Offprint from

The World of Berossos

Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on
»The Ancient Near East between Classical
and Ancient Oriental Traditions«,
Hatfield College, Durham 7th–9th July 2010

Edited by
Johannes Haubold, Giovanni B. Lanfranchi,
Robert Rollinger, John Steele

2013
Harrassowitz Verlag . Wiesbaden
 Berossos and Manetho
Ian Moyer (University of Michigan)

In the early Christian chronographers, and even as early as the Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus, Berossos and Manetho were associated with one another as sources for the most
ancient periods of human history, a trend that was revived with the rediscovery and use of
their fragmentary histories in the chronological works of Joseph Scaliger.1 Modern scholars
have often treated them as a pair, owing to a set of basic similarities: both were non-Greeks
(a Babylonian and an Egyptian), who wrote histories of their respective homelands in Greek;
both drew on indigenous sources and traditions; both supposedly wrote for the second kings
of the Macedonian dynasties that ruled over their lands; both divided their histories into
three books. This series of parallels, in fact, raised suspicions for Ernest Havet, the 19th-
century scholar of Pascal and Christian origins. He wrote a little treatise on the dates of the
Babyloniaca and the Aegyptiaca, in which he argued that the similarities were too great a
coincidence, and these works must be forgeries of some kind – pseudonymous texts written
at the end of the second century BCE and given a dash of added authority by cliché fictions
of eastern wisdom and royal patronage. No barbarian, he thought, could have achieved such
a degree of Hellenism so soon after Alexander’s conquests.2 For others, like O. Murray and
P. Fraser, the similarities have suggested the possibility of the dependence of one on the
other: a case of imitation and emulation, whose effects were intensified by the common
influence of Greek historians on both authors.3 Even when no relationship of dependence
is proposed, as tends to be the case in more recent work, the two are still paired together in
a shared volume of translations, for example, or in a handbook article on historiography.4
In this essay, I would like to reopen the discussion of connections between Berossos and
Manetho, in part to address the question of whether there was any historical relationship be-
tween their respective works, but also to show that this problem, like the authors themselves,
stands at the intersection of differing chronologies, temporalities, and historicities, whether
non-Greek or Greek, ancient or modern, locally situated or more global.
I’ll begin with a familiar way of framing Berossos and Manetho in time and history: the
search for antecedents and relations of descent that is part and parcel of traditional intellec-
tual history. And the first step is to discuss the age-old question of who came first. Very little
is known about the life of Berossos. According to the surviving testimonia, he was born and

1 Joseph AJ 1.104–8 lists Manetho and Berossos first in a series of historians, both non-Greek and Greek,
who support his contention that people lived longer in the days of Noah. On the importance of Berossos
and especially Manetho for Scaliger, see Grafton 1975. Scaliger also published fragments of Berossos
as an appendix to his treatise De emendatione temporum under the title Veterum Graecorum Fragmenta
Selecta (1598).
2 Havet 1873.
3 Murray 1972, 209; Fraser 1972, 1.105. Laqueur 1928, 1063–4 noted the priority of Berossos, and the
similiarities between the works, but left the question of dependence open.
4 Verbrugghe / Wickersham 1996; Dillery 2007.
214 Ian Moyer

raised around the time of Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BCE). As a priest of Marduk at
Babylon, he was well versed in Mesopotamian literary traditions, and, drawing on these, he
composed his Babyloniaca for Antiochus I (r. 281–261 BCE).5 Dates earlier in this range have
been made more plausible by the studies of Amélie Kuhrt and Stanley Burstein, who have
connected bits of the content of the Babyloniaca with that particular historical and political
context. Berossos’ description of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar as a father-son duo, for
example, has been considered an allusion to the coregency of Seleucus and Antiochus.6 This
and the dedication have suggested to several scholars that he was connected to the Seleucid
court, though none of the testimonia state this explicitly. At some point in his life, he may
have emigrated to Cos, but the evidence for this is slight.7
Manetho, on the other hand, is consistently and plausibly associated with the early
Ptolemaic court, even if one of the testimonia is a pseudonymous dedication letter affixed to
a corrupted version of his history.8 The one reported event in Manetho’s life reveals him as
an indigenous interpreter of Egyptian religion at the court of Ptolemy I Soter (305–282) or
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BCE), where he is said to have played a role in formulating
the Graeco-Egyptian cult of Sarapis.9 There is also a piece of documentary evidence. A letter
preserved in mummy cartonnage and discovered at el-Hibeh discusses a complaint regis-
tered with the epistates of the Herakleopolite nome about the theft of an official seal from
the temple of Herishef in Phebichis.10 The complaint claims that two suspects absconded
with the seal, so that they could use it on letters they wrote to Manetho or to anyone else.
This letter is dated to year 6 of Ptolemy III Euergetes, so if this is the same figure (and I
am inclined to think so because the name is not at all common, and because of the priestly
milieu), this would put the last known date in Manetho’s life at 241 BCE. Involvement in
the creation of the cult of Sarapis is no obstacle to this late date. Even though epigraphi-
cal evidence shows that the worship of Sarapis began to develop at Alexandria in the early

5 See G. de Breucker in this volume.

6 Berossos as contemporary with Alexander the Great: Syncellus 14.21–3 (this and all subsequent refer-
ences to Syncellus use the pages and line numbers of Mosshammer 1984); Euseb. Chron. p. 6, 14 Karst
(BNJ 680 T 1). Tatian, Ad Gr. 36 (BNJ 680 T 2) reports that Berossos was born and raised during the reign
of Alexander and published his work in the reign of Antiochus; For the contextual clues, see e. g., Kuhrt
1987, 55–56 and Burstein 1978, 4–6, Appendix 2.
7 Vitr. De arch. 9.6.2 (BNJ 680 T 5a) is the only source. Geert de Breucker in his BNJ commentary and
in his paper in this volume argues that the sojourn on Cos was part of the legend of a ps.-Berossos to
whom astrological works were attributed. Part of the argument for separating the astrological fragments
from the ‘true’ Berossos, however, is the non-Babylonian character of the material. J. M. Steele has ar-
gued that some of this material may be authentic (see his contribution to this volume), and as Johannes
Haubold shows in his chapter, Berossos was not so isolated from the world of Greek intellectuals. On
Cos as a possible contact point between the intellectual circles of Manetho and Berossos, see below.
8 Syncellus 41.10–19 (FGrHist 609 F 25).
9 Plut. De Is. et Os. 28 (FGrHist 609 T 3). The introduction of the Sarapis cult is placed in the reign of
Ptolemy I Soter (satrap 323 – 305 BCE, king 305 – 282 BCE) in Plut. loc. cit. and De soll. an. 36 and Tac.
Hist. 4.83–4. Clem. Al. Prot. 4.42–43 and Cyril. Adv. Iul. 1.16 put the event in the reign of Ptolemy II
Philadelphus (282 – 246 BCE). The Armenian version of the Canon of Eusebius places the arrival of
Sarapis in 278 / 7, during the reign of Philadelphus, while Jerome’s version puts it near the beginning of
the coregency of Soter and Philadelphus: 286 / 5 (see Fraser 1967, 25 n. 9). The authenticity of the story
of Manetho’s involvement, however, is not beyond doubt owing to its traditional Königsnovelle elements.
See Borgeaud / Volokhine 2000.
10 P. Hib. I 72 (FGrHist 609 T 4).
 Berossos and Manetho 215

third century BCE under Ptolemy I, the great Serapeum was not founded until early in the
reign of Ptolemy III.11 All of this is compatible with the composition of the Aegyptiaca
under Ptolemy II, and I would favour a date in the later part of the reign. A reference to the
Arsinoïte nome in Manetho’s 12th Dynasty makes 256 BCE, the year in which Philadelphus
renamed the nome in honor of Arsinoe, a terminus post quem for the composition of the
Aegyptiaca.12 Manetho’s history, therefore, was most likely later than the Babyloniaca – by
at least a few years and as many as 20–30 years.
On basic chronological grounds, then, it is certainly possible that Manetho wrote his
history of Egypt in response to or in emulation of Berossos’ history of Babylonia. But
the modern case for such a relationship also rests on a few of the testimonia collected by
F. Jacoby in his Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker. Early in the ninth century CE,
the Byzantine chronographer George Syncellus charged that ‘what Manetho of Sebennytos
wrote to Ptolemy Philadelphus about the Egyptian dynasties is full of lies, written both in
imitation of Berossos and at about the same time as Berossos or a little later’ (FGrHist 609
T 11c).13 A bit later in his text, he added:
If one carefully examines the underlying chronological lists of events, one will have full con-
fidence that the design of both is false, as both Berossos and Manetho, as I have said before,
want to glorify each his own nation, Berossos the Chaldean, Manetho the Egyptian. One can
only stand in amazement that they were not ashamed to place the beginning of their incredible
writing each in one and the same year.

