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106-512: Against Apion ( Greek : περὶ ἀρχαιότητος Ἰουδαίων λόγος Peri Archaiotētos Ioudaiōn Logos ; Latin Contra Apionem or In Apionem ) is a polemical work written by Flavius Josephus as a defense of Judaism as a classical religion and philosophy against criticism by Apion , stressing its antiquity against what he perceived as more recent traditions of the Greeks. One of his main sources

212-556: A Greek, that they would ever be at enmity with the Greeks; and that then they threw the remaining parts of the miserable wretch into a certain pit." Now this is such a most tragical fable as is full of nothing but cruelty and impudence; how comes it about that we take an oath, and conspire only against the Grecians, and that by the effusion of their blood also? Or how is it possible that all the Jews should get together to these sacrifices, and

318-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

424-471: A bed, and a man lying upon it, with a small table before him, full of dainties, from the [fishes of the] sea, and the fowls of the dry land... he fell down upon his knees, and begged to be released; and that when the king bid him sit down, and tell him who he was, and why he dwelt there, and what was the meaning of those various sorts of food that were set before him the man made a lamentable complaint, and with sighs, and tears in his eyes, gave him this account of

530-422: A brother of Philo , and it has been suggested that this was inserted into Manetho. We do not know when this might have occurred, but scholars specify a terminus ante quem at the first century AD, when Josephus began writing. The earliest surviving attestation to Manetho is that of Contra Apionem ("Against Apion") by Flavius Josephus , nearly four centuries after Aegyptiaca was composed. Even here, it

636-546: A close study of Manetho is that not only was Aegyptiaca not preserved as a whole, but it also became involved in a rivalry among advocates of Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek histories in the form of supporting polemics . During this period, disputes raged concerning the oldest civilizations, and so Manetho's account was probably excerpted during this time for use in this argument with significant alterations. Material similar to Manetho's has been found in Lysimachus of Alexandria ,

742-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

848-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

954-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

1060-460: A list of eight successive Persian kings, beginning with Cambyses , the son of Cyrus the Great . Manetho's record of regnal years for these kings is mostly corroborated by Ptolemy of Alexandria in his Canon , excepting for the fact that Artabanus who reigned for only 7 months is omitted by Ptolemy, while Ptolemy puts 8 years (instead of 5) for Cambyses' reign. Between Cambyses' reign and Darius,

1166-464: A part of Aegyptiaca that circulated independently. Neither survives in its original form today. Two English translations of the fragments of Manetho's Aegyptiaca have been published: by William Gillan Waddell in 1940, and by Gerald P. Verbrugghe and John Moore Wickersham in 2001. Despite the reliance of Egyptologists on him for their reconstructions of the Egyptian dynasties, the problem with

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1272-704: A portion of Manetho's history, roughly from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth [Egyptian] dynasties, but it does describe shifts in control from one faction to another, consistent with dynastic divisions. There is no mention of numbered dynasties, and only 24 rulers are named." This article about a Judaism -related book or text is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

1378-570: A priest of the sun-god Ra at Heliopolis (according to George Syncellus , he was the chief priest). He was considered by Plutarch to be an authority on the cult of Serapis (a derivation of Osiris and Apis ). Serapis was a Greco-Macedonian version of the Egyptian cult, probably started after Alexander the Great 's establishment of Alexandria in Egypt. A statue of the deity was imported in 286 BC by Ptolemy I Soter (or in 278 BC by Ptolemy II Philadelphus) as Tacitus and Plutarch attest. There

1484-529: A separate witness from the Book of Sothis . Unfortunately, this material is likely to have been a forgery or hoax of unknown date. Every king in Sothis after Menes is irreconcilable with the versions of Africanus and Eusebius. Manetho should not be judged on the factuality of his account, but on the method he used to record history, and in this, he was as successful as Herodotus and Hesiod. Finally, in modern times,

1590-440: A slight abbreviation, such as A'akheperen-Re ' (Throne and king-list names) becoming Khebron (XVIII.4 Thutmose II ). A few more have consonants switched for unknown reasons, as for example Tausret becoming Thouoris (XIX.6 Twosre/ Tausret ). One puzzle is in the conflicting names of some early dynastic kings— although they did not have all five titles, they still had multiple names. I.3/4 Djer , whose Son of Ra name

