BORSIPPA (mod. BIRS or BIRs-NIMRLID), ancient city about 15m. S.W. of Babylon and iom. from Hillah, on the Hin dieh canal. It was the sister city of Babylon, and in the inscrip tions is often called Babylon II.; its patron god was Nebo (q.v.). Borsippa is not mentioned in the oldest inscriptions, but comes into importance first after Hammurabi had made Babylon his capital, about 2100 B.C. He built or rebuilt the temple E-Zida at this place, dedicating it to Marduk (q.v.), subsequent kings rec ognizing Nebo as the deity of E-Zida and making him the son of Marduk; and his temple was second only to that of Marduk in Babylon. As with Babylon, the time of Nebuchadrezzar was the period of Borsippa's greatest prosperity; there is evidence that the temple school and the school of astronomy for which Borsippa had for centuries been famous were still in existence in the late 6th century B.C., but, in general, it shared the fate of Babylon, falling into decay after the time of Alexander.
The site of the ancient city is represented by two large ruin mounds. Of these the north-westerly, the lower but larger of the two, is called Ibrahim Khalil, from a shrine of Abraham which stands on its highest point ; eastern legend has it that at this spot Nimrod sought to throw Abraham into a fiery furnace. Excava tions were first conducted here by the French in 1852, and in 1879-80 Hormuzd Rassam worked more extensively though still unsystematically, finding many inscribed tablets and the like, now in the British Museum; but by far the greater part still remains unexplored. The south-westerly mound, the Birs proper, an am bitious but incomplete and ruinous ziggurat built on the site of a predecessor by Nebuchadrezzar, has been supposed by some to have afforded local attachment for the story of the Tower of Babel (q.v.). It rises from a hill over iooft. high as a pointed mass of vitrified brick split down the centre, over 4of t. high, about which lie huge masses and single enamelled bricks, gener ally bearing an inscription of Nebuchadrezzar, twisted and broken, apparently by great heat. In 1854 Rawlinson showed it to be the "house of the seven divisions of heaven and earth," of E-Zida, the temple of Nebo. It was a pyramid of seven solid terraces orna mented with the seven planetary colours, the lowest being 2 7 2 f t. square and perhaps 45ft. high, and on the seventh being an ark or tabernacle. It was destroyed by Xerxes and partly restored by Antiochus I. but was in ruins long before the middle ages.
See H. C. Rawlinson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (186o) ; J. P. Peters, Nippur (1896) ; H. Rassam, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897) ; M. Jastrow, Religions of Babylonia and Assyria (1898) ; also BABYLON, BABEL.