Another excerpt from Syncellus included in the same group of testimonia (T 11b) appears to
express a similar opinion: ‘Manetho of Sebennytos, chief priest of the polluted temples in
Egypt, born – later than Berossos – in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, writes to the same
Ptolemy, telling lies like Berossos.’ There is also a brief reference to Manetho ‘following’ the
work of Berossos in an anonymous fourth-century Latin geographical text.14
The first of these testimonia (609 T 11c) is the only one that states in such a direct way and
so explicitly that Manetho imitated Berossos.15 This claim, however, comes in the course of a
larger argument in Syncellus’ work. The extraction of fragments, it hardly needs to be said,

11 Fraser 1967.
12 Syncellus 66.16, 67.17 (FGrHist 609 F 2, F 3b), Euseb. Chron. p. 63, 14 Karst (FGrHist 609 F 3a). I think
it is reasonable to assume that this reference to the Arsinoite nome is genuine, since it is intended to
correct Herodotus, a practice consistent with the rest of the Aegyptiaca and with Manetho’s reputation.
Laqueur 1928, col. 1063 was also inclined to accept this reference as genuine, though he is rather tenta-
tive in giving it full significance for the dating of the Aegyptiaca.
13 This first part of FGrHist 609 T 11c appears among the testimonia of Berossos as FGrHist 680 T 10–11
(= BNJ 680 T 10a). For the full text and context see below. Syncellus composed his work ca. 808–10 CE
(Adler / Tuffin 2002, xxix).
14 The Expositio Totius Mundi et Gentium (Riese 1878, 104–5; FGrHist 609 T 6c) mentions geographi-
cal writings that were composed by Berossos and followed by Manetho. Berossos did include some
geographical information in his Babyloniaca (see FGrHist 680 F 1a–b), but since there is no geography
preserved in the fragments of Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, the testimony is of dubious value. The relevant
section of the Expositio is as follows: ‘After him [sc. Moses] Berossos the Chaldaean philosopher de-
scribed the provinces and seasons, and these writings were followed by Manetho the Egyptian prophet
and by Apollonius, likewise a philosopher of the Egyptians … ’ (Post hunc [sc. Moses] de provinciis
et temporibus sequentia dixit Berosus Chaldaeorum philosophus, cuius litteras secuti sunt Manethon,
Aegyptius propheta, et Apollonius, similiter Aegyptiorum philosophus … ).
15 This is the primary evidence on which P. Fraser and O. Murray drew (see above n. 3).
216 Ian Moyer

can bring confusion as well as clarity and convenience, and here, as in other cases, the loss
of context and the rearrangement of sources has made the evidence somewhat misleading.
The reference to Manetho’s imitation of Berossos is entangled with Syncellus’ criticism of
Annianos and especially Panodoros, two Egyptian monks of the late 4th to early 5th century
CE, who attempted to reconcile the long chronologies of the Egyptians and Babylonians
with Biblical chronology. Their main sources for Babylonian and Egyptian traditions were
Berossos and Manetho. I have quoted a longer passage of Syncellus below, and I have un-
derlined the excerpts that constitute FGrHist 609 T 11c:
George Syncellus, ed. Mosshammer 1984, p. 16, line 13 – p. 17, line 27:
[16, 13] φανερὸν δὲ ἐκ τούτων ὅτι ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς τῶν Βαβυλωνίων βασιλείας ἤτοι Χαλδαίων ἀπὸ
Νεβρὼδ τοῦ μετὰ τὸν κατακλυσμὸν εἰς ἔτη χλʹ ἀκμάσαντος γέγονε. καὶ χρὴ πᾶσαν ἱστορίαν
Χαλδαϊκὴν ἢ Αἰγυπτιακὴν πρὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ τῇ γραφῇ ἀπαγγελλομένην μὴ ἀποδέχεσθαι
τοὺς προσέχοντας ὀρθῶς ταῖς θείαις γραφαῖς, εἰ καί τινα περὶ κατακλυσμοῦ καὶ λάρνακος ἤτοι
κιβωτοῦ κλέψαντες ἐκ τῶν θεοπνεύστων γραφῶν ἰδιοποιήσαντο, δι’ ὧν οἱ [16, 20] ἁπλούστεροι
καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς ληρήμασι προσέχοντες εὐχερῶς βλάπτονται, λέγω δὲ περὶ μυριάδων ἐτῶν διὰ
σάρων καὶ νήρων καὶ σώσσων καταλεγομένων. ἐν οἷς καὶ περὶ ἀννιδοτίων φάσκουσι ζῴων
τινῶν ἰχθυομόρφων ἐν μέρει καὶ ἀνθρωπομόρφων, ἡμέρας μὲν ἐν τῇ γῇ διαιτωμένων καὶ
μηδεμίαν τροφὴν προσφερομένων, νυκτὸς δὲ ἐν τῷ πελάγει καταδυνόντων, παραδιδόντων τε
τοῖς ἀνθρώποις γράμματα καὶ μαθημάτων καὶ τεχνῶν ἐμπειρίας καὶ πόλεων συνοικισμοὺς καὶ
ἱερῶν ἱδρύσεις καὶ νόμων εἰσηγήσεις σπερμάτων τε συναγωγάς· καὶ ἀπὸ τότε φασὶ χρόνους
μηδὲν παρὰ ἀνθρώποις ἐφευρεθῆναι. ἅτινα πάντα καὶ ἄλλα πλεῖστα πολλῆς ἀδολεσχίας
γέμοντα ὁρῶντες καὶ ταῖς θείαις περισσὸν ἡγοῦμαι αἰδοῖ τῶν ἀνδρῶν, δι’ οὓς ἀναγκάζομαι
κἀγὼ τῇ αὐτῇ στοιχειώσει χρήσασθαι, ἵνα μὴ δόξῃ ἀτελὲς εἶναι τὸ πόνημα. τῆς οὖν Χαλδαϊκῆς
ἀρχῆς [17, 1] ἀπὸ Νεβρὼδ ἀποδεδειγμένης συναποδέδεικται δηλονότι καὶ τὰ περὶ τῶν
Αἰγυπτιακῶν δυναστειῶν ὑπὸ Μανεθῶ τοῦ Σεβεννύτου πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον τὸν Φιλάδελφον
συγγεγραμμένα πλήρη ψεύδους καὶ κατὰ μίμησιν Βηρώσσου πεπλασμένα κατὰ τοὺς αὐτοὺς
σχεδόν που χρόνους ἢ μικρὸν ὕστερον· πλὴν καὶ αὐτὰ ἀνωφελῆ ὄντα στοιχειωθήσεται ἐκ τῶν
παρὰ πολλοῖς ἱστορικοῖς κανονισθέντων.

Τῷ ͵ανηʹ ἔτει τοῦ κόσμου οἱ ἐγρήγοροι κατῆλθον καὶ διήρκεσαν ἐν τῇ παραβάσει ἕως τοῦ
κατακλυσμοῦ.

Ὁ δεύτερος κύκλος τῶν φλβʹ ἐτῶν ἐπληρώθη, καὶ ἤρξατο ὁ τρίτος τῷ [17,10] ͵αξεʹ ἔτει τοῦ
κόσμου, σοʹ τοῦ Μαλελεήλ.

Ὁ ἀκριβῶς ἐφιστάνων τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις δυσὶ κανονίοις αὐτόθεν ἕξει πᾶσαν πληροφορίαν
ὅτι ἐπίπλαστός ἐστιν ἡ τούτων ἐπίνοια ἀμφοτέρων, ὡς προείρηται, τοῦ τε Βηρώσσου καὶ
τοῦ Μανεθῶ τὸ ἴδιον ἔθνος θέλοντος δοξάσαι, τοῦ μὲν τὸ τῶ Χαλδαίων, τοῦ δὲ τὸ τῶν
Αἰγυπτίων. Θαυμαζέτω δὲ πῶς οὐκ ᾐσχύνθησαν ἀφ’ ἑνὸς καὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἔτους ἀρχὴν θέσθαι
ταῖς τερατώδεσιν αὐτῶν συγγραφαῖς, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν Βήρωσσος διὰ σάρων καὶ νήρων καὶ σώσσων
ἀνεγράψατο, ὧν ὁ μὲν σάρος ͵γχʹ ἐτῶν χρόνον σημαίνει, ὁ δὲ νῆρος ἐτῶν χʹ, ὁ δὲ σῶσσος ξʹ.
καὶ συνῆξε σάρους ρκʹ διὰ βασιλέων δέκα, ἤτοι χρόνον ἐτῶν μυριάδων μγʹ καὶ ͵β. ταῦτα δὲ
ἔτη τινὲς τῶν [17, 20] καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἱστορικῶν ἡμέρας ἐλογίσαντο στοχαστικῶς μεμψάμενοι τὸν
Παμφίλου Εὐσέβιον, ὡς μὴ νοήσαντα τὰ ἔτη τῶν σάρων ἡμέρας. Μάτην δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν τούτῳ
μέμφονται. πῶς γὰρ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶχε νοῆσαι πολυμαθὴς ὢν καὶ εἰδὼς τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν δόξαν
πολλοὺς αἰῶνας ὁμολογοῦσαν, ἤτοι μυριάδας ἐτῶν παρεληλυθέναι ἀπὸ τῆς κοσμικῆς γενέσεως
κατὰ τὴν παρ’ αὐτοῖς μυθικὴν τοῦ ζωδιακοῦ ἐπὶ τὰ ἐναντία κίνησιν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ κριοῦ
 Berossos and Manetho 217

