Eric Cline on The REAL Armageddon

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:03][music] >> Eric, welcome back to the show. Uh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me on. As always now, it is now a tradition, what tie are you wearing?

[00:00:21]In honor of today's topic, today is an Egyptian-themed tie because we will, I presume, at one point be talking about the Egyptian battle fought at Megiddo.

[00:00:32]So, I thought an Egyptian tie might be appropriate for today. Absolutely. And so, first things first, Eric, Armageddon, it's not just a thing, it's a place. It is an actual place. Most people do not realize it, but yes, it is Megiddo, the site of Megiddo. In fact, that's where the name comes from.

[00:00:53]Armageddon is Har Megiddo. In Hebrew, that's the mound or mountain of Megiddo.

[00:01:01]And Armageddon originally had an H. It was Harmageddon uh originally, but you know, in Greek, the way you do an H, it's a rough breathing and it looks like an apostrophe. So, at some point, when, you know, the various manuscripts were being copied, some monk left the apostrophe off and Harmageddon became Armageddon, and that's what we have today. It's only mentioned one place in the Bible. It's in the book of Revelation 16:16.

[00:01:30]But so, when people say to me, you know, "Where are you excavating from 1994 to 2014?" I'm like, "I was digging at Armageddon." They're like, "That's not a real place." I'm like, "Actually, it is. Come on. I'll show you it." So, Megiddo is Armageddon, and our t-shirts from each season on the back, they said, "I survived Armageddon."

[00:01:53]I love it. And and so, basically, this is a site now for archaeology that we're learning we're continuing to learn more about. So, you know, it isn't just that it is a place, it's a place that actually there is extensive information coming out of the ground about. Yes, even today, still. I mean, I the renewed excavations, as they're called, which are a consortium headed by Tel Aviv University, they started 1992.

[00:02:18]They really got started in '94, and that's when I joined. And then, after 20 years, I left the project in 2014, but it's still going today. So, they are still excavating every other summer, usually odd-numbered summers, but there is still lots of information coming out of the ground, and indeed, more so now than ever before because they're using remote sensing, exact life sciences, radiocarbon, DNA. I mean, you name it, they're throwing all the the new high-tech stuff at it. So, the excavations of Megiddo are getting more and more and more interesting. In part, cuz there's so much there. I mean, there 20 cities one on top of another, >> Wow. covering 5,000 years of history.

[00:03:03]Because we just done the Trojan War as well, and that that's many different layers of city settlements there. That's only nine. I mean, that's only nine. This is at least 20. Yeah.

[00:03:15]Yeah, it starts back in the Neolithic and goes right up through, well, it goes almost until Alexander the Great. When he marched by, it was probably abandoned, but then the Romans, the Romans established one of their legionaries' camps right at the base of Megiddo, right? Which is being excavated even today. So, in essence, on the site and just off of it, it's from Neolithic right through Roman. So, it's like Jericho, one of those sites that's just continually used again and again and again in that area of the world, yeah.

[00:03:47]Exactly. I mean, I always tell my students that to have a successful site in antiquity, you need food, you need water, and you need defense. And Megiddo has all three, very much like Jericho.

[00:04:00]And actually, as it grew over the years, um it became even better for defense cuz you could see farther and farther away.

[00:04:09]So, um when excavations started at the mound in 1903, it was 110 ft tall. It's now about 70 ft tall because, as we'll talk about, Chicago took off the top couple of 20 ft or so. Um but still, in order to get to the top of the mound to excavate, you have to walk up a 70-ft tall mound, you know, first thing, 5:00 in the morning. You know, let's get that heart racing and get those steps in.

[00:04:39]Yeah.

[00:04:40]>> [snorts] >> The majority of this chat, we will focus on the archaeology and what's actually been discovered at Megiddo. But Eric, we have to start off with biblical Armageddon and why we have Armageddon today.

