Ancient city of Gordium

Gordium was located at the intersection of ancient trade routes, where the Porsuk River flows into the Sakarya River.

The city original name is unknown. Gordium’s history of occupation extends back to the Early Bronze Age.

The site was discovered and identified in 1893 by the German scholar Alfred Korte, who in 1900 began excavations with his brother Gustav on the citadel.

Excavations there by American archeologists Dr Rodney S Young of Pennsylvania University from 1950 to 1974 revealed evidence of occupation from 6300 BC to about AD 189. Gordium, meaning ‘the place of Gordius’ and it original name was unknown.

The architectural and artefactual remains of the Late Bronze Age settlement make clear that the city in this period belong to the Hittite empire. The city remained under Hittite rule until their empire collapsed about 1200 BC.

Control of Anatolia passed to the Phrygians, who made Gordium their capital.

The Phrygian city of Gordium fell into Cimmerian in 687 and then no one at all lived there for around 150 years.

As Alexander the Great marched into Anatolia in the mid-fourth century BC, he is said to have been enticed by the promise of the fabled Gordian knot, which had stood in Cybele’s temple since the time of Midas.

It was finally incorporated into the Roman Empire in 85 BC.
Ancient city of Gordium

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