beside
pagan authors, had produced some notorious problems.95
Another Dominican, Las Casas’ student Domingo de Santo Tomás, com-
piled a lexicon and grammar of the Andean language of Peru; in it, he argued
that the Andean Indians had come to a true understanding of the Christian
God “from the book of nature”—that is, before the coming of the Spanish or,
for that matter, the Inca. This line of reasoning deeply influenced one Felipe
Guaman Poma de Ayala, an Andean Christian and scholar who wrote, be-
tween 1567 and 1615, a work entitled New Chronicle and Good Government
93. Grafton (1992) 134–40.

94. De las Casas (1994) 330.
95. Cf. Grafton (1983/1993) 2.308; also Syme (1972) 17.
and Justice.96 Composed in both rough Spanish and Quechua, his native lan-
guage, the text is eight hundred pages long and has four hundred illustrations.
In form, it is an open letter to Philip III of Spain. It documents the conquest
of Peru but also deals with earlier periods. Guaman Poma argues that the An-
deans were natural Christians, “whites” as he calls them, directly descended
from Adam. At roughly the time when Christ was born, according to Guaman
Poma, the apostle Bartholomew came to the Andes and converted the people
to Christianity—a story adapted from Andean accounts of wandering deities
who go unrecognized among humans. The Inca brought paganism to the An-
des. Hence, when the Spaniards came, they were restoring Christianity to the
Andean people. In the final pages of his open letter, Guaman Poma, who came
from an aristocratic family, argued for a new government of Peru, one that was
administered by both Andean and Spanish elites.
As a historian, Guaman Poma is not that different from the figures I have
considered in this book. We see a religious man from a native elite family at-
tempt to understand and assert some control over the foreign occupation of his
land. While advocating his native culture and history, his New Chronicle is by
no means written in complete opposition to the Spanish. Rather, we see in it a
convergence of cultures: an Andean/Spanish combined rule is imagined. This
vision is built on a view of the past that is centered on the concept of continu-
ity: the new rule of Peru is actually a restoration of old ways. It is also highly
local in perspective: the Andeans are sharply differentiated from the Inca, and
the heritage of the former is recovered by means of the Spanish. At a linguistic
and formal level, Guaman Poma’s letter is fashioned out of a combination of
the Quechua and Spanish languages and cultural idioms. His long missive did
not have the effect he desired. The extirpations of his culture continued; his
New Chronicle languished in obscurity until it was found in the Danish Royal
Archives in 1908.97
96. Cf. Pratt (1992) 2–4.

97. MacCormack (1991) 312–20. See also Adorno (1986), Pratt (1992) 4.
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Index Verborum
Greek ἐξαίρω, 322

ἐπιζητεῖν, 379, 380–81
ἄγνοια, 89 n.136 ἐπιπόνως, 13
ἀκρόασις, 9–12, 10 n.30 ἐπονείδιστον, 374 n.54
ἀληθινῶς (-α-), ἀλήθεια, άληθής, 13 ἔργα, 13
ἀλληγορικῶς, xxx, 227, 232 ἔτι καὶ νῦν, 73, 264 n.180
ἀμαχητί, 316, 316 n.48, 317, 343 ἐχθρός, 316, 317, 321
ἀναγιγνώσκω, 12
ἀντιγενεηλογεῖν, 119, 121 ζητήματα καὶ λύσεις, 361, 376–81
ἀντιπίπτειν, 379 ζωογονηθῆναι, 238
ἀξιολόγως, 275, 285–87
ἁρμόζειν, 184–85 ἱερογραμματεύς, 161, 161 n.168
Ἀσσύρια γράμματα, 152
ἄφρενον, 74 n.85, 74–75 καλούμενος, 288
κατασκάψαι, 159, 159 n.160, 275, 275
βδέλυγμα, 374 n.54 n.214
βιβλίον, 11 κατασκευάζειν, 159 n.160, 275 n.214
Κοίλη Συρία, 271, 281-82
γεγονώς, ix n.10 κοσμέω, 274, 283–84
γενεά, 225–26
γράφω, γραφή, γράμμα, 11, 12, 222, 253– μέν . . . δέ, 270, 309–10
54, 303
νομίζω, 110–11
δ (numeral 4), 60
δέ, 310 οἱ περὶ + acc., viii–ix n.7
(error for numeral δ’), 60 ὁλόκληρος, 283 n.247
δηλῶσαι, 375 n.59 οὖν, 366
διαδοῦναι, 70, 139, 144, 148, 260
διαπορῆσαι, διαπορητικός, -ή, -όν, 376– παράδεισος, 290
77 παραδόξως, 316, 317, 317 n.50
διὰ τί ποτε, 376–77 παραδοῦναι, 70, 144, 221–22
παραλαμβάνω, 294
ἔμφρον, 74 n.85, 74–75 περισσόν, 62 n.24
ἐξαιρέω, 322 πολυβιβλογενής, 19
443
444 Index Verborum
πραγματικός, πραγματεύομαι, 10, 10 hprt, 199

n.29, 29 n.107, 31, 159 n.162, 296, ḥm, 304
296 n.285 ḥq3 <3 n Kmt, 326
πτεροφόρας, 161, 161 n.168 ḥq3w-s3sw, 324–25
ḥq3-h3swt, 324–25, 326
ῥᾳδίως, 316, 317–18 ḥk3, 125 n.10
hms, 175
στοχάζεσθαι, 378–79 djet, 305
συντάσσω, 11, 23
τεταγμένος, 308–9 Sumerian

τις/τινές, 381
τουτονί, 224 GAL.UKKIN, 282
LU.EN.NAM, 282
φιλοπόνως, 12–13 LU.NAM, 282
φίλος, 274, 282 n.245 UD element, 69
φιλοτιμ-words, 15, 274, 283–86, 284
n.249, 284 n.251, 284 n.252, 297
φυσιολογέω, λόγος φυσικός, φυσιολογία, Akkadian
xxix, 227, 230, 232–35, 237, 259
pihatu, pahatu, bel-pihati, 282
sar, 251
Latin tamšil ša Babili, 150, 150 n.118
tamtu, 236
interpretor, 242
Persian
Egyptian
pairi-daêza/pardez, 290
<3 n h3st nb(t), 326
pr-<nh, 162, 173, 179
pr-md3t, 163, 179 Hebrew
neheh, 305
nswt, 304 dûdâ’im, 371
h3swt, 116–17 hamushim, 380
Index Locorum
Greek Literary Texts
Notes: owing to the fact that their fragments in Jacoby are so few in number,
though each often extensive in the excerpting later author, references to Ber-
ossus (B.), Demetrius, Manetho (M.), and Abydenus are to be found only as
citations from the later authors (chiefly Eusebius, Josephus and Syncellus). I
have in a few cases noted to what fragments of my main authors these passages
correspond.
By and large only citations found in the main text are cited, with the excep-
tion of select cases where significant discussion in notes has been included.
Aelian Anabasis 1.2.2, 5

VH 3.17, 27 Anabasis 2.4.7ff., 152
Amyntas FGrH 122 Anabasis 2.5.2, 252
F 2, 154, 155 n.147 Anabasis 2.5.3, 152
Apollonius of Rhodes Anabasis 2.5.4, 153
4.257–62, 378–79 Anabasis 3.5.4, 35
Aristophanes Anabasis 3.15.7, 189
Birds 552, 156, 286 Anabasis 3.16.3–4, 45
Birds 1021, 152 n.138 Anabasis 3.16.3, 47
Birds 1125–41, 156, 286 Anabasis 3.16.4, 44, 47
Danaids F 267 K-A, 327 Anabasis 3.16.5, 47
Aristotle Anabasis 3.16.7, 5
Historia Animalium 631b2, 376–77 Anabasis 7.17.2, 44
Poetics 14050a, 196 Anabasis 7.19.2, 5
Poetics 1451b, 196, 221 n.2 Anabasis 7.20.1, 5
Poetics 1452a, 312 Anabasis 7.23.6, 35
Poetics 1454a37, 377 FGrH 156 F 9.35, 47
Politics 1276a, 156, 288 Artapanus FGrH, 726
Apor. Hom. F 175 Rose3, 233 F 3, 362
Arrian Athenaeus
Anabasis preface 2, 6 194c, 16
445
446 Index Locorum
196a-203b = Callixeinus FGrH 627 F F 4, Lenfant F 4 = Athen. 639c, 46

2, 17–18
523f = Heraclides of Pontus F 50 Damascius
Wehrli, 321 Princ. I.321–22 = Eudemus F 150
639c = B. F 2, 46 Wehrli, 235–36
Demetrius of Phalerum
Callimachus FGrH 228 T 1 = Diog. Laer. 5.80, 25
First Iamb F 191 Pfeiffer, xxix FF 1–3, 104
Callisthenes FGrH 124 [Demetrius]
T 23, 100, 101 n.189 De Eloc. 12 = Hecataeus of Miletus
F 34, 153 FGrH 1 F 1, 120
[Callisthenes] Alexander Romance Demodamas FGrH 428
1.1.4, 334 T 2 = Pliny NH 6.49, 28
1.1.5–6, 334 Dicaearchus of Messana
1.2, 318 F 2 Mirhady, vii–viii n.3
1.2.1, 334, 335 F 58a Wehrli, F 59 Mirhady, 103, 335
1.2.2, 334 n.109
1.3, 38 n. 153, 318 Diodorus Siculus
1.3.2, 334 1.8.1, 137, 138
1.3.3, 334 1.30–41 = Hecataeus of Ab. F 25, 135
1.3.4, 334 1.44.5, 352
1.7, 318 1.46.8 = Hec. of Ab. T 4, 23, 169
1.33.6ff., 314 1.49.2, 168–69
1.34, 318 1.49.3, 169
1.34.2, 314 1.55.3, 25, 314 n.43
1.36, 15 1.55.7–8, 179, 313
1.38, 15 1.59, 339 n.122
1.40, 15 1.63.2, 93
Callixeinus FGrH 627 1.84.4, 95 n.168, 182
F 2 = Athen. 196a-203b, 17–18 1.84.8, 95
Choerilus of Iasus 1.89.3, 178
SH 335, 154 2.2.3, 281 n.237, 319–20
Clearchus of Soli 2.7.2ff., 289
F 6 Wehrli, 271 2.7.2, 214
CRAI 1968 (Ai Khanum), xxvii–xxviii, 2.7.3–4, 156, 286
29 n.111, 237, 271 n.202 2.10, 289
Cleitarchus FGrH 137 F 10 = Diod. 2.7.3– 2.10.1, 289, 290
4, 156, 286 2.14.3–15, 320
Clement of Alexandria 5.46.7 = Euhemerus FGrH 63 F 3, 132
Protr. 5.65.3 = B. F 11, 46 17.64.3–4, 45
Strom. 1.141.1 = Demetrius F 6, 362, 17.112.2–3, 47
363, 364, 365 17.112.3, 44
Corpus Hermeticum 18.39.6, 47
16.2, xxii 19.91.1, 49
Ctesias FGrH, 688 19.91.2, 49, 50
F 1b p.32 Lenfant = Diod. 2.7.2, 214 19.92.5, 15–16
Index Locorum 447
40.3, 339 PE 1.10.39–41, 130

40.3.1–8, 208 PE 9.21.1–19 = Demetrius F 1, 365–67
40.3.1, 339 PE 9.21.4–5, 370–72
40.3.2, 339 PE 9.21.12–13, 373–76
40.3.4, 209 PE 9.21.14, 376–77
40.3.5, 209 PE 9.21.16–18, 368–70
Diogenes Laertius PE 9.29.1, 377
1.11 = Hec. of Ab. F 1, 237 PE 9.29.16, 379–81
5.80 = Demetrius of Phal. T 1, 25 PE 9.41.5, 138
Dionysius of Halicarnassus PE 10.11.8, ix
AR 1.8.3, 191
AR 1.61.5 = Phanodemus FGrH 325 F Hecataeus of Miletus FGrH 1
13, 192 F 1, 120
AR 1.74.1 = Timaeus FGrH 566 F 60, F 322, 327
102 F 324 a + b, 327
Heidelberg Epitome FGrH 155
Epicharmus F 1.4. 47
FF 113–20 K-A, 108 Hellanicus FGrH 4
Eratosthenes FGrH 241 F 63 a + b. 153
FF 4–14, 105 Heraclides of Pontus
Eudemus F 50 Wehrli. 321
F 150 Wehrli, 235–36 Hermippus
Euhemerus FGrH 63 Phormophoroi F 63 K-A, 18
F 3, 132 Herodas
Eusebius 1.26–31, 18
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.7, 277 Herodotus
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene pp.14–18, 201 1.5, 197
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene pp.19–23, 201 1.7.2, 100, 320
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene pp.23–25 = B. 1.8–12, 312
F 5a, 59 1.79.2, 317
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.25, 59 1.95.1, 198
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.26, 59 1.106.2, 320
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.27 = 1.178–79, 156, 286
Abydenus FGrH 685 F 5, 148–49 1.178, 134
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.27 = B. F 7, 1.183.3, 44
201, 266 1.184, 320
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.35 = 1.191.4, 156
Abydenus F 5.7, 268, 271 1.191.6, 156, 288
[Arm.] Chron. Schoene p.40, 138 1.193.2, 134, 135 n.49
PE 1.9.21 = Philo of Byblos FGrH 790 1.193.3, 135
F 1, 130 2.1.1, 294
PE 1.9.24, 130–31, 133 2.3.1, 162
PE 1.9.26, 130 2.3.2, 110 and n.231
PE 1.10.7 = Philo F 2, 225 2.30.1, 101 n.185, 327–28
PE 1.10.16, 254 2.38, 182
PE 1.10.36, 132 2.38.1, 182
448 Index Locorum
2.42.2, 112 n.239, 180 3.8.3, 5

2.42.3, 180, 328 3.10–16, 34
2.42.5, 101 n.185, 112 3.28, 182
2.43–44, 112 3.29.1, 37
2.43.1, 112 3.30, 312
2.43.4, 112 3.119.3–6, 313
2.46.3, 182 3.150–59, 44
2.50.1, 113 3.155.5, 320
2.61–62, 323 4.30.1, 198
2.69.1–2, 178 4.89ff., 5
2.69.2, 182 7.1.3, 34
2.69.3, 327 7.7, 34
2.70–73, 327 7.10 ε, 311
2.73.1, 75 7.24, 287, 311
2.77.4, 327 7.46.3, 311
2.99.2, 90 7.136.2, 311
2.100.1, 89, 90–91, 171 7.152.3, 303
2.102–9, 206 7.166, 100
2.102.1, 89, 91, 91 n.143, 352 8.39.2, 185
2.102.3–5, 179, 313 8.51.1, 100, 364
2.102.3, 206 9.37.2, 313
2.104.3–4, 202–3 9.100.2, 100, 114 n.244
2.107, 312–13 9.101.2, 100, 114 n.244
2.110–2–3, 313–14 9.108–13, 312
2.111, 339 n.122 Hesiod
2.113.1, 115 Cat. of Women FF 2–7 MW, 108
2.121 β, 313 Th. 80–92, 226
2.123.1, 303 Th. 94–96, 226
2.125.6–7, 287 Hieronymus of Cardia FGrH 154
2.137–40, 339–41 F 15, 7, 31
2.137, 335 Hippias of Elis
2.137.2, 340 DK 86 B 3, 100
2.139–40, 335 Hippocrates
2.141, 269, 270 Aër. 12, 134
2.141.1, 269 Hippys of Rhegium FGrH 554
2.141.2, 270 F 6, 378–79
2.141.3, 269, 270 Homer
2.141.4, 341 Il. 3.369–78, 73
2.141.6, 156 Il. 8.141, 375
2.143, 57, 91, 116–17, 119–21, 122, 328 Il. 8.175, 375
2.143.4, 89, 328 Il. 9.236–43, 374–75
2.144.2, 101 n.185, 111 n.232, 112 Il. 21.342–82, 231
2.145.4, 113 n.244, 122 Od. 4.126, xxxi, 106
2.148.5, 182
2.153, 182 Josephus
2.182.1, 185 AJ 1.70–71, 144
Index Locorum 449
AJ 1.93, 108 n.223, 139, 265 Ap. 1.99, 310–11

AJ 1.158 = B. F 6, 9, 71, 242 Ap. 1.101, 309
AJ 1.278–84, 367 Ap. 1.102–3, 114
AJ 1.278–79, 367 Ap. 1.102, 203
AJ 1.307, 371 Ap. 1.103, 203, 211
AJ 1.331, 372 Ap. 1.105, 205
AJ 2.249, 380 Ap. 1.128–29, 264
AJ 2.258, 378 Ap. 1.129 = B. T 3, viii, 210 n.55, 213,
AJ 2.321, 380 241, 265
AJ 8.253, 206 Ap. 1.130 = B. T 3, 145, 213, 262, 265
AJ 8.260, 206 Ap. 1.131–53 = B. FF 8 +9a, 83
AJ 8.262, 202 Ap. 1.131, 272
AJ 9.181, 322 Ap. 1.132–41, 201
AJ 10.18, 269 Ap. 1.132, 272–73
AJ 10.19, 269 Ap. 1.133, 83, 272, 292
AJ 10.20, 59, 152, 201, 269, 270 Ap. 1.134, 159, 210, 265
AJ 10.219 = B. F 8, 83 Ap. 1.135–41, 265, 274–91
AJ 10.220–26, 201, 265 Ap. 1.135, 271
AJ 10.227–28, 28, 292 Ap. 1.138, 283 and n.247
AJ 11.345, 365 Ap. 1.139, 158–59, 283–84
AJ 12.10, 365 Ap. 1.140, 285
AJ 13.74, 365 Ap. 1.140–41, 285
Ap. 1.73–92 = M. F 8, 201 Ap. 1.141, 289 n.267, 290
Ap. 1.73 = M. T 7a, viii, xxii, 87 n.128, Ap. 1.142, 81, 156, 214, 265, 286,
89 n.136, 161 n.172, 210, 265, 291–93
312, 315 Ap. 1.143–44, 292–93
Ap. 1.74, 203 Ap. 1.143, 214
Ap. 1.75–76, 316–19 Ap. 1.144, 28
Ap. 1.75–92, 335 Ap. 1.145, 292, 294
Ap. 1.75, 335 Ap. 1.146–53, 201, 265, 295
Ap. 1.77, 319 Ap. 1.148–49, 42
Ap. 1.78, 320–21, 376 Ap. 1.149, 159
Ap. 1.79–81, 325 Ap. 1.151, 43
Ap. 1.79, xi, 332 Ap. 1.152, 159, 275 n.214
Ap. 1.81, 321–23 Ap. 1.154, 265
Ap. 1.82–83, 206–7 Ap. 1.169–70, 202–3
Ap. 1.82, 324–26 Ap. 1.183 = Hec. of Ab. T 7a, 23
Ap. 1.83, xi, xii, 206–7 Ap. 1.227–87 = M. F 10, 201
Ap. 1.84, 203, 325 Ap. 1.228–29, 204–5, 208, 212, 303
Ap. 1.86, 321 Ap. 1.228, 161 n.172, 203
Ap. 1.89–90, 208 Ap. 1.229, xi, 204–5
Ap. 1.91, 203, 207, 304, 325 Ap. 1.230, xi, xii n.18, 203–4, 332
Ap. 1.95–105 = M. F 9, 201 Ap. 1.231–32, 331–32
Ap. 1.93, 203, 210 Ap. 1.232–49, 331
Ap. 1.94, xi, 208, 332 Ap. 1.232–46, 332–33
Ap. 1.98–99, 309–10 Ap. 1.232–36, 204
450 Index Locorum
Ap. 1.232, xi, 204, 330, 331 Photius

Ap. 1.233, 346 sv Sardanapalus = Callisthenes FGrH
Ap. 1.236, 330 124 F 34 153
Ap. 1.237–50, 204 Bibl. 380–81 B 208
Ap. 1.237, 204, 321, 330–31 Pindar
Ap. 1.239, 208 O. 9.43–53 108
Ap. 1.243, 331 P. 2.16 377
Ap. 1.246, 337 Plato
Ap. 1.250, 99, 208 Timaeus 22a 109
Ap. 1.251–52, 204 Plutarch
Ap. 1.253, 213 Alex. 3.5 258
Ap. 1.287, 212, 303 Alex. 4.2 14
Ap. 2.132, 206 Alex. 8.2 5
BJ 4.485, 205 Alex. 16.2 78, 257
BJ 4.531, 205 Alex. 31.4 189
Letter of Aristeas Alex. 75.6 257
9 27 Alex. 76.9 = B. F 2 78, 257–58
10 27 Arat. 12.6 21
31 27 Arat. 15.3 20
Julius Africanus (Wallraff) Cam. 19.3 189
F 15.9 xi Dem. 17.2–18.1 14
F 34.14 xi Moralia 189d 27
F 73.10 89 Mor. 354c-d = Hec. Ab. F 4 177 n.241,
Longinus On the Sublime 327
9.9 370 n.39 Mor. 354c 326
Lucian Mor. 362a = M. T 3 viii, 162
Hist. Conscr. 55 196 Mor. 364c 182
Megasthenes FGrH 715 Mor. 371c 326–27
F 1a 292 Mor. 601f 601f = Demetrius
Oracula Sibyllina Phal. T 6a 26
3.827–28 144 Polybius
3.829 144 1.14.6 198
Pausanias 2.56.11–12 196, 197 n.10
1.6.1 7 4.70.3 296
1.13.9 = FGrH 154 Hieronymus of 4.70.6 296
Cardia F 15 7, 31 4.70.8 296
10.12.9 = B. T 7a xii, 241 4.70.10 296
Phanodemus FGrH 325 8.10.3 154
F 13 8 n.21, 73, 192 8.10.11 6
F 14 8 n.21, 73 12.11.1 = Timaeus T 10 101
F 27 8 n.21, 73 12.11.2 = Timaeus T 10 102
F 29 8 n.21, 73 12.11.3–4 102
Philochorus FGrH 324 30.25.1 16
F 91 378 Alexander Polyhistor FGrH 273
Philostratus FGrH 789 F 79 149
F 16 292 Posidonius FGrH 87
Index Locorum 451
F 66 75 Chron. 60 M 95 n.166, 178, 181–82

