The broad lines of development in private tomb decoration throughout the Egyptian Archaic Period and Old Kingdom (ca. 3000-2200 B.C.) are known: small decorated niches in Dynasties One and Two become elaborate multiroomed chapels in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. It has been difficult, however, to reconcile the great variety of tomb plans and scenes with their obvious similarity in content. Scenes of similar content are represented over and over again, yet never in exactly the same way and rarely in precisely the same position in the tomb. Yvonne Harpur's Decoration in Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom may not be the final word on the subject, but it offers a perspective for the coherent interpretation of Old Kingdom tomb decoration on the basis of scene content and orientation. The work is not a general expository account of Old Kingdom relief, but rather a careful, fact-filled documentary study, upon which such an account could well be founded. Based on Harpur's D.Phil. work at Oxford, the book is scholarly in nature and academic in format. The background for the investigation of Old Kingdom tombs is briefly presented in the first three chapters covering location, relationship of tomb owners and chronology. A list of all tombs and decorated fragments (750 in total) is provided in Table 1 (pp. 265-84). Additional charts give family trees for tomb owners with documented family relationships (Table 2, pp. 285-300) and list tombs which depict different generations of the same family in the reliefs (Table 3, pp. 301-2). In Chapter 4 the decoration of Old Kingdom tomb entrances is explored, encompassing the decoration of the lintel, jambs and entrance thicknesses. The different elements of entrance decoration and the tombs in which they occur are listed in Table 4 (pp. 303-14). Few significant changes were made in the type of tomb entrance in the Old Kingdom, but when Harpur proceeds to analyze the orientation of scenes and figures in Old Kingdom tombs in Chapter 5, the variations in tomb architecture become more meaningful. Harpur deals with nine tomb types, analyzing each in tum and providing in Table 5 (pp. 377-450) a list of these types with subtypes and all the examples she attributes to each category. Perhaps even more enlightening than her discussion is Harpur's documentation of 145 schematic tomb plans, with the form and position of major figures drawn in, along with verbal characterizations of every register of decoration. This series of illustrations provides a wonderful visual conspectus of the different types of Old Kingdom tombs and their decoration.