| | PLATES | |
| | Man's Golden Age | Frontispiece |
| | | FACING PAGE |
| I. | A Scene from the Nippur Excavations: Rooms of the Temple "Tablet House" | 8 |
| II. | Oldest Literary Catalogue | 14 |
| III. | Nippur Archaic Cylinder | 18 |
| IV. | Gudea Cylinder | 19 |
| V. | "Chicago" Syllabary | 22 |
| VI. | Nippur Grammatical Text | 23 |
| VII. | Gods and the Nether World | 32 |
| VIII. | The Separation of Heaven and Earth | 36 |
| IX. | Enlil Separates Heaven and Earth | 37 |
| X. | Miscellaneous Mythological Scenes | 40 |
| XI. | Enlil and Ninlil: the Begetting of Nanna | 44 |
| XII. | Gods of Vegetation | 50 |
| XIII. | Enki and Ninhursag: the Affairs of the Water-god | 56 |
| XIV. | Enki, the Water-god | 60 |
| XV and XVI. | Inanna and Enki: the Transfer of the Arts of Civilization from Eridu to Erech | 64 and 65 |
| XVII and XVIII. | The Creation of Man | 70 and 71 |
| XIX. | Gods and Dragons | 78 |
| 20. | Inanna's Descent to the Nether World | 85 |
| | TEXT FIGURES | |
| | | PAGE |
| 1. | The Origin and Development of the Sumerian System of Writing | 17 |
| 2. | The Deluge | 99 |
| | MAP | |
| 1. | Sumer in the First Half of the Third Millennium B.C. | 7 |