[00:04:55]And so, we have to go to everyone's favorite, yet strangest book in the whole of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. Yes. Yes, where basically, John, and it it's not quite clear which John. It's not the Apostle John, it's another John, and he goes into a cave and basically has a dream, and this is what is uh told to us in the Book of Revelation. By the way, it is singular, there's no S. I noticed you were good with that. Many people say, "The Book of Revelations." No, it's Revelation. Yes, and in there, it says that the penultimate battle between good and evil, not the final battle, that's going to be fought in Jerusalem like a thousand years later, but the penultimate battle between good and evil is going to be fought at a place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. That's the way it reads, and that is Megiddo. And um yeah, and we've got all kinds of imagery that we can go into, but you know, basically, uh it is good versus evil, and hopefully, good is going to win, but you know, they were never quite sure when it was going to happen. And there are still people today that have said it already happened, and the vast majority though are waiting for it to happen. So, one of the reasons I think um that that they picked this site for Armageddon or or for the penultimate battle, uh and I wrote about this. I had a book that came out in 2000 called The Battles of Armageddon. And I I don't know if you'll remember, you're probably too young, but in the run-up to 2000, we had the whole Y2K scare. Everybody thought the world was going to end because of the computers and all that. I had already been digging at Megiddo since '94 every other year, so '94, '96, '98, and I thought, "Let me write a a book about all the battles that have been fought at Megiddo uh and and publish it before Y2K, and I'll make a fortune and I can retire."

[00:07:01]But as it turned out, I found out that there were 34 battles that had been fought there. And so, it took me uh too long to write the book, and I missed the Y2K. It came out after that. So, as a result, I couldn't retire. I'm still working. But you know, so it goes. But what I figured is by the time that John would have had his revelation, there were already something like at least a dozen, if not more, battles that had already been fought, including a number of ones that are mentioned in the Bible. For instance, when Deborah fights Barak, it is by the the river, right by Megiddo. Saul and Jonathan are killed on Mount Gilboa, which is just down the valley from Megiddo.

[00:07:54]Um We've also got uh like one of the earliest night battles that is fought there. So, um by the time of John uh in, you know, in the early uh centuries AD, they would have already known this to be a place uh with a huge history for battles. And when you're looking around, where do you put like the final couple of battles? Well, Jerusalem is saved for the final battle, and I think next to that that Megiddo would have been the bloodiest place on Earth that they knew of. And so, I think they very deliberately picked it because of its history.

[00:08:32]But then, of course, after that, you continue to have battles, you know, um Saladin comes there uh and fights the Crusaders. The Mamluks and the uh and the Mongols fight there.

[00:08:46]Napoleon fights at Mount Tabor, just down the road. And of course, Lord Allenby fights in World War I there and actually mimics the tactics of Thutmose III from more than 3,000 years earlier.

[00:09:02]So, um at one point, I I thought that I agreed with Napoleon, who supposedly said that the Jezreel Valley and Megiddo is the most perfect battlefield on the face of the Earth. But you know, I looked through everything I think that Napoleon wrote, and I can't find him having said that. I think he was actually talking about Belgium, but you know, I can't prove that. So, anyway, um this is why I think Armageddon made its way into the the New Testament because they already knew that so many battles have been fought there, and they thought that one of the final ones would also take place there. So, it it makes a lot of sense to me to explain it that way.

[00:09:48]Another fact is a battle of Thermopylae in World War II, I believe, and a battle of Megiddo in World War I. So, interesting battle of Armageddon. Um Eric, you mentioned the valley there.

[00:09:58]So, can you give us a good sense of the location and just why it was such an important, such a strategic site for so many thousands of years back in in bronze, iron, and even in in stone age times? Yes, absolutely.

[00:10:13]So, Megiddo today is in what would be considered northern Israel, but it's not very far into the north.

[00:10:22]Um, the Jezreel Valley, the Valley of Israel, cuts across all of modern-day Israel.

[00:10:29]It's shaped like a triangle on its side.

[00:10:33]So, the tip is over in modern-day Haifa, and the base of the triangle is over at the Jordan River.

[00:10:42]So, that's about what, 30 or 40 miles east-west across modern Israel.

