HiddenMysteries: Egypt's first history book

The historical importance of the Palermo Stone has long been overshadowed by the famous Rosetta Stone, but Jill Kamil says it is now being reconsidered as a legitimate historical record of ancient Egypt

The largest fragment of the Royal Annals, the Palermo Stone, and the recent collation of a fragment in Cairo Museum

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The historical importance of the Palermo Stone has long been overshadowed by the famous Rosetta Stone, but Jill Kamil says it is now being reconsidered as a legitimate historical record of ancient Egypt

The so-called Palermo Stone is the largest and best preserved fragment of a rectangular slab of basalt known as the Royal Annals of ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom. Its origin is unknown, but it may have come from a temple or another important building.

The stone has been in Palermo in Sicily -- hence its name -- since 1866, and is now in the Museo Archaeologico. Other fragments of the same slab appeared on the market between 1895 and 1963, and are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Petrie Museum at University College London.

The extract from the Royal Annals, the "King List" of predynastic rulers, is in the upper register of the Palermo Stone. It is followed by the annuals of the kingdom of Egypt from its inception up to the kings of the Fifth Dynasty. Below each name, the years are named by important events, most of a ritual nature, and the height of the Nile inundation is noted at the bottom.

Some 13 major studies have been undertaken on the fragments of the stone, and ever since the first was published by Heinrich Schöfer in 1902 scholars have been divided as to how to interpret the implications of the text. Some have insisted that the predynastic kings listed on the stone indeed existed, although no further evidence had yet come to light. Others held the view that their inclusion on a King List was only of ideological value -- which is to say, in order to show that before the unification of the Two Lands of Upper and Lower Egypt by Narmer/Menes there was chaos. Disorder before order. Strange to say, outside of scholarly circles, the stone was not widely known. Or maybe not so strange in view of the fact that the stone was in fragments and of no artistic value.

Now, however, we know the truth at last, because archaeologists have identified as many as 15 predynastic kings listed on the Palermo Stone. They were real. They existed. And the Palermo Stone, with its apparently cryptic series of notations, can be given its historical worth.

The stone reveals that the earliest kings, before the beginning of the historic period, travelled widely and with some regularity. It also records that, in the Early Dynastic periods, which is to say between 2890 and 2686 BC, copper smelting was already taking place and statues in this medium were being fashioned. Also that military campaigns carried out in Nubia resulted in the capture of 7,000 slaves and 200,000 head of cattle. There were quarrying expeditions to the turquoise mines of Sinai; and 80,000 measures of myrrh, 6,000 units of electrum, 2,900 units of wood, and 23,020 measures of unguent were imported from Punt on the coast of modern Somalia. This was no primitive struggling community on the threshold of civilisation. This was an already established society that was forging its own character and establishing an identity.

When Toby Wilkinson of the University of Cambridge, author of Early Dynastic Egypt, presented a paper on the Palermo Stone at the International Egyptology Conference held in London in December 2000, he resuscitated interest in the stone. In fact, it is astonishing that in this day and age of computer technology, he was the first scholar to bring together and examine all seven fragments of the stone as a whole. He cited early arguments for and against the significance of the text, and concluded that it was carved for display purposes (somewhat like the Rosetta Stone) to register an ancestor cult, and to chart an unbroken line of succession up to the reign of the Fifth-Dynasty king Sneferu, which came at a great peak of prosperity; a period when great monuments were built and when no fewer than 40 ships brought wood from an unknown region outside the country.

In its original form the Royal Annals must have measured more than two metres long and half a metre wide. It was divided into two registers, with the top register subdivided into departments that chronicled the names of predynastic kings along with regnal years and important events in their reigns, followed by notations of such events as the flooding of the Nile, the biennial cattle count, cult ceremonies, taxation, sculpture, buildings and warfare. It listed hundreds of rulers. It is the oldest surviving historical text of ancient Egypt and the basis of subsequent histories and chronologies.

Some kings explicitly recorded that Egyptian deities came into being simultaneously with their visit. The god Sheshat, for example, was associated with an activity known as "stretching the cord" (probably referring to measuring out areas for sacred buildings or shrines). Others lay the foundations of buildings that were called "throne of the gods". Such activities were regarded as sufficiently important to serve as reference points and were expressed in such specific terms as "the birth of Anubis", "the birth of Min" and the "birth" of other gods associated with fertility and male potency such as Min of Coptos, and Heryshef who was usually represented in the form of a ram.

