Manetho and the Shepherd Kings

I will begin with the writings of the Egyptians. Their own writings I cannot set before you; but Manetho was an Egyptian by birth who had a share in Greek learning, as is plain, for he wrote the history of his country in Greek, translating it, as he says himself, from the sacred records; and he convicts Herodotus of many errors about Egyptian affairs made through ignorance. This Manetho, then, writes about us as follows in the second book of his History of Egypt. I will set down his own words, as though I were bringing the man himself into court as a witness: “There was a king of ours named Timaus. In his reign, I do not know how, God blew against us; and unexpectedly men of obscure race from the regions of the east boldly marched against our country and easily took it by force without a battle. Having overpowered its rulers, they then savagely burned the cities and razed the temples of the gods, and treated all the natives with the utmost hostility, slaughtering some and leading the wives and children of others into slavery. At last they made one of their number king, whose name was Salitis. He lived at Memphis, levying tribute from the upper and lower country and leaving garrisons in the most suitable places. Above all he secured the eastern parts, foreseeing that the Assyrians, who would one day grow more powerful, would covet his kingdom and attack it. In the Sethroite nome he found a city very well placed, lying east of the Bubastite branch of the river, and called Avaris after some ancient religious tradition. This he rebuilt and made very strong with walls, settling there a garrison of as many as two hundred and forty thousand heavily armed men to guard it. He came there in summer, partly to measure out grain and pay wages, and partly to drill his troops carefully at arms, to strike fear into foreigners. After ruling nineteen years he died. After him another, called Beon, reigned forty-four years; after him another, Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven months; then Apophis sixty-one years, and Iannas fifty years and one month; and last of all Assis forty-nine years and two months. These six were their first rulers, and they were ever more eager to tear Egypt up by the root. Their whole nation was called Hyksos, that is, ‘shepherd kings’; for hyk in the sacred language means ‘king,’ and sos in the common speech means ‘shepherd’ or ‘shepherds,’ and put together they make Hyksos. Some say they were Arabs.” In another copy, however, the word hyk is said to mean not ‘kings’ but, on the contrary, ‘captive shepherds’; for in Egyptian hyk, and hak spoken with a rough breathing, expressly mean ‘captives.’ This seems to me the more probable view, and more in keeping with ancient history. [a]

These kings named above, he says, the kings of the so-called shepherds, and their descendants, held Egypt for five hundred and eleven years. After this, he says, the kings of the Thebaid and of the rest of Egypt rose against the shepherds, and a great and long war broke out between them. Under a king named Misphragmuthosis, he says, the shepherds were defeated and driven out of all the rest of Egypt, and shut up in a place about seven thousand acres in extent, called Avaris. Manetho says that the shepherds surrounded this whole place with a great and strong wall, to keep all their possessions and their plunder in a stronghold. Thummosis, the son of Misphragmuthosis, tried to take them by storm, besieging the walls with four hundred and eighty thousand men; but when he despaired of the siege, he made terms with them, that they should all leave Egypt and go unharmed wherever they wished. On these terms they set out from Egypt with their whole households and possessions, no fewer than two hundred and forty thousand of them, and crossed the desert into Syria. Fearing the power of the Assyrians, who then ruled Asia, they built a city in the land now called Judea, large enough for so many tens of thousands of people, and named it Jerusalem. In another book of his History of Egypt Manetho says that this nation, the so-called shepherds, is written of as captives in their sacred books; and he is right. For keeping sheep was the ancestral way of life of our earliest forefathers, and because they led a wandering life they were called shepherds. Nor was it without reason that the Egyptians recorded them as captives, since our ancestor Joseph told the king of the Egyptians that he was a captive, and later sent for his brothers into Egypt with the king’s permission. But I will examine these matters more precisely elsewhere.

