BORSIPPA

'Borsippa' was an important ancient city of Sumer (Iraq), built on both sides of a lake about 17.7 km (11 miles) southwest of Babylon, on the east bank of the Euphrates. The site of Borsippa is now called ''Birs Nimrud,'' identifying the site with Nimrod, and the ziggurat, the "Tongue Tower," today one of the most vividly identifiable surviving ziggurats, is identified in the Talmud and Arab culture with the Tower of Babel.
Borsippa is mentioned, usually in connection with Babylon, in texts from the Ur III period through the Seleucid period and even in early Islamic texts. Borsippa was dependent upon Babylon and was never the seat of an autochthonous power. From the 9th century BCE, Borsippa was on the borderland south of which lay the tribal "houses" of Chaldea.
An impressive ruin of its ziggurat marks the site, which has been excavated since 1980 by teams directed by the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; an Austrian team was poised to return in 2003. Many legal administrative and astronomical texts on cuneiform tablets have originated at Borsippa and have turned up on the black market. The local god was Nabu, called the "son" of Babylon's