Saturday, December 7, 2013

ARCHAEOLOGY: (K)Carchemish dig

"KARKEMISH, NOVEMBER 5 - The New York Times called him ''a tanned, scrawny Indiana Jones'', and Nicolo' Marchetti is surely the only archeologist in the world today digging for the treasures of the past under the watchful eye of al-Qaeda machine guns.
Marchetti leads the Turkish-Italian team that is unearthing the Hittite capital of Karkemish, which has been named in the Bible,... On the banks of the Euphrates River, the excavation site straddles the border between Turkey and war-torn Syria. First discovered and briefly explored in the early 20th century by T. H. Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia, Karkemish now lies within a mine-infested military zone, 65% of it in Turkey and 35% in Syria.
Marchetti is proudest of a stele, or commemorative slab, carved with the face of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of Karkemish. He destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon in 587 BC, and built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were the seventh wonder of the ancient world."
ALF
After all this,
when Josiah had set the temple in order, Necho king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, "Take me away; I am badly wounded." So they took him out of his chariot, put him in his other chariot and brought him to Jerusalem,
where he died.
2 Chronicles 35:20,23,24 NIV
Concerning Egypt:
This is the message against the army of Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt, which was defeated at Carchemish on the Euphrates River by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:
What do I see?
They are terrified, they are retreating, their warriors are defeated.
They flee in haste without looking back, and there is terror on every side,"
declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 46:2,5 NIV
"First identified by the British Museum archaeologist George Smith in 1876 as the kingdom of Karkemish mentioned in the Bible, the site was later explored with permission of the Ottoman sultan by a team that included David G. Hogarth, C. L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence — later known as Lawrence of Arabia. They found Assyrian and Hittite temples, palaces and hieroglyphics." NYT