Ancient Carchemish (Jerablus)

2 Chronicles 35:20 .... Necho King of Egypt came up to fight against Carchemish by Euphrates:
and Josiah went out against him ...

Carchemish was strategically located on an important crossing of the Euphrates River for caravans engaged in Syrian, Mesopotamian and Anatolian trade. It was first occupied in the Neolithic period and pottery finds date back to circa 3000 BC. Tombs at Carchemish date back as far as the end of the Early Bronze Age (circa 2300 BC). The first written mention of Carchemish comes from the Mari letters from the royal archives of Mari circa 1800 BC. At that time Carchemish was ruled by a King named Aplahanda and was a center for the timber trade -- perhaps engaged in shipping timber from Anatolia down the Euphrates. In the Eighteenth Dynasty Thutmose I erected a stela near Carchemish celebrating his victorious campaign into Syria and across the Euphrates. Around the end of the reign of Akhenaten the Hittite King Suppiluliumas captured Carchemish and established his son Shar-Kushukh as its king. When the Hittite empire fell to the Sea Peoples Carchemish probably went with it. In 717 BC it went to Sargon II of Assyria and in 605 BC an important battle was fought there by the Neo-Babylonian Nebuchadnezzer II when he expelled the Egyptians from Syria

T E Lawrence with Leonard Woolley, the archaeological director, with a Hittite slab
on the excavation site at Carchemish near Aleppo before the First World War

The History of the Ancient Near East Electronic Compendium