E´rech, one of the cities which formed the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom in the plain of Shinar (). It is not said that he built these cities, but that he established his power over them; from which we may conclude that they previously existed. Bochart seeks the name in the Aracca or Aracha of the old geographers, which was on the Tigris, upon the borders of Babylonia and Susiana. Rosenmüller happily conjectures that Erech probably lay nearer to Babylon than Aracca: and this has been lately confirmed by Col. Taylor, the British resident at Bagdad, who is disposed to find the site of the ancient Erech in the great mounds of primitive ruins, indifferently called Irak, Irka, and Senkerah, by the nomad Arabs: and sometimes El Asayiah, 'the place of pebbles.' These mounds, which are now surrounded by the almost perpetual marshes and inundations of the lower Euphrates, lie some miles east of that stream, about midway between the site of Babylon and its junction with the Tigris.