This volume is a study of the tombs of officials in the Theban necropolis, now lost, but documented in the manuscripts of travelers to Egypt in the early and mid 19th century. One such traveler was the accomplished draftsman Robert Hay, who made unpublished facsimile drawings which have been re-drawn by the author Lise Manniche for this book. The descriptions and drawings are used to reconstruct the decoration of tomb chapels in the Theban necropolis and to assess their ownership and place in history. The book also examines fragments of relevant wall decorations found in museums and other collections.

The complete wall decorations of 3 Theban tombs (No. 77, No. 175 and No. 249) are here published for the first time. The graves at Thebes in Egypt, belonged to a master builder of the Amon temple in the time of Thutmosis IV, a purveyor of sweets in Amenophis III's temple of the dead, and a man in the business of scented oils. To date, only individual scenes from these tombs have been published, but here the reader is presented with the decorations in their entirety, including black and white photographs and line drawings, together with transcriptions and translations of all of the related texts.