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Updated: June 29, 2025
We have no historical account of the great battle of Carchemish. Jeremiah, however, beholds it in vision. He sees the Egyptians "dismayed and turned away back their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back, since fear is round about them."
Its merchants grew rich, and "the mina of Carchemish" became a standard of value in the ancient world. Its capture by Sargon destroyed a rival of Assyrian trade, and opened the road to the Mediterranean to the armies of Assyria. The decay of the Hittite and Mitannian power meant the revival of the older Aramæan population of the country.
According to the Maya, their name is significative of these facts, since KAT or KATAH is a verb that means to place impediments on the road, to come forth and obstruct the passage. Carchemish was their great emporium, where merchants from afar congregated; it was consequently a city of merchants. CAH means a city, and Chemul is navigator.
Probably it should be sought about Zobair, or a little further inland.. The chief provincial cities were Susa and Badaca in Susiana; Anat, Sirki, and Carchemish, on the Middle Euphrates; Sidikan on the Khabour; Harran on the Bilik; Hamath, Damascus, and Jerusalem, in Inner Syria; Tyre, Sidon, Ashdod, Ascalon, and Gaza, upon the coast.
Nebuchadnezzar's victory over Necho, at Carchemish, enabled the Babylonian king to tread in the footsteps of the Assyrian conquerors. The revolt of Zedekiah, which the prophet Jeremiah was unable to prevent, and his alliance with Egypt, led to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. In this period of national ruin, the prophetic spirit found a voice through Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
For Pharaoh Necho was an Idolator; yet his Words to the good King Josiah, in which he advised him by Messengers, not to oppose him in his march against Carchemish, are said to have proceeded from the mouth of God; and that Josiah not hearkning to them, was slain in the battle; as is to be read 2 Chron. 35. vers. 21,22,23.
The defeat of Necho at Carchemish handed Palestine over to the Babylonians, and indirectly brought about the destruction of Jerusalem; even in the age of the Ptolemies Egypt still influenced the history of Israel, and the Jews of Alexandria prepared the way for the Christian Church.
The Hittite empire also had been broken up, and henceforth we hear only of "the kings of the Hittites" who ruled over a number of small states. The Semites of Syria had succeeded in rolling back the wave of Hittite conquest, and in absorbing their Hittite conquerors. The capture of Carchemish by Sargon of Assyria in B.C. 717 marks the end of Hittite dominion south of the Taurus.
Mita's relations with Kue, Tabal and Carchemish do not, in themselves, argue that his seat of power was anywhere else than in the east of Asia Minor, where Moschi did actually survive till much later times: but, on the other hand, the occurrence of inscriptions in the distinctive script of Phrygia at Eyuk, east of the Halys, and at Tyana, south-east of the central Anatolian desert, argue that at some time the filaments of Phrygian power did stretch into Cappadocia and towards the land of the later Moschi.
The battle of Carchemish put an end to Egyptian conquests in the East, and enabled the young sovereign of Babylonia to attain a power and elevation such as no Oriental monarch had ever before enjoyed. Babylon became the centre of a new empire, which embraced the countries that had bowed down to the Assyrian yoke.
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