Borsippa

Borsippa — known today as Birs Nimrud — is an ancient Babylonian city southwest of Babylon with occupation layers stretching back to the third millennium BCE. Its most visible feature is the massive ruin of a ziqqurat, which popular tradition has long equated with the biblical Tower of Babel; the site's Arabic name derives from the legendary king Nimrod. In reality Borsippa was an independent sacred center, its principal temple dedicated to Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and scribal arts. The ziqqurat was substantially rebuilt under Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century BCE, and its fire-blackened upper brickwork — likely the result of an ancient conflagration — fuelled the Babel identification in 19th-century European travel accounts. Today the site is a remote archaeological ruin drawing scholars of Mesopotamian antiquity.