tim
in the Elamite inscriptions--the name of the elder Sargon's capital, which
must have stood close to Sippara, if indeed it was not a quarter of Sippara
itself. The rise of Sargon's empire was doubtless the cause of this
extension of the name of Akkad; from henceforward, in the imperial title,
"Sumer and Akkad" denoted the whole of Babylonia. After the Kassite
conquest of the country, northern Babylonia came to be known as
Kar-Duniyas, "the wall of the god Duniyas," from a line of fortification
similar to that built by Nebuchadrezzar between Sippara and Opis, so as to
defend his kingdom from attacks from the north. As this last was "the Wall
of Semiramis" mentioned by Strabo (xi. 14. 8), Kar-Duniyas may have
represented the Median Wall of Xenophon (_Anab._ ii. 4. 12), traces of
which were found by F. R. Chesney extending from Faluja to Jibbar.

The country was thickly studded with towns, the sites of which are still
represented by mounds, though the identification of most of them is still
doubtful. The latest to be identified are Bismya, between Nippur and Erech,
which recent American excavations have proved to be the site of Udab (also
called Adab and Usab) and the neighbouring F[=a]ra, the site of the ancient
Kisurra. The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the
Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and
uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world.
The science of irrigation and engineering seems to have been first created
in Babylonia, which was covered by a network of canals, all skilfully
planned and regulated. The three chief of them carried off the waters of
the Euphrates to the Tigris above Babylon,--the Zabzallat canal (or _Nahr
Sarsar_) running from Faluja to Ctesiphon, the Kutha canal from Sippara to
Madain, passing Tell Ibrahim or Kutha on the way, and the King's canal or
Ar-Malcha between the other two. This last, which perhaps owed its name to
Khammurabi, was conducted from the Euphrates towards Upi or Opis, which has
been shown by H. Winckler (_Altorientalische Forschungen_, ii. pp. 509
seq.) to have been close to Seleucia on the western side of the Tigris. The
Pallacopas, called Pallukkatu in the Neo-Babylonian texts, started from
Pallukkatu or Faluja, and running parallel to the western bank of the
Euphrates as far as Iddaratu or Teredon (?) watered an immense tract of
land and supplied a large lake near Borsippa. B. Meissner