New City/Newtown

The New City (Akkadian ālu eššu) district is well documented in the extant cuneiform sources, beginning the the late Old Babylonian Period. It is the northern district of the eastern part of the eastern half of the inner city of Babylon.  It is bounded by the Ka-dingirra district in the west,  by the walls Imgur-Enlil and Nēmetti-Enlil in the north, and by the Kullab district in the east and south. According to Tintir = Babylon IV (lines 21–23), the dais Eurunanam and the temples Ekitušgirzal and Eandasaya were located in this part of Babylon. According to Tintir = Babylon V (line 95), the western and eastern limits of New City were the Ištar Gate and the temple of the goddess Bēlet-Eanna (Ekitušgirzal). With regard to the use of the Ištar Gate as a delimiter for New City, George (1992: 375) remarks: “Its western limit is given here as the Ištar Gate, which is also the northern limit of Ka-dingirra. The use of this landmark in the present line is not exact, for the temple E-maḫ, situated a short distance inside the Ištar Gate, but certainly east of it, was in Ka-dingirra nevertheless. The true border between Ka-dingirra and Newtown was thus somewhat east of the Ištar Gate. The city gate is no doubt used as the limiting point in the text because it was such a well-known landmark, and because the compiler of Tintir apparently prefers to use the city gates, wherever possible, as such points.”