Scholia Chron. 61 M 86
Vetus Apoll. Rh. 4.276 103 Chron. 62 M + Sethe = M. F 2 110 and
Eur. Hec. 1 378 n.229, 170, 224
Hom. Il. 1.9 377 Chron. 63–64 M 287
Hom. Il. 6.4 380 Chron. 66 M 171, 175 n.232, 179 and
Hom. Il. 9.238 375 n.256, 313
Pindar P. 2.16 377 Chron. 78 M = M. F 2 108
Septuagint Chron. 80 M 106, 111 n.234, 332
Esther 10:31 xxii Chron. 81 M = M. F 3b 114
Stobaeus Chron. 82 M = M. F 2 99, 111, 172
3.1.173 Wachsmuth xxviii n.220
Strabo Chron. 83 M 106 n.213, 174 n.228, 341
8.6.15 186 Chron. 84 M 341
15.1.5–8 28 Chron. 88 M = B. F 5b 59
16.1.5 44 Chron. 245 M 81, 277 n.223
16.2.17 = Posidonius FGrH 87 F 66 75 Chron. 248–49 M = B. F 7d 272
17.1.8 20 Syriscus FGrH 807
Suda T 1 11–13
sv Dicaearchus = F 2 Mirhady vii-viii Tatian
n.3 Or. Graec. 36 = B. T 2 ix
sv Philo of Byblos = Philo T 1 129 Theagenes of Rhegium
sv Timaeus = Timaeus T 1 101 DK 8 A 1 233
Syncellus DK A 2 233
Chron. 14 M 143, 263 Theocritus
Chron. 17 M = M. T 11c x, xv 17.26–27 114
Chron. 18 M = M. T 11a + b 161, 309 17.95–97 19
Chron. 19 M = M. F 27 112 17.112–17 19
Chron. 28–30 M = B. F 1b 220 Theophrastus
Chron. 28–29 M 58, 201 HP 2.6.2 271
Chron. 28 M 58, 134, 143, 220, 263 HP 4.4.1 290
Chron. 29–30 M 227–28 Thucydides
Chron. 29 M 62, 73–74, 74–77, 144, 1.6.5–6 222
157, 222 nn.5 and 6, 224, 286, 347 1.22.2–3 190
Chron. 30 M 58, 112, 220, 1.22.3 13
229–30, 242, 246, 253–54, 259 1.23.6 197
Chron. 30–31 M 70, 138–39, 254, 260 1.104.1 34
Chron. 30–32 M = B. F 4 201 1.109.4 34
Chron. 31–32 M 262 2.2.1 100–101, 364
Chron. 31 M 70, 139, 144, 260 2.38.2 18
Chron. 32 M 147, 157, 229, 232, 253, 5.19.1 101
261, 286, 376 5.26.5 191
Chron. 39 M = Abydenus F 26 60 Timaeus FGrH 566
Chron. 40 M = B. F 3b 59–60, 64 T 1 101
Chron. 41 M xiii, 161 T 10 101, 102
Chron. 59 M 85, 176 n.240 F 60 102
452 Index Locorum
Xenophon Greek Documents

An. 1.2.7 290
An. 1.2.8 186 Inscriptions
An. 1.2.23 158 Chaniotis E 6 = BE 1979.271,
An. 1.5.1 136 SEG 28.534 9
An. 1.8.27 45 Chaniotis E 7 = IOSPE I 184, IOSPE I2
An. 6.2.2 186 344, Syriscus T 1 11–13
Hell. 3.1.10–15 312 Chronicle of Lindos
Hell. 5.2.7 157 A 7 184
Hieron 4.6–7 14 A 7–8 184
Hieron 11.7 14 A 8–9 185
Oec. 4.13 290 B 29–36 187
[Xenophon] B 62–68 73
Ath. Pol. 2.7 18 C 38–39 185
C 103–9 188–89
C 104–7 188
Latin Literary Texts C 108 187
D 33 128
Cicero CIL 8.1007 = M. T 5 ix n.9
Pro Archia 24 = FGrH 153 T 1 6 n.6 CRAI 1968 (Clearchus, Ai Khanum)
Tusc. 5.101 154 xxvii–xxviii, 29–30 n.111, 237,
Curtius Rufus 271 n.202
5.1.17–23 45 FD III.2.208 150
5.1.20 47 IDidyma
5.1.22 47 479 29
5.1.24 156, 286 480 29
5.1.35 289 IG 12.5 444 = FGrH 239 (Parian Marble)
5.1.45 45 A 3–4 257
Pliny A 4 117
NH 2.56 251 A 6–7 257
NH 6.49 = Demodamas T 2 28 A 9 117
NH 6.121 = B. F 21 242 A 39–40 257
NH 7.123 = B. T 6 xii, 241 B 4 118
Seneca the Younger B 5 118
De tran. an. 9.5 17 B 8 118
Nat. 3.29.1 = B. F 21 78, 242–46 B 23 118
Tacitus IPriene 37 8 n.18
Hist. 4.83.2 ix OGIS
Vitruvius 4.4–6 294
9.6.2 = B. T 5a 240 56.5–6 161 n.168
56.9 95 and n.168
56.73 309 n.28
90 xviii, 95
90.8 161 n.168
90.15 290
90.31 95
Index Locorum 453
219 280, 282, 283, 284 P. Rev. Laws 51.9 309

219.5–7 280 n.230 UPZ 1 ix n.9
219.8–9 283 n.248
219.10–11 282 n.245
219.14–15 284 Egyptian Documents
229.9 285
229.10–11 285 Bentresh Stela 126 n.11
Rhodes & Osborne Canopus Decree 167
46.3–5 284 Lines 5–6 161 n.168
SEG Line 9 95
28.534 9 Line 73 309 n.28
SIG3 Carnarvon Tablet 302
275 = Callisthenes T 23 100, 101 n.189 Coffin Spell 269 322–23
382 10 Contendings of Horus and Seth 177
390 18, 105 n.210 Doomed Prince 178
463.8 290 Famine Stela 126 n.11, 167–68
557.5 187 Gardiner 1938
1050.2–6 284 no. 1 166
1268 xxviii no. 15 165
no. 16 165
no. 27 166
Ostraca no. 170 (Synodal Decrees) 167
Instruction of King Amenemhat 175–76,
Wilcken (1897) = Mertens-Pack 2588.4 306, 338
xxviii, xxix Papyrus Jumilhac 323
16.22 327
Papyrus Salt 825
Papyri VII.5 168
P. Petese Tebt. C
Oracle of the Potter xxi, xxii, 318, Fragment 2 178 n.252
336–37, 338 P. Petese II
P2 54–55 338 col. 2.3ff. 339 n.122
P. Cair. Zen. 33.3 290 P. Vienna D. 10,000 (Oracle of the Lamb
P. Eleph. 1.1 274 of Bocchoris) 115, 172–75, 303, 318,
P. Gron. Inv. 66.11 19 341
P. Hibeh I 72.4ff = M. T 4 ix n.9 Prophecy of Neferty 199, 306, 329–30,
P. Lips. Inv. 590 + 1228, 1229, 335, 342, 346
1231, 1232 115, 118 n.258, 175 Raphia Decree 161 n.168, 167
P. Oxy. 886 132 Rosetta Stone (Rosettana) xviii, xix n.38,
P. Oxy. 1381 110 95, 161, 290, 294 n.283
P. Oxy. 1381.15–17 128 Satrap Stela 24, 35 and nn. 135 and 142,
P. Oxy. 1826, 2466, 3319 314 181, 274, 326
P. Oxy. 3011 337–38 Shooting of the Hippopotamus 177
P. Oxy. 4099 xxviii n.72 Stelae of Kamose 301–2
P. Oxy. 5202 202 n.26 Stela Kawa V 168 n.204
P. Rev. Laws 33.11 290 Testament of Petosiris 39–41
454 Index Locorum
Testament of Somtutefnakht 37–39 1.207 no.322 B Obv. 8 75, 257–58

Testament of Udjahorresne 36–37, 166, 1.305 no.273 Rev. 29–33 248
326 n.83 1.347 no.273 Rev. 38 48
2.333 no.187 Rev. 11 293
2.471 no.168 A Obv. 14–15 16
Near Eastern Documents Sennacherib Prism 268, 341 n.125
Sm 669 Rev. 15–16 223
Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles UCBC 9–1819 64
(Grayson) Verse Account 43 n.177, 297
Chronicle 1.iii.34–38 152, 268 W 20030.7 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 79, 80
Chronicle 1.iv.41–43 44 Wâdi-Brîsa (Weissbach)
Chronicle 5 Obv. 1–14 278–80 col. 6.46ff. 286
Chronicle 5 Rev. 12–13 279–80 WB 62 64
Chronicle 7.iii.12–15 43 YOS 1.52 67
Chronicle 10 Obv. 3–4 282
Chronicle 10 Rev. 26–29 48 n.202 ANET3 page
Bit Miseri 66 n.1 60 75
BM 47176 43 n.177, 297 n.290 61 228, 231, 254–55
BM 91000 = BBst 36 141–42 62 228
BM 103000 149–50, 151 67 225, 243
Cyrus Cylinder 43–44 68 138, 225, 230, 239, 243
DB (Behistun Ins.) 101 77
11 44 114 77
16 44 265 64
49 44 272 65
Dynastic Prophecy 48 n.202, 49–51, 287–88 268, 341 n.125
299–300 307 278
col. ii.19–21 19–21, 300 312–15 43 n.177, 297
Enuma Anu Enlil 223 315–16 43 n.177, 297, 315–16
Enuma Elish 331 50, 226 n.25
Tablet 1.3–4 228 334 43 n.176
Tablet 1.5 231 444–46 329
Tablet 1.21–27 254–55 501 243
Tablet 1.132–45 228 502 229
Tablet 4.100–103 225
Tablet 5.1–10 243
Tablet 5.11–34 243 Bible
Tablet 5.74–75 229
Tablet 6.33–37 239 Gen. 1:3–9 370 n.39
Tablet 6.57 225 Gen. 5 65–66
K 2248 Gen. 6–8 255
Obv. 1–4 243 Gen. 7:11 77
Obv. 6–9 223 Gen. 12–50 360
K 4364 146 Gen. 13:18 205
K 9717 + 81–7-27, 71 Rev. 223 Gen. 16:6 369
Sachs & Hunger Gen. 21:5 369
Index Locorum 455
Gen. 25:1–4 378 Ex. 12:40 368, 369

Gen. 25:1 378 Ex. 13:18 380
Gen. 25:26 369 Ex. 17:8ff. 380
Gen. 25:30 369 2 Kings 13:19 322
Gen. 27:41–28:22 366 2 Kings 19:35 269
Gen. 30:14–23 370 2 Kings 19:37 268 n.190
Gen. 30:14 371 2 Kings 22:8ff. 124
Gen. 32:25 372 2 Kings 22:15 124
Gen. 32:28 372 1 Chron. 1:32 378
Gen. 32:32 373 2 Chron. 32:21 269
Gen. 41:45 373 Isaiah 41:2–4 43
Gen. 46:31–34 325 Isaiah 45:1–3 43
Gen. 46:34 374, 375 Daniel 2:31–45 299 and n.296
Gen. 47:1–6 325 Daniel 7:1–14 299 and n.296
Ex. 2:16 377–78 Extra Biblical
Ex. 2:18 377–78 Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen) 358
Ex. 3:1 377–78 Jubilees 27:19–27 367
Ex. 6:14–25 368
General Index
Aba-enlil-dari (Akkad. name of Ahiqar), Aegyptiaca of Hecataeus of Abdera: date

79 of, 23–24; as title, 24
Abdera, 23 Aegyptiaca of Manetho: appears at approx.
Abraham, 59, 205, 241, 366, 368, 369, same time as B’s Babyloniaca, xv, xxiv,
378, 379, 384 349; date of vii, 3, 99, 179; purpose of
abridging of narrative, 267, 272, 367 n.31. xiii, xvi–xix, xix–xxiii, xxiii–xxvii, xxix–
See also telescoping xxxii, 3–4, 88, 93–94, 96–97, 114–15,
Abydenus, x, 60–61, 62, 63, 138, 148–49, 165, 172, 181, 217–19, 326, 328, 338,
155, 251, 268, 271–72 342, 343–47, 351–53, 382–85; as title vii,
Abydos (Egypt), 163, 164–65. See also xiii; proem to (?) 315
Table of Abydos Aegyptus (legendary figure), 114, 211
Achaemenid Empire/Achaemenids, Aelian, 14, 27
xxxiii, 32, 33, 42, 44–47, 51, 68, 72, Aemilius Paullus, 16
250, 266, 273, 282, 297–99, 314, 348, Africa, sub-Saharan: history of, 216 n. 70,
351. See also Persian rule 216–17
Achthoes (Egyptian king): killed by Agathocles (king of Syracuse), 103
crocodile, 177 Agesilaus (king of Sparta), 157
Adad, 223 Ahiqar (international sage), 79
Adam, 144, 358, 368, 386 Ahwere (wife of Naneferkaptah, hero of
Adapa (name and title of Oannes) 62 n. Setna I), 126
25, 67, 68, 69, 77, 223, 243 Aiaru (Bab. month), 67, 78, 257
adaptation, xxix, 97, 132, 164, 179, 299, Ai Khanum, xxvii–xxix, 29 n. 111, 271
312, 314, 333, 336, 339, 344, 345, 350, n. 202
351, 359, 374, 386 Akencheres/Akencheris (Eg. queen), 211
Adonis: assimilated to Osiris, 324 Akises (king of Babylon), 267
Adremelus (s. of Sennacherib and his as- Akitu (festival). See New Year’s Festival,
sassin), 268. See also Ardumuzan Babylon
advocacy, regional (local), xiv, xxiv, xxvi, Akkad, 141, 278–79
xxxiv, xxxv, 3, 8, 12, 30, 33, 37, 41, 123, Akkadian xviii, 16, 65, 68, 69, 75, 77, 79–
183–92, 200, 293, 367 80, 135, 147, 150, 236, 260; translation
advocate: priest-historian as, xiv, xxvi, of Greek words into, 16
xxxvi, xxxv, 33, 37, 41, 200, 387 Akmim, 163
adyton (inner area of temple), 130–31, Alaparos (legendary king of Pautibiblon),
132, 161, 162 n.175 59, 64, 66
457
458 Index
Alexander I of Macedon, 109 n.228 Altaqu (Eltekeh), battle of, 268

Alexander III of Macedon (the “Great”) Alterity, xxi, xxii, 90, 118, 120. See also
ix, xxiii, 3, 4–6, 14, 15, 25, 28, 32, 33, foreign, other
35, 38, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49–51, 73, 78, 82, Aly, W., 308
86, 114, 118, 152, 187, 188–89, 266, Amarna, 163; letters, 98; period, 98
273, 278, 298, 308, 314, 318, 334, 349; Amasis, 36, 108, 112, 166, 187n304; and
his capture of Babylon, 51; desire to be temple to Athena at Lindos, 187 n.304
Arabs’ third god, 5; gifts of boukephala, Amel-Marduk (Bab. usurper) 295, 296
to Athena Lindia, 187–89; inheritor of Amelon (legendary king of Pautibiblon),
Achaemenid/Persian governing policy, 59, 60, 64, 66
32–33, 298; as last of Achaemenids, 33, Amempsinos (legendary king of Laran-
33 n. 123, 42; last days of and death, 3, chon), 60, 61, 63, 64, 67
247, 249 n.127, 257–58, 294; as “new Amenemhat I, 175–76, 306, 329, 338
Nectanebo,” 318; son of Nectanebo Amenemhat II, 176
II, 334; as “new Sesonchosis” and Amenhotep III, 98
kosmokrator (world conqueror), 314; Amenophis III, 99 n.179, 111
his reception at Babylon, 47 Amenophis (the king in Hyksos II), xi,
Alexander IV, ix n.10, 35, 48, 294 xii, 211, 330–34, 335, 336, 337–38,
Alexander Polyhistor, Cornelius, x, 58, 339, 341, 342, 346; labeled “intrusive”
59–60, 61, 63, 80–82, 134, 139, 148–49, (interpolated) by Josephus, xi, 331
153, 155, 210, 220, 221, 228, 232, 253, Amenophis (the seer in Hyksos II, s. of
264, 266–67, 268, 271–72, 321, 361–62, Paapis), xi, 329, 330–34, 335, 336, 339,
365, 374, 379, 380, 382 340, 342, 346
Alexander Romance, 15, 38 n.153, 258 Amenotes (alt. name for Imhotep/Amen-
n.107, 314, 318, 334–35, 337, 338 hotep), xxviii
Alexandria (Egypt), viii, 17, 18, 20, 22, Amensis. See Hatshepsut
26, 27, 104, 105, 234, 314, 357, 360, Ameny (alt. name for Amenophis), 329
364, 375, 383; foundation of, 314; American South: after the Civil War, xxv
Library of, 17, 18–19, 26–27, 104, 105, Amessis, Egyptian king, 211
234; Museum of, 17, 18, 19, 104; as Amillaros (= Amelon), leg. Bab. king, 60
new Athens, 18–19, 22; significant por- Ammanemes. See Amenemhat I, II
tion of, made up of palaces, 20 Ammenon (leg. Chaldaean king), 59, 62,
Alexandria Eschate (“Furthest Alexan- 64, 66
dria”), 28 nn.105–6 Ammounean characters: in Philo of
Alexandria (in Scythia), 28 Byblos, 130, 131n.33, 155
Alexandrias, list of, 15 Amphiaraus, xxiv n.55
Alkandra (noble woman from Odyssey), Amphipolis/Amphipolitans, 9–11, 13
xxx, xxxi, 106–7 Amun, 112; meaning of name explained,
allegory/allegoria/allegorical(ly)/allego- 326–28
resis, xxx, xxxi, 130, 220, 227–32, 233– Amusis (pharaoh according to Apion),
36, 237, 255, 259, 359; as “concession” 109
to Greek readers of Berossus, 231, 234 Amyntas (bematist), 154, 155 n.147
Allen, J. P., 117 n.252, 165 Amyrtaeus (first pharaoh after first Per-
Aloros (first Babylonian king), 59, 60, 61, sian occupation), 35
64, 66, 71, 76, 221 anagraphai/anagraphein, 56, 208, 212,
Alt, A., 56, 384 213, 253–54, 259, 303
Index 459
Anahita, cult of: at Babylon, 46, 348 anti-Semitism: date of start of, 207–10
ancestral corpse, world as, 230 Antum (god at Uruk) 67
Anchiale (city in Cilicia), 149, 152, 153, Anu (god at Uruk), 67, 68, 231, 236
154. See also Illubru Anu-belsunu (scribe of W 20030.7 and
Andean(s), 386–87 kalu-priest of Uruk), 67–70, 79–80;
andrias (statue of human) vs. agalma compared with Berossus, 80; family of
(statue of a god), 44 Hellenized, 79–80
Andros, 10 Anubis, 94
Androtion, xxiv n.55 Annunaki (Mesopotamian pantheon), 77
Anementos (leg. Bab. sage), 60, 62 n.27 Anu-uballit Kephalon, 68, 79–80
annal(s)/annalistic, 94, 95, 96, 165 n.195, Anu-uballit Nicarchus, 67–68, 79–80
168 n.204, 199, 212, 254, 277, 301 Anysis (Eg. king in Hdt.), 335, 339–40
Annedotos (title of Bab. sages), 59, 60, 62, Aos (= Ea), 236
62 n.25, 64, 66 Apame (first Seleucid queen), 29
Annius of Viterbo, xv n.28, 264 n.181, Apamea, 280
386 Apason (= Apsu), 236
Anodaphos (last leg. Bab. sage), 60, 61 Apion, 109, 202, 202 n.26, 206, 384;
Anos (=Anu), 236 blinded for error, 206
anthropomorphism and gods, xxx, 234 Apis (bull), ix n.9, 37, 95, 178, 181–82,
antediluvian (pre-Flood) cities, 65, 147, 333; alleged wounding of by Cambyses,
261 37; cult supported by Ptolemies, 95;
antediluvian kings, 57, 60–61, 63, 64, 66, Running-of-Apis, 95, 178, 182
71, 147 apkallu (Mesopotamian sage and advisor
antiquarian(ism), 65, 75, 87, 120, 126, figure), xxix, xxx, 65–69, 71, 72, 75,
127, 129, 140, 147, 187, 278 259, 264, 347
Antigonid wars in Babylonia, xvi, 48–49, apocalyptic(ism), 129, 129 n.23, 218, 226,
50, 51, 82, 266 246, 300, 307, 343, 353. See also proto-
Antigonus Gonatas, 20, 31 n.119 apocalyptic; Smith, J. Z.
Antigonus Monophthalmus, 14, 16 n.49, Apollo, 186, 226, 377; of Didyma, 28,
31, 31 n.117, 31 n.119, 48–50, 51, 82, 29–30; and Eg. Horus, 111n232, 112;
308 at Magnesia, 45n190; at Sicyon, 141;
Antioch-in-Pieria (on the Orontes, near Zoster, 284
Daphne), 280 Apollodorus of Athens, 59, 60–64, 69, 71
Antioch-on the-Cydnus, 150, 151. See Apollonius of Rhodes, 103, 105, 378, 380
also Tarsus Appearances/Epiphanies of the Maiden:
Antiochus I, ix, xix, 28–29, 48, 59, work by Syriscus, 11–13, 191
150–51, 152, 281, 283, 284, 291; and Appian, 7
Seleucus, 48, 281, 291 apples, 134; love-apples, 371; of man-
Antiochus II, 151, 285 drakes, 370, 371, 372
Antiochus III, 281 n.230, 293; takes up Apries (pharaoh), 166
relic of Nebuchadnezzar II, 293 Apsu, 75, 228, 231, 236
Antiochus IV, 16, 18 n.58, 67, 294 n.284 Arab(ian)/Arabia, 4–5, 80, 134–36, 207,
Antipater Chaldaeus (possible follower of 269–70, 272, 273, 297
Berossus), 246, 246 n.116 Arakha (region in Mesopotamia), 44
antipiptein (Gk. “tell against, conflict Aramaic, histories in: non-existent, xvii,
with”) in scholia, 379 348
460 Index
Aramaean(s), 79 Artemis Tauropolos: at Amphipolis, 9,

