ticular points does not affect the significance of the whole document, which will be clear to everyone. a 78. The fragment herewith presented was broken out of the middle of a large slab some seven feet long and over two feet high, as it stood on the long edge. It was inscribed on both sides with a series of royal annals, beginning with the predynastic kings of the period before the union of the North and the South, and continuing into the dynastic age to the middle of the Fifth Dynasty. The arrangement of these records can be best understood from the figure (-). The upper line of the front contains at present nine names of predynastic kings of Lower Egypt (the Delta). If the line was full, there were possibly some 120 predynastic kings here enumerated, each rectangle of line 1 (front) containing one name, with no indication of how long each king reigned." In the Fifth Dynasty, therefore, the predynastic kings, the last of whom had reigned some seven centuries before the preparation of this table, were already merely a series of names. Other reasons for the mere citation of the bare names are, however, quite conceivable, such as lack of interest in the predynastic kings on the part of the scribe. 79. But, while the length of the predynastic reigns remains totally uncertain, the date of the beginning of the dynastic period is certainly established by this monument within narrower limits than ever before; and the period from the accession of Menes to the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty is determined within reasonable margins for the first time. The dynastic kings are probably arranged as a Meyer has identified the place of these kings of Lower Egypt in the Turin Papyrus, where no corresponding kings of Upper Egypt were included, and in Manetho (Aegyptische Chronologie, 199 ff., 203 f.). They follow the gods and precede the "Worshipers of Horus," the immediate predecessors of the dynasties. bMeyer believes that this row must have begun with the gods (ibid., 203). follows: the First Dynasty occupied ll. 2 and 3, following directly upon the predynastic kings; ll. 4 and 5 contained the Second Dynasty; there is some uncertainty about the disposition of reigns in 1. 6, but as the first line of the back contained the end of the Fourth Dynasty, the last two lines (7 and 8) of the front must have contained the bulk of the Fourth, which in all probability throws the Third Dynasty back to 1. 6, including possibly the end of 1. 5. The larger part of the back was occupied with the three reigns of the Fifth Dynasty, which filled up ll. 2-5, and perhaps continued (in two lines) into the reign of Nuserre. 80. The arrangement of each reign (except 1. 1, front) was so that in the narrow horizontal space above each line the name of the king was placed, while below it the years of his reign were distributed in successive rectangles, one year in each rectangle. As the space occupied by the years of each reign far exceeded the length of the king's name, the latter was placed over the middle, thus: KING'S NAME Year Year Year Year Year Year Year Year Year 81. The vertical line on the right of each rectangle has the form of the hieroglyphic sign for "year." Each year-rectangle contains the chief events which occurred in that year, one of which furnished the official name for that year. Thus we have the "Year of the Battle and Smiting aThe Turin Papyrus of kings shows no clear dynastic division for this period, and hence such division rests solely on the lists of Manetho. But Sethe has shown (Untersuchungen, III) that such division is practically certain in our monument, and Meyer indicates that it is probable in the Turin Papyrus. bor three lines may have followed 1. 6. See § 86. of the Northerners," dating a jar of King Besh (Bš) in Philadelphia; or the "Year of Smiting the Troglodytes" in our fragment (front, 1. 6, § 104). This was parallel with the same usage in early Babylonia, as has been long known. As time passed, it became more and more common to name the year after the corresponding fiscal enumeration, thus: "Year of the Second Occurrence of the Numbering of all Large and Small Cattle of the North and the South" (§ 339), or "Year of the Seventh Occurrence of the Numbering of Gold and Lands" (front, l. 5, § 135). This was often abbreviated to "Year of the x'th Occurrence of the Numbering," or still more to "Year of the x'th Occurrence." 