As someone who is open to an Amenhotep II Exodus model, and strongly opposed to any 19th Dynasty Model. I’m going to advise Early Exodus daters to stop thinking the name Manetho uses is some kind of proof.
The name Amenophis isn’t the only thing about this Pharoah that Manehto as quoted by Josephus says, it also placed him in a clear chronological sequence as the Pharaoh following the Rameses Miamun who reigned 66 years, and he is then followed by a Seti/Sethos. Basically he is in the place of Merneptah, 19th Dynasty models were originally based on Merneptah as the Pharaoh of the Exodus and Rameses II as the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled, it was the Israel reading of the Merneptah Stele that changed that.
Manetho is to blame for the 19th Dynasty Exodus model, Jospehus’s quotations of Manetho exist in the context of a discourse that was happening between Alexandrian Jews and Alexandrian Judeophobes. Part of it is the antiquity of the Exodus, there is over 300 years from the Expulsion of the Hyksos (start of what we call Dynasty 18) to when this Amenophis becomes king.
So it really bugs me to see enemies of the 19th Dynasty model advocating for Manetho and defending his reliability. It’s funny when they dismiss the “multiple versions of Manetho” by saying to just trust Josephus’s version. Because Josephus himself seems to be using conflicting versions of Manetho.
In Against Apion Book 1 Josephus first lays out his own view on where The Exodus happens in Manetho’s chronology of Egypt in sections 14-16. Then much later in sections 26-31 goes about refuting what he dislikes in Manetho. He must have written these sections on different days borrowing different manuscripts from the Library because there is a discrepancy. They agree on the key chronological placement of this Amenophis I laid out above. But in the first version Seti I doesn’t exist (there is no one between Rameses I and Rameses Miamun) and it’s Seti II who has a civil war with his brother. But in the second version Seti I does exist and it’s he who has the civil war with his brother. The existence of Seti I makes the second version more accurate. But it's easy to assume the civil war with a brother fits Seti II’s conflict with Amenmese. But we don’t know if Amenmese was Seti II’s brother or not. The “Tale of Two Brothers” text is not as similar to what Josephus describes as some claim either. It is still uncertain whether or not Seti I even had any siblings. It’s also possible Manehto made up this brother just to make an identification for Danaus and Aegyptus, but others think Manetho didn’t name Danaus and Aegyptus at all and those are just Josephus’s speculations. The story even as it’s described in the Seti II placement better matches Seti I having conquered parts of the Levant. Egyptologists disagree on if Seti I had any brothers but The Vizier of Lower Egypt during Seti’s reign was Nebamun, the son of a Ramose so could have been confused for another son of Rameses I if he wasn’t.
Also the division into 30 Dynasties doesn’t come from Manetho himself, there is no hint of it in Jospehus’s quotations. That comes from the later transcribers. Which is why it’s possible to skim Josephus here and miss that he’s left the 18th Dynasty, but even then this is the 3rd Amenophis to show up in Josephus’s list of Egyptian Kings following the Hyksos expulsion, not the second.
I’m growing partial to the theory that the original version of Manetho didn't mention Moses or the Israelites or Jerusalem at all, in either the Hyksos context or the 19th Dynasty context, and all of this was stuff added later.
What I do believe is that Manetho did tell a story set in the late 19th Dynasty that was a distorted memory of the history involving Chancelor Bay and Irsu from Papyrus Harris I conflating them and how they tied into the civil war between Seti II and Amenmese, calling that composite figure Osarsiph for some reason. A statue of Bay has been found at Heliopolis so he could have been a Priest there. Then these Judeophobes further fused that narrative with Moses and The Exodus.
Some who want to keep using Manetho as evidence for the Exodus Pharoah being an Amenhotep while acknowledging all of this could say “when that story got conflated with The Exodus is when Merneptah’s name was changed to Amenhotep/Amenophis because people remembered that was the name of the Pharaoh of the Exodus”.
The thing is this isn't the only time Manetho calls a Pharaoh by a different name than modern Egyptologists are used to, his 18th Dynasty rarely uses names we recognize, nor is it the only time he gets their reign length wrong (Merneptah reigned only a decade while this Amenophis reigned 19 years). Manetho's version of the 18th Dynasty as quoted by Josephus even gets the order wrong.
I do think Merneptah’s Manethoean name change to Amenophis predates the story’s conflation with The Exodus or maybe even Manetho himself receiving it.
For one thing it’s possible the Manetho text Josephus used the first time didn’t have this 19th Dynasty Exodus at all, though it has its own issue with being the original. Josephus when he’s refuting Manetho accused him of making this Amenophis up completely, yet he was there in exactly the right position in the version he quoted earlier as reliable history. But since in that version Amenophis was placed before the two brothers Josephus wanted to make the Exodus significantly more ancient then, it served his agenda to include his years.
This Amenophis and Osarsiph narrative also involved another person named Amenophis, the “son of Papis”. So could the name of some contemporary of this Pharaoh accidentally had his name given to the Pharaoh?
When you go to the Wikipedia page List of children of Rameses II, Merneptah is listed as 13 among the sons, being it seems the oldest son to not predecease his long lived father. And the son listed as 14 is Amenhotep. We have no further information on him, we don’t know if his mother was one of the main wives, he doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page. Maybe his mother's name was something corrupted to Papis? Rameses II did have a daughter named Pypuy who could’ve been named after her mother, or…. Rameses did add some of his own daughters to his Harem.
Maybe this brother of Merneptah named Amenhotep was a very important advisor to Merneptah? And lived a decade longer being still around during the civil war between Seti II and Amenmese? And thus some oral memories of the late 19th Dynasty confused him with the actual Pharaoh and gave him a 19 year reign? There is plenty of historical precedent for a King's brother becoming the de facto actual ruler when the King is away on military campaign, like Richard and John in England. Heck Josephus's Manetho just referred to it happening earlier in Egyptian history.
If the Pharaoh of The Exodus was a 18th Dynasty Amenhotep, Manetho as quoted by Josephus got the name right purely by accident.
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