WOODEN STATUETTES OF GODS IN THE ABBOTT COLLECTION The last number of the Quarterly Bulletin contained an account of a few bronze statuettes in the Abbott Collection, the majority of them figures of deities. In this number we may turn to a group of wooden statuettes of gods, contained in the collection, which are remarkable either for their adaptation to peculiar uses or for their artistic qualities. As early as the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1420 B.C.) a wooden statuette, 33 cm. in height, of the king Amenhotep II was placed in his tomb to serve as a receptacle for his copy on papyrus of magical texts which would aid him in the perils of a journey through the caverns of the Lower World. The papyrus was rolled tightly and was thus easily accommodated in a cavity carved in the back of the solid wooden figure to a height of 19 cm. and width of 3 cm. A thin cover of wood closed the space and concealed its contents; even the existence of the cavity was lost sight of under the bitumen which was poured over the figure-1 Probably several dynasties later is the wooden statuette from Sakkara in the Abbott Collection representing a jackal-headed god which has a part of its rolled papyrus still in position in the tall narrow cavity in the back (Figs. 1 and 2). The height of this figure is nearly the same as that of the foregoing dated example, namely 34.7 cm., but the cavity is only 16 cm. high and 1.7 cm. wide, holding therefore a somewhat smaller papyrus; its depth is 2 cm. During the Egyptian Empire the normal height of an undivided sheet of papyrus was 37 to 42 cm., but such sheets were used only for especially sumptuous documents and the height of the cavities in these two figures indicates the use of sheets divided in two in the direction of their length. In the Eighteenth-Dynasty instance a sheet somewhat less than 38 cm. high had been halved, in the Abbott example a height not exceeding 32 cm. for the full sheet is indicated by the height of the cavity, and this fact marks the figure as probably subsequent to the Twenty-first Dynasty (ending 945 B.C.) after which the height of uncut sheets of papyrus 1 Daressy, Fouilles de la ValUe des Rois, No. 24619, PL XXXIII.