(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.

(1) See Breasted, _Anc. Rec._, I, pp. 52, 57.

(2) Cf. Hall, _Ancient History of the Near East_, p. 99 f.

On the top of the new fragment(1) we meet the same band of rectangles as
at Palermo,(2) but here their upper portions are broken away, and there
only remains at the base of each of them the outlined figure of a royal
personage, seated in the same attitude as those on the Palermo stone.
The remarkable fact about these figures is that, with the apparent
exception of the third figure from the right,(3) each wears, not the
Crown of the North, as at Palermo, but the Crown of the South. We have
then to do with kings of Upper Egypt, not the Delta, and it is no longer