The Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project of The University of Memphis worked at Karnak from May 26 to June 29, 2002.^[1] The main objective of the season was to continue collation of war scenes of Ramesses II on the south exterior wall of the Hypostyle Hall in order to produce facsimile drawings of these reliefs. Initial drawings of these reliefs were first made in 1995.^[2] We had begun collation of the drawings in 1999 under the Project's late Director, Professor William J. Murnane. In 2000, we concentrated on the lowest register of the south wall because the scenes along the base of the wall, especially the historically important list of foreign place names, were rapidly decaying despite several conservation treatments of the reliefs in recent years aimed at preserving them.

            By 2002, some of the name rings of the topographical lists from the great triumph scenes flanking the south gateway had become illegible. At the end of the 2002 season we had completed collation of approximately 70% of the scenes on the south wall including the palimpsest of the Battle of Kadesh which was inscribed by Ramesses II on the south wall before he suppressed the Kadesh reliefs and replaced them with scenes of his other wars in Syria. The most interesting and difficult challenge has been to recover traces of the suppressed "Bulletin" of the Battle of Kadesh narrative. This is inscribed in several columns of texts immediately to the west of the south gate of the Hypostyle Hall. This erased version of the "Bulletin" is especially interesting since it includes the later portions of the text which is badly damaged in other known versions. Superimposed over the "Bulletin" is a large triumph scene of the king smiting foreign enemies in the presence of the god Amen-Re and above this part of a war scene at the top of the wall and immediately adjacent to the south gate. More specifically, traces of the Bulletin are found superimposed over part of a rhetorical speech of the god Amen, in several name rings from the topographical list, and also over a representation of an enemy fortress in the battle scene above the triumph scene. Most difficult to disentangle were the areas where columns of texts from the "Bulletin" lay under the vertical columns of text from the triumph scene and under the name of a fortress in the battle scene at the top of the wall. In these areas, the scale of the two sets of hieroglyphs makes it possible to separate the two sets of texts. Many of the hieroglyphs from the "Bulletin" often retain traces of plaster used to suppressed them. Although only traces of the erased text survive, we have been able to recover some interesting information. The best preserved section comes from the end of the "Bulletin." It contains some variations from the other exemplars of this text. For example, in other versions, the king is compared to the god Atum, but in the Karnak text, the same passage compares him to Amen. It is hoped that closer examination of the traces of the palimpsest we recorded this season will allow us to make further restorations of the text of the "Bulletin."