Battle of Karkemiš
The Battle of Karkemiš was a military conflict between the armies of Egypt and Babylon that began in 605 BC. Took place near the ancient city of Karkemiš . It ended in the defeat of the Egyptian troops. The battle is also briefly mentioned in the Bible .
Events
Since the end of the 7th century BC The Assyrian Empire was increasingly under pressure from the expansive Babylonian Empire . In 614 the capital Assur , and in 612 Nineveh, fell to the Babylonians, whereupon the Assyrians had to evade to Harran . When they were there in 610 BC Were attacked by the Babylonians, they had to retreat behind the Euphrates under their king Aššur-uballiṭ II . There they received support from the Egyptian troops of Pharaoh Necho II and tried unsuccessfully to recapture Harran the following year. In the years 607/606 BC The fighting concentrated in the area around Kummuh , whereby it is reported that the Egyptian troops were stationed in Karkemiš and had operated from there. For this reason, the Babylonian Crown Prince Nebuchadnezzar II undertook in 605 BC A campaign against Karkemiš.
Nebuchadnezzar crossed the Euphrates, as Vogt suspects, about 20 km south of Karkemiš near Til Barsip, where there was a ford. The occupation of the city stood in front of the city for an open field battle after they had been reinforced by a support army. The Egyptian army had already set out before the news of the Babylonian march from Egypt and was perhaps led by Pharaoh personally. In the course of the fighting, the Babylonians invaded the suburbs of Karkemiš. Traces of house-to-house fighting could still be found during excavations in 1912. Eventually the Egyptians suffered defeat. Some of them fled to the southwest, others to the city itself. Nebuchadnezzar then pursued them as far as Hama , where he finally crushed the Egyptian army.
After this devastating defeat, Egypt had to give up the entire area up to Wadi al-Arish . It was possible to stop a further advance of the Babylonians and 600 BC. BC to recapture the lost city of Gaza , but the supremacy of Egypt in the eastern Mediterranean was broken for the time being.
literature
- Kurt Galling , Riekele Borger (ed.): Text book on the history of Israel. 3rd edition, Mohr, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-16-142361-5 .
- JD Hawkins: Karkamiš. In: Erich Ebeling, Bruno Meissner, Dietz Otto Edzard (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Volume 5, De Gruyter, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-11-007192-4 , pp. 426-446.
- W. Röllig: Mizir, Mizru, Musur, Musri III, Muzir. In: Erich Ebeling, Bruno Meissner, Dietz Otto Edzard (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Volume 8, De Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-014809-9 , pp. 261-269.
- E. Vogt: The neo-Babylonian chronicle about the battle of Carchemish and the capture of Jerusalem. In: Pieter Arie Hendrik de Boer (Ed.): Volume du congres: Strasbourg 1956 (= Supplements to Vetus Testamentum. [VT] Volume 4). Leiden 1957, pp. 67-96.
Individual evidence
- ↑ ( Jer 46,2-12 EU )
- ↑ W. Röllig: Mizir, Mizru, Musur, Musri III, Muzir. In: Erich Ebeling, Bruno Meissner, Dietz Otto Edzard (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie. P. 269.
- ^ A b Kurt Galling, Riekele Borger (Ed.): Text book on the history of Israel. P. 73, ( restricted online version in Google Book search).
- ↑ E. Vogt: The neo-Babylonian chronicle of the battle of Carchemish and the capture of Jerusalem. In: Pieter Arie Hendrik de Boer (ed.): Volume du congres: Strasbourg 1956. Leiden 1957 pp. 74-76, ( limited online version in the Google book search).