Between 1925 and 1929 Frankfort was the director of the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) of London at El-Amarna, Abydos and Armant.

In 1929 he was invited by Henry Breasted to become field director of the Oriental Institute (OI) of Chicago expedition to Iraq.

[2] In 1937 Frankfort and Emil Kraeling identified a woman on the Burney Relief (c 1700BCE) as Lilith of later Jewish mythology,[3] though this identification is now generally rejected.

[4] In 1939 he published what Gary Beckman considers to be perhaps his most influential scholarly achievement Cylinder Seals: A Documentary Essay on the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East.

[8] Along with EA Wallis Budge, he was revolutionary for his time for suggesting that Egyptian civilization, culturally, religiously, and ethnically arose from an African, instead of an Asian base.