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The ruins are of considerable extent, but scarcely so large as those at either Senkereh or Warka. The name which now attaches to them is Niffer: and it appears, from the inscriptions at the place, that the ancient Semitic appellation was but slightly different.
Less than is the case with the other gods, is he identified with any particular city, and we therefore find in the most ancient period, two centers of Southern Babylonia claiming Shamash as their patron saint, Larsa, represented by the mound of Senkereh, and Sippar, occupying the site of the modern Abu-Habba.
Those of Purna-puriyas come from Senkereh the ancient Larsa, and consist of bricks, showing that he repaired the great temple of the Sun at that city which was originally built by Urukh. But the chief fame of Kurri-galzu arises from his having been the founder of an important city.
The excavations conducted at these places, especially at Niffer, Senkereh, Warka, and Mugheir, were eminently successful.
The ruins, which bear now the name of Senkereh or Sinkara, consist of a low circular platform, about four and a half miles in circumference, rising gradually from the level of the plain to a central mound, the highest point of which attains an elevation of seventy feet above the plain itself, and is distinctly visible from a distance of fifteen miles.
The kings are proud of calling themselves the guardians of the temple of Bel in Nippur, nominated to the office by the god himself, and reviving an old title of the kings of Agade, style themselves also 'king of the four regions. Another change in the political horoscope is reflected in the subjection of Ur to a district whose center was Larsa, not far from Ur, and represented by the mound Senkereh.
A little to the west of Lagas was Larsa, the modern Senkereh, famous for its ancient temple of the Sun-god, a few miles to the north-west of which stood Erech, now Warka, dedicated to the Sky-god Anu and his daughter Istar. Northward of Nippur was Bab-ili or Babylon, "the Gate of God," a Semitic translation of its original Sumerian name, Ka-Dimirra.
It was, on the contrary, a Mesopotamian deity from whom the town of Mabug near Carchemish, called Bambykê by the Greeks, and assimilated by the Arabs to their Membij, "a source," derived its name. Can it be from this Syrian deity that the father of Arioch received his name? The capital of Arioch or Eri-Aku was Larsa, the city of the Sun-god, now called Senkereh.
At any rate it is a son of Kudur-Mabug and not of the Elamite sovereign who receives a principality in Babylonia. But Ellasar is clearly the Larsa of the cuneiform inscriptions, perhaps with the word al, "city," prefixed. Larsa, the modern Senkereh, was in Southern Babylonia, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, not far from Erech, and to the north of Ur.
He repaired the great temple of the Sun at Senkereh and constructed for himself a new palace at Kalwadha, or Chilmad, not far from the modern Baghdad. His inscriptions have been found at Babylon, at Zerghul, and at Tel-Sifr; and it is thought probable that he made Babylon his ordinary place of residence.
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