καὶ πάλιν εἰς αὐτὴν ἀποκατάστασιν; ποίαν δὲ αὐτοὶ ἀνάγκην εἶχον συμβιβάζειν τὸ ψεῦδος τῇ
ἀληθείᾳ;

Translation by Adler / Tuffin 2002, 21–23:

[16, 13] It is clear from this [i. e. Genesis 10:8–12] that the kingdom of the Babylonians, that is
of the Chaldaeans, began with Nimrod, who flourished in the 630th year after the Flood. And
it is necessary for those who correctly heed divine scriptures not to accept any written record
documenting Chaldaean or Egyptian history before the Flood – even if, after stealing narrative
from divinely inspired scriptures concerning the Flood and the chest (that is, the ark) they ap-
propriate it as their own, [16, 20] by which means the less sophisticated, embracing the rest of
their nonsense, are easily harmed (I mean the nonsense involving the myriads of years in sars,
ners, and sosses). Included in this narrative is also the talk about some kind of ‘Annidotioi’, in
shape part fish, part human, who spend all day on the land taking no sustenance, but at night
submerge into the sea. These creatures impart to humankind letters and knowledge of sciences
and crafts, the founding of cities, and the establishment of temples, the introduction of laws,
and the gathering of seeds. And from that time, they say, human beings have made no further
discovery. And when authors of Christian histories see that all of this and a great deal more are
saturated with a large amount of prattle at odds with our divine scriptures, [16, 30] I am amazed
how they have at all consented to subject to a tabular arrangement what is unworthy of any men-
tion whatsoever. Out of respect for these men, I deem it unnecessary to mention them by name.
But it is because of them that I too am required to make use of this same arrangement, lest my
work appear incomplete. Since, then, the Chaldaean kingdom [17, 1] has been demonstrated to
have begun from Nimrod, it has been also clearly demonstrated at the same time that what has
been written about Egyptian dynasties by Manetho of Sebennytos to Ptolemy Philadelphus is
full of untruth and fabricated in imitation of Berossos at about the same time or a little later than
him. Nevertheless, even though this material is useless, it will be arranged chronologically on
the basis of the tabulations found in many historians.

In Anno Mundi 1058, the Watchers descended and continued in their transgression up to the
Flood.16

The second cycle of 532 years was completed, and the third cycle began in [17, 10] Anno Mundi
1056, in the 270th year of Maleleël.

If you pay close attention to the two tables given below, you will be immediately and utterly
convinced that the thinking of both of them, as was stated above, is contrived: the thinking
both of Berossos and of Manetho, who seek to glorify their own nations, the one the nation
of the Chaldaeans, the other that of the Egyptians. Marvel how they felt no shame about as-
signing a beginning to their fantastic compositions from one and the same year. But Berossos
wrote his narrative in sars and ners and sosses, of which a sar is a period of 3600 years, a ner
is 600 years, and a soss is 60 years. And he came up with a total of 120 sars over a span of ten
kings, that is a period of 432,000 years. Now these years some of [17, 20] our historians have
speculatively reckoned as days, criticizing Eusebius Pamphilou for not recognizing that the
years of sars are days. But in this they criticize him vainly. For how was he able to know about
something that has no reality – this man who was both a polymath and familiar with the Greek
notion that affirms that many ages, that is, myriads of years, have elapsed from the creation of
the universe, based on their fanciful idea about the motion of the zodiac from the beginning of

16 Adler / Tuffin 2002, 22 n. 2 note that Syncellus has here confused the fall of the Watchers with the syn-
chronized beginning of the antediluvian kingdoms of Egypt and Babylon.
218 Ian Moyer

the sign of the ram to its diametrical opposite and back to the same sign of the cycle? What was
driving them to reconcile the lie with the truth?

In this passage Syncellus does not cite Annianos and Panodoros by name, but he later makes
it clear that these two are the objects of his critique.17 His attack is in large part directed at
the trustworthiness of the sources that these two monks used, arguing that their attempt at
reconciliation was an exercise in futility, since the works of Berossos and Manetho are mere
fabrications given a thin veneer of verisimilitude by their plagiarism of stories about floods
from divinely inspired scripture.18 In other words, the charge leveled at Manetho was not
just that he copied Berossos, but that both ultimately plagiarized from Moses.19 Syncellus’
argument is intended to falsify an implicit claim by Panodoros that Berossos and Manetho
both refer (each in his own way) to the same actual events and therefore independently con-
firm Biblical chronology. If both are derived from Moses, however, they are not independent
historical witnesses, just derivative forgers attempting to press the claims to antiquity of their
respective nations. This larger rhetorical context – the attack on Panodoros and Annianos –
makes it difficult to take at face value the testimony of Manetho’s dependence on Berossos
as excerpted in Jacoby.
But was there ultimately something behind Panodoros’ comparison of Berossos and
Manetho that justified Syncellus’ characterization of the relationship between the two?
What did they have in common? Did their compositions really begin in the same year, as
Jacoby’s excerpt suggests? Once again, the larger context is vital. As Syncellus’ disparage-
ment of Manetho and Berossos shows, these histories posed a critical problem for Christian
historians: both contained the record of a long past that put the creation much earlier than
scripture would permit. But while Syncellus rejected Manetho and Berossos as simply false,
Panodoros and his younger contemporary Annianos took a different approach. For the two
Egyptian monks, the earliest records of the Babylonians and the Egyptians, became material
that could be compared, synchronized, and reconciled with the Biblical antediluvian period.
In the case of Berossos, the comparison was relatively straightforward: there is indeed a
Flood story and an antediluvian age in the Babyloniaca, and they can be traced back to the
Mesopotamian sources on which Berossos drew. In the case of Manetho, the comparison
must have been a bit contrived, as there is no evidence that the genuine fragments of the
Aegyptiaca referred to a massive world-wide Deluge, and the mythology of Egyptian floods
does not provide any clear parallels. The regular flooding of the Nile was, after all, gen­erally
viewed as beneficent.20 Syncellus does, however, give us one little clue as to what may have
been the basis of comparison. He writes: ‘And it is necessary for those who correctly heed
17 Syncellus cites them repeatedly, but first mentions them by name at p. 34.24–5. Shortly thereafter ­(35.6–19),­
he identifies them as contemporaries and makes it clear that they are the authors of the chronological rec-
onciliations he discussed earlier.
18 See especially Syncellus 16.15–21.
19 See Adler 1983, 439.
20 In most Egyptian cosmogonies, the world emerges from the primordial flood waters (Nun), but (by
definition) there is no antediluvian period to this flood (see, e. g. Lesko 1991, 105, 113–15). In the myth
of the ‘Destruction of Mankind’ attested in Ramesside royal tombs (see Lichtheim 1976, 197–9), Ra uses
a flood of beer to bring an end to Sakhmet’s destruction of rebellious humanity (but here the flood is a
means of saving rather than destroying humanity). Panodoros appears to have chosen a different connec-
tion to Egyptian myth (see below). The attempt at connecting Egyptian history with a catastrophic flood
was also a little unorthodox from the perspective of Greek tradition. Since Plato at least, the reason for
 Berossos and Manetho 219

divine scriptures not to accept any written record documenting Chaldaean or Egyptian his-
tory before the Flood – even if, after stealing narrative from divinely inspired scriptures con-
cerning the Flood and the chest [larnax / λάρναξ] (that is, the ark [kibōtos / κιβωτός]), they
appropriate it as their own … ’21 Though kibōtos is the word used to describe the ark in the
Septuagint, the reference to a chest (larnax) with which Syncellus connects the ark, is some-
what peculiar. The word larnax is not used at all in the Septuagint; and in the relevant frag-
ment of Berossos (FGrHist 680 F 4b), the boat that Xisouthros builds to ride out the Flood
is simply a boat (πλοῖον, ναῦς, σκάφος). Since Syncellus claims that both Chaldaean and
Egyptian histories borrow from scripture, this must be a reference to an Egyptian counter­
part to the Flood story: perhaps a comparison between the ark and the chest in which Osiris
was trapped by his enemy Seth. According to the story in Plutarch,22 Seth tricked Osiris
into trying out the chest for size, then locked him up in it and threw the chest, called there a
larnax (λάρναξ) into the river.23 The chest then drifted out the Tanitic mouth of the Nile to
the sea and eventually made landfall near Byblos in Phoenicia, where Isis recovered her lost
husband. Since Osiris was regarded in Greek interpretations of Egyptian myth as the bringer
of civilization and agriculture, the function of the larnax could (by a clever or desperate
interpreter) be roughly equated with that of the ark or with a box containing the writings
preserved at Sippar in Berossos’ version of the Flood story (FGrHist 680 F 4b).24 The prob-
lem, of course, is that no evidence of this story survives in any of the Manetho fragments,
and even if it did, this approach would have required considerable conjecture and manipula-
tion on the part of Panodoros. It is, in other words, hardly solid evidence that Manetho was
influenced by Berossos.
In fact, the narrative connection between Manetho’s history and the Flood story may have
come to Panodoros ready-made in the introduction to the text he used. If, as most scholars
have argued, Panodoros was following the so-called Book of Sothis, he would have read not
only the pseudonymous dedication to Ptolemy Philadelphus, but he would also have read
a garbled narrative about the origins of the text, which is summarized in Syncellus. That
narrative claims that the content of the work ultimately derives from antediluvian writings
composed by ‘Thoth, the first Hermes’, that were translated and written down after the flood
by Agathodaimon. The text is clearly the product of a well-developed Hermetic tradition that
post-dates Manetho, but it also mentions the legend of texts preserved from the flood in the