[00:10:48]Um, but north-south, it is only 3 miles wide at its, um, narrowest and 7 miles wide at its widest. So, if you're cutting across, it it's a actually, like Napoleon supposedly said, it's a perfect battleground there. But, more importantly for our purposes, there was a highway that led from, well, from Egypt up to Turkey if you want to go in one direction, or from Turkey down to Egypt the other. In other words, if you're an Egyptian and you want to go visit a Hittite, you take the Via Maris, the way of the sea, and that goes right here. If you're a Canaanite and you want to go to Mesopotamia, um, Assyria and Babylonia, you want to go east-west, you have to go right through the Jezreel Valley. So, basically, all the highways met right there.

[00:11:44]Megiddo is at the junction. So, at one point, Thutmose III, the Egyptian pharaoh that fights a battle there in 1479 BC, he said in his inscription, "The capturing of Megiddo is like the capturing of a thousand cities." And he wasn't exaggerating. So, basically, every invader that has come through that region has fought a battle at Megiddo unless the area simply gave in to them without a fight. So, we've got battles all the way, um, yeah, probably even back in the Neolithic already, but certainly by the beginning of the second millennium, we've got Canaanites fighting there. And then, all the way through, I think the last battle, per se, that I documented was, um, 1967, uh, or maybe even 1973.

[00:12:41]Um, there were some air skirmishes because, um, one of the airfields is right there in the valley. So, there there, you know, they've been fighting there for 4,000 years. The geography is what dictates it, and that hasn't changed. Just the people and the weapons have changed, but the fighting, you know, and the geography, that hasn't changed. And it's amazing to think that even in iron age times, more than 2,000 years ago, around that time, it was already well known as a battle site, hence the the biblical link. So, thank you for explaining that, Eric. Um, but let's focus in on that battle of Thutmose III, the Egyptian pharaoh. So, Eric, is it correct to say that this is the earliest recorded battle in history?

[00:13:28]Yes, it is.

[00:13:30]Next question. Okay, fine. Can you tell us more?

[00:13:34]I'm kidding. Yes, it is, but it it depends on how you say it. It is the earliest recorded battle in history, yes. It's not the earliest battle in history, that's when one Neolithic thug picked up a rock and bashed another one over the head, but it is the earliest one that is written down. Because what it seems to have happened is that Thutmose III, um, when he came to the throne, as a, you know, on his in his first year, we think it's about 1479 BC, the Canaanite rulers, uh, rise up in rebellion. And he has to march up to Canaan to put down the rebellion. Well, he took along scribes with him. They kept a daybook, if you will, a diary, a campaign journal. And then, when they got back, they put up a concise version on the walls of one, uh, or more of the temples down in Egypt.

[00:14:36]So, he says things like, "We began marching. After 10 days, we got to the site of Yehem, and we stopped and held a council." And and this is what it says on the wall. So, it is recording what happened. So, we know precisely what happened, but it's from the Egyptian point of view. So, do you believe it or not? So, if you want, I can tell very quickly what he says.

[00:15:05]Please do. Please do. And and also So, the enemy, cuz my mind immediately goes also to the Battle of Kadesh, where you do have the Hittite version of it as well. But, that's Egyptians versus Hittites. With Megiddo, is it is it Egyptians versus local Canaanites? Is that what we should be thinking?

[00:15:20]>> It is, and yet, yes, it's Egyptians versus, we're told, about 30 local Canaanite princes. But, among them, and led by them, is the prince or king of Kadesh. Ah. The same place that 200 years later, the Egyptians and the Hittites are going to fight, right? And Kadesh is in what is today Syria. The ruler of Kadesh is supposed to be one of the leaders of this rebellion by local Canaanites. All right, okay. So, what happens is that, uh, Thutmose III has come to the throne. He's really young, like 8 years old or so. And so, his stepmother, also his aunt, Hatshepsut, Hatshepsut, one of the famous female pharaohs, she rules on his behalf for 20 years. So, then she disappears. When he's about 28, Thutmose III comes to the throne finally. And there must have been a suppressed libido or whatever, but there's also a rebellion. So, he takes off and fights this major battle in his first year. He also then fights almost every year for like the next 17 years.

[00:16:32]So, there's something going on there with him. He probably needed to see a therapist, but we we won't go into that.

[00:16:38]At any rate, that first battle, he I mean, and that's the best time to rebel is the first year when there's a new king on the throne. I don't know if you're planning to do that, but just in case you had that in mind, that's the best time. Yeah, the first year. Watch out, Dan. Yeah.

