Ancient city of Nehardea

City of Nehardea is the city located on the northern portion of the Euphrates River, the home of central Yeshiva in Babylonia.  It has been identified with Tal Nihar, found on modern maps of Iraq opposite Ctesiphon on the Tigris, the Sasanian capital.

Nehardea was an important Jewish centre at least from the early first century CE.  Flavius Jospehus describes Nehardea as the centre of Jewish sovereignty, under the leadership of the brothers Hasinai and Hanilai, who exercised authority around the years 20-35 CE.

It was the site of a famous Talmudic academy, which was destroyed in 259 CE. Most of its scholars then moved to the academy at Pumbedita.
Ancient city of Nehardea

Seleucia on the Tigris

In 312 BC Syrian King Seleucus I Nicator founded this city on the right bank of the Tigris, about 32 km southeast of Baghdad at the mouth of the Royal Canal that connected the Tigris with the Euphrates, to be his eastern capital.

King Seleucus I Nicator had been one of Alexander the Great’s generals.

Seleucia on the Tigris was built largely with materials brought from Babylon, and its founding marks the end of Babylon’s political significance.

Seleucia was populated with Macedonian and Greeks and also included many Jews and Syrians. The Tigris and Euphrates flowed near its walls and rendered it one of the richest commercial cities of ancient times.

Seleucia retained its independence during the Parthian Empire and was probably at the heart of numerous internal conspiracies and power struggles for the throne in the first century BC and AD.

Because of it location on the Tigris Seleucia was one of the targets of Roman attack in any campaign against Parthia and later Persia.

Avidius Cassius burned the city in AD 164, and when Septimius Severus passed through the region on his Parthian campaign of 198 the site was completely abandoned.

The name Seleucia was used for other cities in the East, founded in the Greek style.
Seleucia on the Tigris

Ancient city of Carchemish

The ruins of Carchemish, powerful city-state and Hittite capital, lie near the Syrian town of Jerablus, just across the border in Turkish territory.

In the inscriptions of Ramses II, Carchemish usually called Kadesh. Carchemish means the city of Chemosh. Being a city named after or dedicated to a god, it was a holy city.

The location of Carchemish at a major east-west crossing of the Euphrates as well as it position on the Euphrates assured the site’s importance as a principal thoroughfare in the ancient world.

Carchemish was important from ancient times because of its strategic position on the westernmost point of Syria and convenient crossing place on the upper Euphrates River where trade route from the lower Euphrates turned west to Anatolia.

In the late Bronze Age, Carchemish was already ringed by storing protective walls.

It was an important vassal and ally Assyria in the late nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries BC and from the time Assyria seized the throne of Mari until Mari’s destruction by Hammurabi of Babylon, Carchemish was vassal.

The chief significant of Carchemish from a biblical perspective is that it was the site of the victory of the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II against the Egyptians under Pharaoh Necho II in 605 century.

The Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC resulted in a crushing defeat for the Egyptians, the victorious Babylonians pursuing them southward.
Ancient city of Carchemish