Aegyptiaca (Manetho) in the context of "Literary fragment"

The Aegyptiaca (Koine Greek: Αἰγυπτιακά, Aigyptiaka, "History of Egypt") was a history of ancient Egypt written in Greek by Manetho (fl. 290 – 260 BCE), a high priest of the ancient Egyptian religion, in the early 3rd century BCE at the beginning of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. As an Egyptian intellectual who wrote in Greek about his civilization's very long history—over two thousand years old when he wrote his history—Manetho mediated Egyptian and Greek cultures at the dawn of the Hellenistic period. His Aegyptiaca was a comprehensive history of ancient Egypt and stands as a unique achievement in the corpus of ancient Egyptian literature. It continues to be a vital subject in Egyptology, and an important resource in the refinement of Egyptian chronology.

Manetho's purpose was to instruct the Greek-speaking world of the Eastern Mediterranean about Egypt's deep past. His work provided a clear chronology of Egypt from the first pharaoh of a unified Upper and Lower Egypt, dated by modern historians to 3100 BCE, to just before Alexander's entry into the country following the Siege of Gaza in 332 BCE. Manetho prefaced his human chronology with the "history" of a mythical era of divine rule that linked Egyptian gods with their Greek counterparts, an equivalence already established by Manetho's time.