Borsippa

Borsippa (Sumerian: BAD.SI.(A).AB.BAKI; Akkadian: Barsip and Til-Barsip) or Birs Nimrud (having been identified with Nimrod) is an archeological site in Babil Governorate, Iraq. The ziggurat is today one of the most vividly identifiable surviving ones, identified in the later Arabic culture with the Tower of Babel. However, modern scholarship concludes that the Babylonian builders of the Ziggurat in reality erected it as a religious edifice in honour of the local god Nabu, called the "son" of Babylon's Marduk, as would be appropriate for Babylon's lesser sister-city. Borsippa was an important ancient city of Sumer, built on both sides of a lake about southwest of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates. Borsippa is mentioned, usually in connection with Babylon, in texts from the Third Dynasty of Ur through the Seleucid Empire and even in early Islamic texts. It is also mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 36a, Avodah Zarah 11b) and other rabbinic literature. Borsippa was dependent upon Babylon and was never the seat of a regional power. From the ninth century BC, Borsippa was on the borderland south of which lay the tribal "houses" of Chaldea. The Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions the city in relation to the war between Cyrus the Great and Nabonnedus. The temple to Nabu at Borsippa was destroyed in 484 BC during the suppression of a revolt against the Achaemenid emperor, Xerxes I. In the 1st millennium BC, the city had a large scribal class. In 1854, work at Borsippa was conducted under the direction of Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, with most of the actual digging done by his subordinates. Rawlinson personally uncovered the foundation prisms from Nebuchadnezzar II's restoration on the Nabu temple. Between 1879 and 1881 the site was excavated by Hormuzd Rassam for the British Museum. He concentrated primarily on E-zida, the temple of Nabu. In 1902, Robert Koldewey worked at Borsippa during his main effort at Babylon also mainly on the Nabu temple.