Correction!

In the previous post, I typed that the Battle of Carchemish was with Babylon and EGYPT by mistake......it was actually between Babylon and Assyria...the significance being that Assyria was no longer a world power.....God had me check my facts this morning because I was interested in the battle!  Glad I did!!The Battle of Carchemish was fought about 605 BC between the allied armies ofEgypt and Assyria against Babylonia.

Contents  [hide] 1 Background 2 Battle 3 Results 4 Records of the battle 5 Notes

[edit]Background

When the Assyrian capital Nineveh was overrun by the Babylonians in 612 BC, the Assyrians moved their capital to Harran. When Harran was captured by the Babylonians in 610 BC, the capital was once again moved, this time to Carchemish, on the Euphrates river. Egypt was allied with the Assyrian kingAshur-uballit II, and marched in 609 BC to his aid against the Babylonians.

The Egyptian army of Pharaoh Necho II was delayed at Megiddo by the forces of King Josiah of Judah. Josiah was killed and his army was defeated. The dead body of Josiah was delivered to Jerusalem immediately and buried according to the customs of Judah's kings, near the grave of King David.

The Egyptians and Assyrians together crossed the Euphrates and laid siege to Harran, which they failed to re-take. They then retreated to northern Syria.

[edit]Battle

The Egyptians met the full might of the Babylonian army led by Nebuchadnezzar II at Carchemish, where the combined Egyptian and Assyrian forces were destroyed by the Babylonians and the Assyrian Empire collapsed.

[edit]Results

Assyria ceased to exist as an independent power.

Egypt retreated and was no longer a significant force in the Ancient Near East. Babylon controlled the territory up to the Wadi of Egypt and after several subsequent reverses Pharaoh Necho no longer left Egypt to exert any influence in the affairs of the region.^[1]

Babylonia reached its economic peak after 605 BC^[2] and became the dominant military power in the region, from the Battle of Carchemish until the defeat of Nabonidus at the hands of Cyrus the Persian some sixty-five years later. (See Battle of Opis.)

[edit]Records of the battle

The Jerusalem Chronicle, part of the Babylonian Chronicles, now housed in the British Museum, claim that Nebuchadnezzar "crossed the river to go against the Egyptian army which lay in Karchemiš. They fought with each other and the Egyptian army withdrew before him. He accomplished their defeat and beat them to non-existence. As for the rest of the Egyptian army which had escaped from the defeat so quickly that no weapon had reached them, in the district of Hamath the Babylonian troops overtook and defeated them so that not a single man escaped to his own country. At that time Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole area of Hamath."^[3]

The battle is also mentioned and described in the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah.^[4]

[edit]Notes

1. ^ II Kings 24:7
2. ^ King, Philip J., 1993 Jeremiah: An Archaeological Companion , Westminster/John Knox Press p.22 [1]
3. ^ Chronicle Concerning the Early Years of Nebuchadnezzar II. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
4. ^ The Bible, Jer. 46:3-12

So you see that Babylon took out Egypt, but that was not the main point.....Assyria had been the actual world power at the time; Egypt was already in a decline......