Description
The stone was inscribed on both sides with the earliest known Egyptian text. The stela was originally about 2.1 metres tall by 60 centimetres wide. It was broken into a number of pieces, many of which are missing. The original location of the stela is unknown, but a portion of it was found at an archaeological site in Memphis.
The Palermo Stone fragment was first acquired by the Palermo Archaeological Museum during 1866.
.
Other pieces of the stela are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Petrie Museum in London. Most of the information on the stone concerning the first and second dynasties has not survived.
The ancient historian Manetho may have used the complete stela to construct his chronology of the dynasties of Egypt, written during the third century BC.
Read more about this topic: Palermo Stone
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)