Palermo Stone

Ferdinand Guidano spent a lot of his free time collecting Egyptian artifacts. When he wasn’t doing legal work, he was likely out there trying to find fascinating little windows into the past.

In the 1850s, it was entirely possible to uncover items of incredible historical significance in antique shops. That wasn’t what was unusual about today’s excursion—it was the magnificence and detail of this particular piece that caught Guidano’s eye, and for good reason. Here’s what this stone he found in a shop in Palermo (in present-day Italy) looked like:

Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

Guidano knew he had something good on his hands, but he had no idea this was likely the most significant finding about Ancient Egypt since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone half a century earlier.

Palermo and Stone Stories

While the Rosetta Stone unlocked the mysteries of language, the Palermo Stone began to open a window into history, unlockin…