Until now, such notations had little meaning for us. But today's scholars know so much more about the formative period of the Egyptian civilisation that we can reconsider at least 21 of the 30-odd entries on the Palermo Stone, especially those that relate to the fashioning of images of gods by kings, because archaeological evidence supports the idea of uniform cult centre development; that is to say, excavations carried out at some of the earliest settlement sites reveal uniformity. A common feature, for example, is that all sacred enclosures were kept apart from the eyes of the public and surrounded by a wall. Another is the finds of votive offerings, crudely-baked clay objects sometimes numbering hundreds, probably made by local artisans for simple people who wished to make offerings to the god. Indeed, uniformity can clearly be seen in the gods themselves. Whether in human form, or a human body with animal, bird, reptile, or insect heads, they remained archetypes to which future generations had recourse.

Interestingly enough, the gods remained vague characters throughout Egyptian history, later described in terms such as "he of Ombos" (Set), "he of Edfu" (Horus), "she of Sais" (Neith), and "he of Qift" (Coptos). In other words, no single one was more important than the others. Prayers and hymns addressed to them differed only in epithets and attributes. It was clearly the place, not the god, that mattered, with the place being chosen for its strategic position.

The cult centre of the vulture-goddess Nekhbet, for example, was on the east bank of the Nile at Nekheb (modern Al-Kab), which gave access to the mineral-rich Eastern Desert with its deposits of copper, agate, and jasper. That of Pe (Buto) in the Nile Delta was a departure point for trade with the Near East. And Coptos (Qift) was almost opposite the mouth of Wadi Hammamat, the shortest route to the Red Sea and the gold-bearing veins of the Eastern Desert.

The creation of images and establishment of cult centres mentioned on the Palermo Stone is also mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (inscribed on the walls of the kings who ruled towards the end of the Old Kingdom), and in the so-called Memphite Drama (a text which survived in a late copy and which is also explicit on the creation of cults, the establishment of shrines, and the making of divine statues with distinctive ensigns representing a plant, bird or animal distinctive to a community, and made "of every wood, every stone, every clay"). Apart from being identified with the king, they served at the popular level. Early Egyptians came to believe that the statue in the shrine held the key to a good crop, health, and fertility, and they made pious gestures that were not much different from today's offerings and prayers to the shrines of Christian saints and Muslim sheikhs. Gestures of devotion are a time honoured practice which clearly has its roots in the most ancient past.

This is what is so fascinating about Wilkinson's studies on the Palermo Stone. The material achievements of a unified state depended on the resources of the land, and on trade, and there is every indication that its administration was mapped out early on. The creation of cult centres not only neutralised the differences between the various settlements of Upper and Lower Egypt, but it created a strong bond between the people of all walks of society. And, more important, when the king attended the "birth" days of the gods and made royal endowments in the form of bread and cakes, oxen and other cattle, geese and other birds, and jars of beer and wine, the occasion of his visit was accompanied by annual celebrations which involved the slaughter of sacrificial animals in his honour. These offerings, having once lain on the altar of the shrine and fulfilled their religious function, were taken by the "servants of the god", which is to say the priests who maintained the shrines and the statues of gods within them, and the balance was distributed to the people, the laity.

The construction of buildings for the royal cult seems to have been the most important project in each king's reign, absorbing much of the court's revenue. The concept that the gods and the king had mutual claims on one another must have been strong, but there was always the risk of resistance and when this happened the king, it appears, denied the performance of the cult. In the Pyramid Texts (many of which date to predynastic times, like those that include phrases referring to a time when the dead were laid to rest in simple sand pits and when desert animals were prone to desecrate bodies), are utterances in which the king emphasises that he has power over the gods, that he "bestows power and takes away power, and that there are none that shall escape".

The effect of such a threat on a community, which already has a strong identity, and the "servants of god" attending shrines, can well be imagined. It amounted to a threat of annihilation and the loss of prestige. According to Herodotus, a tradition survived that Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid, closed temples in the land. Among his remembered designations from early times were "Horus fights", "Horus seizes", and "Horus decapitates". And, on an ivory label found at Abydos dating to the reign of the First-Dynasty king Den, the king is shown in a pose that was to become classic: smiting an enemy with a raised club.

Did the king of Egypt, having recognised places that gave access to the natural resources, and those from neighbouring lands; and who built shrines to the gods as recorded on the Palermo Stone, come to share a common feature with the leaders of many early societies? Was he a warlord?

EVIDENCE on seal impressions and pottery of the Early Dynastic Period reveal images of Pharaohs engaged in various ritual activities, and some of the accompanying texts refer to statues made of gold and copper. This image is from the fifth register of the Palermo Stone and refers to a copper statue made in the reign of Khesekhemwy, or his successor of the same name. Here is written evidence that copper statuary was created long before the well-known images of Pepi I and Merenre found in the temple of Hierakonpolis and now in the Egyptian Museum. The kings are sometimes shown wearing the Red Crown, sometimes the White -- as here depicted. Some show the king walking, some striding.

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Egypt's first history book

Saturday, February 14 2009 @ 09:53 PM CST