In The Decoration on the Cult Chapel Walls of the Old Kingdom Tombs at Giza Leo Roeten presents a method that evaluates the degree of interaction between the various decoration themes that are placed on the western wall of the cult chapels at the tombs of Giza. Diagrams resulting from that method show that during the 5th dynasty the focus of the mode of food supply for the ka of the deceased changed from primarily active to primarily magical. On the other walls of the chapel this change not only led to the loss of some secondary cultic functions like the inviting and guiding functions, but also to an increasing focus on scenes from the daily life of the tomb owner.

Caroline Louise Ransom Williams (1872-1952) was the first woman to obtain a degree through the first American Egyptology program, at the University of Chicago. She then became the first woman to study Egyptology at a university in continental Europe. She went on to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the New York Historical Society (precursor to the Brooklyn Museum). She participated in Epigraphic Survey at Luxor and assisted the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Decoration of the Tomb of Per-neb was published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1932. "Using as a vehicle for her discussion the 5th Dynasty tomb of Per-neb now in the Metropolitan Museum, Mrs. Williams has given an almost complete background for the conventions and the techniques of color as used by the ancient Egyptians, particularly of the early dynasties. A book on this subject and with such scholarliness might easily have been a dull thing to read but due to the easy style and clear presentation of ideas it is an absorbing matter for the expert or layman." Brooklyn Museum Quarterly (1935) "For the Old Kingdom Caroline Ransom Williams' The Decoration of the Tomb of Per-neb is a comprehensive and exceedingly valuable study of the technical processes of painting and relief sculpture." William Stevenson Smith, Ancient Egypt as Represented in the Museum of Fine Arts (1952)

One of the foremost experts on Old Kingdom tombs looks at the burial chamber, its significance, and its preparation, concluding that the "house of death is for life." The Egyptian tomb was not considered simply as a grave for burying the corpse of a dead person, but rather as a house of eternity in which the deceased would spend an everlasting life. The author also discusses the architectural designs and characteristics of burial chambers associated with the mastabas and rock-cut tombs, and studies the development of decoration on the walls of tombs.

"The eleven sections of wall-painting from Nebamun's lost tomb-chapel from c. 1350 B.C. are among the greatest and most famous of the British Museum's treasures." "The paintings decorated the walls of an Egyptian official's tomb-chapel, displaying his status and activities in this life and the next. The accountant Nebamun, eternally youthful and vigorous, is shown hunting in the marshes and overseeing his servants and animals on the estates he managed. The paintings offer us fascinating glimpses of the world of ancient Egypt as the governing class wished it to be seen. Ancient visitors would bring offerings and prayers to Nebamun in this colourful chapel, and the paintings were intended to be seen and appreciated by them. Their beauty and vitality are admirably captured in the new detailed photography which has been taken especially for this book." "The process of conservation and analysis in the Museum's specialist laboratories has revealed new information about painting techniques in ancient Egypt, and a detailed study has resulted in new reconstructions of the paintings. This work, together with research in the Museum's archives, is helping to solve the problem of the tomb-chapel's location near modern Luxor, last seen in the 1820s when the paintings were removed." "Richard Parkinson discusses the history of the paintings from ancient to modern times. He describes each painting fully, with translations of the hieroglyphic texts, and reconstructs the full scenes from which each fragment comes. Discussions of the other known fragments from the tomb-chapel (now in Berlin, Avignon and Lyon) are included. Every painting is illustrated in colour with numerous close-up details, doing full justice to these artists who have been described as 'antiquity's equivalent of Michelangelo'."--BOOK JACKET.

This study suggests, through investigations of the tombs in the necropolis of Giza, that economic decline attributed to the collapse of the Old Kingdom had already started in the early dynastic period.