Thapsacus


Thapsacus was an ancient town along the western bank of the Euphrates river that would now lie in modern Syria. Thapsacus was the Greek and Roman name for the town. The town was important and prosperous due to its river crossing, which allowed east-west land traffic to pass through it. Its precise location is unknown and there are several different locations identified as the site of Thapsacus. One possibility is a location close to Carchemish, which now lies in Turkey, on its border with Syria. Karkamış and Jarabulus are the closest modern towns in Turkey and Syria respectively. More recently it has been suggested that Thapsacus was renamed to Seleucia at the Zeugma, which lies further upstream on the Euphrates.

Location

Farrell and Engels argue that Thapsacus was located in the vicinity of Carchemish. There are several classical sources which support this. The oldest source is the 401 BC marching itinerary of Cyrus the Younger as given by Xenophon, in his Anabasis. Farrell calculates that the march rates support a crossing at Carchemish, then across to the Balikh River and then down that river to its junction with the Euphrates. The Greek geographer Eratosthenes, who lived during the third and second century BC, gave a distance of 4,800 stades from Thapsacus to Babylon through the route along the Euphrates. This distance is, which conforms to the actual distance of about between Carchemish and Babylon. Eratosthenes also gives a distance of 2,400 stades for the shortest route to the Tigris from Thapsacus. This distance is, which is also the approximate distance as measured with modern techniques. Arrian writes that Alexander the Great kept the Euphrates and the Armenian mountains on his left after he crossed the Euphrates at Thapsacus in 331 BC. Engels interprets this as additional support for a location near Carchemish.
The city's identification with Carchemish is supported by its similar role. In neo-Assyrian times the city of Carchemish was the main crossing point on the Euphrates. For many centuries it had been the capital city of the major neo-Hittite kingdom in north-western Syria. Trade between east and west passed through it and because of this its system of weights and measures became a standard that was later adopted by the Assyrians and referred to as the Carchemish standard. This standard in trade with Syria continued into neo-Babylonian and Persian times as illustrated by a letter from year 9 of Kuraš/Cyrus where this standard was then known as the measure of Tapsuḫu. The continued importance of the city is the reason Eratosthenes choose Thapsakos as one of the reference points for his system of latitude and longitude.
Thapsakos' identification with Europos finds some support from a corrupt passage in Plinius' Naturalis Historia. In his description of places along the Euphrates, from source to mouth, he gives the following account of the right bank of the Euphrates between Zeugma and Sura. "And in Syria towns: Europus formerly Thapsacus, now Amphipolis, the Tent-Dwelling Arabs. Thus it continues to the place called Sura". The passage reads as if there should be a list of towns and we know from classical references that there were other towns along this strip. In addition it is known that Amphipolis was different from Europus as Stephanos of Byzantine says it was called Tourmeda by the locals. One solution is to read the town list as "Europus formerly Thapsacus,..., now Amphipolis,...".
Gawlikowsi supports the identification of Thapsacus with Seleucia at the Zeugma, which is further upstream on the Euphrates.
The town has also been linked with Dibsi Faraj. Further it has been linked with the town of Balis in Halab district in Syria.

Biblical references

There are two references to Tiphsah in the Bible, both of which are the subject of debate over whether or not they refer to Thapsacus: