These are the bare historical results that have been attained with regard to the names, identity, and order of the kings.  The smaller memorials that have been found with them, especially the ivory plaques, have told us of events that took place during their reigns; but, with the exception of the constantly recurring references to the conquest of the North, there is little that can be considered of historical interest or importance.  We will take one as an example.  This is the tablet No. 32,650 of the British Museum, illustrated by Prof.  Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16.  This is the record of a single year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower Egypt.  On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais.  This religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times.  Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An.  The capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of fortification, half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs already described are armed; this signifies the opening and breaking down of the wall.

On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt, Hemaka, mentioned; also “the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of the Libyans,” and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a king’s carpenter.  On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words “the king’s carpenter made this record.”  All these little tablets are then the records of single years of a king’s life, and others like them, preserved no doubt in royal archives, formed the base of regular annals, which were occasionally carved upon stone.  We have an example of one of these in the “Stele of Palermo,” a fragment of black granite, inscribed with the annals of the kings up to the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the monument itself was made.  It is a matter for intense regret that the greater portion of this priceless historical monument has disappeared, leaving us but a piece out of the centre, with part of the records of only six kings before Snefru.  Of these six the name of only one, Neneter, of the lid Dynasty, whose name is also found at Abydos, is mentioned.  The only important historical event of Neneter’s reign seems to have occurred in his thirteenth year, when the towns or palaces of Ha ("North”) and Shem-Ra ("The Sun proceeds”) were founded.  Nothing but the institution and celebration of religious festivals is recorded in the sixteen yearly entries preserved to us out of a reign of thirty-five years.  The annual height of the Nile is given, and the occasions of numbering the people are recorded (every second year):  nothing else.  Manetho tells us that in the reign of Binothris, who is Neneter, it was decreed that women could hold royal honours and privileges.  This first concession of women’s rights is not mentioned on the strictly official “Palermo Stele.”