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Other Hittite-Aramaean and Phoenician monuments, as yet undocumented with literary records, exhibit a strange but not unpleasing mixture of foreign motifs, such as we see on the stele from Amrith in the inland district of Arvad. But perhaps the most remarkable example of Syrian art we possess is the king's gate recently discovered at Carchemish.
It served also to mask and overawe the larger and more wealthy city of Carchemish, a few miles north, which would remain for a long time to come free of permanent Assyrian occupation, though subjected to blackmail on the occasion of every western raid by the Great King. With this last westward advance of his permanent territorial holding, Shalmaneser appears to have rested content.
The Pharaoh of Egypt, alarmed at the approach of so formidable an invader, sent him presents, which included a crocodile and a hippopotamus, and on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, near Carchemish and Pethor, he hunted wild elephants, as Thothmes III. had done before him. His son still claimed supremacy in the west, as is shown by the fact that he erected statues in "the land of the Amorites."
Carchemish would then be cah-chemul, the city of navigators, of merchants. KATISH, their sacred city, would be the city where sacrifices are offered. CAH, city, and TICH, a ceremony practiced by the ancient Mayas, and still performed by their descendants all through Central America.
Besides the great cylinder inscription of Tiglath-Pileser there exist five more years of his annals in fragments, from which we learn that he continued his aggressive expeditious during this space, chiefly towards the north west, subduing the Lulumi in Northern Syria, attacking and taking Carchemish, and pursuing the inhabitants across the Euphrates in boats.
Above the Aramaeans are the Khatti or Hittites, whose chief city, Carchemish, is an important place; they are divided into tribes, and, like the Aramaeans, occupy both banks of the great stream. These Qummukh hold the mountain country on both sides of the Upper Tigris, and have a number of strongholds, chiefly on the right bank.
Carchemish on the Euphrates became one of their Syrian capitals, commanding the high-road of commerce and war from east to west. Thothmes III., the conqueror of Western Asia, boasts of the gifts he received from "the land of Khata the greater," so called, it would seem, to distinguish it from another and lesser land of Khata that of the Hittites of the south.
All pottery hand-made. Figurines: rude clay and stone figurines are likely to occur, but have as yet been found very rarely in Neolithic strata. Copper implements: traces observed at Carchemish: to be looked for. Conjunction of such slabs with bricks would be an indication of an early Bronze Age site. Rare pot-burials survive. Implements. Pottery. Cist-graves apart from houses, in cemeteries.
It is certain that he occupied Carchemish, and made it his headquarters, but whether it submitted to him, or was besieged and taken, is unknown. All Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine were overrun, and became temporarily Egyptian possessions. But Phoenicia does not appear to have been subdued by force.
At length, in the year B.C. 605, Nabopolassar, who felt himself unequal to the fatigues of a campaign, resolved to entrust his forces to Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and to send him to contend with the Egyptians. The key of Syria at this time was Carchemish, a city situated on the right bank of the Euphrates, probably near the site which was afterwards occupied by Hierapolis.
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