Aratus (of Sicyon), 20–21, 31 10, 11
Arbela, 45, 150 Aruna (site of war council of Thutmose
archaeological interests: in ancient Meso- III), 305
potamia, 75, 140–41, 142, 143, 278 Asclepius, xiii, xxviii, 110, 128, 186
archaism/archaizing, xviii, xxvi, 65, 71, Asenath (d. of Potiphera), 373, 375
87, 120, 127, 129, 142, 147, 278, 383 Asher (s. of Jacob), 368
archival research, historiography and, 9, Asheri, D., 98, 157
10, 11, 13, 140, 214, 302, 386 Ashurbanipal, 150, 222, 243
archive(s), 72, 170, 171, 214, 386. See also Asher-nadin-shumi, 267
“House of Books”; “House of Life”; Asia (Minor), xxiii, 5, 15, 18, 25, 38, 89,
Lindian Chronicle/Chronicle of Lindos 115, 150, 157, 179, 188, 189, 197, 269,
archon, Athenian: dating by, 100–101, 281, 284, 294, 295, 297, 298, 314
117, 189, 192, 364; Record of (Athe- “Asia, King of,” 33 n.123, 189 n.311, 294
nian) Archons by Demetrius of Pha- “Asia’s Ruler” (Eg. title), 38
lerum, 25, 104 Asiatic (person, viewed from Eg. perspec-
arc(s): of causation, 197, 217, 311; of nar- tive), 168, 329; ruling house, 8
rative xxvi–xxvii, 197, 338 Asmakh (“Deserters”): in Hdt., 327–28
Ardumuzan (s. of Sennacherib and his Asordanios (s. of Sennacherib), 267
assassin), 268. See also Adremelus assimilation, xxix, 208, 209
area studies, imperial, xiv, xvi, 21–22, 218 Assmann, J., xxvi, xxvi n.65, 163, 318,
Argos, House of/Argead House, 16, 109, 323–24, 349, 351, 352
114, 211–12. See also Hera Assyria(ns), 49, 50, 82, 88, 125, 130,
Aristarchus, 234, 375 150–55, 208, 211, 230, 231, 266–70,
Aristobulus, 6, 153 272, 276, 277, 278, 282, 289, 291, 293,
Aristophanes: Birds, 156, 286; Danaids, 299, 309, 319, 320, 343; script/letters,
327 152, 155
Aristotle, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, 6, 27, 100, astrology/astrologer: Mesopotamian, 166,
104, 156, 196, 232–33, 235, 237, 238, 240–41, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 250,
287–88, 312, 376–77, 385; and allegory, 257; Berossus as xiii, 241, 246, 252; and
232, 233–34; on history and poetry, Egypt, 166, 246
196; his Homeric Questions, 23; on astronomical diaries, Babylonian, 16, 48,
peripeteia, 312 135, 247–49, 250, 273, 277, 292–93;
ark (of Flood story) 139, 220, 259, 260, begin under Nabû-nasir, 277; those
262, 263, 265 contemporary with Berossus, 247–48;
Armenia(n), 155 n.146; resting place of strong local focus of, 247–48
the ark (Berossus) 139, 262 astronomical lore: attributed to Berossus
Arrian, 5, 6, 44, 45, 47, 152–53, 189, 258 xii, 240–53, 347
Arses (late Achaemenid king), 49 astronomical narrative: in Berossus,
Artapanus, 362, 367, 384 240–53, 347; fragments of, reasons to
Artaxerxes II, 45, 46, 251 n.138 doubt, 241
Artaxerxes III Ochus, 35, 38–39, 319, 337 astronomical observation: at Babylon,
Artemis, ix n.9, 8, 9, 10, 11, 157, 192; of recording of, 16, 48, 72, 82, 132, 135,
Ephesus, 157, 258 240–53, 273, 277, 292–93; begins with
Artemis Leukophryene: at Magnesia, 8, Nabû-nasir, 82, 277; Egyptian, 170, 246
186; festival 11, 186 Astyages, 272
Index 461
Athena, 148; of Lindos, 23, 73, 107, 128, 157, 261–63, 286, 376; re-founded, by
141, 183–92, 196, 197; peplos of, at Flood survivors, 147, 157, 261, 262,
Athens, 22 263, 286, 376; re-founded, virtually, by
Athenaeus, 14, 16, 17, 46, 154 Nebuchadnezzar II, 293; walls of, 138,
Athens/Athenians, xii, xxiv, 5, 8, 17, 156–60, 275, 278, 285–86, 295, 296
18–19, 22, 25, 26, 34, 45, 59, 73, 100– “Babylon” (district of Nineveh), 288
101, 104, 108, 117–18, 148, 189, 191, Babylon/Babylonia, Persian rule of, xvii,
192, 197, 241, 257, 301, 364; becomes 42, 43, 44, 46, 50–51, 82, 266, 278,
equivalent to “Greece,” 118, 189; 298
destruction of, and sack of Acropolis, Babylonia: fecundity of, 134–35, 263
5, 100, 364; mother city of Troy and n.179; location of, in Berossus, 74, 136,
Hyperboreans, 73; set up statue of 147, 221, 222; location of, in Greek his-
Berossus, xii, 241 toriography, 135–36; political history
Athothis (pharaoh), 178 of, from Persian Conquest to Seleucus
Atrahasis (Flood hero), 65, 146, 256 I, 42–51
n.154; Atrahasis, 77, 146, 254, 255, 256 Babyloniaca (title of Berossus’ history
Atthidography/Attidographer, Atthis, xiv, [alt. possibly “Chaldaïca”]), vii, xii,
8, 9, 73, 191, 192, 378 241, 253, 269, 291; appears at approx.
Attic (dialect), 202 same time as Manetho’s Aegyptiaca,
Attica, xxiv, 192; site of rape of Perse- xv, xxiv, 349; and astronomy/astrology,
phone and sacrifice of Iphigenia, 8 240–53, 347; centered on Babylon, 117,
n.21, 73, 192 136, 138, 148–60; date of, vii, 3, 280; In
authentication, xvii, xxi, 75, 90, 123–33, Procreatione, Latin title, 242; proem to
133–34, 138, 139, 140, 145, 146, 148, (?), 134, 145; purpose of xvi–xix, xix–
187, 188, 235 xxiii, xxiii–xxvii, xxix–xxxii, 3–4, 70,
authority, shift of: from king to priest, 139, 172, 217–19, 249, 259–64, 351–53,
129, 218; from king to priest at Baby- 382–85; record of kings separate from
lon, 72, 223–24, 226–27, 240; from Creation account, 76; textual economy
king to priest in Egypt, 34, 40, 41, 169, of, 72, 76, 80–82, 264, 266, 276–77
330–31, 336, 342–43 Babylonian Chronicle Series, 44, 82, 151–
autonomy, local, xvi, xxv, 181, 299 52, 155, 247, 249, 251, 268–69, 276,
autopsy, 10, 13, 24, 169, 190, 205 277, 278, 281, 282, 297; begins under
Avaris (capital of Hyksos), 320–21, 332– Nabû-nasir, 82, 251, 277; for a local au-
33, 343, 376 dience, 277. See also under individual
Axerdis (Esarhaddon), 268, 271 chronicles
axiologos (“noteworthy”): as historio- Babylonian Genesis. See Creation/Gen-
graphic term, 275, 285–87 esis, Babylonian
backdating, 60, 61
Babylon: capture of, by Alexander, 49; back projection (of present into past),
capture of, by Cyrus, 42, 156, 158, 159, xxvi, 8, 23, 28–29, 73–74, 88, 107–8,
265, 288, 296; capture of, by Sen- 120, 128–29, 140–48, 152, 159–60,
nacherib, 80, 160, 276; enormous size 183–92, 276–77, 280–85, 307, 308–9,
of, in Greek authors, 287–88; Hang- 326, 328, 345–47, 386–87
ing Gardens of, 275, 285, 288–90; “back-turners” (Eg. term of abuse),
Hanging Gardens possibly at Nineveh, 175–76
288; not a pre-Flood city, 65, 73, 147, Bactria, xxvii–xxix, 29, 30, 248
462 Index
Bagophanes (guardian of citadel at Baby- father of Hebrew sibyl, xii, 241; on the
lon), 47 Flood, 253–64; innovative, xiii, 65,
Baines, J., xxiii n.50, 34, 93–94, 166, 198– 139–40, 146, 200, 249, 250, 252–53,
99, 200, 305 255–56, 260, 300, 348, 358; innovative
Bakenrenef. See Bocchoris with king list, 65–66, 83–84; and king
Bakhtin, M., 46 lists, 58–84; life of, vii, ix, ix n.10; and
Bakker, E., 198, 287 n.261 Neo-Babylonian period, his ideal past,
Barclay, J., 203 n.29, 207 n.39, 212–13, 276–78; and Ps. Berossus of Cos, xii,
273 n.208, 325 240–41, 277 n.221; subtly pro-Persian
Bardiya (brother of Cambyses), 44. See (?), 298–99; view of regime change,
also Smerdis 298–300
Bartholemew (apostle to the Andes), 386 Bertrand, J.-M., xxiii, 10
basileia (kingship) vs. arche (imperial Betegh, G., 234 n.56, 237
rule): and Cyrus, 294 Beth-el (Jacob’s consecration of), 366
Bebon (title of Seth/Typhon): explained “Beyond-the-River,” 45
by Manetho, 326–27 Bible/Hebrew Bible, 65, 84, 205, 298
Beckerath, J. von, 99, 106 n.214 n.291, 351, 357–85; quoted by Longi-
beer: texts dissolved in and then con- nus, 370 n.39; rewritten, 357, 357 n.1,
sumed, 126 358, 361, 383
“beginnings, middles, and ends” of texts Bickerman, E. (also Bikerman), xxii–
(Bab. formulation), 70, 138, 139–40, xxiii, 364
140 n.68, 144, 148, 254, 260 Bietak, M., 98, 320 n.62
Bel, Bel-Marduk, vii, ix, 42, 43, 44, 47, 50, Bilhah (concubine of Jacob), 370
112, 138, 156, 158–59, 227–28, 229–31, bilingual(s)/bilingualism, xx, xxi–xxii,
236, 238–39, 242–44, 246–47, 254, 259, 65, 147, 223, 360 n.9. See also Zweis-
274–75, 279; Belus, 284–85, 286, 306; prachigkeit
self-decapitation of (?), 230, 231, 238, Bingen, J., xviii, xxvi, 40 n.160, 41, 41
259 n.165
Bel-ibni (governor appointed by Sen- Bisitun (Behistun) Inscription of Darius
nacherib), 267 I, 44, 89
Belibos, usurper king of Babylon, 267 Bit Miseri, 66 n.1
Bel-re’u-shunu (Akkad. name of Beros- Bit Res (main temple at Uruk), 67, 68
sus), vii Black Sea, viii, 11, 186 n.299
Bel-shimanni (revolt leader), 44 BM, 47176 43 n.177
bematist, 154 BM, 91000 = BBSt, 36 141–42
Benjamin (s. of Jacob), 368, 376; tribe of, BM, 103000, 149–50, 151
362 Bocchoris (Bakenrenef) 115, 172–75,
Bentresh Stela, 126 n.11 303, 341; early celebrity of among
Berenice I (Ptolemaic queen), 26 Greeks, 174–75. See also Lamb of Boc-
Berenice II, 95 n.168 choris; Oracle/Prophecy of the Lamb
Berossus; and Anu-belsunu compared, body, divine: as homology for world, 230,
69–71; a Babylonian author (not 231. See also Osiris; Osiris: Osiris-
simply a Mesopotamian one), 151–52, beds/corn-Osiris; Egypt: root of;
276; challenging primacy of Egypt, Tiamat
270–71; and Chronicle 5, divergences Boeckh, A., xi, 202
from, 279–80; on Creation, 220–53; Boiy, T., 48 n.201, 80 n.105
Index 463
Bonaparte, Napoleon, xxv Callisthenes, 5–6, 100, 153

book(s): as symbol(s) or indices of cul- Callixeinus, 17–18, 22
ture, 17, 19, 27, 123–33, 142, 160–82, Calycadnus (river), 150
187 n.301 Cambyses, 34, 36–37, 43 nn.176–77, 44,
Book of Fayum, 170 50, 88, 166, 267 n.188, 294, 312, 314,
Book of Nut, 170 326, 342
Book of Sothis (ps. Work of Manetho), Cambyses Romance, 37
xiii Canaan(ite), 125, 268, 367–69
Book of Thoth, 125 n.10, 126, 126 n.14, Candaules/Myrsilus, 100, 312
127, 170 canon/canonization/canonicity, xxviii,
Borsippa, 239, 295 57, 71, 93, 102, 145, 188, 224, 257, 350;
Bosporus, 11–12 incorrect term for Turin List, xii n.20,
Bosworth, A. B., 153, 281 n.237 87, 93
boukephala (ox-heads, Alexander’s gift): Canopus Decree, 95, 161 n.168, 167, 309
to Athena Lindia, 187–89 n.28
boundary, xxvi, 28, 77 captive-shepherd(s) 206. See also
Braudel, F., 195 Hyksos
Braun, M., 206 n.36, 331, 333–36, 341 Carchemish: battle of, 265, 273, 278–83,
Brauron, 192 320
brick: of Babylon’s walls, 156–57, 159–60, Caria(n), 100, 281
275, 286, 295 Carmania (location of Nabonidus’ exile),
Brinkman, J. A., 65 n.44, 81 n.110, 151 295, 297
n.124, 250 n.130, 251 n.134, 266 Carnarvon Tablet, 302
Brown, D., and M. Linssen, 250, 250 carrier(s), priest and scribe as: culture,
n.133 xviii, xxvi, xxxiv, xxxv, 33, 37, 41, 88,
Brunt, P., 5 n.4, 153, 189 n.313, 204, 247; 133, 143, 163, 165, 188, 200, 223, 263,
his dicta on ancient quotation, 204 318, 386–87
Bubastis, 340 Carthage ix n.9, 102
burial: of antediluvian knowledge, 65, 70, Catalogue of Texts and Authors (from the
139–48, 261, 262 n.177 library of Ashurbanipal), 223, 243
Burkert, W., xxxii n.80, 104, 122 Catalogue of Women (Hesiodic), 108
Burstein, S., 82, 93 n.153, 146, 148 n.110, Cerberus, 186
148–49, 233 n.51, 243, 244, 277 Chaeremon (Eg. historian), 384
Byzantium/Byzantines: confusion with Chaldaean(s), viii, ix, xii, 47, 58, 59,
Bushshua, 271, 271 n.199 60, 64, 80, 81, 82, 83, 112, 155 n.146,
210 n.55, 220, 227, 236, 240, 241,
Cain: transcribes antediluvian knowl- 253, 264, 272, 273, 274, 276, 277, 283,
edge, 144 292, 360 n.7; Chaldaean script, 149,
calendar(s): Assyrian, 231; Athenian, 155
189; Babylonian, 78, 257; Christian, 55; chaos, 218; Babylon(ia) and, 48, 234;
Greek, 257; Hebrew, 55; Islamic, 55; Egypt and, 88, 174, 307, 317. See also
Macedonian, 77, 78, 244; Seleucid, 78, Chaosbeschreibung; Hyksos; Seth;
256, 257, 363 Tiamat
Callias (of Sphettus, Athenian aristocrat), Chaosbeschreibung (Eg. tradition of), 303,
22–23, 26, 30 335 n.106, 343
Callimachus, xxix, 105 n.208 Chebron (Eg. king), 211
464 Index
Cheops/Khufu (pyramid building pha- Civil, M., 57 n.8

