The Shabaka Stone, sometimes Shabaqo, is a relic incised with an ancient Egyptian religious text, which dates from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt.

Originally erected as a lasting monument at the Great Temple of Ptah in Memphis in the late eighth century BCE, the stone was at some point removed (for unknown reasons) to Alexandria.

[2] The stone's dedicatory introduction claims that it is a copy of the surviving contents of a worm-ridden, decaying papyrus found by the pharaoh Shabaka in the Great Temple of Ptah.

[6] Homer W. Smith dates the original text to the First Dynasty, calling it "the oldest written record of human thought".

[8] The stone is archaic, both linguistically (its language is similar to that used in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom) and politically (it alludes to the importance of Memphis as the first royal city).

[8] As such, Henri Frankfort, John Wilson, Miriam Lichtheim, and Erik Iversen have also assessed the stone to be from the Old Kingdom.

[6] The second line, a dedicatory introduction, states that the stone is a copy of the surviving contents of a worm-eaten papyrus Shabaka found as he was inspecting the Great Temple of Ptah.

[14] The text first declares the political and theological supremacy of the Memphite god Ptah, the king of both Upper and Lower Egypt, and the creator of the Ennead.

[14] Ptah, the patron god of craftsmen, metalworkers, artisans, and architects was viewed as a creator-god, a divine craftsman of the universe who was responsible for all existence.

[18] Then, creation became a physical activity carried out by Atum, who, created by Ptah's teeth and lips, produced the Ennead from his seed and hands.

[14] According to Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad, there are three theories on the possible purpose of the Shabaka text: As a temple text written down and set up in the temple of Ptah, it is likely that the Shabaka Stone served a religious, cultic-theological purpose, placing its subject matter within a cultic frame of reference.