CHARCAMIS. - A very ancient city on the right bank of the Euphrates (Vulgate Charcamis, Assyrian inscriptions Gar-ga-miš, or Kar-ga-miš, Egyptian Quair-qamaša or Karba-miša), in upper Syria, perhaps identical with present-day Gerbās or Gerābis-Europos. It was always a center of commerce between Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Egypt, because the Euphrates was easily crossed there and became navigable there.
In ancient times it was under Assyria. Then it was a center of the Hittites; the Egyptians waged war against these, and Thutmose III defeated them in a battle near C. (inscription of Amen-em-beb, in H. Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte to the Old Testament, 2nd ed., Berlin and Leipzig 1926, p. 89). The Hittite king of C., Suppiluliuma (1395-1355), made it the capital of a separate kingdom. Around the year 1200 B.C. C. passed under the Arameans, whose culture appears in the palaces built there. In the year 738 the king Pisiris submitted to Tiglath-Pileser III, king of the Assyrians, and when in 717 he conspired against them, he was defeated and led with his family into Assyria by Sargon, while his army was incorporated into the Assyrian one. It seems that Is. 10:19 alludes to these events. According to II Par. 35:20 and Jer. 46:2, the pharaoh Necho of Egypt waged war against the king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar, and since the cited texts speak of C., many suppose that a battle took place there in 605. The texts, however, say only that the king of Egypt crossed the Euphrates near C., and this would have happened in 609 B.C. From Persian times the city is no longer mentioned, perhaps because the caravans had found another, more convenient crossing over the Euphrates.
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