the long Egyptian record of the past was the absence of floods and other disasters such as those which
periodically destroyed the evidence of the Greek past (Pl. Ti. 22a–23c).
21 Syncellus 16.15–19.
22 Plut. De Is. et Os. 13–18.
23 Plutarch dates this to either the 28th regnal year of Osiris, or the 28th year of his life, and also says that it
occurred on the 17th of Athyr, ‘when the sun passes through Scorpio’. Once the box has arrived in Byblos
and has been enveloped in heather, it is called a coffin (σορός, De Is. et Os.15).
24 The fragments of Berossos do not explicitly mention a box in connection with the burial and recovery of
the writings at Sippar. The latter episode is not attested in the well-known flood narratives of Gilgamesh
or Atrahasis, but may have been part of a late Babylonian version of the Mesopotamian flood story
(see the discussion by S. Dalley in this volume). The particular motif of a tablet box containing ancient
(even antediluvian) writings would not be out of place in such a context. Indeed, in the first-millennium
redaction of Gilgamesh, the stories of both Gilgamesh and the flood survivor Utanapishtim – i. e. the
epic of Gilgamesh itself – are buried in a box under the walls of Uruk. For this metaliterary moment in
Gilgamesh and the significance of the tablet-box motif in Mesopotamian literature, see Michalowski
1999, 79–87.
220 Ian Moyer

Seriadic land, a motif that derives from Jewish and Christian traditions.25 Though stories of
the discovery of ancient texts by learned priests and their presentation before the pharaoh
were a real staple of Late Egyptian narrative literature, the flood motif still sticks out like a
sore thumb as a later addition.
Whether it was by inventive mythological comparison or pseudonymous text, Panodoros
did make a synchronism between Berossos and Manetho: he linked the Babylonian (and
Biblical) Deluge with the transition in Manetho’s work from the reigns of divine and semi-
divine kings to human dynasties. But that was not all! He also made a synchronism of the
starting points for the histories of Berossos and Manetho – inspiring the incredulous com-
ment of Syncellus mentioned earlier: ‘Marvel how they felt no shame about assigning a
beginning to their fantastic compositions from one and the same year’ (17.14–16). As cited
in Jacoby, the quote could give the impression that this was meant to support the earlier
statement that Manetho wrote in imitation of Berossos.26 This synchronism, however, was
purely the product of Panodoros’ creative calculations. In order to bring the Babylonian and
Egyptian antediluvian chronologies within the bounds of Biblical time, he adopted the prin-
ciple that units of time had once been confused. In those primordial days before the flood, a
year could mean a day, or a month, or a season. This was not a new idea, and I’ll return to its
earlier history below. What was novel about Panodoros’ approach, as William Adler pointed
out some time ago, was that he used a Hellenistic Jewish apocryphal work, The First Book
of Enoch, to provide a unifying framework for his chronological reconciliations. A section
of this work, which Syncellus calls the Book of the Watchers, tells of angels who descended
to earth in the 1000th year of the world, had intercourse with mortal women, and divulged
secret knowledge that corrupted humanity: how to make weapons and adornments; the arts
of magic and divination. This included astrological knowledge concerning the movement
of the sun through the degrees of the zodiac, but not (surprisingly) the length of a month, a
year, or a season.27 Knowledge of the latter did not exist among humans until the angel Uriel
revealed it to Enoch in Anno Mundi 1282 or 1286.28 This gave Panodoros license to interpret
the years in Manetho and Berossos as other periods of time.
In the case of Berossos, this was fairly straightforward. The massive Babylonian time
period of the sar was, according to Panodoros, not 3,600 years but only 3,600 days, so the
120 sars of the 10 antediluvian kings in Berossos equaled 432,000 days not years. In other
words (dividing those days into ‘real’ years): 1,183 years and 6 5 / 6 months.29 The Babylonian
record of history, therefore, began in Anno Mundi 1059, a date that fits nicely within the
antediluvian chronology of the Bible – and, moreover, allows Babylonian chronology to be
subordinated to Biblical.
In the case of Manetho, the story of reconciliation is, once again, a bit more complicated.
As I mentioned earlier, most agree that Panodoros was not using Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, but
the Book of Sothis. On the other hand, it is possible that the pre-dynastic Egyptian ­chronology

25 On this, see Adler / Tuffin 2002, 54 n. 2 in which they note a parallel tradition in Joseph AJ 1.70–1 that
mentions monuments constructed in the Seriadic land.
26 Adler / Tuffin 2002, 22 n. 3 here suggest that the reference is not to the works of Berossos and Manetho,
but to Panodoros and Annianos. This seems possible, but it strains the Greek. One would have to assume
a real mental slip by Syncellus, which is not impossible.
27 Syncellus 12.3–13.3, 33.1–8; I Enoch 6–8.
28 Syncellus 34.15–19; I Enoch 72–3; see also Jubilees 4.17.
29 Syncellus, 32.29–33.18.
 Berossos and Manetho 221

that Panodoros synchronized with Berossos’ ten antediluvian kings did ultimately derive
from Manetho. The Hermetic dedicatory text could have been added to some more-or-less
genuine version of Manetho’s text, or at least a version of one of the standard epitomes,30
since Syncellus’ description of what follows the epistle in the Book of Sothis is similar to
what is known of the structure of the Aegyptiaca. The Book of Sothis, according Syncellus
(41.21–22), ‘tells about the five Egyptian classes [of kings] in thirty dynasties, called by them
gods, demigods, spirits of the dead, and mortal men.’31 Several fragments considered genu-
ine Manetho attest that the Aegyptiaca did begin with a list of divine and semi-divine kings.
In fact, Eusebius, one of the principle sources for the epitomes of the Aegyptiaca, had also
attempted to reduce the scale of its predynastic section by a method like the one used by
Panodoros.32 The Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Chronica shows that he also used a list
of pre-dynastic rulers that included divine and semi-divine figures. Manetho’s predynastic
list, moreover, has a parallel in the Turin Canon, an Egyptian king-list preserved on a papy-
rus dated ca. 1200 BCE, that begins with divinities belonging to the Greater Ennead and the
Lesser Ennead, then lists the divine spirits (3ḫ.w), the followers of Horus (šms.w Ḥr), and a
group of mythical pre-dynastic kings. To judge by the surviving fragments of Manetho’s pre-
dynastic list, the reigns of the divine kings were – like those of Berossos’ antediluvian kings –
extremely long by human standards. This was perhaps the most important of the parallels
upon which Panodoros built his unified periodization of the distant past – but (I reiterate) it
does not necessarily indicate any intertextual relationship. Both authors were working from
antecedents indigenous to their own traditions.
As with Berossos, Panodoros reduced the scale of Manetho’s primordial period by calcu-
lating the years as equivalent to smaller units of time. For the dynasty of six gods, he equated
one year of their reigns to a lunar month of just over 29 ½ days, so that the 11,985 years they
reigned amounted to only 969 ‘real’ solar years.33 And for the nine demigods, he figured that

30 Compare, e. g., the versions of Thessalos De virtutibus herbarum (Friedrich 1968) that are basically
intact, except for the replacement of the original introduction with a Hermetic one.
31 This description differs from the fragments of king-lists that most scholars have identified as ps.-
Manetho Book of Sothis (see Adler / Tuffin 2002, 127 n. 2). Therefore, it is possible (as noted above) that
Panodoros had a version of Manetho with the Hermetic dedicatory epistle, but with a better text of the
Aegyptiaca than the Book of Sothis.
32 Syncellus 41.23–8.
33 Syncellus provides ‘Manetho’s’ original figures (according to Panodoros) only for the dynasty of the
gods (11,985 years) and for the regnal years of the first god, Hephaistos (9000 years). He also provides
the reduced numbers for these figures and for the regnal years of all the gods. Syncellus describes
the method of calculation for the reduced years of Hephaistos as follows (18.28–29): ‘after dividing
the number of days in these 9,000 lunar months by the 365 days of the year, they [i. e. Panodoros and
Annianos] come up with a total of 727 ¾ years’ (μερίσαντες τὸ τῶν ἡμερῶν πλῆθος τῶν αὐτῶν ͵θ
σεληνίων παρὰ τὰς τξεʹ ἡμέρας τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ συνῆξαν ἔτη ψκζ 𐅵ʹδʹ) Adler / Tuffin 2002, 24, n. 3 deduce
from this that Panodoros’ method appears to assume a month of approximately 29 ½ days (see also
Verbrugghe / Wickersham 1996, 125–126 n. 15, 175–176 n. 7), but using these figures (11,985 x 29.5 ÷
365) the total number of years is reduced to 968.650685 rather than 969. A better fit for the calculations
can be found if one assumes a lunar month derived from the widely used Callippic cycle: 29 + ½ +
29 / 940 days (see Evans / Berggren 2006, 89) and a solar year of 365 ¼ days (to account for the leap year).
This would result in a reduction of the total of 11,985 years to exactly 969 years. Using this method, the
9000 years of Hephaistos do not reduce exactly to 727.75 years, but the result is close (727.6595745), and
one could reasonably conjecture that in the example from Syncellus quoted above, he gave round num-
bers such as 9,000 and 365 rather than the precise figures used by Panodoros. Alternatively, Panodoros
222 Ian Moyer