[00:16:52]Right. Right. So, he, uh, all right. So, they march up, he says, in like 10 days.

[00:16:58]They march, um, up to Yehem, and they stop and they have a war council because it seems that there are three ways to get to Megiddo from where they are.

[00:17:08]There is the central way, which is the fastest, but also the most narrow, and therefore susceptible to ambush. And that comes right out of Megiddo, right?

[00:17:19]It's known as the Wadi Ara, the Nahal Iron. Um, the it it's still used today, uh, to to get up there.

[00:17:28]The other two ways are more roundabout.

[00:17:30]One goes around to the north and, uh, comes out by, uh, Yokneam, and the other comes around to the south and comes out by Tanach. Well, his generals said, "Please don't go up the middle route. It's suicide, basically. Uh, take either the northern route or the southern route." And Thutmose III tells us that he said to the generals, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's exactly what the Canaanites will be expecting because they know that I'm not that stupid that I would go up the central route. You know, that would be, you know, committing suicide." And he said, "But, you know what? I am that stupid. I'm going to go right up there because they're not going to be expecting it."

[00:18:15]And we're told, uh, in the inscription that they went one guy after the next, and it took like 12 hours, and they came out at Megiddo, and sure enough, it was unguarded. The Canaanites were at the northern and the southern entrances to the Jezreel Valley. They were not at the central part because they hadn't expected him. It was a surprise attack.

[00:18:38]And, um, and that was it. He captured Megiddo. There is a a battle when the Canaanites come, you know, too late, and he beats them. But, he did make a major mistake, which he admits. Um, he let his men stop to loot the camps of the Canaanite rebels, which were all around Megiddo.

[00:19:00]That allowed the people inside the city time to close the city gates, including hauling people up using, you know, ropes made of cloth and linen and all that.

[00:19:11]And it then took him, um, at least 3 months, if not 8 months, to actually capture the city. So, I tell my students, the lesson is that if you're going to do this, capture the city first, then loot and plunder. Don't do it the other way around because it will it will cost you.

[00:19:30]Right. So, the end result is that he wins the battle. He puts down the rebellion. He captures all kinds of things. He tells us the sheep, the goat, the cattle, the chariots that he takes back. Um, and and that's it. He puts down the rebellion. So, it is, um, not only a victory for him, but it's, like we said, the earliest recorded battle. And um the Egyptians then really never relinquished control until about 1140 BC, which is, you know, 300 years later, when the Late Bronze Age collapse takes place. So, the battle at Megiddo is by Thutmose III is one of the famous battles from antiquity, right? It's up there along with all the other battles that one learns like Thermopylae and Salamis and all of that.

[00:20:25]But it's because this is the earliest one. It's not the only one. Like I said, there's like 34 battles that are fought there, but it is the first one that's recorded.

[00:20:36]And does Megiddo continue to be occupied from then on until in into Greek and Roman times or should we be thinking I've got in my notes here as you say that you have the United Kingdom of Israel then the divided kingdom as well?

[00:20:48]They're all there. They're all there.

[00:20:50]Megiddo functions um yeah, it's under Egyptian control at first, but then yes, one by one they each rule in turn. The problem is trying to find them. So, for instance, we know uh after the Late Bronze Age collapse, we know that there's immediately a city built on the ruins, Iron Age Megiddo, and that's probably the time of David and Solomon uh in the the United Monarchy. I'm always careful not to call it the United Kingdom because that's another entity, you know, like where you are right now.

[00:21:26]So, the United Monarchy, but then when Solomon dies, that splits into the divided kingdoms with the northern kingdom of Israel up north and southern kingdom of Judah down south. Megiddo is part of the northern kingdom of Israel.

[00:21:43]And there are Iron Age remains there.

[00:21:46]Um probably something of David, probably something of Solomon. Very hard to identify though. The Chicago excavators, as we'll talk about, thought they had found Solomon's stables. They're now no longer thought to be Solomon's. They're probably Ahab or Omri from like 100 years later. But people have been looking for Solomon at Megiddo since the earliest excavations, you know, 1903 1905 and certainly when Chicago got there in 1925.

