National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

10 cm. high (Stein I928, Pl. XXVI, L.S.6.oi), and in grave L.S.5 and from the burial-place L.T. he describes a female figure of wood from each place, of the same kind as the first mentioned. The one from L.T. is identical with that reproduced in the fig. facing p. 262 in HUNTINGTON'S The Pulse of Asia.'

The three figures found in Cemetery 5 are of course too large to have been enclosed in the ordinary coffins. It is not impossible, however, that they may have been housed in such a hut as the one described by ORDEK (pp. 62, 64), but they can equally well be regarded as representations of gods associated with the burial-place in general and not related to any particular coffin.

III. The finds.

The objects from Cemetery 5 will be treated in the following order: firstly the finds made in the coffins in situ, secondly the objects collected from displaced coffins, it being however possible to recover a part of the inventory; thirdly, the remaining objects found on the surface or in the sand, all of them originating no doubt from coffins destroyed by nature or by man.

In the descriptive list at the end of this section a number containing a letter after the main number 5 denotes a special coffin, thus 5.F : 7 means article 7 from grave F of Cemetery 5. Whereas an ordinary number, for instance 5 : 33, denotes a surface find from the same burial place.

Coffin 5. A.

The only quite untouched grave was 5 A. It was found immediately to the east of the big palisade. The eastern end of the coffin was quite near the surface, the other end was covered with one metre of drift-sand that had accumulated around the big palisade. The coffin was lying in the direction S 76°W—N 76°E, at both ends a thin pole stood as a mark. After the sand had been removed the coffin was found to be completely covered with a couple of ox-hides with the hairs still remaining. The lid consisted of ten short boards laid across the coffin, cut to follow its outline, and kept in place only by the hides, which had apparently been applied in a wet state because they fitted very closely around the lid-members, when therefore the hides were removed the lid came off with them. In Pl. VI a, unfortunately an inferior photo, the lid with the hides is seen lying to the right of the coffin. The coffin was made of two very massive planks, each carved out of half a trunk; at both ends a segment of the natural roundness of the trunk had been left intact. The inside shows a distinct concavity, and the outside a

1 This refers to the first edition; in the second edition this plate has been omitted.

68