Carchemish ("the fort of Chemosh"), the Moabite idol. The Assyrian monuments show it to be a city of the Hittites who held all Syria (between 1100 and 850 B.C.) from Damascus to the Euphrates at Bir; 200 miles higher up on the Euphrates than the classical Circesium. It stood where Hierapolis (Mabog) was subsequently. Important in position as commanding a passage of the Euphrates, from whence its possession was a matter of contest between Babylon and Egypt (2 Chronicles 35:20). Taken by Pharaoh Necho after the battle of Megiddo in which king Josiah, Babylon's ally, fell 610 B.C. Retaken by Nebuchadnezzar three years later, 607 B.C. (Jeremiah 46:2.) Assyria had originally taken it from the Hittites (Isaiah 10:9).