This facsimile reissue of Flinders Petrie’s extensive catalog of buttons and scarabs describes and illustrates over 1500 examples, along with an appendix on additions to the ‘Scarabs and Cylinders’ volume published earlier.

In keeping with his other object catalogs, Petrie devises object classifications based on form with an attempt at dating their sequences. He describes the back of the objects, materials, their designs and inscriptions, and offers ideas on their meanings. Particular attention is paid to animal and human representations and those possibly of gods. He also identifies several local series.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• CHAPTER I BUTTONS
  • 1. Purpose
  • 2. Various classes
  • 3. Dating
  • 4. Foreign
  • 5. Forms of backs
• CHAPTER II DESIGNS ON BUTTONS
  • 6. Religious and royal
  • 7. Human
  • 8. Quadrupeds
  • 9. Birds, reptiles, plants
  • 10. Prisms
  • 11. Fret patterns
  • 12. Stone seals
  • 13. Fluted-dome buttons
  • 14. History
• CHAPTER III ROUNDED MID-PIECES
  • 15. Origin
  • 16. Varieties
• CHAPTER IV MEANINGS OF SCARABS
  • 17. For Living or Dead
  • 18. Nature of Inscriptions
  • 19. Adoration
  • 20. Protection and Blessings
  • 21. Civic and Family
  • 22. Gods
• CHAPTER V GEOMETRICAL SCARABS
  • 23. Meaning of spiral
  • 24. Classes of scrolls
  • 25. Cord and Lotus
  • 26. Later designs
• CHAPTER VI MATERIALS AND FORMS OF BACKS
  • 27. Materials of scarabs
  • 28. Various forms on back
• CHAPTER VII GEOMETRICAL WITH SIGNS
  • 29. Scrolls and signs
  • 30. Plants
  • 31. Symmetric signs
  • 32. Later signs
• CHAPTER VIII INSCRIPTIONS
  • 33. Devotion
  • 34. Local royal scarabs
  • 35. Prayers
  • 36. Family
  • 37. Addresses to gods
• CHAPTER IX ANIMAL FIGURES
  • 38. Sphinx
  • 39. Herbivora
  • 40. Carnivora
  • 41. Birds
  • 42. Reptiles and fish
• CHAPTER X HUMAN FIGURES
  • 43. Men
  • 44. King acting
  • 45. Ra
  • 46. Horus and Set
  • 47. Ptah and others
  • 48. Foreign gods
• CHAPTER XI LOCAL SERIES
  • 49. Nubt and Koptos
  • 50. Gurob and Illahun
  • 51. Memphis and Yehudiyeh
• CHAPTER XII SUPPLEMENT TO “SCARABS AND CYLINDERS”
  • 52. Notable examples