A COMMON everyday custom among Oriental peoples, especially Semites, is to emphasize anything they may say, even trivialities, with an oath of one kind or another. This habit or custom came down from a far-off antiquity, whose origin is still beyond our ken. And the acts or words, classed as oaths, cover a considerable range of meaning. They have been widely and comprehensively discussed for long years. The magnitude of the theme requires that we limit its treatment to specific lines. This we wish to do by confining our attention to the character and significance of the oath as used in court procedure in Babylonia and the Old Testament. One of the essentials in the discussion is to determine as far as possible the fundamental meanings of the words used for and the usage of these words in the periods under survey. This requires an examination of the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew terms employed. Briefly the Sumerian and Babylonian words are these: 1. Nam-erim = mamitu (Br. 2178), oath, ban, curse,p used especially in incantations, with an appeal to some god or king or witness. It was also used as an oath where no appeal was made either to god or man, where the actor merely took his oath. A third use is that found in the execution of treaties between peoples and nations, as E-an-na-tum, king of Lagash, with the city of Umma (ca. 2900 B. C.). The oath was taken and confirmed in the camp of Ningirsu, son of En-lil; the person or god by whom the oath is taken will slay the violator of that oath. The Semitic origin of this common word for oath is probably a root yama, ' oath,' ' ban,' or ' curse,' or Arabic wama'a, to make a sign with the hand (Mercer, Oath, p. 26). Among the Arabs the only really binding and sacred oath is the yamin, 'faithful,' akin to mamitu. There is also a goddess Mamitu, consort of Nergal, the god of devastation, pestilence (cf. AJSL,, April, 1910, pp. 170-171), who has been personified (Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, p. xix).