or MANETHOS, an ancient Egyptian historian, who pretended to have derived all his materials from the sacred inscriptions upon 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 with the gods of Egypt, and continuing it down to the time of Darius Codomannus, who was conquered by Alexander the Great. His history of Egypt is a celebrated work, and is often quoted by Josephus and other ancient authors. Julius Africanus also inserted an abridgment of it in his Chronology. The work of the Egyptian high priest is however lost; and of it there only remain some fragments extracted from Julius Africanus, which are to be found in the Chronica of Eusebius. These remains, however, have latterly acquired great interest, from the attempts which have been made to decipher the hieroglyphical inscriptions, and thereby to rectify, as far as possible, the history and chronology of Egypt. But it seems very doubtful whether any effort of modern ingenuity, even though aided by the interpretation of Egyptian monuments, will ever succeed in reconciling with probability the account of the Egyptian dynasties given by this author.