Manetho’s Tale of the Lepers

That some writers left our nation out of their histories, not because they did not know of us, but out of envy or for other unsound reasons, I think I can prove. Hieronymus, who wrote the history of Alexander’s successors, lived at the same time as Hecataeus; he was a friend of King Antigonus and governed Syria. Yet Hecataeus wrote a whole book about us, while Hieronymus nowhere mentions us in his history, though he spent his life almost in our very neighborhood. So greatly do people’s inclinations differ: one thought us worthy even of careful remembrance, while for the other some ungenerous passion wholly darkened the truth.

Still, the records of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans and the Phoenicians, together with so many Greek writers, are enough to prove our antiquity. Besides those already named, Theophilus, Theodotus, Mnaseas, Aristophanes, Hermogenes, Euhemerus, Conon, Zopyrion and perhaps many others — for I have not come across all the books — have mentioned us at some length. Most of these men missed the truth about our earliest history, because they had not read our sacred books; but all of them together have borne witness to our antiquity, which is what I set out to speak of now. Demetrius of Phalerum, however, and the elder Philo, and Eupolemus did not stray far from the truth, and they deserve to be pardoned, for they were not able to follow our writings with complete accuracy.

One main point of what I proposed at the start of this work still remains: to show that the slanders and abuse some have heaped on our race are false, and to use the writers of them as witnesses against themselves. That this has happened to many others too, because of some people’s ill will, is known, I think, to those who read widely in history. Some writers have tried to soil the good birth of certain nations and of the most famous cities, and to abuse their forms of government. Theopompus did this to Athens, Polycrates to Sparta, and the author of the Tripoliticus — who is not Theopompus, as some suppose — to the city of Thebes as well; and Timaeus in his histories uttered much abuse against these and others. They do this most of all when they fasten on the most famous: some out of envy and malice, others thinking that by saying something startling they will be thought worth remembering. Among fools they do not fail in this hope, but people of sound judgment condemn them for great wickedness.

The Egyptians were the first to slander us. Some others, wishing to please them, tried to twist the truth, neither admitting that our ancestors came into Egypt in the way they did, nor telling the truth about their departure. The Egyptians found many reasons to hate and envy us. In the first place, our ancestors ruled over their country, and when they were freed from there and went back to their own land, they prospered. Then the opposition between our ways and theirs bred great enmity, since our piety differs from what is customary among them as far as the nature of God differs from that of irrational animals. For it is a common ancestral custom among them to regard these animals as gods, though they differ from one another in the honors they pay them in each place. Light-minded and altogether foolish people, trained from the beginning to think badly about the gods, they were not able to imitate the dignity of our teaching about God; and when they saw us admired by many, they envied us. Some of them went so far in folly and smallness of mind that they did not hesitate to contradict their own ancient records; indeed, blinded by passion, they contradicted themselves in their writings without noticing it.

I will stop first at one writer whom I used a little earlier as a witness to our antiquity. This Manetho, who promised to translate the history of Egypt out of the sacred writings, first stated that our ancestors came into Egypt many tens of thousands strong and conquered its inhabitants, and then he himself admitted that later they were driven out again, occupied what is now Judea, founded Jerusalem and built the temple. Up to this point he followed the records. But after this, giving himself license by saying that he would write down the tales and talk about the Jews, he brought in incredible stories, wanting to mix up with us a crowd of Egyptians with leprosy and other diseases, who, he says, were condemned to flee from Egypt. [a]

He brings in a king Amenophis, a made-up name, and for that reason did not dare to fix the length of his reign, though for the other kings he adds the years exactly. To this king he attaches certain fables, having nearly forgotten that he had recorded the departure of the shepherds to Jerusalem as taking place five hundred and eighteen years earlier. For Tethmosis was king when they left, and from them, by his account, the reigns of the kings in between come to three hundred and ninety-three years, down to the two brothers Sethos and Hermaeus. Of these he says Sethos was renamed Aegyptus and Hermaeus Danaus; Sethos drove Hermaeus out and reigned fifty-nine years, and after him his eldest son Rhampses reigned sixty-six.

