In each age of the world distinguished by high activity there will be found at its culmination, and among the agencies leading to that culmination, some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly accepted, impressing its own type upon the current springs of action. This ultimate cosmology is only partly expressed, and the details of such expression issue into derivative specialized questions ... which conceal a general agreement upon first principles almost too obvious to need expression, and almost too general to be capable of expression. In each period there is a general form of the forms of thought; and, like the air we breathe, such a form is so translucent, and so pervading, and so seemingly necessary, that only by extreme effort can we become aware of it.[1] It is this effort which the historian cannot shirk, nor is there a short cut to the understanding of an alien past; but I believe that the comparative study of parallel phenomena leads most surely to an elucidation of manifest and implicit form. I have confined myself to Egypt and Mesopotamia, the cultural centres of the Ancient Near East; for in the peripheral regions civilization arose late and was always, to some extent, derivative. Egypt, too, was influenced by Mesopotamia during its formative period, but without losing its distinct and highly individual character. This matter of early cultural contact is of such importance for our problem that I have discussed the relevant evidence in an Appendix. The following chapters are expanded versions of lectures delivered at Indiana University, Bloomington, in the winter of 1948-9, on the Patten Foundation. I am grateful to Dr. Helene J. Kantor, of the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago, for generously providing me with the drawings for Figures 1 and 4. H. Frankfort WARBURG INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 17 DECEMBER 1950 CONTENTS PREFACE v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi I. THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 1 II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 25 III. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA 49 IV. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 90 APPENDIX. The Influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt Towards the End of the Fourth Millennium B.C. 121 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 138 INDEX 139 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS _Following page 64_