SENNAAR (Hebr. Šin'ār). — A geographical term which in certain biblical pericopes means the land of Babylonia, e.g., Gen. 10:10 ff. (even in opposition to Assyria); ibid. 11:1–9 (the Tower of Babel [v.]); Dan. 1:2; Zach. 5:11. In others, however, it would seem
to indicate Mesopotamia in a more general sense, as in Ios. 7:21, whereas in Gen. 14:1, 9 and Is. 11:11 it might also indicate another Šin'ār in northern Syria.
The precise meaning of the word is highly debated and will remain so Mari (v.) have been published. The word would correspond to the Akkadian Šanhar, which occurs in three Assyrian texts (the el-'Amārnah letters) and three Hittite texts from Boğazköj discovered thus far, as well as to the Egyptian Šugr (Sangar), found in thirteen places (Gardiner). In Egyptian the word denotes a very important country. There is, moreover, no Egyptian term for Babylonia. For this reason Gardiner, in the most exhaustive study of the subject, believes that it means, as it generally does in the Bible, the land of Babylonia. Albright, however, had located it 24 years earlier in the land of Pana, in the Middle Euphrates region, around Terqa. Gelb believes that it lay around Kilis, near Aleppo. Fr. R. de Vaux has recently revived the opinion that it originally meant the region around Mount Šinğar, west of Mossul (Greek Singara). The identification with “Sumer” has been abandoned.