[Illustration:  211.jpg Site of Carchemish]

It lay upon the Euphrates, the winding of the river protecting it on its southern and south-eastern sides, while around its northern front ran a deep stream, its defence being further completed by a double ditch across the intervening region.  Like Qodshu, it was thus situated in the midst of an artificial island beyond the reach of the battering-ram or the sapper.  The encompassing wall, which tended to describe an ellipse, hardly measured two miles in circumference; but the suburbs extending, in the midst of villas and gardens, along the river-banks furnished in time of peace an abode for the surplus population.  The wall still rises some five and twenty to thirty feet above the plain.  Two mounds divided by a ravine command its north-western side, their summits being occupied by the ruins of two fine buildings—­a temple and a palace.* Carchemish was the last stage in a conqueror’s march coming from the south.

* Karkamisha, Gargamish, was from the beginning associated with the Carchemish of the Bible; but as the latter was wrongly identified with Circesium, it was naturally located at the confluence of the Khabur with the Euphrates.  Hincks fixed the site at Rum-Kaleh.  G. Rawlinson referred it cursorily to Hierapolis-Mabog, which position Maspero endeavoured to confirm.  Finzi, and after him G. Smith, thought to find the site at Jerabis, the ancient Europos, and excavations carried on there by the English have brought to light in this place Hittite monuments which go back in part to the Assyrian epoch.  This identification is now generally accepted, although there is still no direct proof attainable, and competent judges continue to prefer the site of Membij.  I fall in with the current view, but with all reserve.

[Illustration:  212.jpg THE TELL OF JERABIS IN ITS PRESENT CONDITION]

     Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from a cut in the Graphic.

For an invader approaching from the east or north it formed his first station.  He had before him, in fact, a choice of the three chief fords for crossing the Euphrates.  That of Thapsacus, at the bend of the river where it turns eastward to the Arabian plain, lay too far to the south, and it could be reached only after a march through a parched and desolate region where the army would run the risk of perishing from thirst.

[Illustration:  213.jpg A NORTHERN SYRIAN]

     Drawn by faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

For an invader proceeding from Asia Minor, or intending to make his way through the defiles of the Taurus, Samosata offered a convenient fording-place; but this route would compel the general, who had Naharaim or the kingdoms of Chaldaea in view, to make a long detour, and although the Assyrians used it at a later period, at the time of their expeditions to the valleys of the Halys, the Egyptians do not seem ever to have travelled by this road.  Carchemish, the place