Battle of Carchemish

In −605, Crown Prince Nebuchadnezzar led the Babylonian army against the Egyptian forces of Pharaoh Necho II, with what was left of Assyria's army, at Carchemish, a fortified city on the Euphrates on today's Turkish–Syrian border. The Babylonian Chronicle records that he crossed the river, routed the Egyptians, and pursued the survivors to Hamath, where "not a single man escaped to his own country." That summer his father Nabopolassar died, and Nebuchadnezzar hurried home to be crowned.

The victory decided who would rule the Near East for the next two generations. Jeremiah 46 preserves a vivid oracle on the battle, dated "in the fourth year of Jehoiakim": "Let not the swift flee, nor the mighty escape; in the north by the river Euphrates they have stumbled and fallen." Egypt lost the Levant, and Jehoiakim of Judah became Nebuchadnezzar's vassal, the first step toward the deportations of −597 and −586. Excavations at Carchemish by Leonard Woolley, with T. E. Lawrence, before the First World War uncovered a burned house holding objects bearing Necho's name, a trace of the battle.