SIPPARA (Zimbir in Sumerian, Sippar in Assyro-Babylonian)  , an ancient Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates, north of Babylon . It was divided into two quarters, "Sippar of the Sun-god " (see SHAMASH) and " Sippar of the goddess Anunit, " the former of which was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1881 at Abu-Habba, 16 m . S.E. of Bagdad . Two other Sippars are mentioned in the inscriptions, one of them being " Sippar of Eden, " which must have been an additional quarter of the city . It is possible that one of them should be identified with Agade or Akkad, the capital of the first Semitic Babylonian Empire . The two Sippars of the Sun-god and Anunit are referred to in the Old Testament as Sepharvaim . A large number of cuneiform tablets and other monuments has been found in the ruins of the temple of the *Sun-god which was called E-Babara by the Sumerians, Bit-Uri by the Semites . The Chaldaean Noah is said by Berossus to have buried the records_ of the antediluvian world here—doubtless because the name of Sippar was supposed to be connected with sipru, " a writing "—and according to Abydenus (Fr . 9) Nebuchadrezzar excavated a great reservoir in the neighbourhood . Here too was the Babylonian camp in the reign of Nabonidos, and Pliny (N.H. vi . 3o) states that it was the seat of a university . See Hormuzd Rassam, Babylonian Cities (1888) .

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