George Syncellus

George, called Syncellus from his office as 'cell-mate' or private secretary to Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople, was a Byzantine monk who died some time after 810. In his last years he wrote the Ecloga Chronographica, a chronicle of world history from Creation to the emperor Diocletian, later continued by his friend Theophanes.

The work is less a narrative than a large table of dates with comments, but it is valuable for what it quotes. Syncellus copied long passages from earlier chronographers, especially Julius Africanus and Eusebius, and through them preserved versions of the king lists of the Egyptian priest Manetho and the Babylonian priest Berossus.

He also quoted the Greek text of 1 Enoch's Book of the Watchers, including the descent of the angels on Mount Hermon and the birth of the giants. Before the full Ethiopic text reached Europe in the 1770s, these excerpts were among the few parts of the book known in the West. Because his sources disagree, his figures are treated cautiously.