raoh): Hdt. on, 287, 287 n.260; Mane- Civil War, American, xxv
tho corrects Hdt. on name of Souphis, civilization, arts of, xxvii, 58, 61, 71, 71
86, 91, 92, 113, 287 n.75, 74, 76, 222, 224
Chersonesos (on the Black Sea), 11–13 clapping of hands: gesture misunderstood
“chief lector priest,” 167, 168 n.203 by Greeks as on Sardnapalus monu-
“chief of the army” (Babylonian title of ment, 152, 153, 154
Antigonus), 48 Clarke, K., xxiii n.51, 56 n.2, 75 n.88, 101
Chiron (man-animal educator): Oannes n.191, 190
contrasted with, xxi n.44, 234 Clarysse, W., xix n.40, 170 n.213, 180
Choerilus of Iasus, 154 n.260, 181, 309 n.28, 310 nn.31–32
Chomasbelos (second postdiluvian king), Clearchus, xxvii–xxix, 29–30 n.111, 237,
80 271
chora (territory of a polis, xvi, xxiii, xxiv, Cleidemus, xxiv n.55
7, 8, 12, 30, 33, 123, 128, 190, 191 Cleitarchus, xvi, 47, 156–57, 283, 286,
chrematismoi (memoranda): in the Lin- 289, 290
dian Chronicle, 184, 187, 188 Cleomenes of Naucratis, 35, 274 n.211
chronicle(s) xii, xxiv n.56, 6, 10, 12, 23, Clio (muse of history), 11
31, 56, 73, 76, 87, 93 n.155, 95, 96, 97, Codex Alexandrinus (LXX), 372 n.47,
99, 107, 117, 118, 172, 174–75, 176–77, 377
178, 186–87, 190, 199, 217, 247, 251, Codex Vaticanus (LXX), 327 n.47, 377–
254, 277, 278, 313, 385; chronicle no- 78
tice, 95, 96, 172, 174–75, 178. See also Coele Syria (“Hollow Syria”), 271, 273,
individual named chronicles 280, 281–82, 291; anachronism in
Chronicle 1, 44, 149, 152, 199, 268 Berossus, 271, 281–82
Chronicle 5, 278–80 Coffin Spells (Eg.), 322–23
Chronicle 12, 281 collaborator, priest as, xiv, xvi, xxxiv,
Chronicle 13, 199 xxxv, 34, 37, 218, 382
Chronicle of the Diadochoi (Chronicle colonialism, xiv, xvi, 111, 195–96, 215–
10), 47, 48, 49, 282 18, 350. See also counter discourse;
chronikai pragmateutheisai: Attidogra- writing-back
phers write, 191 colophon(s) (formal closure of texts),
chronographic armature: of Manetho, x, xxii, 44, 67, 69, 110, 145, 173, 338
xi, xii, 56, 210–12, 215, 217, 307, 315 Comaroff, J., and J. Comaroff, 195 n.4
chronology, resumption of: with Nabû- combat, divine: and allegory, xxx, 231–
nasir, 80–82, 251 32, 233; Babylonian, 227–40, 242,
Churchill, W., xxv 259, 306; Egyptian, 177, 317, 338, 346;
Cicero, 6, 154 Greek, xxx, 231–32, 233. See Contend-
Cilicia, 153; Sennacherib’s campaign ings of Horus and Seth; Enuma Elish
against, 148–50, 152, 154–55, 158 communication, importance of: in Hel-
n.159, 160, 201, 267, 268 lenistic courts, 13–21, 27
Cimon (Athenian general), 8 n.20, 157 compensation: for unimportance/loss of
Cineas (hero of Ai Khanum), xxvii–xxix power, 17, 73, 192
Cinyras: in Pindar, 377 compilation (not writing) of history, 11,
city foundation(s), 15, 48, 61, 65, 81, 102, 23, 57, 67, 70, 79, 84, 94, 105, 117, 163,
136, 138, 152, 293, 321, 343 187, 248
Index 465
comprehensive view of past: and Beros- 1 (Poimandres), 238; Treatise, 16, xxii.
sus, 4, 61, 71, 77, 252–53, 351–52; and See also Hermes Trismegistos
Manetho (esp. in connection with king correction of Greek accounts: by Beros-
list), 4, 93–94, 96–97, 165, 181, 346–47, sus, 81, 154, 156, 214, 237, 269–70,
351–52 286, 288, 290, 293, 320, 351; by Jose-
compromised, later rule seen as, xxvi– phus, 269–70; by Manetho, 86, 90–93,
xxvii, 72, 129 103, 113, 115, 287, 327, 350, 351
concession to Greek readers, 231, 234 Corupedion, battle of, 281
conduit/channel of information, x, 7, 13, cosmic order/power, xxvii, 61, 69, 117,
21, 23, 24, 30, 31, 37, 156, 201, 327 127, 138, 163–64, 201, 221–22, 226,
Conflagration, of the world: possible 231, 235, 245, 247, 306, 318, 344, 345.
Berossan doctrine, 78, 242, 244–45 See also en-me/me; Ma’at
confrontation of sources, xxiii, 10, 71, 80, cosmogony/cosmogonic, 226; Baby-
83, 171–72, 184, 197, 210, 212, 215, lonian, xxx, 133, 220, 221, 227–40;
303, 344, 348 Babylonian as cratogony (origin of
Connerton, P., 195 n.4 authority) 226; Egyptian Heliopolite,
constellation(s) 248; of Cancer, 242, 245; 162, 174, 180; Egyptian Hermopolite,
of Capricorn, 242, 245 180; Egyptian Memphite, 180; Greek,
contact linguistics, xx, xx n.42 130, 131, 226, 234; Phoenician, 130,
Contendings of Horus and Seth, 177 131, 133. See also Creation/Genesis,
contest: for primacy, xxv, xxix, 15, 225, story of
226, 270–71 cosmos, 126, 164, 221, 228, 230, 235, 237,
contingency: of royal rule, 37, 41, 50, 238, 242, 245, 246, 249 n.126
226 counter discourse, 350
continuity, cultural/political, xxvi–xxvii, cratogony (origin of kingly power), and
42, 56, 93, 101, 199, 341, 387 cosmogony, 226; Babylonian, 225–27;
contrary to expectation of invasion of Greek, 226; Egyptian, 162
Egypt, 317 Creation/Genesis, story of: Babylonian,
contradiction and convergence, xxix, x, xxix, xxx, 58, 60–61, 72–73, 74–76,
382–83 82, 84, 130, 133–34, 136, 201, 221–46,
Coordinated Universal Time, 55 252, 254–55, 259, 264, 306, 359; Beros-
Cook, J., Captain: story compared with sus’ second of version of, 228, 238–39;
Hyksos, 344–45 made “history” by framing of Oannes,
coping, national strategies of, xxv–xxvii 76; biblical, x, 55, 228, 229, 257, 352,
Coptic, 37 370 n.39; Egyptian, 180
Coptos, 127, 163 Cremera, battle of, 115
copy, “another”: Manetho for Josephus, Crisis of Succession (or Syrian War of
xi, 206–7 Succession), 280–81
Corinth, League of, 5 critical principles, Greek, xxix, 115, 233,
Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor. See Alex- 344, 350–51, 359–60, 375, 377
ander Polyhistor, Cornelius crocodile(s): Hdt. on, 178; imagery of
Cornelius Nepos, viii n.3 (Egyptian), 177–78, 182, 327. See also
Corn-Osiris. See Osiris; Osirian funerary khampsa
rites Croesus, 122, 197, 198, 272 n.206, 317;
Corpus Hermeticum/Hermetic Tradition, his story Hdt.’s accounting of East-
xxii, 113, 131 n.33, 132, 238; Treatise, West conflict, 197
466 Index
Ctesias, xvi, 46, 153, 214, 289, 299, 319, Damascius (neo-Platonic philosopher),
351, 385 235–36, 237
cult(ic), ix, xxiii, xxiv n.55, 9, 12, 22, 23, Dan (s. of Jacob), 368, 370 n.41
29, 33, 36–37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43 n.176, Danaus, 114, 117, 209, 211–12, 339
45, 68, 75, 94, 95, 125, 125 n.10, 141, Daniel, Book of, 299–300; prophet, 283
142, 162, 165, 169, 170, 173, 178, 192, n.247; and succession of empires, 299,
208, 218–19, 225, 226, 231, 239, 284, 299 n.296.
301, 305, 323–24, 245, 348; of royal Daonos (leg. shepherd and king of
ancestors (Egypt) 94 Pautibiblon), 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67
cultural/social memory, 12, 195 n.52
“culture-Greeks,” viii, 210, 213 Daos (=Daonos), 60, 63
culture in a suitcase, maxims as, xxvii; of Daphne (city), 16, 280
defeat xxvi–xxvii Darius I, 5, 34, 37, 44, 45 n.190, 50, 89,
Cunaxa, battle of, 45 166, 313–14, 326; compared with Seso-
curating the past, xxiii, xxvi, 41, 55, 141, stris to his discredit, 313–14
199–200, 216, 223–24, 278, 300, 315, Darius II Ochus, 45
338, 342, 348–49. See also Baines, J. Darius III, 15, 45, 49, 50, 51, 188, 189
cyclical view of history: and Berossus (?), darkness at beginning of world: in Beros-
79, 241, 245–46, 251; and Egyptian sus, 74, 221, 227, 228, 229, 238
neheh, 305 Datis (Persian commander), 128
Cydnus River, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154 Dauke (god in Eudemus’ Babylonian
n.139, 155–56, 158 creation), 236
Cyprus, 14, 211, 309 David, A. R., 94
Cyrus the Great (also the Elder), 28, 34, Davies, J. K., 21–22, 23 n.87
42, 43, 43 nn.176–77, 45, 49, 50, 51, daybook (Egyptian) 87
140, 156, 158–60, 197, 198, 265, 266, dedication(s), xxiii, 12, 29, 73, 107, 108,
276, 288, 293–94, 295, 296, 297–99, 183, 184, 185, 188, 189
314; captures Babylon, 42–43, 50, Dedumose. See Tutimaeus
156–60, 265, 266, 288, 295, 296, 297; “defeat” of Alexander at Gaugamela in
diverts Euphrates, 156, 158, 160; Dynastic Prophecy, 50–51
divinely appointed in Cyrus Cylinder Deir el-Bahri, xxviii
and Old Testament, 43, 297; as king, Deir el-Medina, 163, 176
not emperor, 294 Delos, 10
Cyrus Cylinder, 43, 51, 297 Delphi, xxiv n.55, xxvii–xxix, 100, 150,
Cyrus, the Younger, 45 185, 186, 190; and Hdt., 190
Delta (of Egypt), vii, 33, 180, 339, 343
Daches and Dachos (= Lahmu and La- Demeter, 134
hamu) in Eudemus’ Bab. creation, 236 Demetrius (the Chronographer), 359–85;
Daisios (Macedonian month), 77–78, his aims, 384; his audience, 369–70,
138, 244, 254, 257–58; Alexander the 372–73, 381–82; compared with Beros-
Great dies in, 78, 257–58; Flood dated sus and Manetho, 357–59, 360–61,
to by Berossus, 77, 138, 244, 254, 257; 382, 384–85; date of, 359–60, 362–63,
full of sacred days, 78, 257 375; and Greek scholarship, 374–75,
Dalley, S., 45 n.189, 64 n.34, 65 n.38, 71 376–82; and Homer, 369, 374–75; life,
n.75, 150, 156, 160 n.165, 231, 262–63, 359–60; and Lindian Chronicle, 369;
278 n.226, 288, 290 location of, probably Alexandria, 360,
Index 467
364; and Septuagint (LXX), 360, 360 diadoch(s), xix, 14, 16, 273, 282, 298, 308
n.9, 368, 371, 372, 373, 375, 377, 378, diaporeisthai, (Gk. “a problem arises”) in
381; his own title “Chronographer” scholia, 376–77
modern, 359 n.6; title of work On the diaspora, xxii, xxiii
Kings of Judaea, 362, 362 n.15; trans- Dicaearchus of Messana, vii–viii n.3, 92
mission of, 361 n.151, 103–4, 114
Demetrius of Phalerum, xxviii, 17, 25–27, Didyma, 28, 29–30
104, 299, 299 n.297; on succession of Dieleman, J., xxii n.46, 113, 162, 166
empires, 299 Dijk, J. van, 66
Demetrius Poliorcetes, 14, 22, 31 n.119, Dinah (d. of Jacob), 365, 368, 370, 371
308 Diodorus, 15, 23, 24, 25, 47, 49, 93, 137–
Democritus, 79 n.104 38, 154, 168–69, 170, 178, 182, 209,
Demodamas of Miletus, 28–30, 31 282–83, 289–90
Demoteles of Andros, 10 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 102, 191
demotic (Egyptian), xvii n.35, xxii, xxvi, Dionysus, 28, 112 n.239
125, 127, 127 n.20, 169, 170, 171, 172, diplomacy/diplomat, 12, 21, 22, 98, 190
179, 319, 337, 339 n.122 discovery, stories of: and the authentica-
Demotic Chronicle, xxvi n.65, 37, 305 tion of texts, 123–33, 138–48, 164, 169,
n.17, 318, 337, 341 173, 183–92, 224, 263, 278
Den (pharaoh), 177 disembedding of history, 217, 253,
Dendera (Egypt): Osiris chapels at, 323; 258–59, 270, 338. See also embedded
sacred drama at, 177 history
deposition of texts/records in sacred displacement of narrative detail, 333–34,
space: as authentication, xxi, 124–25, 335–36, 340–41
126, 127, 130–31, 132, 140–45, 147–48, display/theatricality: and Hellenistic
173, 183–92, 199, 261, 263–64 courts, 14–15, 16–21, 27
Derchain, P., 34 n.128, 39 n.157, 164, 169 division of Alexander’s Empire, 47
Derow, P., 197 n.12 divination of rulers, 18, 19
Derveni Papyrus, 234 Djoser, 110 n.229, 167–68, 170
descent, national, 144, 366–67, 386; doctor/physician: of court (Egypt), 36,
priestly/scholarly in Babylon, 67–68, 37, 166. See also medicine
69, 145–46; priestly/scholarly in Egypt, documentary (literate) culture(s): and
33, 119–22; priestly/scholarly in Israel, oral culture(s), 57, 92, 96–97, 195–96,
368; royal, 114, 262 205, 222–23, 224, 249 n.126, 301, 303
Deucalion and Pyrrha, 108, 109, 255, 257 documents: use of/correspondence with,
deuteronomic, view of the past as, xxv– xxiii, 66–67, 82, 83, 84–87, 92, 94, 98,
xxvi, 298, 316–18, 334–35, 342–43, 102, 120, 123–33, 134, 138, 141–42,
352–53, 386–87 143, 145, 149, 167, 193–92, 197, 205,
Deuteronomic historian, 124 n.5, 358, 216, 253, 266, 268, 277, 326, 342, 363,
361, 385 n.92 386; “fitting” 183–85
Deuteronomy (book of the Bible): discov- domain(s) of learning xx, 127, 127 n.19,
ery story of, 124–25, 128, 129, 134 161 n.171, 168, 218
diachronic view of history: compared to Doomed Prince (Eg. tale), 178
synchronic, xxvii, 70 Doric dialect, 73
diadem: symbol of royal power in Hel- Dornseiff, F., xxxii n.80, 209 n.49, 231
lenistic, 14, 211, 308, 309, 326 n.40
468 Index
doublet, 62, 63; narrative, 140, 228, 230, history of from first Persian conquest
238, 335, 339 to Alexander, 34–36; “root of,” 321–24
drama, religious: Babylonian, 42–43, Eighteenth Dynasty, 106, 108, 111, 201,
225; Egyptian, 165, 177, 323–24, 352; 329
Greek, 22 Eighth Dynasty, 87
dream, divine visitation in, viii, 77, 146, Eion: on the Strymon, 157
254–56, 270, 283, 306, 314, 318–19, ekpyrosis (Stoic doctrine), 79, 241, 245
335 n.106, 336, 339 n.122, 340, 341, Ekur-suma-usarsi (priest at Sippar), 141
366, 373. See also Alexander Romance; El (god in Philo): called Kronos, 254
Dream of Nectanebo; Jacob: ladder; Elam/Elamites, 151–52, 225, 267, 300
Xisouthros n.301; “Elam” for Persia (in Egypt) 37,
Dream of Nectanebo, xxi, 170, 318–19, 166
336–38; demotic version, 319 elephant(s), 20, 248
Drews, R., 151, 153 n.137, 241 n.91, 243, Eleventh Dynasty, 85
247, 250, 251, 276 Elim (in Exodus story), 377 n.70, 379
Drijvers, H. J. W., 239 Elis, 100, 105; embassy from, to Psam-
Droysen, J. G., 258 n.164, 383 metichus II, 105
Duris of Samos, 257 elite, native/local, x, xiii, xvi, xviii, xix,
dynameis (pl.) for military “forces,” 282 xx, xxi, 3, 13, 21, 24, 30, 32, 33, 39, 41,
dynamic of a society: contrasted with a 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 51, 79, 146, 148, 166,
static one, 83, 121, 122, 343–47 167, 171, 181, 199, 218, 285, 297, 317,
dynamis, 19 353, 360, 385, 387
Dynastic Prophecy, 48 n.202, 49–51, Elul (Bab. month), 279
299–300 embassy, xxiv n.55, 22, 29, 105, 332
dynasty (Eg.): Manetho’s history divided “embedded history,” 214–19, 250
by, xii, 84, 85, 86, 87, 96, 174, 181 empires, succession of (Gk. topos), 266,
294, 298–300, 387
Ea (Bab. god of wisdom), 236, 239, 243, Encomium Alexandreae, 19
254; as author of wisdom text, 243 end-time, 78, 246
Ebabbar (cult site of Shamash at Sippar), Eneuboulos (later fish-man sage in Ber-
141–42 ossus), 60, 62 n.27
echthros (Gk. “enemy”): imagery of in Eneugamos (later fish-man sage in Beros-
Egyptian texts, 316, 317, 321 sus), 60, 62 n.27
Eco, U., 141 Enki (god of wisdom), 254, 255, 256
Edfu (Egypt) 163; sacred drama at, 177 Enlil, 49, 51, 236; and Flood, 254–55
Egypt: center of the world, 116–17; inva- en-me/me (Sum., cosmic ordinance), 69
sion of by Alexander, 38; invasion of by Enmeduranki (Euedoranchos), king of
Assyrians, 268, 270, 319, 343; invasion Sippar, 147, 223, 262. See also Eue-
of by Hyksos, 88, 302, 331, 343, 344, doranchos
346; invasion of by Persians under Ennead (Eg. pantheon), 162, 174, 180
Cambyses, 34, 36, 37; invasion of Enuma Anu Enlil (wisdom text), 223
second Persian, 334; “life of,” 163–65; Enuma Elish (Babylonian Creation), 50,
Lower, 33, 180, 181, 309, 323, 343; Up- 58, 61, 72, 75, 76, 138, 224–26, 228–31,
per, 33, 180, 309, 343; Persian control 236, 237, 239, 243, 244, 254
of (First Phase), xvii, 34–35; Persian Ephemerides (journal of Alexander the
control of (Second Phase) 35; political Great’s last days), 6 n.10, 247, 258
Index 469
ephor, Spartan: dating by, 100–1, 364 ethnography, xx, 58, 90, 134–35, 137, 220,
Ephraim (s. of Joseph), 373 287, 384
Epicharmus (comic poet): treats Flood, ethnos, ethnic(ity), 81, 210, 225, 316, 325
108 etymology: in Berossus, 145; in Hebrew
Epidaurus, 186 Bible, 372; in Hecataeus of Abdera,
epimeletes (overseer at Athens), 8 327–28; in Hecataeus of Miletus, 327;
Epiphanies of the Maiden (work of Syris- in Herodotus, 327–28; in Manetho, xi,
cus), 11–12 206, 324–27, 328, 343, 344
epiphany, 11, 12, 107, 128, 184, 185–86, Eudemus of Rhodes, xx, 235–36, 237,
187, 188, 190, 197, 335–36 252 n.139; version of the Babylonian
epistrategos, 274 Genesis, 235–37
epizetein (Gk. “to ask [further]”): in scho- Euechoios (first postdiluvian king), 80
lia, 379, 380–81 Euedokos (later fish-man sage), 60, 62
epoch(al), 51, 77, 85, 109, 114, 116, 117, n.27
137, 147, 189, 250, 252, 253, 258–59, Euedoranchos (leg. king of Pautibilon),
266, 277, 278, 352 59–60, 62, 62 n.27, 63, 64, 66, 223. See
erasure: of culture, xxix, 46, 383 also Enmeduranki
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, 105, 257 Euedoreschos (ninth king in Berossus’
Erbse, H., 91 list), 60
Eretria, 108 euergetism, 22, 284, 285, 291. See also
erga (deeds): historiographic subject, 91, philanthropy
190 Euhemerus/euhemerism, 130, 132, 235
Eridu (antediluvian city), 65, 136 eunuch, 175–76
Erra and Ishum, 65, 144 n.89, 262–63 Euphrates, 45, 134, 136, 141, 148, 156,
error: historiographic/authorial, 90, 91, 158, 159, 160, 248, 275, 278, 279, 280
92, 121, 154, 160, 176, 200, 202, 206, Eupolemus, 367
265, 270, 290, 293, 315, 319; in textual Euripides, 8 n.22, 378
transmission, 60, 62, 67, 80 n.107, 177, Europa, 115
202, 270, 271 n.199, 293 Eurydice (Ptol. queen), 26
Erymanthe with Berossus: alleged parents Eusebius of Caesarea, x–xi, 63, 108, 130,
of Hebrew sibyl Sabbe, 241 201, 207, 238, 267, 361, 374, 377, 380;
Erymanthus River, 296 Praeparatio Evangelica, 130, 207, 361
Esagila (main temple in Babylon), 42, 44, events, coordination of, xxiii, 55. See also
229, 293 synchronism
Esarhaddon (s. and successor of Sen- Excerpta (Latina) Barbari, 89, 109
nacherib), 79, 152, 267 nn.187–188, exegete (exegetes), viii, xxiv n.55, 363
268, 269, 271, 319, 320 exodus: story of, 99, 266, 360, 375, 380
Esau (b. of Jacob), 365, 366, 369 Ezekiel the tragedian, 379
eschaton, 78, 246
Esna (Egypt) 163 Fabii three hundred: compared to Spar-
Esther, Book of, xxii tans, 115
Etana: myth of, 77 fact(s): of history/historiography, 10, 13,
eternal city, Sippar as, 65 n.38, 147 51, 69, 90, 125, 154, 155, 175, 304, 316,
Ethiopia(ns), 89, 90, 333, 335 n.106, 339, 331, 337, 343, 345, 346, 347, 383, 384,
340; oracles of, in Anysis/Sabacos 385
story, 340 faith in fakes, 141. See also Eco, U.
470 Index
falsehood, fiction, forgery: as inappropri- focalization, embedded: and Flood ac-

ate term for history, 8, 125–26, 140–41, count, 261
164, 186–87, 235 n.61 foreign conquest and rule, xiv, xxv, xxvi–
Famine Stela (Egypt), 126 n.11, 167–68 xxvii, 3, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38 n.153, 39–40,
Fanon, F., 217, 217 n.72 50, 51, 68, 72, 82, 88, 96, 111, 120, 121,
Feeney, D., 55 n.1, 97 n.172, 102, 114, 116 125, 128–29, 152, 169, 171, 218, 226,
female: confused with male in Babylo- 246, 318, 323, 326, 328, 329, 333, 335,
nian creation, 76, 227; and eunuch as- 336, 339–40, 342, 346, 347, 352, 387;
sassins of Amenemhat I, 175; imagery conceived of as preordained (Babylon)
of, for soft nations who capitulate 298–300; (Egypt) 316–18, 334–35
before Sesostris, 179, 313; and Semira- foreigner, 36, 111, 221–222, 336, 339
mis, 293; and Twosre, xxxi, 106 forgery, xv, 8, 45 n.190, 125–26, 164
Festival of Victory (Egypt), 177 Forsberg, S., 149 n.116, 150, 154 n.142
Festugière, A.-J., 125 n.9, 127 n.15 foundation: stories of, vii, xxx, 15, 61, 65,
Fifteenth Dynasty (the Hyksos), 85, 88, 75, 81, 102, 138, 152, 234, 235–36, 240,
320. See also Hyksos 293, 321, 343, 359, 379
Fifth Dynasty, 86, 87, 182 Fourteenth Dynasty, 85
fight(ing) with the gods: in Hyksos II, Fourth Dynasty (pyramid builders), 91,
333, 335 92, 95, 287 n.260, 329
Finkelstein, J. J., 57, 64 Fowler, R., xxiv n.57
Finnegan, R., 95–96 frame, framing: of narrative, 27, 79, 126,
First Dynasty, 87, 94, 95, 176, 177, 178 172, 174, 215, 218, 221, 235, 239, 244,
the first year: in Berossus’ Creation ac- 273, 307, 329–30, 331, 346–47; and
count, 59, 61, 72, 74, 75, 76–77, 79, narrative merged (Berossus) 83; and
134, 136, 140, 221, 234 narrative merged (Manetho) 331
fish-man (piradu)/merman (form of France: after the Franco-Prussian War,
Babylonian sage figure), xx, xxi n.44, xxv
xxix, xxx, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 69, Franco-Prussian War, xxv
71, 74, 75, 76, 134, 136, 157, 221, 227, Frankfurter, D., 113, 162 n.178, 164, 169,
234, 235, 259, 276, 347; not typical in 252, 346
Greek world, xxi n.24, 234 Fraser, P., 15, 210 n.56, 367 n.33, 369
fit, fitting: of documents, 183–85 Freudenthal, J., 139 n.64, 236 n.72, 359
fleet(s) 5, 20, 95, 148 n.6, 362 n.15, 363, 364, 369, 374, 376
Flood/Deluge: Babylonian, x, 57, 58, 59, n.62
61, 63–64, 65–66, 70–71, 77–78, 80–83, friend(s): royal, viii, x, xiii, 16, 21–23,
84, 109, 115, 133, 138–40, 142–48, 24, 26, 29, 31, 36, 37, 274, 282–83; of
150, 157, 201, 210, 220, 223, 242, 244, Xisouthros after the Flood, 259–61
245, 249, 253–64, 265, 272, 276, 277, Fugelstad, F., 216–17 n.70. See also
286, 363, 376; biblical, 77, 210, 220, Trevor-Roper, H.: Trevor-Roper Trap
255, 368; Egyptian, 108 n.223; Greek,
108–9, 115, 117 (see also Deucalion Gad (s. of Jacob), 368
and Pyrrha); possibly coordinated with Gardiner, A., 106, 111, 163 n.184, 165,
Alexander the Great’s death by Beros- 175–76, 181
sus, 257–58; as a “second creation,” Gaugamela: battle of, 45, 49, 50, 51, 189;
255; specific dating of, 77–79, 138, 244, dating of at Lindos, 189
254, 257–58 Geb (Egyptian god), 174, 323
Index 471
Gehrke, H.-J., xxiii, 7, 8 geography, xx, 58, 134, 135, 136, 138,
Gellner, E., xviii, xviii n.37 220
genea: meaning of in Berossus, 225–26 Greek language: acquisition of, xix, xix
Genealogies (Hecataeus of Miletus), 120 n.40, 310, 310 n.31, 360, 361 n.10. See
genealogy, 96, 121, 145. See also descent also hellenophone
Genesis, Book of, 64, 205, 228, 229, 229 Green, P., xiv, xvi, 382
n.32, Afterword passim Gregory XIII (pope): calendar of, 55
Genesis Apocryphon: from Qumran Greithlein, J., 195 n.4, 196 n.5
(1QapGen), 358 Gruen, E., xxv n.59, 358 n.5, 363, 376,
genitalia: male and female, 76, 227, 313 381
geography, xx, 58, 134–35, 136, 138, 220, Guaman Poma, F., 386–87
281; Babylonia/Mesopotamia, 135–36, guild(s): scribal (Bab.), 146
138, 220 Gutian, 80
George, A. R., 45 n.184, 72 n.79, 159, 236 Gutschmid, A. von, viii, xxxiii n.80, 202,
n.68, 260 210, 210 n.56, 241, 265, 322
Gerizim, Mt., 365 Gyges, 312
Germany: after WWI, xxv Gyllis (character from Herodas mime),
Gilgamesh, 68, 69, 79, 143, 144, 240, 255 18
Gilgamesh Epic, 68, 69, 124 n.1, 148, 255; gymnasium, 19, 241
discovery story concerning, 142–43
gloss, xx, 79, 111, 127 n.20, 135, 140, 203, Habicht, C., 18 n.64, 21
207, 238, 242, 317, 321, 327, 344 Hadrian (Roman emperor), 129
gnostic, Gnosticism, 238. See also Corpus Hagesitimus: proposer of Lindian
Hermeticum; Hermes Trismegistus Chronicle, 183
gods, Egyptian: as first rulers, xii, 86, 87, Halicarnassus, 22, 30, 102, 191
99 n.177, 112 Halley, E., 251
Goedicke, H., 175, 199, 329 nn.96–97 Hallo, W. W., 69, 144 n.89
gongai (Akk. kungu/gungu) plant in Halule: battle of, 267
Babylonia, xx, 134, 135 Hamath (district in Mesopotamia), 279,
goods: flowing to a city as praise, 18–19 280
Goshen, 374 Hanaean(s) (Greeks in Babylonian texts),
Gould, J., 198 49, 51
governor, 31 n.117, 67–68, 273, 274, 280, Hanging Gardens: of Babylon, 275, 285,
282, 312. See also epistrategos; saknu; 288–90; at Nineveh (?), 288
satrap; strategos Haran, 365, 366, 368
“Graeco-Babyloniaca” tablets, xix n.40 hardship: for Egypt ordained by gods,
Grayson, A. K., 49 n.210, 72 n.79, 151, xxvi, 38 n.153, 298, 317–18, 335, 385.
299 n.300, 300 See also deuteronomic, view of the
Great Alluvium (of Mesopotamia), 135– past as
36 Harmais (= Danaus), b. of Sethos, xi, 114,
“Great Chief of all Foreign Lands” (Eg. 201, 211–13, 265, 307–15, 331, 342
title), 36, 326 Harmesses Miamoun, 211
“Great Ruler of Egypt,” 36, 38, 326 Harmodius and Aristogeiton: statues of, 5
Great Year, 243, 245 Harnouphis, 113
Greek historiography: and ethnography, Harsaphes (Eg. god), 38
xx, 58, 90, 134, 135, 137, 287, 384; and Hartog, F., 90, 111 n.232
472 Index
Hatshepsut, Queen: identified as king River in Iliad, 231; = Ptah, 99 n.177,

