an ancient Egyptian historian, who pretended to take all his accounts from the sacred inscriptions on the pillars of Hermes Trismegistus. He was high-priest of Heliopolis in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, at whose request he wrote his history in Greek; beginning from their gods, and continuing it down to near the time of Darius Codomanus who was conquered by Alexander the Great. His history of Egypt is a celebrated work, that is often quoted by Josephus and other ancient authors. Julius Africanus gave an abridgement of it in his Chronology. Manetho's work is however lost; and there only remain some fragments extracted from Julius Africanus, which are to be found in Eusebius's Chronica.