Julius Africanus

Julius Africanus (c.160 – c.240) was a Christian historian who wrote a history of the world in five books called Chronographiae, from the creation of the world to 221 CE. The original has been lost, and no fragments have ever been found. Attempts to reconstruct the work relies entirely on later authors who quoted Africanus, primarily Eusebius. Syncellus preserves fragments of Africanus's work that are not found in Eusebius, and his versions of overlapping citations are not identical to those of Eusebius. This demonstrates that Syncellus had access to a different, more complete or parallel version of Africanus's work.

There are also fragments in Cedrenus and the Chronicon Paschale. It contained material from Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, or rather, material from one of the many epitomes of Aegyptiaca created during the intervening 500 years that passed between the two authors. Manetho's invention was to arrange the extremely long history of ancient Egypt into more manageable parts, which he called dynasties.

As can be expected, the original text of Aegyptiaca was corrupted long before it reached Africanus, as transmission during the intervening centuries undoubtedly required copies of copies to be created. This copying process naturally introduced errors, omissions and misunderstanding of the source text. There were also outright alterations by religious redactors. The epitome used by Africanus was in all likelyhood a somewhat contemporary copy, i.e. removed from Manetho by some 4-500 years.

As Africanus Chronographiai predates Eusebius’ by a century it is generally considered more reliable by Egyptologists. Syncellus recognized the similarity between Africanus and Eusebius and presented both versions in his Ecloga Chronographica.

Due to the fact that the original has not survived is a big problem, as the information that can be gleaned, is from copies of copies, which in themselves cannot be entirely relied upon.