1696-482: A while, he inquired of the servants that came to him and was by them informed that it was in order to the fulfilling a law of the Jews, which they must not tell him, that he was thus fed; and that they did the same at a set time every year: that they used to catch a Greek foreigner, and fat him thus up every year, and then lead him to a certain wood, and kill him, and sacrifice with their accustomed solemnities, and taste of his entrails, and take an oath upon this sacrificing

1802-497: A year, and reduces to 214 + 1 ⁄ 2 years (another conversion attested to by Diodorus). The sum of these comes out to 1,183 + 1 ⁄ 2 years, equal to that of Berossos. Syncellus rejected both Manetho's and Berossos' incredible time-spans, as well as the efforts of other commentators to harmonise their numbers with the Bible . Ironically as we see, he also blamed them for the synchronicity concocted by later writers. It

1908-548: Is Itti is considered the basis for Manetho's I.2 Athothis. I.4 Oenephes then is a puzzle unless it is compared with Djer's Gold Horus name, Ennebu . It may be that Manetho duplicated the name or he had a source for a name unknown to us. Finally, there are some names where the association is a complete mystery to us. V.6 Rhathoures/Niuserre's complete name was Set-ib-tawi Set-ib-Nebty Netjeri-bik-nebu Ni-user-Re' Ini Ni-user-Re ' , but Manetho writes it as Rhathoures. It may be that some kings were known by names other than even just

2014-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

2120-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

2226-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

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2332-505: Is clear that Josephus did not have the originals, and constructed a polemic against Manetho without them. Avaris and Osarseph are both mentioned twice (1.78, 86–87; 238, 250). Apion 1.95–97 is merely a list of kings with no narratives until 1.98, while running across two of Manetho's dynasties without mention ( dynasties eighteen and nineteen ). Contemporaneously or perhaps after Josephus wrote, an epitome of Manetho's work must have been circulated. This would have involved preserving

2438-483: Is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them. In the second book, Josephus defends

2544-403: Is generally accepted that he was reliant on one or more such lists, and it is not clear to what extent he was aware of the different pharaonic names of rulers long past (and he had alternate names for some). Not all of the different names for each king have been uncovered. Manetho did not choose consistently from the five different types of names, but in some cases, a straightforward transcription

2650-658: Is in fact the celebrated author of the Aegyptiaca , then Manetho may well have been working during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–222 BC) as well, but at a very advanced age. Although the historicity of Manetho of Sebennytus was taken for granted by Josephus and later authors, the question as to whether he existed remains problematic. The Manetho of the Hibeh Papyri has no title and this letter deals with affairs in Upper Egypt not Lower Egypt, where our Manetho

2756-431: Is no reason to doubt this, as admissions of this type were common among historians of that era. His familiarity with Egyptian legends is indisputable, but how he learned Greek legends is more open to debate. He must have been familiar with Herodotus, and in some cases, he even attempted to synchronize Egyptian history with Greek (for example, equating King Memnon with Amenophis , and Armesis with Danaos ). This suggests he

2862-804: Is one of the clues as to how syncretism developed between seemingly disparate religions. He then proceeds to Dynastic Egypt, from Dynasty One to Eleven . This would have included the Old Kingdom, the First Intermediate Period, and the early Middle Kingdom. Volume 2 covers Dynasties Twelve – Nineteen , which includes the end of the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period (Fifteen–Seventeen—the Hyksos invasion), and then their expulsion and

2968-505: Is possible. Egyptian Men or Meni (Son of Ra and king-list names) becomes Menes (officially, this is Pharaoh I.1 Narmer —"I" represents Dynasty I, and "1" means the first king of that dynasty), while Menkauhor / Menkahor (Throne and king-list names, the Horus names is Menkhau and the Son of Ra name is "Kaiu Horkaiu[...]") is transcribed as Menkheres (V.7 Menkauhor ). Others involve

3074-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

3180-400: Is said to have lived and are only mentioned in another source in the first century AD, leaving a gap of 200–300 years between the composition of the Aegyptiaca and its first attestation. The gap is even larger for the other works attributed to Manetho such as The Sacred Book that is mentioned for the very first time by Eusebius in the fourth century AD. Manetho of Sebennytus was probably

