Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST HENRI FRANKFORT Doubleday Anchor Books Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, New York Henri Frankfort was born in 1897 in Holland. He first studied history at Amsterdam University, obtained his M.A. in London, but returned to the University of Leiden for his Ph.D. He has done extensive field work in the Near East, his main project being the Oriental Institute of Chicago’s excavations in Iraq from 1929 to 1937. Dr. Frankfort both organized and headed these excavations, which yielded much new information on the early history of Babylonia, from 4000 to 2000 B.C. In 1938 Dr. Frankfort went to Chicago to write and to teach at the University of Chicago, which had appointed him Research Professor of Oriental Archaeology in 1932. In 1949 he was appointed Director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of Pre-classical Antiquity in the University of London. Among his other writings are numerous contributions to professional journals and a book, _Ancient Egyptian Religion_ (1948). Dr. Frankfort died in 1954. Cover design by Antonio Frasconi Typography by Edward Gorey _The Birth of Civilization in the Near East_ was published by Indiana University Press in 1951. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Indiana University Press. Anchor Books edition: 1956 First published in the United States of America by Indiana University Press PREFACE