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Carchemish, Turkey/Syria, 600BC

Carchemish, Turkey / Syria, 600BC

From Wikipedia...

"Carchemish was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its history the city was independent, but it was also part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Today it is on the frontier between Turkey and Syria. Carchemish is now an extensive set of ruins (90 hectares, of which 55 lie in Turkey and 35 in Syria). The site includes an acropolis along the river, an Inner Town encircled by earthen ramparts and an Outer Town (most of which lies in Syrian territory).

The site has been occupied since the Neolithic period with cist tombs from ca. 2400 BC (Early Bronze Age). The city is mentioned in documents found in the Ebla archives of the 3rd millennium BC when Carchemish was an important center of timber trade. It had treaty relationships with Ugarit and Mitanni. In ancient times, the city commanded the main ford in the region across the Euphrates, a situation which must have contributed greatly to its historical and strategic importance.

In the summer of 605 BC, the Battle of Carchemish was fought here by the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar II and that of Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt and the remnants of the Assyrian army. The Egyptians met the full might of the Babylonian and Median army led by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, where the combined Egyptian and Assyrian forces were destroyed. This battle was one of the pivotal turning moments in ancient history, its impact was so great that the battle is also mentioned and described in the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah. The war was so total that Assyria ceased to exist as an independent power, and Egypt retreated and was no longer a significant force in the Ancient Near East. Babylonia reached its economic peak after 605 BC.

After a brief Neo-Babylonian occupation, archeological excavations have found that there were three phases of Achaemenid occupation, a significant reconstruction in Hellenistic times, a monumental phase from the Late Roman period, Early Byzantine buildings and then an Abbasid phase before the final abandonment of the site around c. 1200AD"