d 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.

By far the most important Babylonian legal code now known is the
so-called Code of Hammurabi.[25] Hammurabi was known to Assyriologists
long before the finding of his legal code. He reigned in Babylon about
B.C. 2000, was the sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty, and the
first permanently to unite the numerous small city states under one
ruler. He may, therefore, be called the founder of the Babylonian
empire. From his numerous letters and inscriptions, as also from other
documents coming from the same period, he was known as a great
conqueror and statesman,