Alexander of Lycopolis

Alexander of Lycopolis was a Neoplatonist philosopher active in Upper Egypt in the late third century CE (c. 277–297 CE). He is known exclusively from his Greek treatise Against the Doctrines of Mani, a systematic philosophical refutation of Manichaeism that draws on Platonist principles. He worked as a philosophy teacher at Lycopolis (modern Asyut) and encountered Manichaean missionaries directly, including Papos and Thomas — Mani's direct disciples — who infiltrated his philosophical circle and converted some of his students. Patriarch Photios mistakenly identified him as a Christian bishop of Lycopolis, a claim modern scholarship has firmly rejected in favour of a pagan Neoplatonist identity.