Babylon Defeats Egypt at Carchemish
605 BC, firm dateFirm date
The Babylonian crown prince Nebuchadnezzar destroys the Egyptian army at Carchemish on the Euphrates and, within months, becomes king. Egypt loses Syria and Palestine, and Judah passes from Egyptian to Babylonian rule.
In 609 BC Pharaoh Necho II marched north to the Euphrates. King Josiah of Judah went out against him at Megiddo and was killed (2 Kings 23:29–30). The Babylonian chronicle for that year records a large Egyptian army crossing the Euphrates with the last king of Assyria to attack Harran, without success (Babylonian Chronicle 3 year 17). Necho then removed Josiah’s son Jehoahaz after a reign of three months and took him to Egypt. He put another son, Eliakim, on the throne under the name Jehoiakim, and laid on Judah a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold (2 Kings 23:31–35).
Four years later the Egyptian army was at Carchemish on the Euphrates. The Babylonian chronicle tells what happened in a few lines. In the twenty-first year of Nabopolassar the king stayed at home, and his eldest son, the crown prince Nebuchadnezzar II, led the army to Carchemish, crossed the river and attacked. The Egyptians gave way and were beaten. Those who got away were overtaken in the district of Hamath, and the chronicle says that not one man escaped to his own country. Nebuchadnezzar then conquered the whole region of Hamath (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 1–8).
Jeremiah dates the same battle to the fourth year of Jehoiakim and names the pharaoh: it was the army of Necho that Nebuchadnezzar struck at Carchemish. His poem on the defeat says of the Egyptian warriors, “In the north by the river Euphrates they have stumbled and fallen” (Jeremiah 46:2–6).
Nabopolassar died that summer. Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon and took the throne (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 9–11). In the rest of that year and the next he marched unopposed through what the chronicle calls the Hatti-land, that is, Syria and Palestine, and its kings came before him with tribute (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 12–17). Kings sums up the outcome: the king of Egypt did not come out of his land again, because the king of Babylon had taken everything that had been his from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates (2 Kings 24:7).
For Judah the battle meant a change of master. Jehoiakim served Nebuchadnezzar for three years and then rebelled (2 Kings 24:1), which led to the First Deportation to Babylon. In that same fourth year of Jehoiakim, Jeremiah announced that Judah and the nations around it would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:1) (Jeremiah 25:8–11).
How this is dated
Firm date. Fixed by contemporary documentation and not seriously disputed.
The Babylonian chronicle puts the battle in the twenty-first year of Nabopolassar, before his death on the eighth of the month Abu, and dates Nebuchadnezzar’s accession to the first of Ululu (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 1–8) (Babylonian Chronicle 5 obv. 9–11). By the conversion tables of R. A. Parker and W. H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 75 (1956), those days are 15 August and 7 September 605 BC, so the battle was fought in the spring or summer of that year.
Jeremiah dates it to the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 46:2). Daniel puts Nebuchadnezzar’s first move against Jerusalem in Jehoiakim’s third year (Daniel 1:1); the difference is usually explained by a count that leaves out the accession year. The chronicle speaks only of “the Egyptian army”. The pharaoh’s name comes from Jeremiah.
Primary sources
Scripture
In context
Grows out of
- 622 BC, estimated date
- 609 BC, firm date
Leads to
- about 605 BC to 536 BC, traditional date
- 16 March 597 BC, firm date