The mural paintings were done on a plaster made of loess applied to walls of sun-dried bricks. The moisture in the soil in which they have been buried for centuries contains water-sol. Salts (alkali chlorides, sulfates, and carbonates) up to 5-8 wt. %. These salts accumulate on the surface during drying out and cause progressive destruction of the paint surface. The paint is first fixed with a soln. Of polybutyl methacrylate resin and the paintings are removed in sep. Fragments up to 2 square meters in size together with a thin layer of loess plaster 4-6 mm. Thick. To desalinize, a fragment of the mural liberally wetted 7-10 days between layers of wet undyed cotton cloth is placed detween two large electrodes of Pb sheet. On passage of direct electric current through the system the salts gradually dissolve and the dissocd. Ions diffuse into the cloth linings and partly react with the Pb of the electrodes. The average current density varies 2-3 ma./square centimeter of the paint surface. The principal difliculty is the variable resistance of different parts of the painting, but there are ways to overcome this.