82. All other events were then gradually abandoned as designations of the years, and by the Fifth Dynasty the fiscal numberings were almost exclusively used. These occurred every two years, in uninterrupted sequence, irrespective of the changes in reign, and hence it was necessary to call a year when no numbering took place, the "Year after the x'th Occurrence (of the Numbering)." Finally, when the numberings became annual, each year received the name of a new numbering, and this was the system of dating in Egypt from the Sixth Dynasty on. It amounted to numbering the years themselves, and gradually became nothing else. The Palermo stone thus furnishes us the origin of the Egyptian system of dating. 83. In addition to the chief events of the year, each yearrectangle contained, at the bottom in the middle, a datum giving a number of cubits, palms, and fingers, which have been thought to be the height of the inundation for each year; but this is very uncertain. a Measured from some fixed point only a few cubits below high water; but the fine subdivisions in the measurements (down to fractions of a finger-breadth) are against the theory. 84. In 11. 2-5 (front), containing the First and Second Dynasties, the events of each year are for the most part celebrations of religious feasts and the like, and in the latter part the "numberings" appear. With the Third Dynasty (1. 6) the events known to the chronicler become more numerous, increasing and making irregular in size the yearrectangles. They become still larger in the Fourth and Fifth. Small as are the rectangles of the First and Second Dynasties, they are in each line of the same size, and this offers the basis for a rough estimate of the number of years in these dynasties, if we can gain even a distant approximation of the total length of the stone. 85. An examination of the back shows that from onetenth to one-eighth of the total length of the lines is preserved on the fragment. This insures roughly five hundred years for the length of the first three dynasties, of which only about eighty would belong to the Third Dynasty, a 86. In this computation the stone offers little for determining the length of the Third Dynasty. This is, however, shown by the Turin Papyrus to have been only fifty-five years before Snefru; or, with Snefru, seventy-nine years, x months; or, in round numbers, eighty years. That Snefru belonged to the Third Dynasty is favored by the arrangement of the stone, although the Manethonian tradi aThe first attempt at restoring the length of the stone was made by Sethe, who obtained the following results: First Dynasty (ll. 2–3)..... Third Dynasty (1. 6) . . .253 years 302 years .maximum, 100-110 years These pioneer results have been modified by Meyer (Aegyptische Chronologie) to the following: First Dynasty (11. 2–3)...... Second Dynasty (ll. 4-5)........ 210 years 243 years The possible difference is thus about a century. Meyer's results are certainly a minimum, and Sethe's a maximum, but the principle employed by Meyer would now doubtless be accepted by Sethe. tion perhaps placed him at the head of the Fourth Dynasty. It should be remembered that this difficulty with the Third Dynasty is not peculiar to any theory of restoration of the stone. We cannot, on any scheme of restoration, push the Third Dynasty back into 1. 5 (front), for the birth of Khasekhemui, a king of the latter part of the Second Dynasty, is recorded in 1. 5 (No. 4). Nor can we assume that Snefru is here reckoned with the Fourth Dynasty, which would leave only the first half of 1. 6 for the whole Third Dynasty. Finally, as Snefru is reckoned with the Third Dynasty, and we know that he was its last king (for he was the predecessor of Khufu), all his predecessors in the dynasty, as well as at least six years of his own reign, must have been included in the first half of 1. 6. If all the rectangles of the first half of 1. 6 were as small as those of 1. 2, this would leave perhaps fifty years for his predecessors in the dynasty. The supposition that more lines are lost at the bottom would not at all affect the Third Dynasty. Again, any great prolongation of the lines is forbidden by the back. 87. The stone offers little aid as to the length of the Fourth Dynasty, as most of that dynasty is lost at the bottom of the front, but it furnishes valuable hints as to the close of the Fourth and the first half of the Fifth Dynasty. The short reigns at the close of the Fourth are fragmentarily indicated in l. 1, and the lengths of the short reigns of the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty roughly corroborate those indicated in the Turin Papyrus. 88. It will be seen that the monument is invaluable as a source for the chronology of the earliest dynasties. Accepting 2900 B. C. as the date for the accession of the Fourth Dynasty, the Palermo Stone furnishes us an assured minimum of 3400 B. C. as the beginning of the dynastic period and the accession of Menes. This date is only affected by |