Amessis by Manetho, 106 269
Hattu (region), 279 Hera: priestess of at Argos, 100–1
Havet, E., xv n.28, 264 n.181 Heracles, 13 n.39, 28, 109, 111, 112, 113–
Hawaii, 344–45 14, 122, 186, 187–88, 292, 328; gifts of/
“headers”: names of Eg. kings as, 210–11 to Athenia Lindia, 187–88; “footprints”
Hebrew, xxii, xxxii, 27, 131 n.33, 371, 380 of at Heraclea, 186
Hebron, 205 Heracleides of Pontus: on destruction of
Hecataeus of Abdera, xvi, 23–25, 27, Milesians, 321, 322
31, 93, 135, 137–38, 168–69, 178, Heraclitus, 245–46
179, 208–9, 214, 237, 291, 313, 327, Hermes: in P. Oxy., 3011 337. See also
328, 338–39, 350, 351, 383, 384, 385; Hermes Trismegistus
as critic of Herodotus, 24–25, 93, Hermes Trismegistus, xiii, 131 n.33, 132
328; error on pyramid builders, 90; Hermippus, 18
ethnography/geography and Berossus, Hermopolis (Tuna el-Gebel), 39, 168,
137–38; the first Hellenistic writer, 24; 180
on Hyksos/Jews (?), 208–9, 338–39; life Herod, 31
of, 23–25; as possible model of/conduit Herodas: on Alexandria (Eg.), 18–19
for Greek historiographic principles, Herodorus of Heraclea, 186 n.299
24, 237, 384–85 Herodotus, xvi, xxiv, xxxiii, 7, 10, 32, 36,
Hecataeus of Miletus, 91, 92, 116, 119, 37, 44, 57, 75, 83, 89–93, 100–101, 103,
327; confused with Hec. of Abdera, 104, 105, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 122,
209 134–35, 156–57, 160, 162, 163, 171,
Hector, 374–75 178, 179, 182, 185, 190, 269–71, 286,
Hecuba (mother of Hector, child of Kis- 88, 294, 301, 307, 311–12, 313, 315,
sia/Kisseus), 378 317, 320, 323, 327, 335, 339–41, 350,
Hegel, G., 215 n.64, 216, 217 364, 366, 385; Alexander the Great
Hegesistratus, 313 inspired by, 4–5; his Assyrioi Logoi,
Heidelberg Epitome, 47 320; Book, 2 (Egyptian logos), 90, 91,
Helen, xxxi, 90, 107, 115 110, 294, 327; corrects forbears with
Heliopolis (Egypt), vii, 33, 34 n.132, 95, Egyptian knowledge, 112, 115, 119–20;
132, 162, 163, 179, 180–82, 309, 373, and cross-cultural naming, 100, 111
375 n.232, 112; and dating by Athenian
Helios’ Cattle (from Odyssey), 323–33 archon, 100, 364; errors of, 90, 91, 121,
Hellanicus of Lesbos, 108, 153 160, 315; errors regarding the time of
hellenistic literature (Greek), xxxiii the pyramid builders, 90–91, 92, 93;
Hellenization, xxvii, xxix, xxx–xxxii, 15, “even now” expression(s) (eti kai nun),
68, 78, 249, 359 73, 75, 139, 185; and Hecataeus of
hellenophone non-Greek, xv, xvii, xix, Abdera, 24–25, 178, 328; and Heca-
xxxiv, 25, 71, 113, 200, 202, 237, 260, taeus of Miletus, 119–22, 327, 328; his
265, 276, 287, 315, 319, 320, 344, 349, history Delphi-centered, 190; Josephus
361 quotes, 202–3, 206; larger logos of
Hellespont: Xerxes’ bridge over, 287 treated as an animate thing, 198; local
Hengel, M., 146 historiography responding to, xxiv; his
Henige, D., 57, 92, 96, 121 narrative, 197–98; and the novella, xi,
Hephaestus, 9 n.23; battling Scamander 307–8, 342; omits some pharaohs, 89,
Index 473
91 and n.143, 352; and Persian Wars historical consciousness, 215, 216, 217,
narrative as master narrative, 198, 250–51, 302, 346
301; and the priests of Thebes (Eg.), historical metaphor, 344
57, 83, 89, 91, 116–17, 119–21, 122, historicization, historicize, 78, 79, 84,
328; and reporting what he has heard 172, 173, 178, 215, 221, 235, 239–40,
(legein ta legomena), 303; on Sennach- 258, 259, 300, 331, 337–38, 342, 361,
erib, corrected by Berossus, 269–70; 383, 385
stimulus of, on other historians, xvi, historiographic polemic, 90, 103, 270,
xxiv, xxxi, 24–25, 32, 86, 89–90, 91–92, 288, 293, 315, 350–51
93, 103, 105, 112–13, 115, 122, 134–35, historiography, hellenistic: seen as
156–58, 160, 185, 206, 269–70, 286–87, eulogistic, 6; importance of/to com-
288, 311–12, 312–15, 316 n.48, 320, munities, xvi, xxiii, xxiv, 7, 8, 9, 12,
327–28, 339–41, 350–51, 385; and 21–22, 31, 37, 56, 98, 128–29, 162, 181,
synchronism, 100, 113–14 n.244; tells 188–92, 296, 360; methods typical of,
story of origins of East/West conflict xvi, xxiii, xxv, 4–13, 102–4, 180–81,
as proof of its importance, 197; on two 183–92, 301; perceived in its time, 4–7,
Heracleses, 112 21–32, 44, 192
Hermann, A., 305 n.14, 306. See also historiography, pre-colonial Indian/South
Königsnovelle Asian, 215–16; discourse of, 215–16;
Herrmann, P., xxii n.51, 8 Western colonial view of, 215
Hesiod, xxxii, 108, 226, 231, 234, 254 history; and continuous narrative, 172,
hetairoi (companions): royal, 283 198, 351, 384, 385; debates regarding
Hezekiah (king of Judah), 268, 269 the nature of, 192–200, 215–17; de-
Hierapolis (Syria), 246 fined, 195 n.1, 195–96; earliest human,
hieratic (Egyptian), xvii n.35, 87, 127 vii, xx, xxix, 65, 76, 101, 123, 130, 131,
n.20, 170, 179, 302, 316 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 144, 147, 148,
hieroglyphic(s) (Egyptian), xvii n.35, 35, 165, 212, 220, 221–23, 239–40, 265,
36, 39, 132, 163, 165, 167, 170, 180, 352, 358, 363; “embedded,” 214–19,
274, 318, 319, 336, 337 250; human, vii, xxi, xxxi, 4, 93, 94, 96,
Hieron I of Syracuse, 14, 377 97, 120, 165, 181, 235, 352; insurgent,
Hieron II, 103 219; “invented,” 186, 278, 386; and nar-
Hieronymus of Cardia, 16, 31, 48 n.202 rative history, 4, 32, 146, 195–200, 341,
Hieronymus “the Egyptian,” 108 n.223 384–85; numinous, 219; and prophecy
Hieroskopos, xxiv n.55 in difficulties relating to combina-
Higbie, C., 73, 107, 183, 186, 187 tion of, 331–34, 335–40, 341; “in a
Hilkiah (high priest), 124 saucer,” Polybius’ criticism of Timaeus’
Hillaku (Cilicia), 149 parochial view, 191; as “story,” 196–98;
Himera: battle of, 100, 103, 114 n.244 universal, xxv, xxx, 23, 101, 104 n.202,
Hindu Kush, xxviii 114 n.248; world, vii-viii n.3, xxv,
Hippias of Elis, 19 n.66, 100 xxvii–xxix, xxxii–xxxiii, 104, 110, 261
hippo: imagery of (Egypt), 177; and king Hnes (Heracleopolis Magna), 37
Menes, 85, 176, 336 Hobab, 378
Hippocrates, 134 Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger, 186–87
Hippys of Rhegium, 378–79 n.301
historian(s): of Amphipolis, 9–11; as “holes”: in Homer, xxxi, 73, 105, 107, 249,
royal friends, 23–32 369
474 Index
Hollow Syria. See Coele Syria 239, 265, 352, 358, 363; live like wild
Homer, xxx, xxxi, xxxii, 5, 73, 105, 106, animals, 134, 136, 137, 221, 222
107, 115, 116, 197, 231, 233–34, 351, Hunter, R., 75 n.85, 114 n.245, 324
359, 369, 374, 375, 377, 381; and al- Hyksos, 88–89, 96, 169, 301–2, 304,
legorical interpretation, 233–34; Iliad, 307, 319, 320–21, 324, 325, 326, 328,
xxxi, 73, 106, 160, 188, 233, 256, 369, 343–44, 346,347; Avaris their capital,
374, 375 n.59, 377, 380 n.83, 381 n.86; 320–21; connected to the Jews, 207–9,
Ody., xxi, 105, 106–7, 115, 232, 256, 338–39
381 n.86; scholia to, 374–75, 377–81; Hyksos (etymologies of): in Manetho, xi,
shapes Alexander the Great’s vision, 5; 206, 324–28, 343, 344
using Homer to explain Homer, 375 Hyksos I, xi, 201, 208, 265, 266, 303–4,
Homeric Questions (Aristotle), 233 315–24, 342, 343, 344
Homoroka (?): alt. name for Tiamat, 227, Hyksos II, xi, 201, 204, 206, 208, 265, 266,
236 302 n.6, 303–4, 307, 328–38, 339–41,
horizon, historical, 277. See also Nabü- 342, 346; narrative oddities of, 333–36
nasir Hyperboreans, 8 n.21, 73
Hornblower, J., 6, 7, 282
Hornblower, S., 19 n.64, 190 n.321, 197 Iberia, 292
n.12, 301 n.2 ibis: staff of consulted, 167
horography, 191. See also local history iconatrophy, 154
Horus, 94, 111 n.232, 112, 162, 177, 315, identity, national/communal, xxiii, xxv–
317, 323, 338, 346; the Behdetite, 323; xxvii, 8, 56, 100, 122, 125, 186, 315,
= Or, 103, 330, 331 323, 365, 385, 385 n.92
hourglass shape: of historical texts, 82 Illinos (= Enlil), 236
“House of Books” (Eg.), 162, 163, 170, Illubru (city in Cilicia), 149
180; defined, 163 “imagined treasure,” 187
“House of Life” (Eg.), 37, 126, 127, Imhotep/Amenhotep (also Imouthes,
160–82, 302, 346; defined, 162 n.178, Amenotes), xxviii, xxix, 110, 167–
162–64; as healing place of soul, 169; 68, 170, 224, 128. See also Praise of
off-limits to non-Egyptians, 168; Imouthes, “Sayings of Amenotes”;
responsible for “life” of Egypt, 163–65, Tosorthros
346–47. See also “House of Books”; imperial knowledge, xiv, xvi, 21–22, 30,
library; Papyrus Salt 41, 215–19, 385–87
“Houses of Sneferu,” 95 Inachus, 109
Hughes, J., 124 n.6, 364 n.26, 368 n.36, Inaros (s. of Psammetichus, revolt
369 n.37 leader), 34, 170
Huldah, prophet, 124 Inca(ns), 386–87
humanity: history of, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, independence: period of/for Egypt in
xxxiii, 58, 61–63, 72, 77, 119–20, 133, fourth century, xvi, 35–36, 50–51, 86
136, 137, 138–39, 144, 146–48, 214, Indian/South Asian historiography:
221–23, 228–31, 239–40, 244, 260–62, discourse of, 215; pre-colonial, 215–16;
304–5, 347. See also universal history; Western colonial view of, 215
world chronicle indigenous rule, xiv, xviii, xxvi, 35, 36, 38
humans, earliest, 59, 65, 68, 76, 101, 120, n.153, 82, 86, 140, 151, 158, 171, 199,
123, 130, 131, 135, 136–38, 140, 144, 266–67, 278, 293, 296, 297, 307, 328,
146–48, 165, 212, 220, 221, 222, 230, 336, 337, 341, 343, 352–53
Index 475
indigenous ruler, foreign (nonnative) 366; ladder, 366, 367; wrestling, 372
made into, xiv, xxvi, 36–37, 42, 218–19, Jacoby, F., xxiv, 6, 7, 56, 99, 108, 153, 240–
307, 326, 352, 53, 386–87 41, 268, 269
information, exchange of, xix, xx, xxi, Jaxartes River, 28, 29
xxviii, 14, 15, 21, 22–23, 23–32, 37, Jerusalem, xxii, 125, 141, 208, 209, 210,
143–44, 185, 211, 223, 271, 315, 344 211, 267, 268, 269, 272, 273, 279, 294,
Ingirra (Anchiale, in Cilicia), 149 303, 331, 333, 339, 343, 362, 364, 365
Inowlocki, S., 202 n.27, 203 Jesus Christ, 55
In Procreatione (Latin title for Babylo- Jethro (father-in-law of Moses), 377–78.
niaca), 242 See also Reuel
Instruction of King Amenemhat, 175–76, Jews: and Egypt, 3, 26, 27, 202, 204, 205,
306, 338 207–10, 212, 213, 264 n.181, 303, 315,
Intaphrenes, 313 338, 357, 360, 363, 365, 368, 373–74,
intended reader, xvii, xix–xxiii, xxviii, 375, 379–80, 383
xxxiv, 4, 18, 110, 112, 135–36, 143, 146, Jokshan (forebear of Zipporah), 379
152, 216, 217–18, 226, 231, 234–35, Joseph (biblical patriarch), 362, 368,
256–57, 261, 272–73, 277, 286–87, 315, 370, 371, 373, 374, 375, 376, 384; and
317, 325–26, 344, 349, 369–70, 373 pharaoh, 373
intentional history, xxiii, 7–10, 12–13, Josephus: his AJ as “rewritten Bible,”
23, 31 358; uses Berossus to correct Hdt.
Intermediate Period (Eg.): First, 85; on Sennacherib, 269–70; his critique
Second, 34, 85, 88, 99, 201, 220, 301; compared with approach to Beros-
Third, 121, 323 sus, 213–14; his critique of Manetho,
Interpolation, xi, 91, 204, 206, 207, 212, 213; his Jewish War, 205; reliability of
229, 370 n.41 quotations in, 202–3; as transmitter of
“in the image of Babylon,” 150, 150 n.118 Berossus and Manetho, 201–14; and
inundation of Nile: annual, 94, 98, 117, trial imagery, 203, 210, 241, 264, 265
167, 168, 323 Josiah (king of Judah), 124–25, 128, 141
Ionia(ns), 18, 25, 248; defeated by Sen- Juba (king of Mauretania and historian),
nacherib in Cilicia, 148; revolt of, 197 31
Ionic dialect, 202, 225 Jubilees, Book of (biblical digest), 144,
Iphigenia: sacrifice of, 8 n.21, 73, 192 358, 367, 381
Iranian(s), 45, 46 Judah (region), 124, 125, 210, 268, 362
Isaac (biblical patriarch), 365, 366, 367, Judah (s. of Jacob), 368
368, 369, 379; attempted sacrifice of, Judah (tribe), 362
366 Julian (Roman Emperor), xxi n.44
Isaiah, Book of: and Cyrus, 43 Julius Africanus, x, xi, xii, 63, 85, 89, 108
Ischia, 175 Julius Caesar, 31
Iser, W., xix n.39
Isis, 103, 108, 177, 180, 323, 336, 337–38 K 4364 147
Issachar (s. of Jacob), 368, 370–71 Kadesh, battle of, 305
Issus: battle of, 15, 50 kalu-priest (at Uruk), 67
Kahane, H., xx n.41
Jacob (biblical patriarch), 362, 365–66, Kaiechos (pharaoh), 95, 178, 181
367–68, 369, 370, 372, 376; becomes Kalaniopu’u (Hawaiian king), 345
Israel, 372; consecration of Beth-el, Kalasiris, 113
476 Index
Kamose (pharaoh): expels Hyksos, 301–2; Kirua (rebel during reign of Sennacherib
his stelae, 301–2 in Cilicia), 149
Karnak, 301 Kingu (lieutenant of Tiamat, from whose
Kassites, 224, 225 blood humans made), 230, 239
Kealakekua Bay, 344, 345 Kissare and Assoros (= Kishar and An-
“Kephalon.” See Anu-uballit Kephalon shar, from Bab. Genesis of Eudemus),
Keturah (wife/concubine of Abraham), 236
378 Klinger, J., 98
khampsa (Eg. term), 327. See also croco- Klotchkoff, I. S., 67 n.52, 70, 71, 79
dile knowledge, divine: transmission of, 143–
Khayan (Hyksos king), 88 44, 173, 221, 222–23, 329, 338. See also
Khebes-Ta (Eg. “Hacking up of the Oannes
Earth”), 322–24, 352 Koenen, L., xxxii n.80, xxxiii, 174, 336
Khentyamentiu (biform of Osiris), Komoroczy, G., 135 n.50, 137
164 Königsnovelle, ix n.9, 206, 302, 306–7,
“Kheper-Ka-Re” (pharaonic name), 88 329, 330, 337, 342 n.129, 346; pro-
Khmun, 39–40 phetic, 303, 330, 336, 337, 340, 341–42,
Khnum, 173 346
Khoiak (Eg. month): rites during (of kosmeo (to decorate [a building], term of
Osiris), 322–24, 352. See also Khebes- euergetism), 274, 283–84
Ta; Osirian funerary rites; Osiris kosmokrator (world conqueror), 28;
king and sage: merging of, 66, 334, 335 Alexander the Great as (in Egypt), 314,
kingless period(s): in Babylonia, 48, 151, 334; Moses as, 362; Nebuchadnezzar
276 II as, 273, 292, 320; Semiramis as, 289,
king list(s), xii, xxxi, 48, Ch. 2 passim, 293; Sennacherib as, 152; Sesostris as,
147, 165, 170, 171–72, 181, 197, 199, 91, 92, 93, 206, 291, 313, 314
200, 208, 212, 213, 223, 247, 249, 257, Kraeling, E. G., 251 n.137, 255
264, 277, 296, 301, 304, 305, 315, 321, Kraus, F. R., 57
324, 332, 342, 348, 364; of Berossus, Kronos, 70, 77, 99 n.177, 132, 138, 139,
structure of, 58–65, 249; of Manetho, 140, 232, 254, 255, 256, 375
structure of, 85–86, 95–96; not “pure” Kuhrt, A., xiv, 29, 30, 290–91
or “real” history, 57–58 Kumarbi (Hittite god), 231
“King of Asia,” 33 n.123, 189 n.311 Kunduz, Afghanistan, 237
“King of Babylon,” 45 kyllestis (Eg. term), 327
kings, Egyptian: names of as “headers” in
Manetho, 210–11 Laban (from story of Jacob), 366,
kings, postdiluvian, 59 370
king-shepherd(s), 206, 324, 325. See also Labashi-Marduk (Laborosoardoch, late
Hyksos neo-Babylonian ruler), 42, 159, 201,
king’s story, Egyptian. See Königsnovelle 295, 296, 297
kingship, ideology of: Babylonian, 43 Lamb of Boccohris, 115, 172–75, 303,
nn.176–77, 147, 225–27, 239, 278, 294; 318, 341
Egyptian, 92–93, 162, 164–65, 169, Lambert, W. G., 57, 145, 147, 223, 225,
170, 174, 304–5, 314–15, 317–18, 334; 226, 241 n.91, 243, 246, 247, 250, 251,
Greek, 27, 92–93, 226, 239, 308 262; and A. R. Millard, 139, 140, 255
“king” vs. “majesty”: in Egypt, 304–5 n.147, 256 n.154
Index 477
“Lament over the Destruction of Sumer 169, 170, 171, 172, 179, 313. See also
and Ur,” 48 “House of Books”; “House of Life”
Lane Fox, R., xxxiii n.80, 33 n.123, 160 Libya, 292
language choice, xvii, xviii, xix–xx, xxi, Lichtheim M., 38 n.152, 127 n.17, 166
xxviii, xxix, xxxii, xxxiv, 3, 32, 80, 139, n.198, 167–68 n.203, 329 n.98
147, 200, 217, 218, 265, 315, 349, 351, “life” of Egypt: maintenance of, 163–65,
360, 384, 386 323–24. See also “root” of Egypt
Laodicea, 280 Life of Greece (Dicaearchus), viii n.3, 104
Laranchon (Larak), 60, 64, 65 Lightfoot, J. L., 144, 246 n.116
Las Casas, Fray B. de, 385–86 limit(s), 28, 340
Late Period (Egypt), xxvi, 40, 41, 120, Lincoln, B., 230 n.36
127, 163, 166, 167, 169, 224, 307, 316, Lindian Chronicle/Chronicle of Lindos,
317, 318, 323, 342, 343, 346 12, 23, 73, 107, 108, 128, 129, 186, 183–
Law, xxiv n.55, 26, 27, 61, 74, 124, 125, 92, 196, 197, 369
128, 141, 208, 332, 339, 365 Lindos, 12, 23, 107, 128, 133, 141, 183–
lawcode, lawgiving, 25, 27, 332, 335 92, 196, 369
n.106, 339 list(s), listing, xi, xii, xxiii, xxvii–xxviii,
Leah (biblical matriarch), 367, 368–69, xxix, xxxi, 15, 18, 19, 23, 25, 26, Ch.
370–71, 376 2 passim, 135, 147, 167, 170, 171–72,
lecture(s): of historical texts in Antiquity 178, 181, 184–86, 187, 189, 190, 192,
(akroaseis), 9, 10, 10 n.30, 11–12 196, 197, 199, 200, 208, 212, 213, 223,
legitimacy, legitimation, xvi, xviii, xxiv, 228–29, 243, 247, 249, 257, 264, 277,
15, 16, 17, 20, 37, 41, 43, 48, 51, 56, 57, 299, 301, 304, 305, 315, 321, 324, 332,
87, 88, 94, 96, 125, 128, 167, 175, 176, 342, 348, 364, 384, 386; of votives/
183, 192, 218, 219, 219 n.76, 278, 291, dedications, 23, 185, 186, 187, 190
306, 307, 314, 317, 326, 329, 338 Listenwissenschaft, 56, 384
legomena, 205, 212, 213 literacy, literate, xvi, xvii n.37, xix, xxviii,
Lehoux, D., 249 n.127, 250 n.129, 258 3, 96, 121, 180, 218, 360; in non-native
n.162 language xix, xxix
Leipzig World Chronicle (papyrus), 115, Livy, 17
175 Lloyd, A., 36, 37, 90, 91, 181, 326
leper(s), leprous priest: Egyptian story local history/historian(s), xxiii–xxv, 7, 8,
of (Manetho’s Hyksos II), xi, 99, 201, 11, 29, 58, 73, 107, 123, 133, 128, 160,
204–5, 206, 208, 212, 303, 330–38, 340, 180, 190, 191–92, 225, 301. See also
342, 346 horography
letter (written message), xiii, 15, 16, Longinus: On the Sublime and quotation
26, 45 n.190, 98, 161, 184, 197, 211, of Bible, 370 n.39
386–87 longue durée, 195. See also Braudel, F.
Letter of Aristeas (to Philocrates), 26–27, Lono (Hawaiian god, with whom Cook
297 n.288, 371 n.43 identified), 345
Levi (s. of Jacob), 365, 368; tribe of, 362, Loos (Mac. month), 78
368 “loser” history, xxv
Library: at Alexandria, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, Loraux, N., 301 n.2
104, 105, 234; of Ashurbanipal, 222, loss of identity, xxv, xxvi, 122, 125, 323–
243; at Tebtunis, 170–71, 179, 313; 24, 385–87
temple, 17, 37, 72 127, 161, 163, 165, Lucian: How to Write History, 196
478 Index
Luxor, xxviii nism, xxx–xxxi, 97–117, 359, 363–64;