Now I will bring forward the Egyptians as witnesses to this antiquity. I will set down once more how Manetho’s account stands as to the order of the times. He speaks as follows: “After the shepherd people had gone out of Egypt to Jerusalem, Tethmosis, the king who drove them out of Egypt, reigned afterward twenty-five years and four months, and died; and his son Chebron took over the government for thirteen years. After him Amenophis reigned twenty years and seven months; then his sister Amesses twenty-one years and nine months; after her Mephres twelve years and nine months; after him Mephramuthosis twenty-five years and ten months; after him Thmosis nine years and eight months; after him Amenophis thirty years and ten months; after him Orus thirty-six years and five months; after him his daughter Acencheres twelve years and one month; after her, her brother Rathotis nine years; after him Acencheres twelve years and five months; after him another Acencheres twelve years and three months; after him Armais four years and one month; after him Ramesses one year and four months; after him Armesses Miamun sixty-six years and two months; after him Amenophis nineteen years and six months. After him came Sethos, also called Ramesses, who had a force of cavalry and a fleet. He appointed his brother Armais viceroy of Egypt and gave him all the other powers of a king, with only these commands: he was not to wear the diadem, nor to wrong the queen, the mother of his children, and he was to keep away from the other royal concubines. He himself marched against Cyprus and Phoenicia, and again against the Assyrians and the Medes, and brought them all under his power, some by the spear and some without a battle, through fear of his great army. Proud of his successes, he pressed on all the more boldly, subduing the cities and lands of the east. When a considerable time had passed, Armais, who had been left in Egypt, fearlessly did the very opposite of everything his brother had warned him not to do. He took the queen by force and went on using the other concubines without restraint; and on the advice of his friends he wore the diadem and rose against his brother. But the man set over the priests of Egypt wrote a letter and sent it to Sethos, telling him everything, and that his brother Armais had risen against him. So he returned at once to Pelusium and took back his own kingdom. And the country was called Egypt after his name.” For Manetho says that Sethos was called Aegyptus, and his brother Armais was called Danaus. [g]

That is Manetho’s account. Now it is plain from the years he gives, when the time is added up, that the so-called shepherds, our forefathers, were released from Egypt and settled in this country three hundred and ninety-three years before Danaus came to Argos; and yet the Argives consider him most ancient. So Manetho has testified for us from the Egyptian writings to the two most important points: first, that we came into Egypt from elsewhere; and second, that our departure from it was so ancient that it came nearly a thousand years before the Trojan War. As for what Manetho has added, not from the Egyptian writings but, as he admits himself, from tales told by no one knows whom, I will refute it in detail later, and show his lies to be past belief. [i]

I wish now to pass from these to what is recorded about our nation among the Phoenicians, and to present the testimony of their writings. The Tyrians have records going back very many years, written up by public authority and kept with great care, of the events among them worth remembering and of their dealings with one another. In them it is written that the temple at Jerusalem was built by King Solomon a hundred and forty-three years and eight months before the Tyrians founded Carthage. It was not without reason that the building of our temple was recorded among them; for Hiram, the king of the Tyrians, was a friend of our king Solomon, having inherited his father’s friendship for him. He shared Solomon’s ambition to make the building splendid, and gave him about nine thousand pounds of gold; and he cut the finest timber from the mountain called Lebanon and sent it for the roof. In return Solomon gave him many other gifts, and land in Galilee, in the district called Cabul. But what drew them together in friendship most of all was their love of wisdom. They sent each other problems, asking each other to solve them, and in these Solomon was the better, as he was wiser in other things too. Many of the letters they wrote to one another are preserved among the Tyrians to this day. To show that what I say about the Tyrian records is not my own invention, I will bring forward as witness Dius, a man believed to have been accurate in Phoenician history. In his History of Phoenicia he writes as follows: “When Abibalus died, his son Hiram became king. He built up the eastern parts of the city with embankments and made the town larger. The temple of Olympian Zeus, which stood by itself on an island, he joined to the city by filling in the space between, and he adorned it with offerings of gold. He went up to Lebanon and had timber cut for the building of temples. They say that Solomon, who was ruler of Jerusalem, sent riddles to Hiram and asked to receive others from him, on the terms that whoever could not solve them should pay money to the one who solved them. Hiram agreed, but could not solve the riddles, and spent a great deal of money on the penalty. Then a certain Abdemon, a man of Tyre, solved the riddles that had been set and proposed others himself; and when Solomon could not solve these, he paid Hiram a great deal of money in return.” So Dius testifies to what I have said above. [j]