Contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed, however, the larger part of the contents of most Babylonian libraries. They have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so that the age of Khammurabi, or even of Sargon, in Babylonia, is beginning to be as well known to us as the age of Periklês in Greece. Along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal documents and records of law-cases which have been preserved. Babylonian law was, like English law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and carefully considered code had been formed at an early date. Collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be found in the libraries. The autograph letters of Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis, have come down to us, and we even have letters of his time from a lover to his mistress, and from a tenant to his landlord, whom he begs to reduce his rent. Boys went to school early, and learning the cuneiform syllabary was a task that demanded no small amount of time and application, especially when it is remembered that in the case of the Semitic Babylonian this involved also acquiring a knowledge of the dead language of Sumer. One of the exercises of the Sumerian schoolboy bids him "rise like the dawn, if he would excel in the school of the scribes." Purely literary texts were numerous, especially poems, though nothing corresponding to the Egyptian novel has been met with. The epic of Gilgames, composed by Sin-liqi-unnini, has already been referred to. Its twelve books answered to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the eleventh accordingly contains the episode of the Deluge. Gilgames was the son of a royal mother, whose son was fated to slay his grandfather, and who was consequently confined in a tower. But an eagle carried him to a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered Erech from its foes, and made it the seat of his kingdom. He slew the tyrant Khumbaba in the forest of cedars, and by means of a stratagem tempted the satyr Ea-bant to leave the woods and become his counsellor and friend. Istar wooed him, but he scorned her offers, and taunted her with her misdeeds to the hapless lovers who had been caught in her toils. In revenge the goddess persuaded her father Anu to create a winged bull, which should work havoc in the country of the Babylonians. But Gilgames destroyed the bull, an achievement, however, for which he was punished by Heaven. Ea-bani died of the bite of a gadfly, and his spirit mounted to the skies, while Gilgames himself was smitten by a sore disease. To heal it he sailed beyond the mouth of the Euphrates and the river of death, leaving behind him the deserts of Arabia and the twin-mountain where men in the shape of huge scorpions guard the gateways of the sun. At last he found Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge, and learned from him how he had escaped death. Cured of his malady, he returned homeward with a leaf of the tree of life.