Scholar
Manetho of Sebennytos
Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek
c. 285 BCE
Active under Ptolemy I or II; his birth and death dates are unknown.
Biography
A priest from Sebennytos in the Delta who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek. His book is lost; only excerpts quoted by later writers survive. From it comes the division of Egypt’s kings into thirty dynasties, which historians still use.
Key facts
Certainty: Established
The division of Egypt’s kings into dynasties, still used today, goes back to Manetho, whose work survives only in later excerpts.
- Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John M. Wickersham (1996) “Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated” University of Michigan Press