st after Khammurabi had made
Babylon the capital of the whole land, somewhere before 2000 B.C. He
built or rebuilt the temple E-Zida at this place, dedicating it,
however, to Marduk (Bel-Merodach). But although Khammurabi himself does
not seem to have honoured Nebo (q.v.), subsequent kings recognized him
as the deity of E-Zida and made him the son of Marduk (q.v.). Each new
year his image was taken to visit his father, in Babylon, who in his
turn gave him escort homeward, and his temple was second in wealth and
importance only to E-Saggila, the temple of Marduk in Babylon. As with
Babylon, so with Borsippa, the time of Nebuchadrezzar was the period of
its greatest prosperity. In general Borsippa shared the fate of Babylon,
falling into decay after the time of Alexander, and finally in the
middle ages into ruins. The site of the ancient city is represented by
two large ruin mounds. Of these the north-westerly, the lower of the
two, but the larger in superficial area, is called Ibrahim Khalil, from
a _ziara_, or shrine, of Abraham, the friend of God, which stands on its
highest point. According to Arabic lore, based on Jewish legends, at
this spot Nimrod sought to throw Abraham into a fiery furnace, from
which he was saved by the grace of God. Excavations were first conducted
here by the French Expedition Scientifique en Mesopotamie in 1852, with
small result. In 1879 and 1880 Hormuzd Rassam conducted more extensive,
although unsystematic, excavations in this mound, finding a
considerable quantity of inscribed tablets and the like, now in the
British Museum; but by far the greater part of this ruin still remains
unexplored. The south-westerly mound, the Birs proper, is probably the
most conspicuous and striking ruin in all Irak. On the top of a hill
over 100 ft. high rises a pointed mass of vitrified brick split down the
centre, over 40 ft. high, about which lie huge masses of vitrified
brick, some as much as 15 ft. in diameter, and also single enamelled
bricks, generally bearing an inscription of Nebuchadrezzar, twisted,
curled and broken, apparently by great heat. Jewish and Arabic tradition
makes this the Tower of Babel, which was supposed to have been destroyed
by lightning. Excavations conducted here by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854
showed it to be the stage tower or _ziggurat_, called the "house of the
seven divisions of heaven and earth," of E-Zida, the temple of Nebo. On
a large platform rose seven solid terraces, eac