each of their years was equivalent to a season, or one quarter of a year, so that their 856 years
amounted to only 214. That results in a total of 1,183 years – the exact length of the reduced
antediluvian era in Berossos. Now, except for the 9,000-year reign of the first divine king
Hephaistos (Ptah) and the subtotals of the gods and demigods, Syncellus reports none of the
original reign-lengths – only the recalculated figures of Panodoros and his mathematical
procedure. The ‘original’ figures that Panodoros claimed to derive from Manetho must be
reconstructed. There is no way to verify them independently, but in any case they differed
significantly from the figures given in Eusebius’ Chronica.34
So in short, almost nothing solid remains from Jacoby’s 609 T 11c that would support a
direct textual relationship between Manetho and Berossos. The histories of their respective
civilizations did not in fact begin in the same year, nor did Manetho derive a Flood story
from Moses by way of Berossos.35 The two histories certainly shared the broad similarity
of a long chronology, and of primordial kings with extraordinarily long reigns. But if, as
Syncellus repeatedly argues, Manetho, like Berossos, wrote in order to glorify the antiquity
of his own civilization, then he did a rather poor job by the standard that seemed to mat-
ter most to the later chronographers and apologetic historians. His chronology is actually
shorter than that of Berossos, even though he had the opportunity as the later writer to take
the lead in that competition. And there is no evidence in the Aegyptiaca of synchronisms
or references to Mesopotamian kings or chronology – even when one might expect it, as
in the Assyrian conquest that ultimately established the Saïte dynasty, or the campaign of
Nebuchadnezzar against Necho’s encroachments in Syria-Palestine. The latter was treated
in some detail by Berossos,36 but (as far as we can tell) Manetho did not mention it. In fact,
Syncellus himself, at a later point seems to contradict his assertion about the dependence
of Manetho on Berossos, in an excerpt that I have yet to find among the testimonia of either
author (Syncellus 38.12–21, trans. Adler / Tuffin 2002, 51):
… the account written by Manetho concerning the Egyptian dynasties before the Flood is also
shown to be false. This is seen from the fact that while each of them, that is those who write on
Chaldea and those who write on Egypt, confirms himself, neither mentions nor confirms the
other: not the author of the Aigyptiaka as to the contents of the Chaldaïka (according to what
they say about them, they tell lies about the past), nor the author of the Chaldaïka as to the
contents of the Aigyptiaka. Rather, in glorifying his own nation and homeland, each weaves a
web of lies; …

Syncellus’ claim that Manetho wrote in imitation of Berossos was, it seems, entirely a reac-
tion to the synchronizing and rationalizing efforts of Annianos and Panodoros rather than
the Egyptian and Babylonian histories themselves.
As I mentioned, however, the basic principle of this rationalizing effort – the idea that
the years of ancient times used to be shorter – was nothing new. It was not just a product
of attempts to encompass and subordinate the histories of pagan nations within a universal

could have found (or created) round figures for the original reign years that would add up to 11,985 and
when converted according to his formula would be very close to the reduced figure he cites.
34 Syncellus 19.1–17; 41.29–42.19; compare to FGrHist 609 F 3a (Euseb. Chron. p. 63, 15 Karst).
35 Manetho does, on the other hand, mention Deucalion and the Greek flood story, which he puts in the
reign of Misphragmouthosis, the 6th king of Dynasty 18 – much later than the Biblical / Babylonian Flood
(Syncellus 78.3; FGrHist 609 F 2).
36 FGrHist 680 F 8; BNJ 680 F 8a.
 Berossos and Manetho 223

Christian history. Rather, it goes back to the 4th-century BCE Greek mathematician and
astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, as attested by the Neoplatonist Proclus in his comments
on the story of the meeting between Solon and the Egyptian priests in Plato’s Timaeus.37
Eudoxus, of course, was famous for having studied astronomy with Egyptian priests at
Heliopolis, so he – like the Solon of Plato’s tale – may have discussed and compared Greek
and Egyptian chronologies while in Egypt.38 There is also a more developed version of this
idea in Diodorus’ account of Egyptian history (1.26.1–5): at the time of the oldest Egyptian
gods, the years were months, but by the time of the younger gods, the years had become
seasons. The most important source for Diodorus on the subject of Egypt, it is generally
agreed, was Hecataeus of Abdera,39 who wrote his Aegyptiaca in the early days of Ptolemaic
rule over Egypt: ca. 320–305 BCE. These two figures, Eudoxus and Hecataeus, take us from
the age of Christian universal historiography to a much earlier period in which Greek intel-
lectuals grappled with non-Greek histories as well as differing Greek traditions in order to
integrate them into universal historical and chronological schemes. This was, after all, the
era in which Timaeus of Tauromenium (ca. 350–260 BCE) worked at Athens to devise his
method of dating events according to Olympiads. The earliest foundations of Greek univer-
sal history, of course, went back to Herodotus, for whom the traditions of Egyptian priests
concerning their long past had played a decisive role.40 The conquests of Alexander, however,
created a new world political and cultural order that put Greek histories into a more direct
dialogue with the local traditions they had attempted to adopt, represent, and subsume.
This is the shared milieu through which modern historians have connected Berossos
and Manetho – as scholars of a new kind, able to respond to Greek historiography from the
perspective of indigenous traditions. And they may have been even more closely connected
than by a common membership in the broad cosmopolis of Greek learning. If Berossos did
indeed emigrate to Cos after writing his Babyloniaca, he would probably have arrived there
during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. At the time, Cos was an independent, democratic
polis and an ally of Ptolemaic Egypt. It was also, of course, the birthplace of Philadelphus,
and there was significant intellectual traffic between Cos and Alexandria during the era
when the Museum and Library were developing under the patronage of the second Ptolemy.41
The poet Philitas of Cos was the tutor to Philadelphus;42 Theocritus spent some time on
Cos; the poetry of Herodas also suggests connections between Alexandria and Cos; and, of
course, the island was famous for its Hippocratic school of medicine: Praxagoras of Cos was
the teacher of Herophilus, the great Alexandrian physician. So there were certainly oppor-
tunities for indirect intellectual contacts, whether through texts or common acquaintances,
between Berossos at Cos and Manetho at Alexandria. And yet, as we have seen, there are no
solid signs of a specific intertextual relationship between the two.
37 Procl. In Ti.1.102.25–8. Discussed by Adler 1983, 432–3.
38 The most important sources are Strabo 17.1.29–30, Diog. Laert. 8.8.86, Sen. Q. Nat. 7.3.2 (Lasserre 1966,
T 7, T 12–13, T 15); see also the discussion of other sources in Lasserre 1966, 139–41.
39 Burton 1972, 13–14 incorrectly attributes the idea to Manetho, but says that Manetho could not in any
case have been the source for Diodorus; she suggests Eudoxus via some intermediary. She also seems
to exclude Hecataeus, but her reasoning is not clear. Burstein 1992, 45 n. 1 is not convinced by Burton’s
argument for multiple sources, citing Hornblower 1981, 22–39, along with Murray 1970, 144–50 and
Jacoby FGrHist 3a, 75–87.
40 Vannicelli 2001; Moyer 2002.
41 See Fraser 1972, 1.307, 343–4 and Von Staden 1989, 42–3.
42 See Theoc. Id. 7.
224 Ian Moyer

