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Tel Ibrahim, are to be identified with the cities of Sepharvaim and Kutha 
from which the Samaritans came. 
But, in the discoveries at Abbo Hubba, Mr. Rassam has been the finder, 
not of one city only but of three, for it now becomes evident that Sippara 
was also the Agadeov Akate, the capital of the first great North-Babylonian 
King Sargon (B.C. 3800), and also synonymous with the Akkad founded by 
Nimrod (Genesis x. 10). In one inscription (WAI., i., pi. 69, lines 29, 33, 
col. 2), Nabonidus states that Sargon, King of Babylon, and Naram Sin, 
his son, restored the temple of Agade, called E-ULBAR, “ the house of the 
star,” but, in a newly-found cylinder deciphered by Mr. Pinches, this 
temple is said to be in the city of Sippara. Also, in a remarkable inscription 
of Nebuchadnezzar L, B.C. 1140, King of Babylon, the goddess is specially 
invoked as bilat al Ak-ka-di, “ lady of the city of Akkad,” so that now we 
have the last of the cities of Nimrod restored — Babylon near Hillah, Erech, 
the mounds of Warka Akkad at Abbo Hubba, and Kul-unu or Calneh, the 
modern Niffer. Few places have been more important in Babylonian history 
than the city of Sippara, and in the royal palaces, discovered by Mr. Rassam, 
some of the greatest sovereigns of the East have resided. Shalmaneser III. 
(B.C. 859), Sargon (B.C. 721), Sennacherib (B.C. 702),Esarhaddon (B.C. 681), 
and Assurbanipal (B.C. 668), all entered the city in triumph. Nebuchad- 
nezzar II. (B.C. 605) resided here, restored the temples, and added to the 
palace, as shown by bricks bearing his inscriptions. In the reign of 
Nabonidus (B.C. 555) the city became a very important centre of military 
operations. In an historical inscription of this king (Trans. Bib. Arch., 
vol. vii., p. 158), we read that : — “ In the month Nisan, on the 5th day, the 
mother of the King Nabonidus was in the fortified camp on the Euphrates, 
above Sippara, and she died there. The son of the king (Belshazzar) and his 
soldiers, three days in the ranks weeping made.” This Duru-Karasu (fortified 
camp) is probably to be identified with the city called in the inscription, 
found by Mr. Rassam at Abbo Hubba, alu (^| >^- J^;) DI E-IR 
ma-kha-az 1 1 Annu , “the city of Dier, the fortress of Anu,” which was 
the place where the army gathered for the war against Elam. This 
fortress of Anu, we are told in the same inscription, has a temple dedi- 
cated to Anu, “ the great god,” the head of the Babylonian pantheon, 
and also a shrine to the serpent god called 
shu-pu-u (Hebrew and that is the “ crawler,” or 
“ gliding one.” On the advance of Cyrus, in B.C. 540, the 
province of Akkad revolted, and Cyrus entered Sippara, while Belshazzar 
and Nabonidus fled south, — the former to Babylon, the latter to 
Borsippa. On the 14th day of Tam muz, Cyrus entered Sippara without 
fighting, and halted while Ugbaru or Gobyras, governor of Kurdistan 
(Gutium), pushed on and entered Babylon on the 16th, two days later. A 
calendar I discovered in 1875 shows that the 15th day of the month 
Tammuz was the feast of the marriage of Istar and Tammuz, — the most 
orgean of all the Babylonian festivals, and one at which the wives and 
