While working as a Congregational minister in England, Norman de Garis Davies (1865?1941) developed an interest in Egyptology. In 1897 he joined Flinders Petrie's excavations at Dendera as a copyist of inscriptions and sculptures. He did further work for the Egypt Exploration Fund, producing many volumes of archaeological surveys, one of which won him the Leibniz medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. From 1907 he worked for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, together with his wife Nina. Published in 1901, this highly illustrated work surveys the tombs of the important burial site at El-Sheikh Said in Upper Egypt, where many of the governors of the 15th nome had been buried since the time of the Old Kingdom. Davies reproduces the tombs' hieroglyphic inscriptions and the bas-reliefs, as well as providing archaeological plans. His two-volume Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrâwi (1902) is also reissued in this series.

A Congregational minister, Norman de Garis Davies (1865?1941) developed an interest in Egyptology, joining Flinders Petrie as a copyist and working for the Egypt Exploration Fund. This 1901 highly illustrated work surveys the tombs, reliefs and inscriptions of an important ancient Egyptian burial site.