456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



tiire the scene of our ivory carving, " the king striking down a cap- 

 tive." In its form the ivory carving, which is to be imagined as 

 backed with some stuff, corresponds exactly to the half shell of such 

 a cuff in natural size. It would comfortably cover the half of an 

 Egyptian slender wrist. But this neat, fragile carving could hardly 

 have stood a practical use. It could only have been put upon a statue 

 of life size; that is, one which according to the inscription of 

 Thutmosis (Thotmes) IV represented the king shooting with the bow. 



It is not surprising that an object with the name of Thutmosis IV 

 was found in the city of Amenophis IV. It may not even be as- 

 sumed that it was brought from Thebes or elsewhere. It has been 

 long known that the city " Horizon of the sun cult " already existed 

 before Amenophis IV, perhaps, even probably, under another name, 

 as was then the case as to personal names, such as Amenophis 

 changed to Tch-n-aten and Ptah-mose to Ra'-mose. 



On account of the great find of tablets made in 1887 in the " house 

 of the royal letter writer " in the royal archives in the palace quar- 

 ter, not far from the village Et-Till, the surroundings of this house 

 had been again and again searched throughout by various investi- 

 gators with the result of adding merely a few unimportant pieces 

 to the original find of upward of 350 tablets, but since the early 

 '90s of the last century hope and further search were given up. 

 So that on December 15, 1913, when Mr. Dubois, the Government's 

 superintendent of buildings and of the excavations, announced the 

 discovery of a clay tablet in house O 47, 2 it seemed scarcely credible 

 (pi. 11; pi. 12, fig. 1). A portion of another tablet was found on 

 December 19 in house N 47, 3 (pi. 12, fig. 2). 



Both these pieces were found in premises which already had been 

 thoroughly excavated, the first near the wall of a courtyard, where it 

 became fastened on the upper edge about 30 centimeters below the 

 surface. Though the surface humidity was slight, yet it caused 

 much flaking of the left margin of the obverse and the correspond- 

 ing part of the reverse side of the tablet. The second piece lay 

 considerably deeper in the debris, and therefore escaped this damage. 

 The surroundings of both places where the finds were made were 

 diligently dug up in search for other pieces, but without success. 



In the division of the finds these two valuable documents fell to 

 the share of the Egyptian Service of Antiquities, and its courtesy in 

 lending them for examination and study is here gratefully acknowl- 

 edged. Dr. Otto Schroeder of the division of western Asia in the 

 Berlin Museum prepared a provisional translation and explanation 

 of these tablets. The smaller one (pi. 12, fig. 2) is of light-brown cla}^ 

 with darkish spots, probably due to contact with chemical salts. It 

 is 6.1 centimeters high by 3.6 centimeters wide, its greatest thickness 

 2.65 centimeters. It is inscribed on the obverse only and contains a 