[00:22:20]And and Eric, why is that? So, is there a particular mention of Megiddo and Solomon in the Old Testament? There is in fact, yes. There is at one point in um the Book of First Kings, it says the cities that Solomon fortified and it mentions um Jerusalem and Megiddo and Hazor and Gezer.

[00:22:46]And uh alongside it also says and there were chariot cities of Solomon. And so, from the days of Yigael Yadin in the 1950s and '60s, uh he dug at Hazor and at Megiddo and then he was in correspondence with the people digging at Gezer. And they were trying to find Solomon at all of those places because the Bible said he had fortified them.

[00:23:12]Right. So, in fact, uh Yadin did find the entry gates to the cities and it looked to him as if they were all built on the same either six-chamber or eight-chamber, sometimes four-chambered entry gate to the city. And he actually published articles um about having found Solomon at Megiddo and Hazor and Gezer.

[00:23:37]Nowadays, they've been re-dated. Israel Finkelstein has re-dated the ceramics and said, "No, even those are about a century later. They're probably Ahab or Omri rather than Solomon." Um but the discussion continues. There are uh people who don't agree with that. So, but again, the search for Solomon has been around for a very long time at Megiddo, which is actually why I think the book that I wrote on the Chicago excavations, I think the subtitle is something like The Search for Solomon's City, something like that. Because when Chicago went, they were looking for Thutmose III and Solomon.

[00:24:20]Because it is that it is that classic of archaeology in the early 20th century, isn't it, Eric, that it's almost that people went out there trowel in one hand and Bible in the other and just wanting to find something even if the information's not there and just to label it. And we we talk about Schliemann as well in the uh Trojan War chat and yeah, him labeling it as Priam's treasure or the mask of Agamemnon. Just that because you're so so invested in it, that desire to label something you find as linked to what you know in the Bible. Absolutely. And the Chicago excavators who were at Megiddo from 1925 to 1939 were really in some ways no different from Schliemann. In fact, I mean, Schliemann is at Troy 1870 and then on and off, he dies in 1890.

[00:25:07]The first excavations at Megiddo are in 1903 by a German-American named Schumacher um and then Chicago comes in 1925.

[00:25:18]And um Schumacher, when he was at Megiddo 1903 to 1905, guess how he digs at Megiddo? Puts down a whacking great trench right through the middle of the mound just like Schliemann had done at Troy. And they were only digging 30 35 years apart, so, you know, it kind of makes sense. The Chicago excavators were much more careful and much better, but they too them I mean, right away as they were digging when they found these buildings they identified as stables, they didn't just say, "Hey, we found stables." No, they announced to the world they had found Solomon's stables. And that made headlines around the world just like the headlines that Schliemann had made at Troy.

[00:26:06]So, Eric, is it the beginning then of the 20th century that excavations, I don't even want to say proper excavations, but you know, official excavations begin at the site of Megiddo. They know where Megiddo is already.

[00:26:21]And then that's when excavations begin.

[00:26:24]But is it only with the Well, let's start with the first one. Let's start with 1903 then. Okay. And I will put in at the beginning here just like we have at Troy, there is nothing at Megiddo that says it's Megiddo.

[00:26:38]Right. We we have a little bit of writing, not much. There's a fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh that's been found. We still haven't found the archives that I know I know are there.

[00:26:49]Right? In the Late Bronze Age, Biridiya, the king of Megiddo, writes to the Egyptian Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. And we've got six letters from him. There must be There must be returned correspondence. And it's in the Late Bronze Age palace, the half that Chicago did not excavate and throw away.

[00:27:10]So, but we don't know that Megiddo is actually Megiddo. And in the late 1800s, um other people were identifying other sites in the Jezreel Valley as potentially Megiddo. But again, just like Hisarlik has to be Troy, so our mound, which um the actual official name in Arabic is Tell el-Mutesellim, Tell el-Mutesellim is Megiddo. It has to be. There's nothing else that fits the description over time. So, um in 1903 when um Gottlieb Schumacher went there, he was originally from Zanesville, Ohio, German extraction. His father was a Templar, not the Knights Templar, but the German movement that thought that the Second Coming was imminent and that you should move to the Holy Land. His father, Jacob, was hired to be um I believe his title was actually city planner for Haifa. And he's the one among others who planned the modern city of Haifa. So, young Gottlieb moved to the region when he was about 9 years old. Uh and in fact, some of the surveyors, uh Conder and Kitchener, who did the famous survey of Western Palestine and actually the boundary between Israel and Lebanon today is where Conder and Kitchener stopped their survey.