3286-606: Is said to have written exclusively in the Greek language for a Greek-speaking audience. Other literary works attributed to him include Against Herodotus , The Sacred Book , On Antiquity and Religion , On Festivals , On the Preparation of Kyphi , and the Digest of Physics . The treatise Book of Sothis has also been attributed to Manetho. These works are not attested during the Ptolemaic period when Manetho of Sebennytus

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3392-815: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Manetho He authored

3498-493: Is speculated that Manetho wrote at the request of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II to give an account of the history of Egypt to the Greeks from a native perspective. However, there is no evidence for this hypothesis. If such were the case, Aegyptiaca was a failure, since Herodotus' Histories continued to provide the standard account in the Hellenistic world. It may also have been that some nationalistic sentiments in Manetho provided

3604-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

3710-468: Is still used as a basis for all Egyptian discussions. Volume 1 begins from the earliest times, listing deities and demigods as kings of Egypt. Stories of Isis , Osiris, Set , or Horus might have been found here. Manetho does not transliterate either, but gives the Greek equivalent deities by a convention that predates him: (Egyptian) Ptah = (Greek) Hephaistos ; Isis = Demeter ; Thoth = Hermes ; Horus = Apollo ; Seth = Typhon ; etc. This

3816-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

3922-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

4028-512: Is thought to have functioned as a chief priest. The name Manetho is rare, but there is no reason a priori to presume that the Manetho of the Hibeh Papyri is the priest and historian from Sebennytus who is thought to have authored the Aegyptiaca for Ptolemy Philadelphus . Manetho is described as a native Egyptian, and Egyptian would have been his mother tongue. Although the topics he supposedly wrote about dealt with Egyptian matters, he

4134-466: Is used universally, and this has permeated the study of nearly all royal genealogies by the conceptualization of succession in terms of dynasties or houses. Manetho's Aegyptiaca has been cited as a source for early antisemitic ideas because of his account of Exodus, in which he portrays the Jewish people as forming from a group of lepers and shepherds who were expelled from Egypt and later conquered it,

4240-495: Is usually considered more reliable, but there is no assurance that this is the case. Eusebius in turn was preserved by Jerome in his Latin translation, an Armenian translation, and by George Syncellus . Syncellus recognized the similarities between Eusebius and Africanus, so he placed them side by side in his work, Ecloga Chronographica . Africanus, Syncellus, and the Latin and Armenian translations of Eusebius are what remains of

4346-473: Is written as Manethon , Manethos , Manethonus , and Manetos . Although no sources for the dates of his life and death remain, Manetho is associated with the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323–283 BC) by Plutarch (c. 46–120 AD), while George Syncellus links Manetho directly with Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC). If the mention of someone named Manetho in the Hibeh Papyri, dated to 241/240 BC,

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4452-610: The Achaemenid interruption of Egyptian rule. Three more local dynasties are mentioned, although they must have overlapped with Persian rule. Dynasty Thirty-one consisted of three Persian rulers, and some have suggested that this was added by a continuator. Both Moses of Chorene and Jerome end at Nectanebo II ("last king of the Egyptians" and "destruction of the Egyptian monarchy" respectively), but Dynasty Thirty-one fits within Manetho's schemata of demonstrating power through

4558-626: The Aegyptiaca ( History of Egypt ) in Greek , a major chronological source for the reigns of the kings of ancient Egypt . It is unclear whether he wrote his history and king list during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or Ptolemy II Philadelphos , but it was completed no later than that of Ptolemy III Euergetes . The original Egyptian version of Manetho's name is lost, but some speculate it means "Truth of Thoth ", "Gift of Thoth", "Beloved of Thoth", "Beloved of Neith ", or "Lover of Neith". Less accepted proposals are Myinyu-heter ("Horseherd" or "Groom") and Ma'ani-Djehuti ("I have seen Thoth"). In

4664-664: The Annals give annual reports of the activities of the kings, while there is little probability that Manetho would have been able to go into such detail. The New Kingdom lists are each selective in their listings: that of Seti I , for instance, lists seventy-six kings from dynasties one to nineteen, omitting the Hyksos rulers and those associated with the heretic Akhenaten . The Saqqara king list , contemporaneous with Ramesses II , has fifty-eight names, with similar omissions. If Manetho used these lists at all, he would have been unable to get all of his information from them alone, due to

