Manetho

Although the Hyksos were described by the Ptolemaic Egyptian historian Manetho as “invaders of an obscure race” who conquered the region by force, recent research has shown that they descended from people who had immigrated peacefully over centuries from southwest Asia, now Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The major intellectual pursuit of his last years was a concordance and calibration of the chronologies of ancient civilizations, very much in the tradition of the ancient historians Manetho, Strabo and Eratosthenes.

According to a passage in Manetho, much suspected, however, of being an interpolation, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus had himself, before the cataclysm, inscribed on stelæ in hieroglyphical and sacred language the principles of all knowledge.

This would be the only Egyptian mention of the Deluge, the same Manetho not speaking of it in what remains to us of his "Dynasties," his only complete authentic work.

The scene is laid at the close of the reign of the god Râ, the earliest terrestrial reign, according to the system of the priests of Thebes, the second, according to that of the priests of Memphis, which is the one followed by Manetho, who placed at the very origin of things the reign of Phtah, previous to that of Râ.