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As secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, archaeologist Zahi Hawass recently helped relocate an entire village built over a warren of tombs on the west bank of the Nile, to permit the tombs’ preservation and examination. Now Hawass and his long-time collaborator, Italian photographer Sandro Vannini, have documented a wealth of artifacts from those tombs, which hold denizens of the ancient capital city, Thebes. Only a few scholars have ever seen the tombs or their contents, and—given the tombs’ fragility—few members of the public ever will. Exquisitely detailed color photographs of murals and wall carvings record the religious and social scene in Egypt thirty-six centuries ago, as experienced not by pharaohs, but by lesser court figures, viziers, generals, architects, and priests.