| THEMES | Subject matter covering the Mesopotamian field (6) |
| TROPIC | Parallel matter covering the top of the road (6) |
| TIGRIS | River on which the Mesopotamian cities of Nineveh and Ctesiphon stood (6) |
| TOPICS | Tax officer reportedly chooses subject matter (6) |
| THREAD | Long strand of material in subject matter (6) |
| STANDS | Subject matter of Twist and Shout resists change (6) |
| THEMOB | Subject matter mostly pertains to flower produced by the common people (3,3) |
| HADES | This underworld god is a personification of death whose realm, divided from the land of the living by a terrible river, resembles the Mesopotamian land of the dead. |
| MATTER | Subject matter |
| ASTARTE | Phoenician goddess of love, fertility and war worshipped from the Bronze Age to classical antiquity; counterpart of the Mesopotamian Ishtar (7) |
| ANCIENT | Like the Mesopotamian people |
| LAYER | Thickness of matter covering a surface (5) |
| BOATMAN | Organic matter covering reptile in pale 4 (5,7) |
| WATER | Organic matter covering reptile in pale 4 (5,7) |
| HUMERUS | Organic matter covering old king's bone (7) |
| TOPIC | The first place on the Olympic finals becomes the subject matter |
| ANIMALS | General term for the organisms forming the subject matter of many of the books for children by Dick |
| CONTENT | The subject matter of an article, discussion or literary work; or, usually in plural, a list of chapters given at the front of a book (7) |
| ALI | Subject matter, with Cosell, of the book "Sound and Fury" |
| DIGRESS | Change the subject matter during excavations (7) |
