More Wall Painting Fragments from Tell Es-sweyhat

Although the planned 1994 Tell es-Sweyhat expedition to Syria had to be canceled due to a lack of financial resources, work on previously excavated materials from the 1991 and 1992 seasons has steadily progressed and a final Oriental Institute report on these researches is anticipated during the forthcoming fiscal year. The important Early Bronze Age wall paintings, dated to the middle of the third millennium B.C., were first discovered during the 1991 season of field work in Operation 5, Quadrant C, on the southern slope of the main mound. More wall painting fragments were excavated from the same area during the 1992 season and the wall from which they had fallen was further defined. Also, fragments of wall painting were recovered from another unexcavated wall belonging to the same building complex. However, due to the meticulous care which had to be taken in the timeconsuming conservation procedures necessary to lift each fragment, further excavation of the building was not possible and portions of both wall paintings at present known still remain unexcavated. A brief report on the one hundred and three wall painting fragments so far excavated (the suckling calf fragment in particular) as well as a preliminary sketch plan of the excavation square containing the buttressed wall from which one of the wall paintings fell was first published in the 1991-1992 Annual Report, pp. 76-80, figures 2-5. Another preliminary assessment appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology (98 [1993]: 139-42) and other reports will appear in forthcoming issues of the Syrian Department of Antiquities Annual Report on Excavations in Syria as well as an entry in "Archaologische Forschungen in Syrien (5)," Archivfiir Orientforschung 40. This year's report presents ten of the one hundred and two unpublished wall painting fragments (figs. 2a-e, 3a-e) , nine of which belong to a scene which was originally painted on the western side of Wall 21.2, to the north of buttress A, and one of seven fragments, WP.92.23 (fig. 2e), from an unexcavated wall in the south-