Palermo Stone: One Of The Earliest History Records Of Ancient Egypt

A. Sutherland - AncientPages.com - The Palermo Stone, carved on a black basalt stele, is one of the earliest Egyptian historical texts. The original location of the artifact is unknown, but one fragment is said to have been found at an archaeological site at Memphis in 1866, while three other fragments now in Cairo were probably discovered in Middle Egypt.

It is a large fragment of a stela known as the Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt and contains records of the kings of Egypt from the first to the fifth dynasty.

The king list of Egyptian pharaohs, represents one of the basic sources of information about the chronology and cultural history of ancient Egypt during the first five dynasties (c. 2925–c. 2325 BC), although the last name preserved on the stone is that of Neferirkare, the third of the nine kings of the 5th dynasty.

On the Palermo Stone there is also chronicled that there was a civilization prior to the present one. This civilization dates back between twenty and thirty thousand years.

Named for the Sicilian city, where it has been preserved since 1877, it is one of six existing fragments from a single stela that probably originally stood in an Egyptian temple or other important building.

The Palermo Stone is an irregular shield-shaped fragment, 43.5 cm high, 25 cm wide and 6.5 cm thick (maximum dimensions).

The original to which the Palermo Stone belonged, is believed to have been about 2.2 meters long, 0.61 meters high and 6.5 cm thick.

It is generally accepted, but not proven, that the large Cairo Fragment, may have belonged to the same original.

It is inscribed on both sides with horizontal lines of hieroglyphic text, the top row listing the names of predynastic rulers.

The following rows, each headed by the name of a different king, are divided into compartments, each compartment signifying one year.

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Palermo Stone consists of 6 horizontal bands or registers of hieroglyphic text running right to left. Within the compartments the hieroglyphs always list one or more memorable events of that year.

According to Palermo Stone, in the early 4th Dynasty, Sneferu sent a military expedition to Nubia. This expedition returned with 7,000 captives and 200,000 cattles. There is no further explanation in text, who the captives were and from which locations in Nubia.

The Palermo Stone was published and translated for the first time in 1902 by a German Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer (1868-1957). The purpose of this ancient artifact is not clearly defined.

Was it meant to record historical events or had it another function?

Written by – A. Sutherland AncientPages.com Staff Writer

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