2004-2005

Each war scene on the south wall shows the king attacking two stereotyped towns. The name of each town is written in a column of text in its center.

Collation of Facsimile Drawings of the Battle Reliefs of

     The main objective of the season was to complete collation of war scenes on the south exterior wall of the Hypostyle Hall in order to produce facsimile drawings of these reliefs. Initial drawings of these war scenes were first made in 1995. We began collation of the drawings in 1999 under the Project's late director, professor William J. Murnane. Our collation of the inscriptions on this wall was made more difficult by their poor state of preservation and the fact that part of the wall is a palimpsest in stone with two sets of hieroglyphic texts superimposed one atop the other. After getting bogged down in the palimpsest in 2000 and 2002, we were finally able to complete our record of the south wall in the 2004-2005 season.  Despite moving beyond the area of the palimpsest, our work remained especially challenging due to the severe erosion that much of the wall suffers from as well as the fact that many parts of the wall were so poorly dressed by the sculptors that much of the relief was carved in plaster or in some cases patching stones that have since fallen away.

A badly eroded cartouche of Ramesses II. The lines in yellow on the right indicate the traces of the name that could still be read. This level of erosion was typical of the poor condition of the wall in many places.

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