luxury, 14–15 and Turin List, M’s nearness to, xii, 85,
Lycurgus (overseer of Athens), 8 n.22, 87, 93–94, 96, 171; and discrepancies
8–9, 17 with, 87–88, 92
Lydia, 197, 314; chronology of, 101, 122 Mania, sub-satrap (regional governor for
Persians), 312
Ma’at (divine cosmic order in Egypt) mania, documentary, 10, 102, 187; of
xxvii, 40–41, 178, 306, 307, 318–19, Hellenistic rulers, 15
323, 342, 346; and annual Nile inunda- Manning, J., xviii, 32 n.122, 38 n.154
tion, 323 Mantinea: fall of to Spartans, 157
Maccabees III, xxii mantis, xxiv n.55
MacCulloch, D., 187 n.301 Marduk-apla-iddina (local ruler of Baby-
Macedon, 6, 109, 114, 334 lon), 267
magic: Babylonian, 243; Egyptian, 125, Marsyas: flayed by Apollo, 186
126, 127, 164, 318, 334; Egyptian dif- Marudach Baldan (usurper), 267
ficulties with term, 125 n.10; Israelite, Masistes (brother of Xerxes), 312
371 mastroi (local magistrates at Lindos),
magistrates, list(s) of: dating by, xxiii, 25, 183
100, 101, 104, 117, 183, 189, 364 maxim(s) (also sayings, sententiae),
Magnesia on the Maeander, 8, 11, 45 xxvii–xxix, 154, 185
n.190, 186, 285 McEwan, G. J. P., xviii
Magoi: rule of, 89 McGing B., xviii, xviii n.37
Makahiki (Hawaiian religious festival), measureable past, xxxi, 56, 92, 96, 104,
345 120, 122, 252, 277, 320, 352
male, 175, 231; confused with female in Mede(s) 80, 173, 211, 309
Babylonian Creation, 76, 227; imagery Media, 45, 80, 173, 211, 275, 285, 288,
of, 179, 313; male-woman of the “ef- 309, 314
feminates” who assassinate Amenem- medicine, xiii, 110
hat I, 175 Medina, 55
Manasseh (s. of Joseph), 373 Megalaros (leg. king of Pautibiblon), 59,
mandrakes: apples of, 370, 371, 372; of 64, 66
Reuben, 370, 371, 372 megalophrosyne, mega phronesai (think-
Manetho: his Aegyptiaca appears at ap- ing big), 287, 311
prox. same time as Berossus’ Babylo- Megasthenes, 28, 292
niaca, xv, xxiv, 349; criticizes Hdt. for Meidias (assassin and usurper), 312
ignorance, 89, 90, 315; in foundation Meluhha (Akkad. for Egypt), 16
story of Sarapis cult, viii–ix; imitates member of the “staff of the House of Life”
Berossus (?), xv; innovative, xiii, 171– (Eg. title), 161
72, 200, 342, 348, 358; innovative with Memnon (Amenophis): speaking statue
king list in particular, 96, 107, 171–72; of, 99 n.179, 111, 332 n.100
and king lists, 84–97; local orienta- Memoir(s) 6, 20 n.72
tion of, 181–82; possible position Memphis, vii, xviii, 3, 89, 126, 163, 167,
in Egyptian priesthood, viii–ix, xiii, 171, 180–81, 333, 337, 343
161–62, 309; ps. letter of, to Ptolemy men/de, 309–10
Philadelphus, xiii, 161; and synchro- Mendels, D., 178, 181, 299 n.297
Index 479
Mendesian goat, 95, 178, 180, 182 Monument-novelle, 154. See also Mem-
Menelaus, xxxi, 73, 90, 107, 115, 188 non: speaking statue of
Menes (also Menas, Men, Min), 85, 86, moon, 228, 242, 246; cycle(s) of, 243,
89, 90, 91, 94, 113, 176–78 246; eclipse cycles of, 250, 251. See also
Menestheus (leg. king of Athens), 257 Selene
Mephres (Eg. king), 211 moral evaluation, of monarchs, 15
mercenary, 22, 108 n.218, 312 Moses, 124, 209, 263, 339, 362, 365,
Merib (s. of Naneferkaptah, hero of Setna 368, 377–78, 379, 384; ideal leader/
I), 126, 127 culture hero, 362, 384; identified with
Mesopotamia(n), ix, xxvi, xxvii, xxx, 42, Osarseph, leader of Lepers, 99, 208,
48, 56, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 75, 375. See also Torah
137, 138, 140, 145, 146, 148, 155, 166, Mosshammer, A., x n.13, 75 n.85, 78
199, 220, 221, 225, 228, 230, 239, 244, n.101, 173
247, 251, 254, 267, 269, 276, 278, 299, Most, G., 233
348, 365; southern shoreline moved Moümis = Mummu (title/byname of
since Antiquity, 136 Tiamat), 236. See also Tiamat; Tiamat:
messianism: political/historical, xxvi, 318 Mummu Tiamat
Metasthenes (phony Persian historian Moyer, I., xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 119, 120, 341–
invented by Annius of Viterbo), 386 42, 350, 382
Meyer, E., xxxiii n.80, 153, 202, 316, multiple audiences: for Berossus and
319–20 Manetho, xiv, xix–xx, xxi, 4, 110, 112,
mice, miraculous: disable Sennacherib’s 186, 217–18, 235, 344
army, 269, 341 Mummu. See Moümis
Michalowski, P., 57–58, 142–43, 148 Murray, O., 24, 237, 350
Middle Kingdom, 85, 87, 93, 165, 220, museum, perspective of: in Antiquity,
305, 306, 322, 335, 342 140–41, 187
middle years: often underrepresented/ the Museum: of Alexandria, 17, 18, 19, 27
poorly understood in ancient chro- n.103, 104
nologies, 59, 80, 82, 85. See also “hour- mutheuomena, 205, 212, 213. See also
glass shape” myth
Midian, 377–78 mutual dependence (two-way street)
Miletus, 29, 30, 281 between scholar/priest and king/com-
Mill, James, 215 n.64, 216, 217 munity, 11, 41, 169, 219 n.76, 326
Millar, F., xxxii, xxxiii n.80, 22, 299 Mycale, battle of, 100, 114 n.244
Misphragmouthosis (pharaoh), 108, 109, Mycerinus/Menkheres (Eg. king), 92
211 Myrsilus. See Candaules
Mnevis (bull), 95, 178, 181–82; called myth: and history, xxiii, xxx, xxxi,
Osiris Mnevis in death, 182 n.276 xxxii,7, 8, 10, 24, 25, 73, 75, 77, 78,
Moeris (pharaoh), 91, 178 n.251 102, 105–7, 108, 109, 112, 114–15,
Mohammed, 55 116, 117, 122, 130, 133, 146, 159, 160,
Momigliano, A., xxxiv–xxxv, 101, 202, 164, 170, 187, 190, 192, 197, 205, 212,
299, 349 n.2, 351–52, 384 221, 226, 228, 230, 232, 234, 235, 250,
monstrous hybrids, Babylonian (esp. 255, 257, 262, 270, 293, 303, 305, 317,
during Creation), xxii n.44, 76, 227, 336, 338, 344, 347
228–29, 234 mythical reality, 344, 345
480 Index
Mythological Manual (Eg.), 170 230, 238, 335, 339; history, 4, 32, 146,
mythopraxis, 250, 346 195–200, 341, 384–85; inset, xxi, 126,
167, 221; master, xxiv, 117, 198, 301;
Nabonidus (last neo-Babylonian king; tags in Manetho, xii, 85–86, 106, 174,
conquered by Cyrus) 42, 43, 44, 49, 51, 178, 200–1, 210, 210 n.56, 303, 305,
82, 140, 141, 148, 159, 160, 201, 265, 305 n.18; telescoping of, 272; template,
266, 276, 205, 296–98, 299. See also 88, 328, 338, 343–47
Nabonidus Chronicle nation, nationalism, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii,
Nabonidus Chronicle (Chronicle 7), 42, xviii n.37, xxv–xxvii, xxx, xxxi, 3, 9, 44,
199, 297 87, 115, 116, 125, 129, 200, 217, 237,
Nabopolassar (king of Babylon, father of 246, 265, 266, 293, 298, 299, 315, 322,
Nebuchadnezzar II), 71, 82, 83, 158, 323, 324, 342, 348, 349, 350, 352, 357,
201, 265, 266, 267, 272–73, 274, 276, 358, 360, 361, 364, 367, 369, 376, 385,
279, 280, 291; and Nebuchadnezzar II 385 n.81, 386
as models for Seleucus I and Antiochus native writers: “first phase,” 217
I, 291–93 natural accounting/accounting of nature,
Nabouchodonosor, 362. See also Nebu- xxix, 227, 228, 230, 232–35, 237
chadnezzar II naturalize/normalize, 75, 76, 231, 256. See
Nabû-apla-iddina (Bab. king and archae- also concession to Greek reader
ologist), 141–42, 187 Nearchus, 6, 47
Nabû-nasir (king of Babylon), 80–82, Nebo (main deity of Borsippa), 239
149, 250 n.130, 251; Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar I, 147, 223, 224
Chronicle Series and Astronomical Nebuchadnezzar II, 28, 82, 83, 124, 158–
Diaries begins with him, 251, 277; his 60, 201, 210, 262, 265, 266, 271–75,
destruction of the records of earlier 278–97, 313, 320; building program of,
kings, 61, 251; expansion of Berossus’ 274–75, 283–90; Carchemish, battle
narrative from his reign, 277 of, 265, 273, 278–83, 320; as euerget-
name(s), naming, cross cultural, xxviii– ist, 284–85; and Hanging Gardens,
xxxi, 64–65, 67–68, 99, 106–7, 100, 288–90; and Israelites, 362; as world
109, 110–13, 206–7, 208, 211, 227, 228, conqueror, 273, 292, 320
236, 238, 254, 256, 266, 324–28, 332, “Nebuchadrezzar” (leader of revolt), 44
339, 375 Nechautis (chief judge of Nectanebo II),
Naneferkaptah (hero of Setna I), 125–28, 128
167 Necho II (pharaoh), 281
Narayana Rao, V., 216, 217 “Nectanebo,” xiii
narrative: abridgment of, 267, 272, 367 Nectanebo I (pharaoh), 39, 88
n.31; arc(s) of, xxvi, xxvii, 197, 338; Nectanebo II, 35, 38, 39, 128, 318–19,
astronomical in Berossus, 240–53, 334–37; king and magician, 334–35;
347; block(s), 86, 97, 172–75, 176–78, sires Alexander the Great, 334
210–12, 303; blocks of marriage to Neferhotep I, pharaoh, 165
chronologically frame, xii, 171–72, Neith (chief deity of Sais, Eg.), 36, 37,
172–75, 176, 179–80, 200, 210–13, 38
215, 307, 342, 344, 348; continuous Neo-Assyrian(s), 44, 65, 71, 72, 80, 81,
narrative history, 172, 198, 351, 384, 82, 83, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155,
385; displacement of detail, 333–34, 201, 250, 266, 270
335–36, 340–41; doublets in, 140, 228, Neo-Babylonian(s), 28, 42, 49, 65, 66, 69,
Index 481
71, 75, 77, 82–83, 140, 142, 145, 147, 114, 201, 211, 212–13, 265, 307–13,
158, 201, 265, 266, 267, 276, 278, 280, 315, 331, 342
283, 291, 293, 295, 296, 297, 299, 320; Novetzke, C. L., 216 n.66, 219
Berossus’ ideal past, 276–78 Nubia(ns), 168 n.204; “hacking up of,” 95
Nepherites (first native pharaoh after Nyuserra (last pharaoh of the Fifth
First Persian Domination), 35 Dynasty, 86
Nephthali (s. of Jacob), 368
Neugebauer, O., 241 n.92, 251 Oannes/Uan(-Adapa) (Babylonian cul-
New Kingdom, 93, 165, 166, 175, 177, ture hero and fish-man sage, apkallu),
178, 201, 220 xx–xxi and n.44, xxix–xxx, 58, 59–79,
New Year’s Festival (Akitu) at Babylon, 133, 136, 139, 140, 144, 147, 172, 214,
42–43, 50, 225, 226, 277, 306; program 221–26, 227–29, 231–35, 237, 239, 243,
for, Seleucid in date, 50, 226; seen as 244, 246, 255, 259, 263, 264, 276–77,
“rectification of the foreign king,” 50 306, 347, 358; creates historical frame
“Nicarchus.” See Anu-uballit Nicarchus for Babylonian Genesis account, 76;
Nicocles of Cyprus, 14–15, 20 gifts of to earliest humans, xxi, 61, 71,
Nidintu-Anu (f. of Anu-belsunu), 67 74, 222, 224; image of “still in Berossus’
Nidintu-Bel (revolt leader), 44 time,” 73, 75, 76, 139, 224; his instruc-
Niehoff, M., 233 n.48, 360 n.7, 377 n.66, tion comprehensive (“nothing more
381, 383 n.89 has been discovered”), xxi, 62 n.24, 72,
Nikouria Decree, 18, 105 74, 79; his name in Sumerian, 62 n.25
Nile, 117, 167, 180, 330, 32, 333, 340; Odakon (another fish-man apkallu),
annual inundation of, 94, 98, 117, 167, 60, 61, 62, 63 and n.29, 64, 66, 69, 72;
168, 323; and Ma’at, 323 Oannes’ “twin” or “double,” 63
Nilus (legendary pharaoh), 103, 104 Odysseus (in Iliad), 9 374–75
Nineteenth Dynasty, xxx, 106 oikoumene (settled world), xxiii, 6
Nineveh, 149, 150, 153, 288; Hanging Old Comedy, Attic, 18
Gardens at (?) in “Babylon” district, Old Kingdom, 34, 87, 88, 93, 165, 309
288–89 n.38, 322 n.67, 326
Ninth Dynasty, 87, 177 Olympiad (time reckoning), 22, 99–105,
Ninus (leg. king), 319–20 107, 114, 189 n.313
Nippur, 57 n.8, 147 n.108, 223 Olympian gods, 112
Nisan (Bab. month), 279 Olympic Games, 99, 100, 101–5, 114, 115,
Nitocris, Eg. queen, 90 116, 359
Noah, 77, 144, 220, 272 n.204 Omorka (= Tiamat), 112, 236; name is
nomarch, 35, 40–41 numeric equivalent of Selene in Greek,
nonnative rule, xvi, xviii, xxvi, 3, 23, 38 236, 236 n.73
n.153, 40, 68, 72, 82, 88, 129, 151, 152, On the Making of Kyphi: ps. work attrib-
169, 199, 246, 266–67, 307, 323–24, uted to Manetho, xiii
328, 335, 340, 342, 343, 346, 347, 352 Onesicritus, 6
nonroyal figure: in Egyptian texts, 34, Onuris (god at Sebennytus), 319, 336,
172, 199, 305, 308 n.24, 322, 343, 346 337; and temple of in Dream of Nec-
nostoi (homecomings of heroes): stories tanebo, 319
of, 102. See also Odyssey Ophioneus (god in Pherecydes of Syrus),
novella, Herodotean, xi, 307–8, 342; of 232
Sethos and Harmais in Manetho, xi, Opis: battle of (Nabonidus vs. Cyrus), 43
482 Index
Or = Horus, 103, 330, 331 Papyrus Jumilhac, 323, 327

Oracle/Prophecy of the Lamb (of Boc- Papyrus Salt 825, 164, 168, 169, 170
choris), 115, 172–75, 303, 318, 341 paradeisos vs. kepos, 290
Oracle of the Potter, xxi–xxii, 318, 336– paradox of translation, xxi–xxiii and
37, 338 n.46, 113
oral preservation: of past, xi, 57, 92, 96, paradoxos, 316, 317, 317 n.50
195, 205, 222, 224, 249 n.126, 301, 303 Parian Marble (Marmor Parium), 117–
orientalism and Egypt, 304 18, 254, 257
origin(s) of cosmos, xxx, 72–73, 133, 221, Parkinson, R. B., 175, 176 n.238
228, 230, 235, 237–38, 242, 277 Parsons, P., xxi, xxii, 153 n.137, 337
Oropus, xxiv n.55, 9 n.23 nn.117–18, 338 n.119
Oros, 211. See also Horus; Or Psaenhor (Psinyris, scribe of Lamb of
Orphic doctrine, 231 Bocchoris), 173
Osarseph (leprous priest and leader, Hyk- “pass on,” “distribute” ancient wisdom,
sos II, 99, 182, 208, 332, 375; identified 70, 139, 144, 260, 261–62
with Moses, 99, 208, 375 patriarch(s) (Hebrew), 64, 65–66, 362,
Osirian funerary rites, 164–65, 322–24, 362 n.15, 368, 369, 383
352 Pausanias, xii, 7, 31, 157, 241
Osiris, 99 n.177, 103, 112, 164–65, Pautibiblon (Bad-tibira), 59–60, 64, 65
166, 179, 180, 182 n.276, 307, 313, Pedon (s. of Amphinneus, of Priene),
314–15, 322–24, 337–38; Osiris-beds/ 107, 108 n.218
corn-Osiris, 322–23. See also Khoiak Peftuauneith (court doctor to Apries),
Festival; Osirian funerary rites 166
Osorcho (pharaoh identified as Heracles), Pelling, C., 196, 198, 311 n.36, 384
111–13 Peloponnesian War, 100, 101, 197, 287
Osor-Hapi, ix n.9. See also Sarapis n.261, 301, 364; Archidamian phase
ostrakon, -a, xviii, 176 of, 100; created by Thuc.’s writing up
“other,” xxii, 90. See also foreigner of it, 301
Otiartes (leg. Chaldaean king and f. of Pelusium (gateway to Egypt from East
Xisouthros the Flood hero), 60, 64, 138 and battle site), 211, 268, 269, 313, 334
Otto, E., 199 n.17, 304–5 Pentecontaetia: Thuc. tells of as explana-
Ouranos, 132 tion for outbreak of Peloponnesian
Oxus River, 28, 252 War, 197
peplos: of Athena, 22–23
paideia (Gk. culture), viii, xxviii–xxix, 17, Perdiccas: murder of, 47
27, 29–30 n.111, 104 n.202, 130, 189, Pergamon, 6, 294 n.284
210, 210 n.55, 245, 265, 315, 349 periodization, 84 n.115, 114–15, 258, 300,
palace(s): royal, 20, 36, 38, 72, 164, 178, 364
272, 275, 285, 287, 288 Peripatos (school of Aristotle): members
Palermo Stone, xii, 56, 86, 92, 94–96, 98, as conduits of information, xxvii, xx-
117, 171, 172, 174, 177, 178, 182 viii, xxx, 104, 235, 237, 271, 321
Palestine, xxii, 45, 155, 268 peripateia (sudden reversal): Aristotle on,
Panathenaia, 22 312; Greek storyline, 307, 311–13
Panchaea (utopia of Euhemerus), 132 Persephone, Rape of, 8 n.21, 73
papyrus, papyri, 87, 90, 94, 96, 170, 316; Persian Gulf, 136. See also Red Sea
loss of in the Delta, 33 (ancient)
Index 483
Persian rule, xvi, xvii, xxxiii, 4, 5, 18, 45, Phoencian History of Philo of Byblos,
45 n.190, 185, 197, 199, 217, 348; of 129, 133
Babylon/Babylonia, xvi, 32, 41–47, 49– phoenix of Egypt: in Ezekiel the Trage-
51, 82, 83, 160, 199, 217, 265, 266, 278, dian, 379; in Hdt., 75
282, 290, 297, 298, 348; of Egypt, xvi, “phoney prediction” in Dynastic Proph-
32, 33–41, 86, 88, 89, 95, 166, 199, 217, ecy, 51
313, 317, 318, 323, 335, 343, 348 Phorkys and Keto (from Hes. Theogony),
Persian Verse Account, 43 n.177, 297 234
Persian Wars, 100, 197, 301 Phrygia, 378
perspective, regional, xvi, xxiii–xxv, 3, 7– “physical” explanation(s) of text. See al-
8, 12, 30, 33, 58, Ch. 3 passim, 387. See legory; physiologeo
also Babyloniaca; Berossus; Manetho physiologeo/physikos logos, physiologia,
Peru, 386, 387 xxix, 227, 230, 232–35, 237, 259
Peter, H., xxiv pillar(s): of Sennacherib, 148; of Seth
Petese stories (Eg.), 170, 172 n.252 (biblical), 144
Petesis (glyph writer from Dream of Pindar, 185 n.289, 377, 380; on the Flood,
Nectanebo), 318–19, 336–37 108
Petosiris, 39–41, 326; tomb complex of, piradu. See fish-man
39–41 piromis (Eg. gentleman), 57, 91, 116–17,
Petoubates (pharaoh synchronized with, 119, 328
first Olympic Games), 99–100, 103 planet(s), xxvii, 55, 242, 248; the five, 228,
Peuce (island on the Danube), 5 242, 246
Phanodemus, Atthidographer, xxiv n.55, plants: associated with Babylonia, 134–35
8 nn.21–22, 8–9, 9 n.23, 73, 192 Plataea: battle of, 100, 114 n.244
pharaoh: incarnation of Horus, 315, 323; Plato, 109, 221 n.2
as sole priest of Egypt, 40, 161 Pliny the Elder, xii, 14 n.42, 28, 29, 241,
Pharnabazus, Persian satrap, 312 242, 243 n.103, 251
Pherecydes of Syrus, 232 plomos (lead documents from Granada),
Pheros (Eg. king in Hdt.), 339 n.122 187 n.301
philanthropy, philanthropic, 255, 285, Plutarch, viii n.7, viii–ix, 5, 7, 20, 26, 31,
297 182, 189, 257, 258, 326, 327
Philip III Arrhidaeus, ix n.10, 282, 294 Pluto (god), viii–ix, 284
Philip V, 296 polemic, historiographic, 90, 103, 270,
Philip III (of Spain), 386 288, 293, 315, 350–51
Philo of Alexandria, 235 n.66, 349, 362 polis, xxiii, 11, 19, 30, 190
n.15, 367 n.32 politeia: as part of Oannes’ instruction,
Philo of Byblos (Herennius Philo), 129– 226
33, 134, 148, 172, 225, 235, 254 Polybius, 6, 7, 16, 29 n.107, 31, 101, 102,
Philo of Byzantium, 286 n.259, 288 n.263 154, 191, 196, 198, 296, 299; and suc-
Philochorus, Atthidographer, xxiv n.55, cession of empires, 299
378 Polybus (Eg. nobleman mentioned in
philotimia, philotimos, 15, 274, 283–86, Ody., king in Manetho), xxx, xxxi, 105,
297 106–7
Phoenicia(n), 3, 108 n.223, 130–33, 211, Polystratus: honored by Halai Aixonides,
214, 268, 271, 272, 273, 274, 280, 281, 284
291, 292, 309 pompe (procession), 16, 17, 22
484 Index
Pontus (region), 12, 321 priest/scholar, rise in importance of: at