Instead, they are usually connected through a shared Greek historiographical lineage
and the common influences of Hecataeus of Abdera and Herodotus.43 The argument, brief-
ly speaking, is that Hecataeus’ propagandistic and idealizing work on Egypt, written for
the benefit of the embryonic kingdom and dynasty of the Ptolemies, provoked a series of
competitive responses: Megasthenes on India, and then our non-Greek writers Berossos
and Manetho. As responses to rival nations and to the errors of previous Greek historians,
Berossos and Manetho (it has been argued) adopted not only the Greek language but also
some of the generic conventions and intellectual practices of Greek ethnography and his-
toriography. They included a polemical approach to predecessors, the insistence on native
sources, and Hecataeus’ structural pattern (derived from Herodotus) of framing an historical
narrative centered on a succession of kings with logoi on geography, customs, and religion
or mythology. The arguments have not found universal support, but the general influence of
Herodotus and Hecataeus on Berossos and Manetho still often frames, I believe, the standard
debate over how to locate these non-Greek historians in relation to Greek historiography.
I cannot pursue this discussion in detail, but I would like to raise a few points in order to
dispute the idea that Berossos and Manetho can be related to one another through a different
universal history – dare I say, a ‘civilizing’ narrative of the spread of Hellenism.44
In the first case, let me take up the theory that the polemical stance of these non-Greek
writers is itself proof of Greek influence. This seems to me a kind of Catch-22 argument (but
also one that has echoes in the cultural and political contests of the colonial and post-colonial
world): by virtue of the very attempt to establish a position independent of predecessors in
Greek historiographical writing, Berossos and Manetho are classed as dependent on their
predecessors. In other words, even a counter-discursive response to Greek historiography be-
comes a kind of mimicry.45 In the case of Berossos’ Babyloniaca, however, the evidence of a
direct refutation of Greek versions of Babylonian or Mesopotamian history is modest. While
he makes one or two implicit corrections, there is only one overt contradiction of a Greek
tradition, and that concerns the story that Semiramis founded Babylon and built its greatest
monuments. This comes in the context of Berossos’ account of Nebuchadnezzar’s works at
Babylon, including the Hanging Gardens.46 In that context, Semiramis is described specifi-
cally as ‘Assyrian,’ which suggests that Babylonian prestige, at least relative to Assyrians,
was indeed part of his motivation for correcting the Greeks. On the other hand, it is worth
remembering that Berossos corrects Ctesias on Semiramis, but does not correct Herodotus
on his attribution of major works at Babylon to queen Nitocris. Did he not know that story?
And as far as asserting the greater antiquity of Babylonian civilization relative to the Greeks,
it is true that Berossos’ chronology was enormous, but he does not appear to have made any
specific synchronisms with Greek tradition. If there was a transcultural Hellenistic game of
competitive chronology afoot, it is not entirely clear that Berossos was playing.
Manetho is different. He is said to have written Criticisms of Herodotus. Whether this
was a separate work, or simply part of his Aegyptiaca, is not entirely clear, but Manetho does
correct Herodotus on some specific points, such as the name and relative placement of the
Old Kingdom pyramid-builder Cheops, and the identity of the king who built the so-called
43 Most notably in the influential article by Murray 1972, but also – though to a lesser extent – in
G. Sterling’s book on the origins of apologetic historiography (Sterling 1992).
44 For a fuller discussion of Manetho’s historiography from this perspective, see Moyer 2011, 84–141.
45 On the colonial discourse of mimicry, see Bhabha 1994, 85–92.
46 BNJ 680 F 8a. See the discussions of C. Tuplin and R. Rollinger in this volume.
 Berossos and Manetho 225

Labyrinth.47 Because of these corrections, and references to kings and stories known to the
Greeks, Manetho has given the impression of greater familiarity, or at least more explicit
engagement with Greek traditions, than Berossos. But this should not be taken for ‘influ-
ence’ or ‘dependence’ – especially in the case of Manetho’s attempts to reconcile Greek and
Egyptian chronologies. There are several synchronisms preserved in the epitomes of the
Aegyptiaca, but I’ll just discuss two important examples: Heracles and Deucalion.
As Pietro Vanicelli has shown, the crucial nexus of Herodotus’ project of universal chron­
ology was a synchronism between the Egyptian king Sesostris and Heracles, a hero of tre-
mendous importance for Greek genealogical chronologies.48 Herodotus placed both about
900 years before his day or (alternatively) 16 generations in the past, and constructed the
narrative portion of his Egyptian history to be roughly coextensive with that period. This
was, in fact, the reason for his misplacement of the Pyramid builders – a structural mistake
that was reproduced by Hecataeus of Abdera. Now Manetho did, of course, include the great
12th Dynasty pharaoh Sesostris (Senusret III) in his king-list, and he referred to his legendary
conquests, but he did not follow Herodotus in synchronizing him with Heracles. There is no
way he could have, since Manetho’s Sesostris was around 1,600 or 1,900 years earlier than
Herodotus’ (depending on the epitome). Manetho’s only mention of Heracles comes in con-
nection with the 23rd Dynasty king Osorcho, whom (he says) the Egyptians called Heracles.
From this king to the end of the Saïte dynasty, counting inclusively, there are 15 or 16 kings
(again, depending on the epitome) – about the same number as in the narrative of Egyptian
history that Herodotus constructed to fit his Heraclid periodization.49 But if this reference
was meant to be a synchronism (rather than just the mention of an epithet), Heracles is put
only about three and a half centuries (rather than nine centuries) before Herodotus, a contra-
diction that would emphasize to an extreme degree the proverbial youth of the Greeks. More
to the point, however, is the fact that Manetho did not follow the principles of Herodotus’
universal chronology.
In fact, he implicitly revealed its gaps and limitations. The earliest synchronism with
Greek tradition in Manetho’s Aegyptiaca actually involves Deucalion and the Greek Flood
story. As the father of Hellen, Deucalion stands at the beginnings of Greek ethnical gen­
ealogy. In Herodotus and Hecataeus, he has no fixed place in universal chronology; he
floats somewhere in the remote past before Heracles and Cadmus. Manetho, however, puts
Deucalion in the reign of his 18th Dynasty king Misphragmuthosis – a fixed point in the
temporal scale of the Egyptian king list. This fixing of Deucalion bridges a ‘floating gap’
in Greek accounts of the past that were ultimately based on oral traditions. Herodotus had
already begun to examine such gaps as a result of his encounter with Late Period Egyptian
traditions on their past, but he did not fully resolve them. If the epitomes accurately represent
the text of the Aegyptiaca, Manetho appears to have tied up some of Herodotus’ loose ends,

47 Syncellus 63.3–4, 64.3–4, 66.16–17, 67.17–18; FGrHist 609 F 2, F 3a, F 3b.
48 Vannicelli 2001.
49 16 kings in Africanus’ epitome of Manetho (Syncellus 82.9–83.6, 84.10–23; FGrHist 609 F 2): Osorcho,
Psammus, Zet, Bocchoris, Sabacon, Sebichos, Tarcus, Stephinates, Nechepsos, Nechao, Psammetichus,
Nechao, Psammuthis, Uaphris, Amosis, Psammecherites. 15 kings in Eusebius’ epitome of Manetho
(Syncellus 83.26–84.9, 85.16–28; FGrHist F 3a–b): Osorthon, Psammus, Bochchoris, Sabacon, Sebichos,
Taracus, Ammeris, Stephinathis, Nechepsos, Nechao, Psammetichus, Nechao, Psammuthis, Uaphris,
Amosis. One difference is the mysterious Zet (Ζήτ), who only appears in Africanus, on whom see
Redford 1986, 311.
226 Ian Moyer

and definitively subsumed Greek chronology under the structure of the Egyptian king-list.
As anthropological studies have shown, an awareness of gaps in chronologies based on oral
genealogical traditions sometimes came about in the modern colonial situation when tradi-
tional indigenous chronologies were confronted with the longer, continuously documented
chronology of the colonizing power.50 In this case, Manetho’s king-list must have been analo-
gous to the modern colonial temporality for the Greeks, and perhaps provoked some of their
efforts at chronological rationalization.
Clearly, both Manetho and Berossos followed their own indigenous traditions and did
not reorganize their respective pasts in accordance with Greek chronology. Their projects
were, however, not just translations of indigenous sources. In their formal characteristics,
the Babyloniaca and the Aegyptiaca were novel compositions relative to what had gone
before in each scribal tradition. To what extent was that novelty of form shaped by Greek
historiography? As I mentioned at the start, Havet suspiciously observed that both Manetho
and Berossos wrote histories in three books. These divisions may have been introduced after
the initial composition, but for the sake of argument, I will very briefly look at these and
other basic divisions, since structural patterns have been proposed as a debt that Berossos
and Manetho owe to Greek predecessors. In the case of Berossos, the first book is occu-
pied with a geography of Babylonia as well as myths of the creation of the world and the
transmission of civilized arts to humanity. The geographical section in particular stands
out as compar­able to the Herodotean / Hecataean pattern – though detailed descriptions of
geography­were certainly included in the Assyrian accounts of military campaigns.51 In other
respects, however, Berossos’ history appears to have been stitched together from existing
texts such as the Enūma Eliš, the Sumerian King List and so forth, and the major structural
divisions follow these textual boundaries. After the mythological origin stories, Book 2
consists almost entirely of king-lists, interrupted shortly after the start by the story of the
Flood and the preservation of tablets containing all the knowledge (the beginning, the mid-
dle, and the end) that had been revealed to humanity in Book 1.52 The beginning of the third
book, then, coincides with the beginning of the Babylonian Chronicle series, and the curious
comment about Nabonassar’s initiation of accurate astronomical records, and his destruction
of the records of previous kings.53 Taking this very broad view, then, Berossos’ Babylonian
history (with the possible exception of the geographical section at the start) appears to have
the synthetic metatextual organization that one might expect from a Babylonian scribe: an
organization which (as P. Michalowski has shown) revolves around the commemorative acts
of creating, preserving, recovering and even destroying texts that were central legitimating
functions of kingship.54
If Manetho was aware of Berossos, it is possible that he wrote his three books in emula-
tion of the three books of the Babyloniaca. The divisions, however, do not come at such