[00:28:43]>> [snorts] >> We know for a fact that they stayed overnight or for a couple of days with um Schumacher's family in Haifa.

[00:28:52]And they actually went up on top of Megiddo as part of their survey. And and then later, um Schumacher goes, he gets his PhD in archaeology, and opens up the excavations at Megiddo 1903. At that time, it's Ottoman controlled. Um so, he had to get permission from the Sultan to dig there.

[00:29:17]And he's there 1903 to 1905 with this huge trench, like I said, that goes right through. He makes some discoveries, but misses others. So, one of the things he finds is a little tiny jasper seal about uh 1 and 1/2 inches across, couple of centimeters. And um on it it says um "Servant of Shema", I think is what it says. Um which is um or s- Shema, servant of Jeroboam. And that was probably Jeroboam the second. Well, that seal is now missing because Schumacher sent it up to Istanbul to the Sultan. We know it made it to Istanbul and then it disappears. So, he did find that, but it's gone.

[00:30:04]He also found um a large boulder, piece of stone, which has a cartouche of Sheshonk, biblical Shishak, that came from an inscription or some sort of building that Sheshonk put up at Megiddo. This would be about 925 BC, after Solomon dies, and indeed in his inscription down in Egypt. It's very much like Thutmose the third, but, you know, 400, 500 years later, Sheshonk says he captured Megiddo. And lo and behold, here is this fragment with his cartouche at Megiddo.

[00:30:42]But, Schumacher and his men missed it and they threw it out on their back dirt pile. They never knew they had found it.

[00:30:51]So, we're not sure what level it comes from. The only reason we know even that it exists, when Chicago showed up in 1925, the first thing that they did was run around the site collecting rocks and stones from Schumacher's back dirt pile to build their dig house.

[00:31:13]And one of the Egyptian workmen carrying this stone down the hill said, "Hey, you know, there are cartouches on here." And they're like, "Oh my word." And so, when James Henry Breasted came over from what was then the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, he said, "Wait, that's Sheshonk. That's biblical Shishak." Right? So, Schumacher found great stuff, but he also missed great stuff. If we knew which level he had found that inscription in, we would know which level Sheshonk had captured. And therefore, since we know Sheshonk was just after Solomon, we would know what level at Megiddo is Solomon's. But, we don't know any of that. So, we're still searching for Solomon. So, anyway, Schumacher did a a pretty good job, better than Schliemann at Troy, let's put it that way. But, then when he ended in 1905, the site just lay there for 20 years until Chicago came and started excavating in 1925.

[00:32:20]And Breasted had just started the Oriental Institute at Chicago.

[00:32:26]Now, it's the Institute for the study of either ancient cultures or ancient civilizations. It's ISAC.

[00:32:34]Breasted started it in 1920 and he immediately started looking around for an excavation.

[00:32:41]And in fact, he went to Lord Allenby and asked Allenby where he should dig. Why did Breasted and Allenby have a relationship?

[00:32:52]Because when Allenby fought his battle at Megiddo in 1918, he had gotten explicit instructions from London as to how to conduct the campaign.

[00:33:06]But, Allenby looked at the geography and realized that he was camped and there were three ways to get to Megiddo. There was the central way, which was narrow, but most susceptible to ambush. There was the northern route, there was the southern route. And so, Allenby read his history, realized what Thutmose the third had done, and did it himself with the same results. The Turks and Germans were not expecting him to come up that way. He captured Megiddo in 1918 with nobody killed at all. Couple of horses died, they ran them into the ground, but very successful battle.

[00:33:52]And later, after he had been I guess given a title and he became Lord Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, they actually asked him, "Do you want to be Allenby of Armageddon?" And he kind of laughed and said, "No, all the cranks and Christendom will come out of the walls for that one."

