Built, destroyed and rebuilt more than twenty times over 6,000 years, Megiddo is the battlefield of history. The place of mankind’s earliest recorded battle, Megiddo is mentioned in Revelations by the name Armageddon (from Har Megiddo meaning Mount Megiddo). It is the site of the final confrontation between good and evil.
Overlooking the fertile Jezreel Valley and guarding the strategic and Iucrative route between Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was inevitable that Megiddo would be constantly fought over.
First inhabited during Neolithic times, Megiddo was fortified by the Canaanites around 2,000 BC. Two centuries later it was a stronghold of the Hittites, Shepherd Kings who invaded both Palestine and Egypt.
In the 15th century BC Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III led a great army across the Sinai Desert. Marching up the Mediterranean coast and inland he defeated the assembled “Princes of the North” beneath Megiddo’s walls. With a detailed account of both the journey and the combat itself etched on the walls of the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, the victory at Megiddo is the earliest single battle (as opposed to campaign or war) ever to be recorded.
The famous Tel el Amarna tablets contain letters written by the Governor of Megiddo asking the help of pharaoh Amenophis III. He was being harassed by bands of Hapiru, believed to be the original Hebrews. Later King David defeated the Philistines bringing Megiddo into his flourishing Israelite kingdom, and his son Solomon, who extended Israel’s commercial network, made Megiddo one of his administrative centers.
It was the Biblical mention of Solomon’s 1,400 chariots (1 Kings 10:26) stationed in his cities that led early archaeologists to conclude they had found Solomon’s Stables in Megiddo. It is now reasoned that so many horses were probably stabled outside the city walls, not within. Megiddo is one of Israel’s most extensive ongoing digs and the Museum of Megiddo has a model and many displayed showing the tel before and after Solomon’s reign.
Even in the First World War Megiddo figured as a battleground. It was fought over as the British general Allenby swept the Turkish forces north from Jerusalem back as far as Damascus, before they broke completely as he pushed on towards Constantinople. For his work he was granted the title Allenby, Lord of Megiddo.
*For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. …And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. Revelation 16:14-16
This page is part of the book The Holy Land of Jesus
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