the original Sumerian name Ka-dimirra.
The god was probably Merodach or Marduk (_q.v._), the divine patron of the
city. In an inscription of the Kassite conqueror Gaddas the name appears as
Ba-ba-lam, as if from the Assyrian _babalu_, "to bring"; another foreign
_Volksetymologie_ is found in Genesis xi. 9, from _balbal_, "to confound."
A second name of the city, which perhaps originally denoted a separate
village or quarter, was Su-anna, and in later inscriptions it is often
represented ideographically by E-ki, the pronunciation and meaning of which
are uncertain. One of its oldest names, however, was Din-tir, of which the
poets were especially fond; Din-tir signifies in Sumerian "the life of the
forest," though a native lexicon translates it "seat of life." Uru-azagga,
"the holy city," was also a title sometimes applied to Babylon as to other
cities in Babylonia. Ka-dimirra, the Semitic Bab-ili, probably denoted at
first E-Saggila, "the house of the lofty head," the temple dedicated to
Bel-Merodach, along with its immediate surroundings. Like the other great
sanctuaries of Babylonia the temple had been founded in pre-Semitic times,
and the future Babylon grew up around it. Since Merodach was the son of Ea,
the culture god of Eridu near Ur on the Persian Gulf, it is possible that
Babylon was a colony of Eridu. Adjoining Babylon was a town called Borsippa
(_q.v._).

The earliest mention of Babylon is in a dated tablet of the reign of Sargon
of Akkad (3800 B.C.), who is stated to have built sanctuaries there to
Anunit and A[=e] (or Ea), and H. Winckler may be right in restoring a
mutilated passage in the annals of this king so as to make it mean that
Babylon owed its name to Sargon, who made it the capital of his empire. If
so, it fell back afterwards into the position of a mere provincial town and
remained so for centuries, until it became the capital of "the first
dynasty of Babylon" and then of Khammurabi's empire (2250 B.C.). From this
time onward it continued to be the capital of Babylonia and the holy city
of western Asia. The claim to supremacy in Asia, however real in fact, was
not admitted _de jure_ until the claimant had "taken the hands" of
Bel-Merodach at Babylon, and thereby been accepted as his adopted son and
the inheritor of the old Babylonian empire. It was this which made
Tiglath-pileser III. and other Assyrian kings so anxious to possess
themselves of Babylon and so to legitimize their power. Sennacherib