To the land from which there is no return, the home of darkness, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, turned her mind, Yea, the daughter of Sin set her mind to go; To the house of gloom, the dwelling of Irkalla, To the house from which those who enter depart not, The road from whose path there is no return; To the house where they who enter are deprived of light; A place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food; The light they behold not, in thick darkness they dwell; They are clad like bats in a garb of wings; On door and bolt the dust is laid. Compare with this Job 10. 21, 22: Before I go, whence I shall not return, To the land of darkness, yea deepest darkness, {187} The land dark as midnight, Of deepest darkness without any order, And where the light is as midnight; or Job 7. 9, 10: He that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more, He shall return no more to his house, Neither shall his place know him any more. Other similarities may be noted: the Hebrew Sheol, like the Babylonian, was deep down in the earth; it is pictured as a cavern; silence reigns supreme, etc. There is but one explanation for these similarities: When the ancestors of the Hebrews left their homes in the Euphrates valley they carried with them the traditions, beliefs, and customs current in that district. Under new surroundings, and especially under the influence of their higher religion, new features were added and old conceptions were transformed. But these changes were not able to obscure entirely the character impressed upon the older beliefs by contact with Babylon. Striking similarities are found also between the legal systems of Babylonia and Israel. In the light of recent discoveries the study of ancient law begins to-day, not with the legal systems of Rome, or of Greece, or of Israel, but with the laws of early Babylonia. Of the beginning of the Babylonian legal system we know nothing except a few popular traditions, which trace it back to some deity. It is clear, however, that long {188} centuries before the time of Moses or Minos or Romulus the people living in the lower Euphrates-Tigris valley developed legal codes of a high and complex order. In the legal phrase books of the later scribes there have been preserved seven so-called Sumerian family laws, written in the language of the people occupying the southern part of the Euphrates-Tigris valley before it came under the sway of the Semites. These laws, in theme and literary form resembling later Babylonian and early Hebrew laws, were probably in existence in the fourth millennium B.C.; some of them may go even farther back.