Posener, G., 36 n.143, 36 n.148, 88 n.131, expense of king, 36–41, 70–72, 128–29,
306, 326 169, 218–19, 226, 299–300, 342–43
Posidonius, 75 priestly autobiography (“Testament”),
post-Kassite period, 223, 224 Egyptian, 33–41, 326
Potiphera/Pentephres/Petephres, 373, priestly elite, native, 32–51, 146, 167, 297,
375 353, 386; and legitimation of new rul-
power, xvi, xx, xxxiii, xxxv, 9, 14, 14 n.40, ing house(s), 219
16–20, 23, 27, 36–37, 40, 41, 43 n.176, Priestly Manual (Eg.), 170
46, 50, 51, 71, 79, 84, 97, 115, 118, 125– princesses, abduction of: at start of Hdt.,
29, 147, 162, 163, 169, 171, 176, 177, 197
180, 181, 190, 192, 211, 215, 242, 266, “problems and solutions”: Greek critical
274, 280, 283, 287 n.262, 294, 296, 298, tool, 361, 376–81
299–300, 304, 308, 326; seen as contin- procession, 16, 17, 22
gent/negotiated/provisional, 37, 41, 50, proem, 25, 89, 113, 145, 315. See also
51, 226, 326, 218–19, 219 n.76 program, programmatic statement(s)
P. Oxy., 886 (astronomical text), 132 program, programmatic statement(s),
P. Oxy. 1381, Praise of Imouthes/Ascle- 13, 212
pius, 110, 128 propaganda, 5, 15, 32, 43, 89, 297, 314
P. Oxy. 3011 (the retreat of Amenophis to prophetic Königsnovelle. See under König-
Memphis?), 337–38 snovelle
P. Oxy. 4099 (mythographic list and say- prophecy, prophetic text(s), xxi, 33, 49,
ings of Seven Wise Men), xxviii n.72. 50–51, 169–75, 188, 199, 215, 218,
praise: of cities/countries, 18–19 299–300, 302, 303, 305–7, 318, 319,
Praise of Imouthes-Asclepius, 110, 128 328–33, 335, 336–38, 339, 340–44, 346
Predynastic Period (Egypt): when gods Prophecy of Nerferty, 199, 306, 329–30,
ruled, 86, 87 335, 342, 346
preordained, defeat and foreign con- Proteus, 90
quest/rule seen as, xxv–xxvi, 386–87; proto-apocalyptic, 129, 169, 218, 226,
at Babylon, 298–300; in Egypt, 316–18, 246, 300, 302, 305, 307, 342, 343, 353;
334–35, 342–43. See also deuternomic, “wisdom lacking a royal patron” (of
view of past as; messianism apocalyptic view), 343. See also Smith,
Pre-Socratic(s), xxxii, 100, 233, 245 J. Z.
prestige language, xx, 218 protos heuretes (first discoverer), 133,
pride, local and national, xvi, xxxii, 7, 19 223–24. See also Oannes; Sanchuni-
n.64, 298 athon; Taautos
Priene, 8, 107 Prt, season of (Egypt), 323
priest: as “carrier of culture,” xxvi; pha- Psammetichus II, 105
raoh only “true” one in Egypt, 40, 161; Psammetichus III (Psamtik), 34, 36, 166
problem with term when applied to Pseudo Philo: Liber Antiquitatum Bibli-
Babylonians, 42 n.171; problem with carum, 358
term when applied to Egyptians, 161 Psinyris. See Pasaenhor
and n.171 Psophis (town described by Polybius),
priest historian(s), xv, xxi, 240, 265, 315, 296
386–87 Ptah, 99 n.177, 110, 126, 167, 171, 313
Index 485
Ptolemaia, dynastic festival, 18, 105 dicta regarding, 204; reliability in Jose-
Ptolemaios of Mendes, 384 phus, 202–3, 209–10
Ptolemies: as patrons/benefactors, 17–21,
22, 24, 114, 188 n.307 Rachel (biblical matriarch), 367, 368–69,
Ptolemy (name of work by Demetrius of 370–72, 376; and mandrakes of Reu-
Phalerum), 25 ben, 371
Ptolemy I Soter (s. of Lagus), viii, 6, rain miracle: at Lindos, 128
22–27, 31, 33, 35, 39, 95, 103, 114, Ramesseoshehab (scribe of the House of
118, 153, 176, 274, 326, 365, 371 n.43; Life), 165
assumes kingship of Egypt, 25, 35, 118, Ramesses II, 86, 94, 126, 165 n.195, 305
326; as historian, 6, 31, 258 Ramesses IV, 165–66
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, x, xiii, xv, xix, Ramesseum: at Thebes, 24, 25 n.98
16, 17–21, 22, 26–27, 33, 103, 105, 118 Rampses (s. of Sethos), 331
n.256, 161, 176, 281, 363 Raphia: battle of, xix n.38; Decree of, 161
Ptolemy III Euergetes, 17, 31, 294 n.283 n.168, 167
Ptolemy IV Philopator, xix, 362, 362, 364, Ras Shamra, 131
375 Ray, J., 35 n.139, 126 n.12, 163
Ptolemy VI Philometor, 365 Rebecca (biblical matriarch), 366, 369
Ptolemy VIII, 31 recognition: of the authority of newly
public reading(s) of historical texts (ak- discovered text(s), 124, 128
roaseis), 9, 10, 10 n.30, 11–12 Record of (Athenian) Archons (Demetrius
Pulu (Gk. Phulos, Bab. name for Tiglath- of Phalerum), 25, 104
pileser III), 266 Record(s), vii, 3, 25, 33, 85, 94, 99, 104,
Purim, xii–xxiii 107, 123, 124, 133, 134, 140, 143, 144,
pyramid(s), 90, 91, 92, 93, 113, 178, 145, 154, 164, 183, 189, 191 n.326,
287 205, 206, 208, 212–14, 251, 253, 254,
Pyrrho, 23 258, 266, 269, 277, 278, 292, 303, 315,
pyr technikon (effective fire): stoic doc- 338; antediluvian, 140, 143, 144, 263;
trine, 245 astronomical, 247, 248, 251. See also
pythais (embassy to Delphi), xxiv n.55, anagraphai/anagraphein
9 n.23 “rectification of the foreign king” (Akitu
Pythian Games (Delphi), 100, 101 n.189 [New Year’s Festival]) at Babylon, 50
Pytho (Delphi), xxvii–xxix Red Sea (ancient; mod. Persian Gulf), 58,
59–60, 74, 75, 134, 147, 221, 263 n.179;
Qishti-Marduk (scribe of the Cyrus Cyl- “bordering Babylonia” in Berossus,
inder), 43 n.177 136, 147, 221, 222
Quack, J., 98 n.174, 125 n.9, 126 n.14, 171 Red Sea: crossing of by Israelites, 377
n.217 n.70, 379
Quaegebeur, J., 33, 337 n.117, 338 n.119 regime change, xxv, 267, 293–94, 298–
quarry, quarries, Egyptian: at Hamma- 300, 316. See also succession of empires
mat, 165, 166; place where “polluted” reign lengths, Egyptian, xii, 56, 86, 87, 92,
left in Hyksos II, 330, 331, 332 94, 343
Que (city in Cilicia), 149 Reinach, T., 159 n.160, 214 n.61, 275, 292
Qumran, xii n.48, 358 n.278
quotation, ancient: reliability of Brunt’s reiterability, ideal of: Egypt, 163–64
486 Index
relic of Nebuchadnezzar II: used by An- Rowton, M. B., 85 n.116, 101 n.187, 114
tiochus III, 292–93 n.247
religious officials, lists of, xxiii “Running-of-Apis,” 95, 178, 182
response to Greek historical writing, xv– Ryholt, K., xii n.20, 84 n.115, 87 n.123,
xvi, xxiv, xxv, 92, 270, 285, 351, 384; of 88, 93, 170–71, 179–80, 270 n.198, 313,
Berossus to Hdt, xvi, 134–35, 156–57, 336, 337
160, 263, 269–71, 286–88, 351–52,
385; of Manetho to Hdt, xvi, xxxi, 86, Sabacos (Ethiopian invader of Eg. and
89–93, 103, 105, 112, 115, 179, 206, king in Hdt.), 335 n.106, 339–41. See
287, 311–12, 313, 315, 327, 328, 335, also Sabakon
339–41, 350, 351–52, 385 Sabakon (first ruler of Twenty-Fifth
Reuben (s. of Jacob, also Reubel), 368, Dynasty): burned Bocchoris alive, 106
370–71; and mandrakes, 370–71 n.213, 174
Reuel (alt. for Jethro), 378 Sabbe (Hebrew sibyl, allegedly a d. of
revelation: of Oannes, 61, 71–72, 74, 148, Berossus), xii, 241, 263
214 Sacaea, Persian (?, festival at Babylon),
revolt, 22, 34, 35 n.137, 39, 44, 50, 149, 46, 78, 220 n.1, 265 n.183, 348
197, 267, 268, 272–73, 280–81, 282–83, Sachs, A. J. and H. Hunger, 248–49
312 Sack, R. H., 83
rewriting: the Bible, 357, 357 n.1, 358–59, Sacred Book: ps. work attributed to Ma-
361, 383 netho, xiii
Reymond, E. A. E., 173 Sacred Way between Miletus and
Rhampsinitus, 90, 313 Didyma, 30
Rhathotis (b. of queen Akencheris, Eg.), sacrifice, 8 n.21, 15, 28, 29, 47, 73, 180,
211 188, 189, 192, 248, 262, 366, 379
Ringren, H., 49 sage, primeval: as inventor and transmit-
rivalry/competition: between Hellenistic ter of wisdom, 133, 223–24. See also
dynasts, 14–16, 19, 28 n.106, 34 n.135, Oannes; Sanchuniathon; Taautos
298, 308 sages: list(s) of, 60–70, 72, 76, 79, 80, 83,
rivers: bisecting cities/settlements, 155– 84, 221; made from list of Sumerian
58 texts, 69
Robert, L., xxvii, xxviii, 10 n.30, 11 n.33, Sahlins, M., 195 n.4, 250, 343–47; and
29 mythopraxis, 250, 346
Roccati, A., 164 Sais, 8 n.21, 36, 37, 45, 172
Rochberg, F., 72, 243 n.102 saknu (Bab. governor), 67–68
Rood, T., 197 n.12 Salamis: battle of, 100, 103, 114 n.244
root of Egypt: destruction by, 321–22; Salitis (first king of the Hyksos in Mane-
Hyksos desire destruction of, 321–24 tho), 319, 320–21, 343
Rosetta Stone (Rosettana), xviii, 95, 161 Samareia (district in Fayum), 365
n.168, 290 Samaria, 362, 364–65. See also Samareia
Romaine, S., xx n.41 Samaritans, 365
rome (Egyptian title), 117 Samos, 281, 287 n.261
Rome/Romans, x, xxxii, 3, 7, 16, 102, Samuel, A., 247
114–15, 116, 129, 186, 190, 323 Sanchuniathon (wisdom hero in Philo of
rounding, numerical: by Manetho, Bylos), 130–33, 148, 155, 172, 224
88 sangu priest: at Sippar, 141
Index 487
Santo Tomás, D. de, 386 indigenous (local), xiii, xvii, xviii, 217,
Sarakos (Assyrian king), 272 247, 252, 262, 383
Sarapis: cult, ix n.9; foundation story of scholia: to Apollonius of Rhodes, 103,
his cult, viii-ix, 162 380; to Euripides, 378; to Homer, 374–
Sardanapalus, 272; memorial of at Tarsus, 75, 377–81; to Pindar, 377, 380
152–54. See also Sennacherib: and Cili- Scillus: N. Peloponnese (exile home of
cian campaign against Greeks Xenophon and miniature Ephesus),
Sardis, 100, 248 157, 191
Sargon II, 267 Scribe, xiii, xxi, xxii, 43 n.177, 51, 69,
saros: meaning, 251 145, 148, 161, 163 n.179, 164, 169, 224,
Saros (Canon) Cycle, 78, 250–51 346; as carrier of culture, xxvi; of the
Sartre, M., xv, 349, 351 god’s book (Eg.), 161; of the House of
satrap/satrapy, 24, 35, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, Life (Eg.), 126, 165, 167, 173; pharaoh
118, 248, 273–74, 281–82; as Seleucid Sneferu acts as his own, 329
term for “governor,” 273–74, 281–82 script register(s), xvii–xviii, 127 n.20, 131,
Satrap Stela (Eg.) of Ptolemy (s. of Lagus 149, 155
viceroy), 24 n.88, 35, 181, 274, 326 Scythia(ns), 28, 314, 328 n.93
Satraps’ Revolt, 35 n.137 seals, Egyptian, 175, 177; Mesopotamian,
Sauneron, S., 94 n.159, 161 n.170, 180 75, 228
“Sayings of Amenotes” (Imhotep/Ascle- Sebennytus (Eg.), viii, 319, 337
pius): ostrakon, xxviii Second Dynasty, 87, 95, 174 n.226, 178,
Scaliger, J., 74–75 n.85, 236 181
Scamander River: in Homer, 231, 380. See Second Dynasty of Isin, 147, 224
also Xanthus River Sed (Festival and period, Eg. royal jubi-
Schäfer, H., 95 lee), 174, 182
Schäfer, P., 99 n.178, 206 n.38, 208 n.43 Sekhmet (Eg. god), 37
Schank, R., 239 Selene, 227, 236; numeric equivalent in
Schivelbusch, W., xxv–xxvi Greek of Omorka, 236
Schnabel, P., 76, 144–45, 229, 235, 241, Seleucia: on the Calycadnus, 150; in Pie-
292 n.278 ria, 280; on the Tigris, 48, 248
scholar, 23, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 78, 80, 84, Seleucid/Antigonid conflict in Babylonia,
105, 126, 130, 145, 167, 200, 214, 223– xvi, 48–49, 50, 51, 82, 266
24, 234, 235, 250, 251, 257, 258, 263, Seleucids: as imitators of Achaemenid
362, 379, 380, 385, 386 Persian governing policy, 42, 298
scholarly culture: Babylonian (and Seleucus I, ix n.10, 14 n.41, 16, 28–30,
Mesopotamian more generally), xiii, 47, 48, 48 n.204, 49, 50, 51, 59, 118,
xvii, xviii, 3, 44, 66, 67, 68–69, 70, 72, 150–52, 280, 281, 291; as restorer of
80, 84, 108, 125, 129, 139, 142, 145, Babylon, 48, 49, 50
146, 200, 214, 217, 223, 234, 235, 240, Seleucus II, 68, 285
244, 247, 253, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263, Seleucus III, 199
265; Egyptian, xiii, xvii, 3, 87, 96, 97, Seleukis (region), 280
100, 125, 126, 127, 129, 161, 162, 163, self-categorization, communal, xxv, 7–8,
165, 167, 170, 173, 200, 214, 217, 265, 11, 116–17, 145, 181
302, 328; Greek, xxix, xxx, xxxi, 23, self-destruction: of Eastern king/com-
105, 234, 257–58, 259, 359, 359–61, mander, 272
369, 374–75, 376–77, 378–82, 383; Selinus River(s), 157
488 Index
Semiramis, (leg. queen of Babylon), xxi Setna I (Eg. narrative), 125–28, 129, 134,
n.44, 28, 80, 81, 130, 156, 214, 286, 167, 170
289–91, 293, 319–20; alleged founda- Setna Khaemwese (hero of Setna I, s. of
tion of Babylon by, rejected by Beros- Ramesses II), 125, 126, 170, 187
sus, 81, 156, 214, 286, 290, 291–92, Sety I, 86, 94
293, 320; as world conqueror, 289, 293 Sety II, 106, 308 n.24
Senacherim, 362. See also Sennacherib Seven Sages (Greek), xxvii–xxix
Seneca the Younger, 17–18, 19, 78, 242– Seven Sages (Mesopotamian), 63, 71, 71
45 n.75, 76
Sennacherib, 59, 65, 80, 81, 148–52, Seven Wonders, 286 n.259, 287, 288, 288
154–55, 158, 160, 199, 201, 266– n.263
71, 276, 288, 340–41; and attack on Shabataka (pharaoh), 268, 269, 341
Egypt, 268–70, 340–41; and capture Shamash (sun god and main god of Sip-
of Babylon, 151, 160, 266–68, 276; par), 49, 51, 141–42, 233
and Cilician campaign against Greeks, Shamash-eriba (revolt leader), 44
148–52, 154–55, 160, 201, 268; Cilician Shamash-shum-ukin (neo-Assyrian
reception of by Greek historians, 152, regent), 149, 151 n.124
54; and defeat of Greeks, 148–49, 152; Shaphan (adjutant to Josiah), 124
does not capture tribes of Judah, Ben- Shaya, J., 141 n.73, 187 n.302
jamin, and Levi, 362; murdered by s., Shear, T. L., 22
152, 268; as world conqueror, 152 Shebat (Bab. month), 279
Sennacherib Prism, 268, 341 n.125 Shechem (from story of Dinah),
Senwosret I (pharaoh), 175, 179, 306, 365
338 Shelter-of-Shepseskaf, 92
Senwosret III, 179. See also Sesostris shepherd(s), 59, 64; in Demetrius, 373,
Septuagint (LXX), xii, 290, 322, 360, 368, 374, 375; element in name of Berossus
371, 372, 373, 374 n.54, 375, 377, 378, and Manetho, vii, 385; = Hyksos, 201,
381, 384 206, 207, 208, 211, 212, 304, 321, 324,
Sepúlveda, G. de, 385 325, 331–33, 335, 346, 375
Sesonchosis, 103, 313, 314. See also Shepseskaf (pharaoh), 92
Sesostris Sherwin-White, S., 29, 30, 33 n.123,
Sesoosis, 25, 93, 313. See also Sesostris 49–50
Sesostris (also Sesonchosis, Sesoosis), 25, “Shooting of the Hippopotamus,” 177
88, 90, 91, 92–93, 103, 104 n.201, 170, Shu (Eg. god), 174
179, 182, 206, 291, 312–13, 313–15; as Shulman, D., 216, 217
world conqueror, 25, 91, 92, 179, 206, Shuruppak (antediluvian city), 64 n.35,
291, 313–15. See also Senwosret I and 65
III Sibyl (Third Sibylline Oracle), 144. See
Seth (biblical), 144 also Sabbe
Seth (Eg. god, Gk. Typhon, often of Sibylline Oracle, Third, 144
chaos, opposed to Horus), 36, 99 Sicily, 102, 103
n.177, 177, 317, 326–27, 332, 338, 346. Sicyon, 20, 31, 141; temple to Apollo at,
See also Typhon 141
Sethos, 114, 154, 269, 333, 341; and Sidon, 14
Harmais novella in Manetho, xi, 201, Simeon (s. of Jacob), 365, 368
211–13, 265, 307–15, 331, 342 simultaneous appearance (roughly): of
Index 489
histories of Berossus and Manetho, xv, Spanish conquest of the New World,
xxiv, 349 385–87
Sin-liqi-unninni (sage and stammvater at Spawforth, A., 30
Uruk), 67, 68–69, 79 spectacle(s) 18–19
Sinope (original site of statue of Pluto/ Spek, R. J. van der, 48 n.201, 147 n.108,
Sarapis), viii–ix 250
Sippar (antediluvian city of Mesopota- stability, idea of: in Babylon(ia) 51; in
mia), 65, 70, 136, 138, 139–48, 223, Egypt, 120. See also Ma’at
254, 256, 259–63, 267; associated with Stasianax (s. of Aristippus): honorand of
learning/knowledge, 65, 145, 147, 148; proxeny decree, 150 n.120
city of the Sun, 70, 138, 141–42, 254, statue(s), stories of, viii, xii, 5, 22, 36, 44,
260, 262; survives Flood, 144, 263; tab- 57, 73, 91, 99 n.179, 111 and n.236,
lets of antediluvian knowledge buried 116, 119–21, 149, 151 n.124, 152–54,
by Xisouthros at/in Berossus, 70, 138– 164, 165, 225, 229, 241, 283 n.247, 284,
40, 142, 143–48, 254, 256, 259–63 313–14
Siptah (child pharaoh), 106, 106 n.214 stelae, of Kamose, 301–2; victory memo-
Sixteenth Dynasty, 87 rials of Sesostris, 179, 313–15. See also
Sixth Dynasty, 34 female; male
Smerdis (Serdius, b. of Cambyses), 89, Stern, M., 208, 209 nn. 51–52, 210 n.53
312. See also Bardiya stereotype appropriation, 113, 117, 252.
Smith, J. Z., xviii n.37, 33 n.123, 48–49, See also Frankfurter, D.; paradox of
50, 56, 129, 218, 226, 300, 342, 343, translation; ventriloquism, colonial
353. See also proto-apocalyptic “still in my time” expression, 73–74, 75,
Smith, R. R. R., 14 nn.41–42, 33 n.123, 76, 139, 185, 224, 264 n.180
308 stochazesthai (Gk. “to guess”); in scholia,
Sneferu (pharaoh), 95, 98, 329; acts as 378–79
own scribe, 329; and Neferty, 329 Stoa, stoic, stoicism (philosophical
social memory, 195 school), 79, 229, 232–33, 245–46
Social War: Athens’ (357–55), 19; 218 Stone, L., 195 n.3
BC, 296 storm, imagery of: in Egyptian texts, 316,
Sodom, 205 317, 318, 335
Sogdia(ns), 28, 29, 30 story: as history, 196–98
Solon, 109, 184 n.287 Strabo, 20, 44, 154, 186
Somtutefnakht (Eg. priest), 37–39, 41 strategos, 274
Song of Kumarbi (Hittite myth), 231 Straton of Sidon, 14–15, 20
sophism, sophists (Greek), 90, 100, 121, Stratonike, 285
189 Subrahmanyam, S., 216, 217
Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus, 312 succession: of empires (Gk. topos), 266,
Sosibius (from story of Sarapis reported 294, 298–300, 387; priestly, royal, etc.,
by Plutarch), viii xi, 26, 76, 82, 85, 93–94, 95, 96, 120,
“souls of Re” = sacred Egyptian scripture, 176; War of (Seleucid), 280–81. See
168 also transition(s), of power
Souphis (late Eg. for Cheops), 86, 91, 92, Suda, vii–viii n.3, xii, 24 n.88, 101, 129
113, 287 n.25,161, 251
South Asian historiography, 214–17 Sumerian (language), xviii, 48, 64, 65,
Spalinger, A. J., 305, 342 n.129 146, 147, 223, 251
490 Index
Sumerian King List, 56, 57, 64 315, 317, 325–26, 344, 349, 369–70,
Sun, 74, 133, 138, 224, 228, 234 n.55, 242, 373
246; eclipse cycles of, 251; Sippar, city Tarn, W.W., viii
of, 70, 138, 141–42, 254, 260, 262 Tarsus (also Tarson, Tarzi, Tharsin), 149–
Sun-god Tablet of Nabû-apla-iddina, 54, 156, 158, 160; modeled on Babylon
141–42 by Sennacherib, 150, 160; renamed
Syncellus, George, x, xii, xiii, xv, 58, 60, “Antioch-on-the-Cydnus,” 150, 151
61, 63, 74 n.85, 74–75, 76, 81–82, 108, Tatian, ix
143, 161, 201, 220, 221, 225 n.21, 228, Tauric region of Asia Minor, 284
229, 232, 238, 253, 272, 314 Tauthe/Tauathe (alt. rendering of Tiamat/
synchronic view of history as “timeless,” tamtu), 235, 236
xiii, xxvii, xxx–xxxi, 57, 77, 79, 84, 163, tax, taxation, 37, 45 n.190, 49
178, 304–5, 344 Tcherikover, V., 208
synchronism, synchronization, xxx–xxxi, Tebtunis library, 170–71, 179, 313
78, 97–118, 359, 363–64; defined, Teisylus, priest at Lindos, 183
98–99 telescoping, of narrative, 272. See also
synods, priestly (Egypt): decrees of, xviii– abridging
xix, 95, 161 n.168, 162, 167, 181 (see Tema (region of Arabia), 297
also Canopus Decree; Raphia: Decree template narrative, 88, 328, 338, 343–47.
of; Rosetta Stone) See also Sahlins, M.
Syracuse, 14, 103 temple, vii, xix n.38, xxiii, 10, 11, 19 n.67,
Syria, 31 n.117, 35, 45, 136, 208, 214, 246, 21, 23, 30, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44–48, 51,
271, 272, 274, 280, 281, 289, 291, 292, 67, 68, 72, 74, 94, 102, 107, 125–29,
322. See also Coele Syria 131–32, 141, 148, 157, 158, 161–64,
Syrian War, First, 248, 281; of Succes- 167, 170–72, 179–81, 182–92, 196, 199,
sion (also called Crisis of Succession), 226, 227, 229, 248, 258, 274, 284, 285,
280–81 298, 308, 309, 316, 317–20, 337, 341,
Syriscus (Gk. local historian of Chersone- 365; community/town (enclave), 21,
sos (Black Sea), 11–13, 191 37, 42 n.171, 180, 181, 182–92, 320;
complex, regional perspective of, in
Taautos (primeval sage in Philo of Byb- Egypt, 162, 166 n.198, 171, 180, 181; in
los), 130–33, 155, 172 Jerusalem, 124–25, 141, 205, 272, 273,
Table of Abydos, 86, 94, 96, 171 293, 294, 303, 365; in Mesopotamia,
Table of Karnak, 86, 94 67; as a museum, 140–41, 187
Table of Saqqara, 86, 94, 171 “Temple Program for the New Year’s
Tacitus, ix Festival at Babylon” (Akitu): Seleucid
Tadmor, H., 299 date of, 50, 226
tags, narrative: in Manetho, xii, 85–86, “temporal space,” creating (making/ex-
106, 174, 176, 178, 200–201, 303, 305 panding time periods), 91–92, 93, 239,
n.18 252, 287 n.260
Tait, W.J., 117, 127 n.20 Ten Thousand (Gk. mercenaries of Cyrus
tamtu (title of Tiamat), 236 the Younger), 5 n.4
target audience, xvii, xix–xxiii, xxviii, Tenth Dynasty, 85, 87
xxxiv, 4, 18, 79, 110, 112, 135–36, 143, Teos, 23
145, 146, 152, 216, 217–18, 226, 231– Testament: of Petosiris, 39–41; of Som-
34, 256–57, 261, 272–73, 277, 286–87, tutefnakht, 37–39; of Udjahorresne,
Index 491
36–37, 326 n.83 it, 301; dating of Peloponnesian War,

