In northern Babylonia, Nabopolassar is known to have sponsored construction in three other cities: Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar. Presumably, he built elsewhere in Babylonia.
At Borsippa, Nabopolassar started construction on the city wall Ṭābi-supūršu ("Its Fold Is Pleasant"). Work, just like it had been with Babylon's inner and outer city walls, remained unfinished in 605 and it fell upon Nebuchadnezzar to finish the job. According to an inscription written on a clay cylinder, Nabopolassar's workmen managed to have Ṭābi-supūršu's (stone) foundations (re)laid, as well as to have had an embankment wall of baked brick and bitumen constructed outside its circumference.[[39]]
In Kish, at least according to Nebuchadnezzar, Nabopolassar had Edubba ("Storage House"), the temple of Kish's tutelary deity Zababa, built anew and had the statues of the deities living in it (Zababa and his consort Baba) returned to their daises.[[40]] Because Nebuchadnezzar makes no statement about having to finish his father's work, it is assumed that Nabopolassar's work on Edubba was finished by 605.[[41]] Unfortunately, no details about the project itself are presently known.
Nabopolassar devoted time and energy to projects at Sippar, the principal northern Babylonian cult center of the sun-god Šamaš. According to his own inscriptions, as well as those of two of his successors (Nebuchadnezzar II and Neriglissar), the founder of the Neo-Babylonian Empire built Eʾedina ("House of the Steppe"), the temple of the goddess Ištar as the "Lady of Sippar";[[42]] dug a canal between the Euphrates River and Sippar since the river's course had moved away from the city;[[43]] and started construction on Ekunankuga ("House, Pure Stairway of Heaven"), Šamaš' ziggurat.[[44]] The work on Eʾedina appears to have taken place late in Nabopolassar's reign (after 612 [or even 610]) since the inscription mentioning its construct refers to the defeat of the Assyrian king Sîn-šarra-iškun and the destruction of Assyria's principal cities (Aššur, Kalḫu, Nineveh, [and possibly Ḫarrān]).[[45]] The same is true of the rebuilding of Ekunankuga since Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar both state that Nabopolassar's construction on the ziggurat was unfinished. Nebuchadnezzar, as he did with many other projects, continued working on Ekunankuga.
39 Nbk. 32 (C36) ii 55–60.
40 C38 iii 76–85; this text will be published in RINBE 1/2. On Edubba, see George, House Most High pp. 78–79 no. 200.
41 Nebuchadnezzar had Edubba's enclosure wall rebuilt. In addition, he constructed Zababa's ziggurat Eunirkitušmaḫ ("House, Temple-Tower, Exalted Abode").
42 Npl. 15 (C22) ii 5–10; George, House Most High p. 81 no. 244. Eʾedina has not yet been identified in the archaeological record and, therefore, it is unclear if it was an independent, freestanding structure or a (complex of) rooms in Ebabbar ("Shining House"), the temple of Šamaš.
43 Npl. 14 (C21/B7) i 10–ii 15.
44 VA 8410 (unpublished inscription of Nebuchadnezzar to appear in RINBE 1/2); and Weiershäuser and Novotny, RINBE 2 pp. 48–49 Ner. 6. For Ekunankuga, see, for example, George, House Most High p. 115 no. 672. Only the remains of the lowest stage of Ekunankuga survives today and its mudbrick base is approximately 40×40 m.
45 Npl. 15 (C22) i 20–ii 4: "When (the god) Šamaš (Šaššu), the great lord, came to my side and [I] killed [the Subarean (Assyrian) and turned the land of] my [ene]my into a mound [of] ruins (lit. 'a mound [and] ruins')."
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser, 'Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [/ribo/babylon7/RINBE11Introduction/Nabopolassar/BuildingActivitiesofNabopolassar/Borsippa,Kish,andSippar/]