The Graphic Section of the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition was established in 1907 for the purpose of recording ancient Egyptian wall paintings. To head this effort, the Museum hired Norman de Garis Davies, a British Egyptologist who had spent the previous nine years recording and publishing tombs at sites such as Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt.

The work of the Graphic Section was centered on the tombs of officials in the cemeteries of western Thebes on the west bank of the Nile opposite modern Luxor. In ancient times, this area had served as the burial site for Thebes, Egypt's southern capital. The royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, the tombs of officials, and those of the artists' village at Deir el-Medina provide the richest source of ancient Egyptian paintings preserved anywhere in Egypt.

Davies was assisted by a number of young artists, and by his wife Nina, who helped him develop a copying technique that almost exactly simulates the colors and brushstrokes preserved on the tomb walls. Although a few copies restore damaged areas of the originals, the majority are facsimiles, painted to scale (1:1), and showing areas of deliberate damage and accidental loss suffered over the millennia.

The tombs of officials in western Thebes cover a period of almost a thousand years, from the early Middle Kingdom to the late New Kingdom (ca. 2000–1100 B.C.). They preserve the distinctive painting styles of these important periods and the changes that occur from dynasty to dynasty and reign to reign. The scenes on the walls record burial practices and ceremonial events; they are also rich sources of information on the day-to-day activities of the ancient Egyptians and on the fauna and flora of the time.

The Museum's Graphic Section produced a number of publications on these tombs, illustrated with reproductions of the facsimiles, and with line drawings and photographs of the decoration. Members of the Graphic Section also painted selected scenes at a number of other sites, including the Museum's archaeological concessions at Lisht and Kharga Oasis. Between 1907 and 1941, some 350 facsimiles were painted, most of which are on view in the Museum's Egyptian galleries 132 and 135 (the lobby of Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium). These facsimiles are an important resource for the study of ancient Egyptian painting, and an invaluable record of the condition of the tombs in the early twentieth century.