[00:34:10]So, when Breasted was looking around for a site to excavate, he met up with Allenby and Allenby said, "Well, why don't you dig Megiddo?

[00:34:20]You've got the battle of Thutmose the third, why don't you find evidence for the battle? And you've also got Solomon."

[00:34:27]And Breasted said, "Great." He was a showman also, all about PR. There was an exhibit at the University of Chicago right now on the Chicago excavations and it shows how Breasted used the media back then. So, that's where it came from. That's why they started digging at Megiddo was because of Allenby having won the battle there in 1918 and that was because Breasted had published Thutmose the third. So, you you see, it's all one big happy family, one big circle. It's really interesting and and what you were just mentioning there, going back to Schumacher say finding like Jeroboam, mentioning Jeroboam, so he's a king of the northern kingdom, just to clarify. But, the Sheshonk, that Egyptian pharaoh, I think it's the 22nd dynasty, who was saying that isn't he with the the silver coffin which survives, beautiful silver coffin.

[00:35:18]You've got Psusennes a little bit, yeah, 21st and 22nd dynasty. But, yeah, but Sheshonk is a Libyan who founds founds the 22nd dynasty, right. But, we're all there in the, you know, the third intermediate period and all that, yeah. So, there and so you got those things and obviously Breasted, that that Egyptian link only comes to light when they are making their dig house, the link to Allenby, the British general as well. So, so yeah, let's take it away. So, >> [snorts] >> that excavation begins looking for yeah, yes, the Solomon link is there. Um, but what what do we know about these excavations? How long do they go on for?

[00:35:59]So, the Chicago excavations go on for 14 or 15 seasons, if you want to call it that. They they dug almost all year round, but they first get there in 1925. It's a small group of about five people and they they grow and shrink and grow and shrink over the years. I mean, at at one point there's probably 14 or 15 staff members there because they were able to bring their spouses and so they had, you know, one big happy family in the dig house.

[00:36:30]Wasn't always so happy.

[00:36:33]Um, there were soap operas galore. I mean, oh my word. So, but they're there until 1939 and they end because of World War II. Well, Eric, I would like to bring you into the uh talk about the archaeology now as well. These archaeologists, amazing archaeologists, but it sounds like the excavations done at the time of Chicago and since we've excavations in more recent times, some including yourself, has revealed so much about [clears throat] Megiddo and its importance through the years. So, I hope you don't mind if we can kind of go through almost layer by layer and highlight some of the big discoveries, you know, what we know about Megiddo at different times. So, can we start back in the Stone Age? I mean, what do we know about Megiddo during, you know, the age of of well, the dawn of farming in the Neolithic? Yeah, we can certainly start there and I hope we've got what, three or four hours for this podcast, yeah?

[00:37:25]Cuz >> [laughter] >> Joseph, my producer, I'll be you know, he's not going to be happy, okay?

[00:37:30]I don't know. I'll give you the cliff notes version here. Yes, the earliest occupation at Megiddo seems to be somewhere about 5000 BC or so, the towards the end of the Neolithic period.

[00:37:44]And it looks like they may actually be living in part in a cave right there.

[00:37:50]Certainly on the bedrock of the mound.

[00:37:53]And then as time goes on, they start building layer upon layer upon layer upon layer.

[00:38:00]And so, um, we've actually got nowadays we we do it it it it properly.

[00:38:07]The very top of the mound is stratum one and Chicago at one point dug all the way down to bedrock at labeling the the layers. So, we know that stratum 20 is the earliest layer that's there. By the way, that's backwards from what Schliemann did at Troy, where he labeled the very bottom one as Troy one and the top one as Troy nine. So, again, it's showing that Schliemann didn't really know what he was doing cuz you got to you got to label them as you go. But, anyway, so we have 20 layers at Megiddo, the bottom one, 20, is Neolithic. And they're there for a bit and then it segues right into the early Bronze Age. Actually, it segues into the Chalcolithic, the Copper Age, and from there into the early Bronze Age by about 3000 BC.

[00:39:02]And so, some of our earliest strata, the layers, are like stratum 19, 18, 17.

