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.
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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
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)