50 Thomas 2001, 199–200, and also the excellent article by Calame 1998, which compares Herodotus’ work
of historiopoiesis to that of Michael Somare, the first indigenous prime minister of Papua New Guinea.
See also more generally Henige 1974 and Vansina 1985.
51 A pointed out by S. Dalley during the Durham conference. See, for example, the Letter to Ashur in
which Sargon II describes his eighth military campaign and includes an elaborate description of the
mountainous terrain of Urartu (Chavalas 2006, 334, 337–40).
52 BNJ 680 F 1a–b, F 3a–b, F 4a–b.
53 BNJ 680 F 3a, F 16a (with the commentary by G. de Breucker).
54 Michalowski 1999.
 Berossos and Manetho 227

clear-cut points in the structure of his work. Book 1 treats the divine and semi-divine rulers
as well as Dynasties 1–11; there is no sign of a section on geography or customs, so Manetho
clearly did not adopt that Greek convention; Book 2 then treats Dynasties 12–19; and Book 3
Dynasties 20–30. There is some historical sense in beginning Book 2 with the 12th Dynasty,
which can be seen as a major refoundation of the Egyptian kingdom after the internal divi-
sions of the first intermediate period. But the same cannot be said of the division between
books 2 and 3, which splits up the 19th and 20th Dynasties at a time when the New Kingdom
was still in pretty good form. More significant, I believe, is the fact that the second book
ends with a synchronism: Thuoris, the last king of the 19th Dynasty is identified with the
Homeric Polybus, the Egyptian host of Helen and Menelaus. Manetho’s book divisions, then,
if they are indeed his, were set at reference points familiar to Greeks: the 12th dynasty of
Sesostris (whom I discussed earlier), and the Trojan War. Much more prominent, however, is
the Egyptian king-list structure that Manetho follows, as well as the division of these kings
into thirty dynasties. Manetho innovatively expanded the king-list with narratives and other
comments, but the king-list structure still predominates in the Aegyptiaca. The longer quota-
tions preserved in Josephus even suggest that Manetho’s history was not so much a continu-
ous narrative as a list of kings with stories or other information attached in an exegetical
format: as a series of lemmata and comments. The dynastic divisions into familial group-
ings and locations also appear to be Manetho’s creation. Though there are similar divisions
implied by the periodic running totals of kings and years in the Turin Canon, Manetho’s
divisions are more explicit and elaborate. The round number of thirty dynasties, moreover,
may have been intended to give the Aegyptiaca a canonical closure. Thirty is the number of
days in an Egyptian month, and the number of years of rule celebrated at a pharaoh’s ḥb-sd
(jubilee festival). The number was also associated with Ma‘at and judgement, and it is the
number of chapters in the Teachings of Amenemope, a canonical wisdom text.55 Indeed, the
Aegyptiaca can be seen as a wisdom text on Egyptian kingship. The narrative segments and
other comments serve as the exegetical component of a king-list, elaborating principles of
good kingship through a metahistorical juxtaposition of multiple royal narratives gathered
from Egyptian literature.56
This comparison of Berossos and Manetho suggests that although their works as a whole
had no exact formal antecedents within their respective traditions, both authors responded
to Greek historiography not only on the basis of indigenous sources, but also in an effort to

55 The classic wisdom text attributed to Amenemope was composed in the Ramesside period but sur-
vives in its most complete form in a manuscript of the 26th Dynasty (P. BM 10474; on the dating, see
Verhoeven 2001, 290–302). It is widely accepted that the author of the Proverbs was familiar with
the ‘30 chapters’ of Amenemope, and seems to have regarded this number as part of the genre. See
Proverbs 22:20–1: ‘Have I not written for you thirty chapters of advice and Knowledge, for you to
be able to expound the truth and with sound words answer those who question you?’. See Lichtheim
1976, 146–63, and Grumach-Shirun 1980 for further references. A Roman-period bilingual (Greek and
Demotic) school text on an ostrakon from Medinet Madi also mentions ‘30 precepts’ (O. Med. Mad. I
27, adopting the reedition of Hoffmann 2000, 45–6, pl. 9). The number thirty’s connotations of justice
and judgement come from the ‘Council of Thirty’ (mꜥb3y.t) that was the traditional grand jury of Egypt
(see e. g. Admonitions of Ipuwer (P. Leiden 344 6, 10)). Even the Ennead of gods judging Horus and Seth
was referred to as the Thirty in P. Chester Beatty I recto 3,9. For references to this tribunal of thirty in
the Ptolemaic hieroglyphic texts at Edfu see Wilson 1997, 414–15. There is a probable reference to this
tribunal in Diod. Sic. 1.75.3–7.
56 For a detailed elaboration of this argument, see Moyer 2011, 125–41.
228 Ian Moyer

make explicit their indigenous literary and metahistorical principles: the content of indigen­
ous form (to adapt Hayden White’s phrase).57 This commonality is a long way from the basic
question of the connection between Berossos and Manetho with which I began this essay,
and I would like to conclude by briefly reconsidering the ways in which these two writers
and their histories have been subsumed in a series of interrelated universal histories: modern
intellectual history, early Christian history, and the history of Hellenism. In each of these
universal histories, Berossos’ Babyloniaca and Manetho’s Aegyptiaca – alien and ahistorical
from the universal perspective, have been brought into the fold of history, but they have been
historicized in various procrustean ways that have excluded other, more local historicities.58
The apparently straightforward questions ‘Who came first?’ and ‘Did Manetho imitate
Berossos?’ implicitly situate the two historians in a progressivist, teleological scheme in
which chains of innovation and influence connect them to one another, and to a wider his-
tory of ancient Greek ways of thinking and writing about the past. This Greek legacy, by
way of Christian historiography, is widely viewed as the ultimate ancestor not only of mod-
ern occidental historiography, but also of the modern west’s ‘regimes of historicity’ – its
modes of understanding the past and the future in relation to the present.59 When Berossos
and Manetho are explained through a common-sense historicism and in terms of an intel-
lectual history that refers (ultimately) to the modern west,60 there are only certain questions,
answers and evidence that are relevant. The comment of George Syncellus that ‘Manetho of
Sebennytos … wrote in imitation of Berossos and at about the same time as Berossos or a
little later’ (FGrHist 609 T 11c), for example, looks like an important piece of evidence for
this intellectual history. On closer examination, however, this comment has a complex origin
in the confrontation between Christian history and the far larger scales of the past preserved
in the works of Berossos and Manetho. From the perspective of Syncellus, the solution to this
problem was simple: both the Babylonian and the Egyptian histories were untrue; they were
forgeries whose only claim to plausibility came from their shared imitation of earlier sacred
scripture. Panodoros, however, chose a more subtle approach: he historicized the ‘ahistori-
cal’ works of Berossos and Manetho. Rather than assigning them to the realm of myth and
fantasy on ethnic grounds, he brought them into harmony with a universal Christian history
and with each other by assigning their deepest pasts to a period of epistemological indeter-
minacy – an antediluvian, pre-historical time when the principle units of chronology had not

57 White 1987.
58 Ashis Nandy’s general comment on the more recent conditions of division between the west and the
rest seems apposite: ‘the historians’ history of the ahistorical – when grounded in a ‘proper’ historical
consciousness, as defined by the European Enlightenment – is usually a history of the prehistorical, the
primitive, and the pre-scientific. By way of transformative politics or cultural intervention, that history
basically keeps open only one option – that of bringing the ahistoricals into history’ (Nandy 1995, 44).
59 Hartog 2003. Hartog contrasts the presentism of western modernity with the Hawaiian heroic order of
time, which is oriented toward the past (following Sahlins 1985). He then proceeds to dicuss Ulysses and
Augustine as precursors to the subsequent chapters on modernity (from Chateaubriand to the present).
As A. Hannoum points out in his review, Hartog constructs around Ulysses a Greek heroic order of time
that is different from the Hawaiian one: it is characterised by its own form of presentism. Thus Greece
and Europe are attached to modernity ‘whereas the Hawaiians are yoked to some premodern, primitive
sensibility in which they are doomed to be stuck in repeating the past’ (Hannoum 2008, 462).
60 Dipesh Chakrabarty has famously observed that ‘insofar as the academic discourse of history – that
is, “history” as a discourse produced at the institutional site of the university is concerned, “Europe”
remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories’ (Chakrabarty 1992, 1; Chakrabarty 2008, 27).
 Berossos and Manetho 229

