anted and confessed that this nation was not
originally Egyptian, but that they had come from another country, and
subdued Egypt, and then went away again out of it. But that those
Egyptians who were thus diseased in their bodies were not mingled with
us afterward, and that Moses who brought the people out was not one of
that company, but lived many generations earlier, I shall endeavor to
demonstrate from Manetho's own accounts themselves.

28. Now, for the first occasion of this fiction, Manetho supposes what
is no better than a ridiculous thing; for he says that, "King Amenophis
desired to see the gods." What gods, I pray, did he desire to see? If
he meant the gods whom their laws ordained to be worshipped, the ox, the
goat, the crocodile, and the baboon, he saw them already; but for the
heavenly gods, how could he see them, and what should occasion this his
desire? To be sure? it was because another king before him had already
seen them. He had then been informed what sort of gods they were, and
after what manner they had been seen, insomuch that he did not stand in
need of any new artifice for obtaining this sight. However, the prophet
by whose means the king thought to compass his design was a wise man.
If so, how came he not to know that such his desire was impossible to
be accomplished? for the event did not succeed. And what pretense could
there be to suppose that the gods would not be seen by reason of the
people's maims in their bodies, or leprosy? for the gods are not angry
at the imperfection of bodies, but at wicked practices; and as to eighty
thousand lepers, and those in an ill state also, how is it possible to
have them gathered together in one day? nay, how came the king not to
comply with the prophet? for his injunction was, that those that were
maimed should be expelled out of Egypt, while the king only sent them
to work in the quarries, as if he were rather in want of laborers, than
intended to purge his country. He says further, that, "this prophet slew
himself, as foreseeing the anger of the gods, and those events which
were to come upon Egypt afterward; and that he left this prediction for
the king in writing." Besides, how came it to pass that this prophet
did not foreknow his own death at the first? nay, how came he not to
contradict the king in his desire to see the gods immediately? how came
that unreasonable dread upon him of judgments that were not to happen
in his lifetime? or what worse th