450 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



But to return to the house of General Ra'-mose. The first thing 

 noticed was that all the doors, not only that of the main entrance 

 but even those of the inner rooms, were framed in ashlar. This was 

 later often observed in other, even plainer, houses, though they had 

 no inscriptions as on the doorframes of Ra'-mose's house. These 

 stone frames of interior doors are of some importance in connection 

 with the colored reproduction of an inner room to be described below. 



The Ra'-mose house also furnished new data concerning the " quad- 

 rangular " room hitherto regarded as the master's room, but now as 

 that of the lady of the house. Its presumed function as the master's 

 room was derived from the fact that it overlooked the courtyard 

 and the storerooms. This would presuppose that it had a window 

 from which one might look out. But Egyptian windows in the 

 lower rooms, with the exception of the " audience windows " in the 

 palace, are arranged for lighting the inner rooms, being placed high 

 up, almost at the ceiling. So that this reason for considering it the 

 " room of the master " fails. On the other hand, there are two rea- 

 sons favoring its designation as the " room of the lady " in the case 

 of the house of Ra'-mose. In the first place this is the only known 

 instance where the name of the mistress of the house appears on the 

 frame of a false door, in exactly the same manner that her husband's 

 name is preserved architecturally pendant from a real door. But as 

 all the doorframes of the house have not been preserved, it can not 

 be asserted that the name of the wife occurred only on this one 

 frame and that therefore the " quadrangular " room must be con- 

 sidered as that of the wife. But there is another and stronger 

 reason. An annex to the " quadrangular " room, accessible through a 

 short corridor, is evidently a wardrobe room. On two sides of this 

 wardrobe or dressing room are wooden benches, about 70 centimeters 

 high, resting on brick bases, and wide enough so that on and under 

 them the clothing and ornaments of the lady could have been placed. 

 This may seem a bold assumption, but not if it is recalled that in the 

 female apartments of the palaces of Amenophis III, south of 

 Medinet Habu, each bedroom of his numerous chief wives had a 

 wardrobe chamber fitted up with like wooden benches, though of 

 correspondingly greater dimensions. The wardrobe chamber near 

 the " quadrangular " room therefore decidedly favors the assumption 

 that it was the " room of the wife." However, it will be the safest 

 plan to defer a positive statement as to such use of the " quad- 

 rangular" room until women's apparel and children's pla^^things 

 have been found in such a room. 



The painting on the walls of the " deep hall," the dining room of 

 General Ra'-mose, is well preserved and offered a very interesting 

 study which was gladly taken up, though with the consciousness that 

 it can not at present be definitely interpreted, so that what has been 

 accomplished must necessarily be considered as only a first attempt 