4770-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

4876-555: The Greek language , the earliest fragments (the inscription of uncertain date on the base of a marble bust from the temple of Serapis at Carthage and the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus of the 1st century AD) wrote his name as Μανέθων Manethōn , so the Latinised rendering of his name here is given as Manetho. Other Greek renderings include Manethōs , Manethō , Manethos , Manēthōs , Manēthōn , and Manethōth . In Latin it

4982-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

5088-512: The Tanite Dynasty Twenty-one and Dynasty Twenty-two lineage in his Epitome such as Psusennes I , Amenemope and even such short-lived kings as Amenemnisu (five years) and Osochor (six years). In contrast, he ignores the existence of Theban kings such as Osorkon III , Takelot III , Harsiese A , Pinedjem I , and kings from Middle Egypt such as Peftjaubast of Herakleopolis . This implies that Manetho derived

5194-465: The dynasteia well. The Thirty-second dynasty would have been the Ptolemies . Most of the ancient witnesses group Manetho together with Berossos , and treat the pair as similar in intent, and it is not a coincidence that those who preserved the bulk of their writing are largely the same ( Josephus , Africanus , Eusebius , and Syncellus ). Certainly, both wrote about the same time, and both adopted

5300-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

5406-603: The "History of Egypt", may have been Manetho's largest work, and certainly the most important. It was organised chronologically and divided into three volumes. His division of rulers into dynasties was an innovation. However, he did not use the term in the modern sense, by bloodlines, but rather, introduced new dynasties whenever he detected some sort of discontinuity, whether geographical ( Dynasty Four from Memphis , Dynasty Five from Elephantine ), or genealogical (especially in Dynasty One , he refers to each successive king as

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5512-403: The "Horus" name; the "Two Ladies" name; the "Gold Horus" name; the praenomen or "throne name"; and a nomen , the personal name given at birth (also called a "Son of Ra" name as it was preceded by Sa Re ' ). Some kings also had multiple examples within these names, such as Ramesses II who used six Horus names at various times. Because Manetho's transcriptions agree with many king-lists, it

5618-441: The "son" of the previous to define what he means by "continuity"). Within the superstructure of a genealogical table, he fills in the gaps with substantial narratives of the kings. Some have suggested that Aegyptiaca was written as a competing account to Herodotus ' Histories , to provide a national history for Egypt that did not exist before. From this perspective, Against Herodotus may have been an abridged version or just

5724-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

5830-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

5936-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

6042-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

6148-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

6254-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

6360-409: The Jews bore to him. But I leave this matter; for the proper way of confuting fools is not to use bare words, but to appeal to the things themselves that make against them... As Josephus himself notes, his work "does not contain quotations from Manetho's original, but rather cites from one or perhaps even two epitomized and altered version of Manetho 's Aegyptiaca. Written as a narrative, it covers only

6466-550: The Pharaonic king-lists were generally wrong for Manetho's purposes, and we should commend Manetho for not basing his account on them (2000:105). These large stelae stand in contrast to the Turin Royal Canon (such as Saqqara, contemporaneous with Ramesses II), written in hieratic script. Like Manetho, it begins with the deities, and seems to be an epitome very similar in spirit and style to Manetho. Interestingly,

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6572-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

6678-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

6784-407: The distress he was in; and said that he was a Greek and that as he went over this province, in order to get his living, he was seized upon by foreigners, on a sudden, and brought to this temple, and shut up therein, and was seen by nobody, but was fattened by these curious provisions thus set before him; and that truly at the first such unexpected advantages seemed to him matter of great joy; that after

6890-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

6996-513: The effect is still visible in the way Egyptologists divide the dynasties of the Egyptian kings. The French explorer and Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion reportedly held a copy of Manetho's lists in one hand as he attempted to decipher the hieroglyphs he encountered. Most modern scholarship that mentions the names of the kings will render both the modern transcription and Manetho's version, and in some cases Manetho's names are even preferred to more authentic ones. Today, his division of dynasties

7102-519: The entrails of one man should be sufficient for so many thousands to taste of them, as Apion pretends? Or why did not the king carry this man, whosoever he was, and whatsoever was his name, [which is not set down in Apion's book,] with great pomp back into his own country? when he might thereby have been esteemed a religious person himself, and a mighty lover of the Greeks, and might thereby have procured himself great assistance from all men against that hatred

