Clio's Other Sons: Berossus and Manetho

537 Pages·2015·8.363 MB·English

by  John D. Dillery

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Clio’s Other Sons
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Clio’s Other Sons
Berossus and Manetho
With an afterword on Demetrius
❦
John Dillery
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
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Copyright © by John Dillery 2015
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2018 2017 2016 2015 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Dillery, John, 1961–
Clio’s other sons : Berossus and Manetho : with an afterword on
Demetrius / John Dillery.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 472- 07227- 9 (hardback : alkaline paper)— ISBN 978- 0-
472- 05227- 1 (paperback : alkaline paper)— ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12045- 1
(e- book)
1. Berosus, the Chaldean— Criticism and interpretation.
2. Manetho— Criticism and interpretation. 3. Berosus, the
Chaldean. Babyloniaka. 4. Manetho. Aegyptiaca. 5. Babylonia—
Historiography. 6. Egypt— Historiography. 7. Historiography—
Greece— History— To 1500. 8. Greek literature— History and
criticism. I. Title.
PA3944.B3D55 2014
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For
Ludwig Koenen
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Contents
Part 1 History Matters
Chapter 1 Introduction 3
Part 2 The Vectors of History: Time and Space
Chapter 2 Time: Berossus, Manetho, and the
Construction of King Lists 55
Chapter 3 Space: Regional Perspective and
Authentication in Berossus and Manetho 123
Part 3 Narrative History
Chapter 4 The Great Narratives: Introduction 195
Chapter 5 Berossus’ Narratives 220
Chapter 6 Manetho’s Narratives 301
Chapter 7 Conclusion to Narratives 348
After Words
Ending with Demetrius:
Demetrius the Chronographer 357
Bibliography 389
Indexes 443
Index Verborum 443
Index Locorum 445
General Index 457
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Preface
Berossus and Manetho—
Who Were They?
This seems a fitting place to consider why I have written this book. To state my
case, I need first to introduce my subjects. I will then move on to a discussion,
under several heads, of why they make worthwhile topics for a monograph.
There is not much to go on, in truth, but it is all we have.1 In the earliest
years of the Hellenistic Age (the first quarter of the third century BC), in Se-
leucid Babylon and Ptolemaic Egypt, two men set down to write histories from
the foundation of civilized life to contemporary or near-c ontemporary times.
Berossus (Gk. rendering of Bel-r e’u- shunu, “Bel (the Lord) is their shepherd”),
a Babylonian, was a priest of Bel- Marduk; Manetho (meaning not known for
certain, but possibly “Shepherd (i.e.) guardian of the temple”), an Egyptian,
was also a priest, residing at Heliopolis in the Delta, a little less than fifty kilo-
meters north of Memphis.2 It is curious that the element “shepherd” may occur
in both their names. Both saw the world and its past chiefly through the lenses
of their own cultures—i ndeed, primarily as human history centered on their
respective priestly localities. Berossus’ work was called the Babyloniaca (or pos-
sibly Chaldaïca), Manetho’s the Aegyptiaca. As their titles suggest, both works,
though histories of their native lands, remarkably were written in the Greek
language. Furthermore, while each work covered human history from its earli-
est periods as conceived of within the frameworks of Babylonian and Egyptian
civilization— cultures that were literally millennia old by the start of the third
century BC— each history contained a mere three books.3
1. For the scarcity of verifiable information about Berossus and Manetho, see, e.g., for Beros-
sus, Burstein (1978) 5 and Kuhrt (1987a) 33 and 36–3 7; for Manetho, Redford (1986) 203–4 and
Gozzoli (2006) 191.
2. For the name of Berossus, see de Breucker (2010) ad T 1; for that of Manetho, Moyer (2011)
85 n.5
3. So did the world history of the fourth-c entury Aristotelian Dicaearchus of Messana (Suda
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