Having admitted, then, that our fathers had left Egypt so many years before, he now inserts this invented king Amenophis. He says this king desired to see the gods, as Orus, one of his predecessors on the throne, had done, and that he told his desire to his namesake Amenophis son of Papis, who was thought to share in a divine nature because of his wisdom and his knowledge of the future. This namesake told him that he would be able to see the gods if he cleared the whole country of lepers and other polluted people. The king was pleased, and gathered out of Egypt all whose bodies were diseased or maimed, eighty thousand of them, and threw them into the stone quarries on the east side of the Nile, to work there and be kept apart from the rest of the Egyptians. Among them, he says, were some of the learned priests, stricken with leprosy. But that Amenophis, the wise man and seer, feared that the anger of the gods would fall on him and on the king if they should be seen to have been treated with violence. He added that some people would ally themselves with the polluted and rule Egypt for thirteen years. He did not dare to tell the king this, but left a written account of it all and killed himself; and the king was in despair.

After this Manetho writes, word for word, as follows: “When those in the quarries had suffered there for a long time, the king was asked to set apart a place for them to lodge and shelter, and he granted them the city of Avaris, which the shepherds had then left empty. According to the ancient theology this city belongs to Typhon. When they had gone into it and had the place as a base for revolt, they appointed as their leader one of the priests of Heliopolis named Osarsiph, and swore to obey him in everything. First he laid down a law for them that they should not worship the gods, nor abstain from any of the animals held most sacred in Egypt, but should sacrifice and consume them all, and should associate with no one except those who had sworn the conspiracy with them. After making such laws as these, and a great many others most opposed to Egyptian customs, he ordered them to repair the city’s walls with all their many hands and make ready for war against King Amenophis.

“He himself took with him some of the other priests and of those polluted with them, and sent envoys to the shepherds who had been driven out by Tethmosis, to the city called Jerusalem. He told them how things stood with himself and with the others who had been disgraced along with him, and asked them to march together against Egypt with one mind. He promised that he would first bring them back to Avaris, the homeland of their ancestors, supply their multitudes with everything they needed in plenty, fight for them when it was needed, and easily bring the country under their power. They were overjoyed, and all of them eagerly set out together, some two hundred thousand men, and before long they arrived at Avaris.

“When Amenophis, king of Egypt, learned of their invasion, he was greatly disturbed, remembering the prediction of Amenophis son of Papis. First he gathered the multitude of the Egyptians and took counsel with their leaders. He sent for the sacred animals most honored in the temples, and ordered the priests in each place to hide the images of the gods as securely as they could. His son Sethos, who was also called Ramesses after his father Rhampses, a boy of five, he sent away to a friend of his. He himself crossed over with the rest of the Egyptians, some three hundred thousand of the best fighting men, and met the enemy, but did not join battle; thinking he would be fighting against the gods, he turned back and came to Memphis. There he took Apis and the other sacred animals he had sent for, and at once went up into Ethiopia with his whole army and the multitude of Egyptians; for the king of Ethiopia was under obligation to him. That king received him and took in all his multitudes, supplying them from what the country had for human food, and gave them cities and villages enough for the thirteen years of exile from his kingdom that fate had decreed. He also stationed an Ethiopian army on the borders of Egypt to guard the people of King Amenophis.

“That was how things stood in Ethiopia. But the Solymites came down with the polluted Egyptians and treated the people so impiously that, to those who then saw their sacrileges, the rule of the shepherds before them seemed a golden age. They not only set cities and villages on fire, and were not content with robbing temples and mutilating the images of the gods, but they went on to use those very places as kitchens for roasting the sacred animals that were worshipped. They forced priests and prophets to be the sacrificers and butchers of these animals, and then threw them out naked. It is said that the priest who laid down their constitution and their laws was by birth from Heliopolis, and was named Osarsiph after Osiris, the god of Heliopolis; but when he went over to this people his name was changed, and he was called Moses.”

This, then, is what the Egyptians report about the Jews, along with much more that I leave out for the sake of brevity. Manetho goes on to say that after this Amenophis came back from Ethiopia with a great army, and his son Rhampses with another army as well, and that the two of them joined battle with the shepherds and the polluted, defeated them, killed many of them, and pursued them to the borders of Syria. These and the like are the things Manetho has written. [e]

I will show that he is talking nonsense and lying openly; but first I will make a distinction, for the sake of what I shall say later against others. He has granted and admitted that our race was not Egyptian in origin, but came in from outside, conquered Egypt and left it again. But that the Egyptians who were maimed in body were not mixed with us afterward, and that Moses who led the people out was not one of them but lived many generations earlier, I will try to prove from what Manetho himself says.