(2) The spaces are not strictly rectangles, as each is divided vertically from the next by the Egyptian hieroglyph for “year”.

The text, which is engraved on both sides of a great block of black basalt, takes its name from the fact that the fragment hitherto known has been preserved since 1877 at the Museum of Palermo.  Five other fragments of the text have now been published, of which one undoubtedly belongs to the same monument as the Palermo fragment, while the others may represent parts of one or more duplicate copies of that famous text.  One of the four Cairo fragments(1) was found by a digger for sebakh at Mitrahineh (Memphis); the other three, which were purchased from a dealer, are said to have come from Minieh, while the fifth fragment, at University College, is also said to have come from Upper Egypt,(2) though it was purchased by Professor Petrie while at Memphis.  These reports suggest that a number of duplicate copies were engraved and set up in different Egyptian towns, and it is possible that the whole of the text may eventually be recovered.  The choice of basalt for the records was obviously dictated by a desire for their preservation, but it has had the contrary effect; for the blocks of this hard and precious stone have been cut up and reused in later times.  The largest and most interesting of the new fragments has evidently been employed as a door-sill, with the result that its surface is much rubbed and parts of its text are unfortunately almost undecipherable.  We shall see that the earliest section of its record has an important bearing on our knowledge of Egyptian predynastic history and on the traditions of that remote period which have come down to us from the history of Manetho.

(1) See Gautier, Le Musee Egyptien, III (1915), pp. 29 ff., pl. xxiv ff., and Foucart, Bulletin de l’Institut Francais d’Archeologie Orientale, XII, ii (1916), pp. 161 ff.; and cf.  Gardiner, Journ. of Egypt.  Arch., III, pp. 143 ff., and Petrie, Ancient Egypt, 1916, Pt.  III, pp. 114 ff.

(2) Cf.  Petrie, op. cit., pp. 115, 120.

From the fragment of the stele preserved at Palermo we already knew that its record went back beyond the Ist Dynasty into predynastic times.  For part of the top band of the inscription, which is there preserved, contains nine names borne by kings of Lower Egypt or the Delta, which, it had been conjectured, must follow the gods of Manetho and precede the “Worshippers of Horus”, the immediate predecessors of the Egyptian dynasties.(1) But of contemporary rulers of Upper Egypt we had hitherto no knowledge, since the supposed royal names discovered at Abydos and assigned to the time of the “Worshippers of Horus” are probably not royal names at all.(2) With the possible exception of two very archaic slate palettes, the first historical memorials recovered from the south do not date from an earlier period than the beginning of the Ist Dynasty.  The largest of the Cairo fragments now helps us to fill in this gap in our knowledge.