View to Carchemish 2

View to Carchemish from the northwest.  On the left side of the image, the citadel, with a Turkish Jandarma post, is visible.  Spread across the center horizontal plane of the picture is part of the large rampart that encircles the "Inner Town."   The Citadel and the Inner Town were the "heart" of ancient Carchemish.

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The huge mound (220 acres) lies on the Turkish/Syrian border with 135 acres in Turkey and 85 acres in Syria (Jerablus).  It consists of an Outer Town, an Inner Town, and a Citadel.

Carchemish is a large antiquity site on the west bank of the Euphrates River located about 60 miles northeast of Aleppo.  It is situated at an important crossing point of the Euphrates River and trade routes from the east (Assyria and Babylonia) passed through it on their way to the Levant and/or Turkey (Hittite country).

It is mentioned numerous times in ancient Hittite, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, etc. texts as well as in the Bible (Isaiah 10:9; Jeremiah 46:2-3; 2 Chronicles 35:20).  It was the scene of the famous battle between the Egyptian Pharaoh Neco II who was defeated by the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in 605 BC—see Jeremiah 46 and the Babylonian Chronicle).