their eagerness to capture the foe. Tiglath-pileser I. had seen its walls from the opposite shore of the Euphrates, but had not ventured to approach them. Assurnatsir-pal and his son Shalmaneser had received tribute from its king, and when it finally surrendered to the armies of Sargon it was made the seat of an Assyrian satrap. The trade which had flowed through it continued to pour wealth into the hands of its merchants, and the 'maneh of Carchemish' remained a standard of value. When Egypt made her final struggle for supremacy in Asia, it was under the walls of Carchemish that the decisive struggle was fought. The battle of Carchemish in B.C. 604 drove Necho out of Syria and Palestine, and placed the destinies of the chosen people in the hands of the Babylonian king. It is possible that the ruin of Carchemish dates from the battle. However that may be, long before the beginning of the Christian era it had been supplanted by Mabog or Membij, and the great sanctuary which had made it a 'holy city' was transferred to its rival and successor.
Like Carchemish, Kadesh on the Orontes, the most southern capital the Hittites possessed, was also a 'holy city.' Pictures of it have been preserved on the monuments of Ramses II. We gather from them that it stood on the shore of the Lake of Horns, still called the 'Lake of Kadesh,' at the point where the Orontes flowed out of the lake. The river was conducted round the city in a double channel, across which a wide bridge was thrown, the space between the two channels being apparently occupied by a wall.
Kadesh must have been one of the last conquests made by the Hittites in Syria, and their retention of it was the visible sign of their supremacy over Western
