What is presented here is a preliminary crystallization of thinking about questions, problems, and aspects that presented themselves during research into the iconography of Old Kingdom elite tombs in the so-called Leiden Mastaba Project (LMP), started in 1980 for teaching advanced students. Since the Egyptian culture has been given shape mainly in connection with the residences of the kings, the elite tombs of the Memphite area only were incorporated into the database. The original paper database consists of individual files on each tomb, giving a plan, wall scheme, a concise description of each sub-theme and its accompanying texts (if present). For details on the set-up, the original questions, the intention and some preliminary results on the partially collected material in 1985, see Van Walsem, Mastaba project. The core of this essay is a combination of and an elaboration of two former lectures by the author entitled: "Some un(der)exposed aspects in the study and interpretation of mastaba scenes" and "Religious iconography of Ancient Egypt: methodological and theoretical problems".

Cultural Expression in the Old Kingdom Elite Tomb considers the material and immaterial culture left behind by the ancient Egyptian elite in their tombs starting some 5000 years ago. The book intends to understand this culture reflecting the intention of the ancient Egyptians. All these intentions are now inaccessible to us, a paradox indeed.

In The Iconography of Family Members in Egypt’s Elite Tombs of the Old Kingdom, Jing Wen offers a comprehensive survey of the depiction of family members and provides a new perspective to explain its meaning.

This study collects, categorizes, and interprets the representations and associated texts of family members of the tomb owner that appeared in elite tombs of the Old Kingdom in the Memphite and provincial necropolis from the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties. It provides a detailed investigation into the kinship designations, titles, and presentational specifics of family members, and examines the frequency of occurrences of kinship designations and titles. The typology introduced in this study classifies the stances of family members into seven major types, each with several sub-types. The analysis of the appearances of each sub-type makes it possible to trace the developments and innovations of the depiction of family members during the Old Kingdom and further discuss the familial ideology expressed by these stances. This study also introduces the concept "family group" to describe the situation when more than one family members appear in a single scene or on the false door. A comprehensive analysis of all the family groups in the Old Kingdom private tombs demonstrates how the Egyptians conceptualized relationships within a familial framework, such as the differentiation of gender and generation, and the indication of age. A particular issue is the meaning of the term sn- dt "brother of the funerary estate." By analyzing all the existing examples, this study points out that the establishment of the sn-dt is a strategy to extend funerary responsibilities to non-family members and remote relatives, who would then provide offerings for the deceased as the family members did. The offerings that family members usually carry is the stpt-offerings, a specific type of offerings consist of forelegs, processed birds, and other food. This study also compares the representation of family members in the chapel and other sources concerning making offerings by taking them as different language games. This comparison reveals the nature of the depiction of presenting offerings.

This study is a methodical investigation of the ancient Egyptian priesthood appearing in the Memphite elite tombs of the Old Kingdom. The iconographic specifics of figures having singular priestly titles, or any hierarchical and gender variations of the same titles, were collected into a database and analyzed to determine the ranges and limitations of each title's function as well as any relationships they may have to one another. Priestly figures appearing in offering table scenes are compared to those appearing at false doors, and priestly figures appearing in funeral scenes are compared to those appearing in offering rooms to determine any relationship. This study also explores the sequences of priests appearing in the elite tomb offering list scenes and their relationship to sequence of rituals in the Pyramid Text offering list. All the above coalesce to suggest deep similarities between the function and rituals of the non-royal tomb complexes and the royal tomb complexes of the Old Kingdom.

During 2004 a conference dedicated to the history, art, archaeology and language of Old Kingdom Egypt (2700 - 2200 BC) was organised by the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague. The publication of the conference makes available a representative overview of the latest research and trends presented by more than thirty Egyptologists, most of them leading experts in their respective fields of specialisation.