Tethmosis (pharaoh), 211, 332 100–101, 364
Teucer, Athenian (founder of Troy [ac- Thutmose III, 86, 305
cording to Phanodemus]), 192 Thyoris (Twosre, Eg. king [!]): identified
“text genre”: script choice, xvii with Homeric (Od.) Polybus by Mane-
texture of a text, 204, 214–19, 235, 263– tho, xxx, xxxi, 105, 106–7, 109, 115
64, 291, 311, 312, 322 Tiamat, 75, 225, 228–34, 236, 238,
Thalat(t)h/Thalassa, 112, 227, 236. See 242, 259, 306; Mummu, 75. See also
also Omorka; Tiamat Moümis; Omorka, tamtu; Thalat(t)h/
Thamte (Gk. rendering of tamtu), 236 Thalassa
Thapar, R., 216, 217 Tiglath-pileser III (also Pulu/Phulos), 59,
Thargelion (Athenian month), 257 71, 80–81, 266
Theagenes of Rhegium, 233 Timaeus of Tauromenium, 101–3, 115,
Thebes (Egyptian), 23–24, 25, 83, 92, 116, 191, 257; compared with Manetho on
122, 163, 165, 169 synchronism, 102–3; documentary
Theocritus, 19, 103, 114, 324 mania of, 102; and Fall of Troy, 257;
theoi adelphoi, in Herodas, 18 and foundation of Carthage and Rome,
theomachy. See combat, divine 102; list of works, 101
Theophrastus, 79 n.104, 238, 271, 290 time: and “curated” past, 55, Ch. 2 pas-
Theopompus, 14–15 sim; cyclical, Egyptian, 305; linear,
theoroi (ambassadors to Delphi), 18 Egyptian, 305; reckoning, xxiii, xxxi, 3,
Thermopylae: battle of, 103, 114 n.244, 55–56, 78, 81, 84, 100, 102–4, 116–17,
115 118, 119–20, 252, 257, 359
Theugenes (son of Pistokrates), 189 Timotheus (Greek exegete involved in the
Third Dynasty, 87, 110, 167, 224 foundation of the Sarapis cult), vii
Thirteenth Dynasty, 85, 165; and tis/tines (Gk. “someone, some”) in scho-
Fourteenth Dynasty with all rulers of lia, 381
unnamed in Manetho, 85 titles, titulature: Babylonian, 45, 282;
Thirtieth Dynasty (last Eg. dynasty), 86, Egyptian, xiii n.24, 35, 36, 38, 39, 88,
89, 96, 164 n.191 91, 167, 274, 326
“Thirty-first Dynasty” (Second Persian Tjuneroy (Eg., overseer of works), 94
Domination of Egypt), 86, 89 Tlepolemus (son of A[ ?]), 284
“Thirty-second Dynasty” (Ptolemies), 89 Trenkner, S., 308
Thirty-Years Peace: between Athens and toil: historiographic virtue, 12, 13
Sparta, 100 tomb(s), 23, 39, 44, 94, 126, 127, 153, 154,
Thomas, R., 90, 121 n.270 167, 322; mastaba tomb, 92
Thompson, D., 105, 163 n.179 Torah (Jewish law), 26, 124–25, 128, 141
Thoth (Eg. god of wisdom/magic), 39–40, Tosorthros (Eg. king during whose reign
126, 127, 131 n.33, 132, 163 n.179, 165, lived Imouthes/Imhotep), 110
168, 170. See also Book of Thoth Touthmosis, 211
Thrace, 179, 314 trace/tracing, textual, xxi, 73, 140, 143–
threat, existential: to a country/people, 45, 146, 256, 261, 263–64, 276–77, 341,
xxv–xxvi, 128–29, 321–24, 352, 386–87 381. See also transfer of wisdom/
Thucydides, 7, 10, 13, 31, 100–101, 190, text
191, 197, 301, 311, 317 n.50, 364; cre- tragedy, tragedians, Attic, 8–9 n.22, 17,
ated Peloponnesian War by writing 20, 196, 307
492 Index
transfer of wisdom/text, accounts regard- Tutimaeus (pharaoh during whose reign

ing. See “beginnings, middles, ends”of occurs Hyksos I), 315–16; his name,
text; Clearchus; Deuteronomy; discov- 316, 316 nn.46–47
ery, stories of; Oannes; Philo of Byblos; Twelfth Dynasty, 85, 87, 175, 306, 320,
Sanchuniathon; Setna I; Taatutos; 329
trace/tracing; Xisouthros Twenty-fifth Dynasty, 90, 106 n.213, 174
transition(s) of power, xvi, 47, 51, 166, Twenty-fourth Dynasty, 172, 174
176, 266, 294, 298–300, 387. See also Twenty-seventh Dynasty, 89, 348
succession of empires Twenty-third Dynasty, 99, 111
translate, translation, translator, x, xxi, Twosre (Eg. queen identified as pharaoh
xxii, xxx, 16, 26, 87, 89, 112, 113, 129– [!] Thyoris by Manetho), xxxi, 106, 106
30, 131, 140, 150, 162, 175, 204, 205, n.214, 107
227, 236, 237, 242, 243, 303, 309, 215, Typhaon/Typhoeus, 234. See also Typhon
358, 362, 368, 369, 382, 384, 386 Typhon: Avaris (capital of Hyksos)
trauma, national, xxv-xxvi and nn.60 considered Typhonian, 321, 331; =
and, 65, 88, 151, 268, 276, 302, 337, Egyptian god Seth (enemy of Horus,
352, 386–87 god of chaos, Hyksos), 99, 177, 326,
treacherous brother motif, 308, 308 n.24. 327, 332
See also Harmais; individual names of Tyre, 292
Joseph’s brothers
Treatise, 16; Corpus Hermeticum, xxii, UCBC, 9–1819 64
113 UD (element in Sumerian names,
Trevor-Roper, H., 216 n.70, 216–17; “when”), 69
“Trevor-Roper Trap,” 216 Udjahorresne, 36–37, 38, 41, 45, 51, 166,
trial imagery, Josephus and, 203, 210, 326
241, 264, 265 Uenephres (pharaoh), 178
tribute, 279, 343 Ugarit, 131. See also Ras Shamra
Triparadeisos: meeting of Diadochoi at, ummanu(s) (Akkad. “vizier”), 65, 66, 68,
47 71, 72, 79
Trojan War, xxxi, 115, 116, 122, 130. See universal history, xxv, xxx, 23, 101, 104
also Troy (Ilium), capture/fall of n.202, 114 n.248
Troy (Ilium), capture/fall of: and Di- universe, 143, 180, 219, 245; and Ma’at,
caearchus, 103–4; precisely dated, 257; 41; and meaning of sar, 251. See also
synchronized with reign of pharaoh cosmos; origin(s) of cosmos
Thyoris by Manetho, xxx–xxxi, 78, 107, UNIX time, 55
109, 114, 114 n.247, 359 unnamed rulers, in king lists, 64 n.35, 85
truth, true account, xxx, 13, 24, 96, 128, Ur, 44, 48, 136, 258 n.166
148, 192, 197, 205, 212, 235 n.61, 318, uraeus (snake): pharaonic symbol, 173
386 urigallu-priest, 43, 225
Tuplin, C., xxi n.44, 45 n.190, 157, 310 Uruk (Warka) 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 75, 80
n.31 n.105, 84; more Hellenized than Baby-
Turin List (also Canon), xii and n.20, 86– lon (?), 80 n.105; library at, 72; list of
88, 92–94, 96, 171 sages from, 66–71, 72, 79
“turmoil”, time of: in Egyptian thought Ussher, J. (archbishop): date of Creation,
(opposed to Ma’at/order), 34, 36, 37, 257
39, 40, 41, 85, 307, 329 usurp(ation), 89, 294, 298, 308
Index 493
Utnapishtim, 65, 146, 255 Wiseman, D. J., 49 n.211, 69 n.70, 145

Utuabzu (“born from the deep”), 66, 69 Wolff, E., xix n.39
wonder, 168, 2886, 287, 288, 291, 293;
Van Seters, J., 305 n.14, 319 n.60, 357 n.2, Seven Wonders, 286 n.259, 287, 288,
361 n.12, 384 n.91, 385 n.92 288 n.263
Vatican Museum: and statue of Udjahor- world chronicle, 99, 115, 118 n.258, 175.
resne, 36 See also Leipzig World Chronicle;
Veïsse, A.-E., xviii Parian Marble
ventriloquism, colonial, 111–13. See also world conqueror, 28; Alexander as, 314,
paradox of translation; stereotype ap- 334; Moses as, 362; Nebuchadnezzar
propriation II as, 273, 292, 313, 320; Semiramis as,
Vermes, G., 59 n.18, 357 n.1, 358, 381 289, 293; Sennacherib as, 152; Sesostris
Verse Account (Persian), 43 n.177, 297 as, 91, 92, 93, 206, 291, 313, 314
view, of past, archaizing, xviii, xxvi, 65, world history, vii–viii n.3, xxv, xxvii–xxix,
71, 87, 120, 127, 129, 142, 147, 278, 383 xxxii–xxxiii, 104, 110, 261
visual antiquarianism, in Mesopotamia, World War I, xxv
75, 140 “writing back”: post colonial, 350
Vitruvius, 240, 246
votives, 23, 73, 107, 108, 128, 184–88, Xanthus (Scamander) River in Homer,
190, 192 380
Vulgate (tradition of Alexander history), Xenophon, 5 n.4, 10, 14, 136, 157, 158,
153 160, 186, 191, 290, 311, 312
Xerxes, 5, 34, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 83, 287,
W 20030.7, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 79, 80 298, 311, 312; his alleged destruction
Wacholder, B. Z., 372–73, 373 n.51, 373 of Babylonian temples, 44–45, 298; and
n.53, 380 n.81 bridge over Hellespont, 287; his mega-
Waddell, W. G., 109, 173, 309 n.28, 316 lophrosyne (big thinking), 287, 311
Wadi Hammamat: quarries, 165–66 Xisouthros/Xisuthrus (Sum. Ziusudra),
Walbank, F., 6 n.11, 101, 101 n.184, 101 Flood hero of Berossus, xxxvi, 60, 64,
n.189, 102–3, 105 n.208, 218, 296 64 n.35, 64–65, 70–71, 77–78, 80, 138–
walls of Babylon. See Babylon: walls 40, 142–48, 253–64, 265; and family
Wall of Achaeans (Iliad): inspired by taken up into heaven, 70, 138, 260, 261;
walls of Babylon (?), 160 his “friends” and the Flood, 259–61
WB 62, 64 Xypete, Attic deme, home of Teucer, 192
West, M., 130 n.31, 131 n.33, 133, 160,
226 n.22 Year One: Babylonia, 59, 61, 72, 74–77,
West Semitic, 3, 45 79, 134, 136, 140, 221, 234. See also
Wikipedia, 55 Aloros
Wilcken, U., xxviii Yoffee, N., xxvi
Will, É., xvi n.32, 16 n.49, 103 n.198, 280 YOS, 1.52 67
n.228, 281
Winter, I. J., 75 n.89, 140, 143 Zagreus, Orphic deity, 231
wisdom: and apocalyptic, 218; Delphic, Zas, Chronos and Chthonie, deities in
xxvii–xxix; Egyptian occult, xxii, 113, Pherecydes, 232
125, 125 n.10, 126–27, 164–65, 167–68, Zebulun (s. of Jacob), 368, 370, 371
169–70. See also Book of Thoth; Thoth Zeno of Citium founder of Stoicism, 245
494 Index
zetema(ta) kai luseis, Greek literary Zipporah (wife of Moses), 377–78, 379
critical approach. See “problems and Ziusudra (Sum. Flood hero), 64, 65, 146,
solutions” 255, 256. See also Xisouthros/Xisuth-
Zeus, 112, 119, 132, 226, 228, 238, 254, rus
328, 374, 375; = Amun, 112, 328; = Bel, Zweisprachigkeit (bilingualism, Sum. and
112, 228, 238, 254; Triphylius, 132 Akkad.) in Mesopotamian culture,
Zilpah (biblical matriarch), 370 xviii, 49, 64, 65, 147, 223

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With an afterword on Demetrius

University of Michigan Press

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,

Published in the United States of America by the

A CIP catalog record for this book is available

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Dillery, John, 1961–­

Berossus and Manetho—­

on the earlier work of Julius Africanus, the “father of Christian chronography.”15

15. Gelzer (1885/1888) 1.1; cf. Wallraff (2007) xxi.

of no years for Amenophis—­in Josephus’ mysterious “other copy” of Manetho

22. Cf. Laqueur (1928) 1099–­1101.

Nationalism and Colonialism,

25. Green (1990) 326.

of Manetho—­were written at almost exactly the same time, in almost identi-

choice to write in Greek have been a massive statement of reorientation? While

Approaches and Analogues: Exposing Methodology

The Intended Reader: Language Choice and the

tory first in (say) demotic, however dependent he was on Egyptian sources—­

We may also consider the histories of Berossus and Manetho as examples of

49. Bickerman (1944) 361–­62 = (1976/1986) 1.244–­45.

of materials.53 The resulting picture of a people in the hands of a local historian

response of Berossus and Manetho to the realities of Greco-­Macedonian rule

Regime Change and the Culture of Defeat:

“History is written by the victors”: this sentiment, attributed to various impor-

64. Cf. Schivelbusch (2003) 31.

compromised by foreign domination.68 Is it any surprise that a salient feature

An Opportunity: Hellenization and World History

What could be more exemplary of the process of Hellenization than such a

has attributed the wisdom of Delphi to an Egyptian deity or (2) a Hellenized

by Oannes “allegorically” (allegorikos).76 Greek readers of old poetry, especially

76. See below, pp. 227–35.

77. See below, pp. 105, 106–7.

Greco-­Macedonian rule and stimulated by Greek historiography—­and thus as

the significant interplay between Greek and non-­Greek in Hellenistic literature

A Note Concerning Ancient Names, Citations to Berossus

ANET3 = Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. J. B.

Part 1 History Matters

Part 2 The Vectors of History: Time and Space

Part 3 Narrative History

Greek Historians in the Time of

“Intentional History”: Clio at Work

Hornblower is right to stress that local Greek historical writing represented

categorization”; as such, it is often a “back projection” of the group’s current

while resident [here?

26. Chaniotis prints [καὶ ποιηταῖς γεγραμ]μένα.

Heracleidas son of Parmenon proposed: since Syriscus son of Hera-

31. Lazarides (1976) 52.

cus son of Heracleidas, because he wrote the Epiphanies of the Maiden

of the great historians of the Greek tradition37—­indeed, recall that Thucydides

Information, Communication, and the

37. See esp. Marincola (1997) 72, 148–­57.

foundly interested in “theatricality” and display, and display is fundamentally

44. Cf. Flower (1994) 68–­69.

narrative that probably derives from Hieronymus of Cardia.48 There we learn

For everything in the world that exists and is produced is in Egypt:

had been reworked by Athenians in the fourth century in an attempt to redefine

Aratus, Plutarch details Antigonus Gonatas’ response to the Sicyonian states-

Although it is difficult to establish precisely Plutarch’s source for this remark,

Historians as Royal “Friends”

73. Cf. Tarn (1913) 369; Walbank (1933) 39.

“imperial” knowledge. Davies mentions prominently in his discussion Callias

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dillery, John, 1961–

Berossus and Manetho—

of no years for Amenophis—in Josephus’ mysterious “other copy” of Manetho

22. Cf. Laqueur (1928) 1099–1101.

of Manetho—were written at almost exactly the same time, in almost identi-

tory first in (say) demotic, however dependent he was on Egyptian sources—

49. Bickerman (1944) 361–62 = (1976/1986) 1.244–45.

response of Berossus and Manetho to the realities of Greco-Macedonian rule

Greco-Macedonian rule and stimulated by Greek historiography—and thus as

the significant interplay between Greek and non-Greek in Hellenistic literature

of the great historians of the Greek tradition37—indeed, recall that Thucydides

37. See esp. Marincola (1997) 72, 148–57.

44. Cf. Flower (1994) 68–69.

120. Cf. Hornblower (1981) 5–17.

of the Persian occupation of Egypt—namely, its conclusion.151 We first hear of

151. Lichtheim (1973/1980) 3.41–44.

165. Bingen (2007) 217–20 (quotes from 218).

deed. First, it demonstrates the personal–in fact, biological—link between this

77. Rochberg (2004) 118; see also 219–36.

Anu-uballit/Kephalon, as well as others.105 So why did Anu-belsunu write in

116. Cf. Rowton (1948) 64–67.

137. See p. 315; also Dillery (1999) 97–98.

tant world-conquering pharaoh, the chronology of Old Kingdom and Middle

152. Cf. Lloyd (2007) 313 ad Hdt. 2.102–10.