But above all these he placed the Peparethian wine from the island of Peparethus, a wine which of course did not please the many, as this experienced taster acknowledges that nobody is likely to have a true relish for it till after six years’ acquaintance.  Such were the Greek authors who basked in the sunshine of royal favour at Alexandria; who could have told us, if they had thought it worth their while, all that we now wish to know of the trade, religion, language, and early history of Egypt.  But they thought that the barbarians were not worth the notice of men who called themselves Macedonians.  Philadelphus, however, thought otherwise; and by his command Manetho, an Egyptian, wrote in Greek a history of Egypt, copied from the hieroglyphical writing on the temples, and he dedicated it to the king.  We know it only in the quotations of Josephus and Julius Africanus, and what we have is little more than a list of kings’ names.  He was a priest of Heliopolis, the great seat of Egyptian learning.  The general correctness of Manetho’s history, which runs back for nearly two thousand years, is shown by our finding the kings’ names agree with many Egyptian inscriptions.  Manetho owes his reputation to the merit of being the first who distinguished himself as a writer and critic upon religion and philosophy, as well as chronology and history, using the Greek language, but drawing his materials from native sources, especially the Sacred Books.  That he was “skilled in Greek letters”:  we learn from Josephus, who also declares that he contradicted many of Herodotus’ erroneous statements.  Manetho was better suited for the task of writing a history of Egypt than any of his contemporaries.

As an Egyptian he could search out and make use of all the native Egyptian sources, and, thanks to his knowledge of Greek, he could present them in a form intelligible to the Hellenes.  It must be confessed that he has occasionally fallen into the error of allowing Greek thoughts and traditions to slip into his work.  The great worth in Manetho’s work lies in the fact that he relates the history of Egypt based on monumental sources and charters preserved in the temples.  Moreover, he treats quite impartially the times of the foreign rulers, which the form of the Egyptian history employed by Diodorus does not mention; but above all, Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers arranged according to a regular system.  But however important in this respect Manetho’s work may be, it must not be forgotten what difficulties he had to contend with in the writing of it, and what unreliable sources lay in these difficulties.  He could not use the sources in the form in which he found them.  He was obliged to re-write them, and he added to them synchronisms and relations to other peoples which necessarily exposed him to the dangers of colouring his report correspondingly.