420 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 2 



The institute is also active in the great Theban cemetery, where 

 Mrs. Nina cle G. Davies has long been engaged in copying in color 

 facsimiles the ancient paintings on the walls of the tombs. Under 

 the editorship of Dr. Alan H. Gardiner, who supported this work 

 for years, these paintings of Mrs. Davies, together with an addi- 

 tional series which she is now engaged in making, will be published 

 by the institute in color, in a series of 115 color plates, occupying 

 two folio volumes. 



It will thus be seen that as far as the early human career in North- 

 eastern Africa is concerned, the institute is salvaging and studying 

 the evidence along a chronological series of periods extending from 

 the geological ages down to the emergence of Europe in the history 

 of the east. 



NINE ANCIENT CITIES BEING EXCAVATED IN WESTERN ASIA 



In Asia a similar program has been undertaken, modified, how- 

 ever, by the fact that the climatic conditions and the character of 

 the monuments have contributed to the perservation of a different 

 type of materials. Certain kinds of written evidence are better 

 preserved in Asia than in rainless Egypt. This is especially true of 

 cuneiform tablets when they have been fired in an oven so that they 

 become pottery. Far across the hills and valleys of western Asia, 

 from Anatolia to Persia, stretches a vast array of city mounds cover- 

 ing great archives of cuneiform tablets, and the process of salvaging 

 these materials has still been hardly more than begun. Behind this 

 historic age of writing there lies a period of many thousands of years 

 of prehistoric development which must be investigated by a pre- 

 historic survey like that which we have had in Egypt. Meantime 

 the study of the human career in western Asia is not yet in a posi- 

 tion to disclose any such remote sequence of development as the 

 Oriental Institute has found in Northeastern Africa. 



Thus far the researches of the institute in western Asia have 

 been concerned chiefly with the Age of Writing, and especially with 

 the early developments in the Tigris-Euphrates region. Some 30 

 to 40 miles north-northeast of Baghdad the institute has a con- 

 cession to excavate a group of four ancient cities lying in a circle 

 only some 15 miles in diameter. At Tell Asmar, the most important 

 of the four, the institute has put up a considerable field house which 

 is now the headquarters of its operations in ancient Iraq. This 

 project is under the charge of Dr. Henri Frankfort, as field director. 

 In immediate charge of the work at the second neighboring site, 

 called Khafaji, Doctor Frankfort had for one season Dr. Conrad 

 Preusser associated with him. By the introduction of modern trans- 

 portation it is possible to carry on the investigation of these two 



