426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 2 



FiQUKE 2. Coffin texts and paintings on cedar planks forming tlie side of an 

 ancient Egyptian coffin of about 2000 B. C. It is such texts as the above 

 (lower right-hand portion of the plank), revealing early consciousness of 

 moral responsibility, which the institute's coffin-texts project has copied 

 from possibly 200 similar coffins scattered throughout the museums of 

 Egypt and the Western world. Their publication will for the first time 

 make available to scholars all the earlier sources of the Book of the 

 Dead now known. 



Plate 3 



Figure 1. Wreckage of the palace of Ramses IH at Medinet Habu, flanked by 

 his great mortuary temple. It is here that Professor Hoelscher has been 

 carrying on excavations for the Oriental Institute and investigations of 

 palace architecture. (See fig. 2.) The temple beyond the palace is some 

 500 feet long and is covered both inside and out with royal records, of 

 which the epigraphie expedition of the institute, under Dr. Harold H. 

 Nelson, is making facsimile copies. The work on the walls of this 

 temple, the largest at Medinet Habu, is now approaching completion, and 

 two folio volumes have been issued. 



Figure 2. Hoelscher's reconstruction of a vaulted hall in the place at Medinet 

 Habu. (See fig. 1.) This audience hall of Ramses III, built early in the 

 twelfth century B. C, discloses for the first time, as noted by Professor 

 Hoelscher, the fact that such a palace hull had a vaulted roof, with a higher 

 vault over the central nave and lower vaults on each side — the funda- 

 mental roof type in later basilica and cathedral architecture. 



Plate 4 



Figure 1. The new Oriental Institute headquarters in Egypt on the east bank 

 of the Nile between modern Luxor and the great Temple of Karnak. The 

 main building faces west and is surrounded by a large garden. The river 

 bank to the west has had to be faced with stone, because the force of the 

 current at flood time would otherwise undercut the institute's property. 

 The main building on the right serves as a residence unit for the staff, 

 while the library, drafting room, and offices are housed in the building on 

 the left. Photographic laboratory, garage, shops, and servants' quarters 

 are in detached buildings at the rear. 



Figuke 2. Air view of the ancient Babylonian city of Eshnunna, now called 

 Tell Asmar. This ancient city is being excavated by the Iraq expedition, 

 whose headquarters building, visible in this air view, has been constructed 

 at the edge of the city ruins. The area cleared at the time this view was 

 taken (January 23, 1931) is visible at the point of what looks like an 

 arrow but is really the excavators' railway line terminating in the spread- 

 ing dump at the outer end. The small " pockmarks " on the mound at the 

 right of the excavated area were made by illicit native diggers before 

 the institute received its concession to clear the mound. Photograph by 

 courtesy of the Royal Air Force. 



Plate 5 



Figure 1. Wooden post from a buried house of the Stone Age at Alishar. 

 Eighty-flve feet down in the great city mound of Alishar, the Anatolian 

 expedition found the remains of a Neolithic (Late Stone Age) house. The 

 walls seen in the photograph are the solidified debris of later buildings, 