been fixed and were not equivalent to the time-scales of the historical present. This moment
of ‘historicization’ left its traces in a spurious connection between Berossos and Manetho.
But it was ultimately Hellenism – or at least the Greek language – that made Egyptian and
Babylonian chronologies available to the early Christian authors for refutation or reconcili-
ation, and through them to the early modern scholars of historical chronology who contin-
ued those debates. The history of Hellenism, and in particular the history of intellectual
exchanges and the production of knowledge at the interface between non-Greek and Greek
civilizations in the Hellenistic period has at times been written from the perspective of the
modern west as a colonial history.61 In the history of historiography, it has sometimes been
imagined that it was only through the influence of Hellenism that some non-Greek civili-
zations (whatever their prior traditions concerning the past) achieved a ‘proper’ historical
consciousness and passed from the realms of the ahistorical to the historical by writing real
historical narratives. But, as I have argued, this vision forecloses the possibility of seeing
the histories of Berossos and Manetho in more dialogical terms as responses to the common,
widely spread, hegemonic culture of Hellenism and its modes of representing the past.
Berossos and Manetho created their texts in productive moments that shared what
Marshall Sahlins might call a similar structure of conjuncture: that is, ‘a set of historical
relationships that at once reproduce traditional cultural categories and give them new values
out of the pragmatic context.’62 In both cases, the pragmatic context was formed, in part, by
the need to respond to Greek intellectual traditions and Graeco-Macedonian rule. But if that
is the global, or the universal dimension, each scholar brought to it his own particular, local
categories and concepts. Among the things that has become clear in our own world-historical
age is that the global cannot be understood solely from the top down, or from the core out-
wards. Global cultural interactions, as Arjun Appadurai has observed, are characterized by
a constant tension between homogenization and heterogenization. The cultural forces intro-
duced to any given society (and these would include universal historicities and temporalities)
are always in some way or another indigenized. Transregional ideas are always received,
consumed and inflected at the conjunctures (and disjunctures) between the global level and
a series of more local levels by actors who both experience and create the larger formations.63
It is these dynamics that have made the works of Berossos and Manetho simultaneously ac-
cessible and illegible to later universal historians (ourselves included).

References
Adler 1983
William Adler, ‘Berossus, Manetho, and “1 Enoch” in the World Chronicle of Panodorus’, Harvard
Theological Review 76 (1983), 419–42.
Adler / Tuffin 2002
William Adler / Paul Tuffin, The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of
Universal History from the Creation, Oxford 2002.

61 For a broader discussion of this phenomenon, see Moyer 2011, 11–36.

62 Sahlins 1985, xiv, 125, 152–3.
63 This is the formulation of Appadurai 1990; see esp. 6–7, 10, 21.
230 Ian Moyer

Appadurai 1990
Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, Public Culture 2
(1990), 1–24.
Bhabha 1994
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York 1994.
Borgeaud / Volokhine 2000
Philippe Borgeaud / Youri Volokhine, ‘La formation de la légende de Sarapis: une approche
transculturelle’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2 (2000), 37–76.
Burstein 1978
Stanley M. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus(Sources and Monographs on the Ancient Near
Eastvol. 1, fasc. 5), Malibu, CA 1978.
Burstein 1992
Stanley M. Burstein, ‘Hecataeus of Abdera’s history of Egypt’, in: Janet H. Johnson (ed.), Life in
a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond (Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization 51), Chicago 1992, 45–9.
Burton 1972
Anne Burton, Diodorus Siculus Book I. A Commentary (Études préliminaires aux religions orien-
tales dans l’empire romain 29), Leiden 1972.
Calame 1998
Claude Calame, ‘Mémoire collective et temporalités en contact: Somare et Hérodote’, Revue de
l’histoire des religions 215 (1998), 341–67.
Chakrabarty 1992
Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for “Indian” pasts?’,
Representations 37 (1992), 1–26.
Chakrabarty 2008
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference,
Reissued ed (Princeton Studies in Culture / Power / History, Princeton 2008.
Chavalas 2006
Mark W. Chavalas (ed.), The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation, Oxford 2006.
Dillery 2007
John Dillery, ‘Greek historians of the Near East: Clio’s “other” sons’, in: John Marincola (ed.),
A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, Malden 2007, 221–30.
Evans / Berggren 2006
James Evans / J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos’s Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and
Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy, Princeton 2006.
Fraser 1967
Peter M. Fraser, ‘Current pConcerning the early history of the cult of Sarapis’, Opuscula
Atheniensia: Skrifter utgivna av Svenska institutet i Athen 7 (1967), 23–45.
Fraser 1972
Peter M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford 1972.
Friedrich 1968
Hans-Veit Friedrich (ed.), Thessalos von Tralles, griechisch und lateinisch (Beiträge zur klas­
sischen Philologie 28), Meisenheim am Glan 1968.
Grafton 1975
Anthony T. Grafton, ‘Joseph Scaliger and historical chronology: the rise and fall of a discipline’,
History and Theory 14 (1975), 156–85.
Grumach-Shirun 1980
Irene Grumach-Shirun, ‘Lehre des Amenemope’, in: Wolfgang Helck / Eberhard Otto (eds.), Lexi­
kon der Ägyptologie III, Wiesbaden 1980, 971–4.
Hannoum 2008
Abdelmajid Hannoum, ‘What is an order of time?’, Review of Hartog 2003, History and Theory 47
(2008), 458–71.
Hartog 2003
François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité: présentisme et expériences du temps, Paris 2003.
 Berossos and Manetho 231

Havet 1873
Ernest Havet, Mémoire sur la date des écrits qui portent les noms de Bérose et de Manéthon, Paris
1873.
Henige 1974
David P. Henige, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera (Oxford Studies in African
Affairs), Oxford 1974.
Hoffmann 2000
Friedhelm Hoffmann, Ägypten: Kultur und Lebenswelt in griechisch-römischer Zeit. Eine Dar­
stel­lung nach den demotischen Quellen, Berlin 2000.
Hornblower 1981
Jane Hornblower, Hieronymus of Cardia (Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs),
Oxford 1981.
Kuhrt 1987
Amélie Kuhrt, ‘Berossus’ Babyloniaka and Seleucid rule in Babylonia’, in: Amélie Kuhrt / Susan
Sherwin-White (eds.), Hellenism in the East: Interaction of Greek and non-Greek Civilizations
from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander, London 1987, 32–56.
Laqueur 1928
Richard Laqueur, ‘Manetho’, in: Georg Wissowa / Wilhelm Kroll (eds.), Paulys Realencyclopädie
der classischen Altertumswissenschaft XIV 1, Stuttgart 1928, col. 1060–1101.
Lasserre 1966
François Lasserre, Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos (Texte und Kommentare 4), Berlin
1966.
Lesko 1991
Leonard H. Lesko, ‘Ancient Egyptian cosmogonies and cosmology’, in: Byron E. Shafer (ed.),
Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, Ithaca and London 1991, 88–122.
Lichtheim 1976
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. II: The New Kingdom, Berkeley 1976.
Michalowski 1999
Piotr Michalowski, ‘Commemoration, writing, and genre in ancient Mesopotamia’, in: Christina
Kraus (ed.), The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts
(Mneomsyne Supplements 191), Leiden 1999, 69–90.
Mosshammer 1984
Alden A. Mosshammer (ed.), Georgius Syncellus. Ecloga chronographica, Leipzig 1984.
Moyer 2002
Ian S. Moyer, ‘Herodotus and an Egyptian mirage: the genealogies of the Theban priests’, Journal
of Hellenic Studies 122 (2002), 70–90.
Moyer 2011
Ian S. Moyer, Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism, Cambridge 2011.
Murray 1970
Oswyn Murray, ‘Hecataeus of Abdera and Pharaonic Kingship’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
56 (1970), 141–71.
Murray 1972
Oswyn Murray, ‘Herodotus and Hellenistic culture’, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), 200–13.
Nandy 1995
Ashis Nandy, ‘History’s forgotten doubles’, History and Theory 34 (1995), 44–66.
Redford 1986
Donald B. Redford, Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals, and Day-Books, Mississauga 1986.
Riese 1878
Alexander Riese (ed.), Geographi latini minores, Heilbronn 1878.
Sahlins 1985
Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History, Chicago 1985.
Sterling 1992
Gregory E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition. Josephus, Luke-Acts and Apologetic
Historiography (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 64), Leiden 1992.
232 Ian Moyer

Thomas 2001
Rosalind Thomas, ‘Herodotus’ Histories and the floating gap’, in: Nino Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s
Craft in the Age of Herodotus, Oxford 2001, 198–210.
Vannicelli 2001
Pietro Vannicelli, ‘Herodotus’ Egypt and the Ffoundations of universal history’, in: Nino Luraghi (ed.),
The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus, Oxford 2001, 211–40.
Vansina 1985
Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, Madison 1985.
Verbrugghe / Wickersham 1996
G. P. Verbrugghe / J. M. Wickersham, Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native
Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ann Arbor 1996.
Verhoeven 2001
Ursula Verhoeven, Untersuchungen zur späthieratischen Buchschrift (Orientalia Lovaniensia
Analecta 99), Leuven 2001.
Von Staden 1989
Heinrich Von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria, Cambridge 1989.
White 1987
Hayden White, The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation,
Baltimore 1987.
Wilson 1997
Penelope Wilson, A Ptolemaic Lexikon: A Lexicographical Study of the Texts in the Temple of Edfu
(Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 78), Leuven 1997.