WI: Necho II obliterates babylonian/median/scytian army in Carchemish

Or, what should be done in order to get Necho II as the ruler of the greatest power in 600 BC?

The african exploration could be a POD if Necho II decides to not send a fleet and use it for establish in Asia?

If you want to create an ATL, please be my guest.
 
So he defeats them at Carchemish. What then? Egypt has not historically had much luck projecting power past the levant or maybe Syria, so it's an open question how far Necho II's reach will actually be. If it is limited there(let's assume for a minute that he is able to prop up some kind of Assyrian state in north Syria and furthermore assume that it won't splinter into a million little tiny statelets), what then? Does Assyria re-emerge as a serious power(unlikely, given that pretty much their entire administration has been badly disrupted and that was the backbone of the Assyrian state, but they've bounced back when they shouldn't have before)? Babylon will be weakened, so I could see a modest-to-serious Elamite revival and maybe even push into Mesopotamia, which will have fairly important consequences for any future Persian empire. This in turn could be good for the Medes(We have people to sell horses to!) or bad(getting marginalized once more!). So overall I'm not sure if we'll get one dominant power or if the near east becomes multipolar again for a while in the way it was in the second millennium. Incidentally, this could be good for the Israelites/Judahites; they tend to benefit from political fragmentation. There could also be interesting cultural effects; does Babylon still become a major center for astronomical and mathematical study and does it still become a synedoche for the great and immoral city? Is there still a "Babylonian captivity"?
 
Well, if he does not navigate around Africa, he can use his fleet to seize Cyprus and secure the island and the Levant, including Syria, giving him a big revenue, because now he can control all the commercial routes, and use it as a base to capture Anatolia.

Also, his father Nabopolassar was very old at the time he took Ninive, in fact he died just after the battle in OTL. If Nebuchadnezzar died in Carchemish, that would be a fatal blow to Babylon.

Looking all the previous ATL around the same age, i can think in some kind of military reform, inspired in the nomad tribes just at north of Syria, and the greek mercenaries (Necho after the defeat started relationships with carians and greeks), in order to start to conquest all the surrounging states.

And yes, the biggest impact would be cultural, just imagine, egyptian temples in Anatolia and Babylon...
 
So he defeats them at Carchemish. What then? Egypt has not historically had much luck projecting power past the levant or maybe Syria, so it's an open question how far Necho II's reach will actually be. If it is limited there(let's assume for a minute that he is able to prop up some kind of Assyrian state in north Syria and furthermore assume that it won't splinter into a million little tiny statelets), what then? Does Assyria re-emerge as a serious power(unlikely, given that pretty much their entire administration has been badly disrupted and that was the backbone of the Assyrian state, but they've bounced back when they shouldn't have before)? Babylon will be weakened, so I could see a modest-to-serious Elamite revival and maybe even push into Mesopotamia, which will have fairly important consequences for any future Persian empire. This in turn could be good for the Medes(We have people to sell horses to!) or bad(getting marginalized once more!). So overall I'm not sure if we'll get one dominant power or if the near east becomes multipolar again for a while in the way it was in the second millennium. Incidentally, this could be good for the Israelites/Judahites; they tend to benefit from political fragmentation. There could also be interesting cultural effects; does Babylon still become a major center for astronomical and mathematical study and does it still become a synedoche for the great and immoral city? Is there still a "Babylonian captivity"?

I think this is way too late for an Elamite revival, at least if we mean the Elamite language/religion/ethnic polity. Maybe an Aryan state based in that region, but that's not too different from OTL's Achaemenids.
 
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