7208-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

7314-654: The epitome of Manetho. Other significant fragments include Malalas 's Chronographia and the Excerpta Latina Barbari , a bad translation of a Greek chronology. Manetho's methods involved the use of king-lists to provide a structure for his history. There were precedents to his writing available in Egypt (plenty of which have survived to this day), and his Hellenistic and Egyptian background would have been influential in his writing. Josephus records him admitting to using "nameless oral tradition" (1.105) and "myths and legends" (1.229) for his account, and there

7420-719: The establishment of the New Kingdom (Eighteen onward). The Second Intermediate Period was of particular interest to Josephus, where he equated the Hyksos or "shepherd-kings" as the ancient Israelites who eventually made their way out of Egypt ( Apion 1.82–92). He even includes a brief etymological discussion of the term "Hyksos". Volume 3 continues with Dynasty Twenty and concludes with Dynasty Thirty (or Thirty-one, see below). The Saite Renaissance occurs in Dynasty Twenty-six , while Dynasty Twenty-seven involves

7526-401: The five official ones. Thus, how Manetho transcribed these names varies, and as such, we cannot reconstruct the original Egyptian forms of the names. However, because of the simplicity with which Manetho transcribed long names (see above), they were preferred until original king-lists began to be uncovered in Egyptian sites, translated, and corroborated. Manetho's division of dynasties, however,

7632-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

7738-480: The format must have been available to him. As a priest (or chief priest), he would have had access to practically all written materials in the temple. While the precise origins for Manetho's king-list are unknown, it was certainly a northern, Lower Egyptian one. This can be deduced most noticeably from his selection of the kings for the Third Intermediate Period . Manetho consistently includes

7844-551: The historicity of the Hebrew Bible against accusations made by Apion (who Josephus states is not Greek), arguing that Apion in fact rehashes material of Manetho 's, though there was apparently some confusion between Manetho's references to the Hyksos and the Hebrews . Josephus on Apion's blood libel ( Against Apion 2:8): Apion becomes other men's prophet upon this occasion, and says that "Antiochus found in our temple

7950-406: The historiographical approach of the Greek writers Herodotus and Hesiod , who preceded them. While the subjects of their history are different, the form is similar, using chronological royal genealogies as the structure for the narratives. Both extend their histories far into the mythic past, to give the deities rule over the earliest ancestral histories. Syncellus goes so far as to insinuate that

8056-419: The impetus for his writing, but that again is a conjecture. It is clear, however, that when it was written, it would have proven to be the authoritative account of the history of Egypt, superior to Herodotus in every way. The completeness and systematic nature in which he collected his sources was unprecedented. Syncellus similarly recognised its importance when recording Eusebius and Africanus, and even provided

8162-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

8268-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

8374-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

8480-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

8586-456: The nine dynasties with demigods came to 858 years. Again, this was too long for the Biblical account, so two different units of conversion were used. The 11,985 years were considered to be months of 29 + 1 ⁄ 2 days each (a conversion used in antiquity, for example by Diodorus Siculus ), which comes out to 969 years. The latter period, however, was divided into seasons, or quarters of

8692-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

8798-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

8904-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

9010-713: The one most similar to his is the Turin Royal Canon (or Turin Papyrus ). The oldest source with which we can compare to Manetho are the Old Kingdom Annals (c. 2500-2200 BC). From the New Kingdom are the list at Karnak (constructed by order of Thutmose III ), two at Abydos (by Seti I and Ramesses II — the latter a duplicate, but updated version of the former), and the Saqqara list by

9116-460: The opposite side of the papyrus includes government records. Verbrugghe and Wickersham suggest that a comprehensive list such as this would be necessary for a government office "to date contracts, leases, debts, titles, and other instruments (2000:106)" and so could not have been selective in the way the king-lists in temples were. Despite numerous differences between the Turin Canon and Manetho,

9222-416: The other houses. The purpose of these lists is not historical but religious. It is not that they are trying and failing to give a complete list. They are not trying at all. Seti and Ramesses did not wish to make offerings to Akhenaten , Tutankhamen , or Hatshepsut , and that is why they are omitted, not because their existence was unknown or deliberately ignored in a broader historical sense. For this reason,

9328-439: The outlines of his dynasties and a few details deemed significant. For the first ruler of the first dynasty, Menes , we learn that "he was snatched and killed by a hippopotamus ". The extent to which the epitome preserved Manetho's original writing is unclear, so caution must be exercised. Nevertheless, the epitome was preserved by Sextus Julius Africanus and Eusebius of Caesarea . Because Africanus predates Eusebius, his version

9434-555: The priest Tenry. The provenance of the Old Kingdom Annals is unknown, surviving as the Palermo Stone . The differences between the Annals and Manetho are great. The Annals only reach to the fifth dynasty, but its pre-dynastic rulers are listed as the kings of Lower Egypt and kings of Upper Egypt . By contrast, Manetho lists several Greek and Egyptian deities beginning with Hephaistos and Helios . Secondly,

9540-577: The primary sources for his Epitome from a local city's temple library in the region of the River Nile Delta which was controlled by the Tanite-based Dynasty Twenty-one and Dynasty Twenty-two kings. The Middle and Upper Egyptian kings did not have any effect upon this specific region of the delta; hence their exclusion from Manetho's king-list. By the Middle Kingdom, Egyptian kings each had five different names ,

9646-425: The records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes , the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what

9752-520: The same year. While this does seem an incredible coincidence, the reliability of the report is unclear. The reasoning for presuming they started their histories in the same year involved some considerable contortions. Berossos dated the period before the Flood to 120 saroi (3,600 year periods), giving an estimate of 432,000 years before the Flood. This was unacceptable to later Christian commentators, so it

9858-416: The selective nature of their records. Verbrugghe and Wickersham argue: [...] The purpose of these lists was to cover the walls of a sacred room in which the reigning Pharaoh (or other worshiper, as in the case of Tenry and his Saqqara list) made offerings or prayers to his or her predecessors, imagined as ancestors. Each royal house had a particular traditional list of these "ancestors", different from that of

9964-561: The son of Hystaspes, there was an interim period whereby the Magi ruled over Persia. This important anecdote is supplied by Herodotus who wrote the Magian ruled Persia for 7 months after the death of Cambyses. Josephus , on the other hand, says they obtained the government of the Persians for a year. The king-list that Manetho had access to is unknown to us, but of the surviving king-lists,

10070-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

10176-483: The two copied each other: If one carefully examines the underlying chronological lists of events, one will have full confidence that the design of both is false, as both Berossos and Manetho, as I have said before, want to glorify each his own nation, Berossos the Chaldean , Manetho the Egyptian. One can only stand in amazement that they were not ashamed to place the beginning of their incredible story in each in one and

10282-523: Was Menander of Ephesus . Against Apion cites Josephus' earlier work Antiquities of the Jews , so can be dated after C.E. 94. It was possibly written in the early second century. Against Apion 1:8 also defines which books Josephus viewed as being in the Hebrew Scriptures : For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain

10388-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

10494-464: Was also a tradition in antiquity that Timotheus of Athens (an authority on Demeter at Eleusis ) directed the project together with Manetho, but the source of this information is not clear and it may originate from one of the literary works attributed to Manetho, in which case it has no independent value and does not corroborate the historicity of Manetho the priest-historian of the early third century BC. The Aegyptiaca ( Αἰγυπτιακά , Aigyptiaka ),

10600-672: Was also familiar with the Greek Epic Cycle (for which the Ethiopian Memnon is slain by Achilles during the Trojan War ) and the history of Argos (in Aeschylus 's Suppliants ). However, it has also been suggested that these were later interpolations , particularly when the epitome was being written, so these guesses are at best tentative. At the behest of Ptolemy Philadelphus (266–228 BC), Manetho copied down

10706-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

10812-505: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

10918-442: Was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation

11024-440: Was presumed he meant solar days. 432,000 divided by 365 days gives a rough figure of 1,183 + 1 ⁄ 2 years before the Flood. For Manetho, even more numeric contortions ensued. With no flood mentioned, they presumed that Manetho's first era describing the deities represented the ante-diluvian age. Secondly, they took the spurious Book of Sothis for a chronological count. Six dynasties of deities totalled 11,985 years, while

11130-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

11236-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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