[00:39:11]They're going to be in the third millennium from say 3000 to 2000 BC. And that's where we start getting um, some of the largest architecture that we've got there. There is one huge temple, which I think we're mostly now calling the Great Temple, right? It is absolutely huge. It's early Bronze Age.

[00:39:34]It may well have been the largest structure in the Levant [laughter] at the time. I mean, I wouldn't say the world, but um who knows? But it certainly claimed The thing is that we haven't excavated all of the Great Temple. We've excavated bits and pieces, and we can see where it must be, but like good archaeologists, we're not excavating the whole thing because we have to leave some for the the future.

[00:40:00]But we can also see that there is already contact with Egypt at the time.

[00:40:06]All right, there's Egyptian pottery there and all of that. The Early Bronze Age is really, really interesting at Megiddo. And we also start getting some of the earliest fortification walls built at that time, which is what's going to give Megiddo its shape, its round shape. But we especially get such walls in the Middle Bronze Age, and that is a hallmark actually of the sites all in this area. The fortifications, Middle Bronze Age, that's where you've got like a glacis, which is a dirt you know, um um uh sloping uh with a a a a wall up top. And so those glacis in the Middle Bronze Age, some of them continue into the Late Bronze Age, and we may have that at Megiddo.

[00:40:56]But we've also got some evidence now, um the recent excavations at Megiddo, uh seem to show that there were houses that were built as part of the outer fortification wall, and the back of the house would have been facing the exterior of the site, you know, like without windows, so it makes part of the protective, and then you would get in through the interior. So, there is continuous occupation, right? Stratum, you know, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, um all through the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Bronze Age, and then into the Late Bronze Age.

[00:41:37]A lot of them are destroyed, and you can actually see evidence of the destruction. And there is in fact one area that if the radiocarbon dating is correct, may be the city that Thutmose III captured. But the thing is with Thutmose III, he probably didn't destroy the city. He would have occupied it. All right, and in fact that inscription, um later of Shoshenq, same sort of thing.

[00:42:09]Um So, Thutmose III never actually mentions destroying Megiddo. He mentions capturing it, right? Remember it took him between 3 and 8 months of a siege to capture it, but he doesn't say he destroyed it, which means it's going to be rather hard to identify in the record. Same thing with Shoshenq, 500 years later, he doesn't say he destroyed Megiddo. He just says he captured it.

[00:42:37]But there are some layers, and I'm thinking in particular of the layer at the end of the Late Bronze Age, where it is destroyed, and the city is burnt to the ground, and that would be stratum seven, which is interesting because we're talking about stratum seven at Troy also, but we have stratum seven at Megiddo is also destroyed at about the same time, but there the radiocarbon datings, uh and again there's a 7A and a 7B at Megiddo, and um they're both destroyed. One might be about 1250 BC, and one might be uh as late as 1140 BC, but we're always arguing about when is it.

[00:43:24]And there may be some evidence that it's a bit tighter in date. And and Eric, you mentioned earlier how with Thutmose Thutmose III, that, you know, um is it said that there's a king of Megiddo as well? There's a ruler of Megiddo in the Late Bronze Age? There is for sure. We know in the time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten in about 1350.

[00:43:48]>> Yes, in the palace at the end. And that we know there's Biridiya.

[00:43:52]What Thutmose III mentions are the Canaanite kings and headed by the ruler of Kadesh that we mentioned.

[00:44:00]>> I'd have to go back and check and see. I don't think he mentions where the other kings are from. He just says 30 Canaanite princes. But uh it may well be that the prince of Megiddo is listed in there as well, but even if he is, his name is not given. But but the thing I wanted to ask is that, you know, Late Bronze Age before the collapse, if you think about the Mycenaeans and the kind of the palatial centers, it seems also with Megiddo as well, like there seems to have been someone at the top in the Late Bronze Age living in a palace, probably with archives haven't been discovered as you mentioned. But but should we be imagining before these two destructions that you hinted at, you know, this is a thriving dare dare I say some sort of city-state, thousands of people with with some sort of ruler, monarch at the top?

[00:44:52]Uh yes. I'm not sure I would say thousands, maybe thousands, certainly hundreds. Okay.

[00:44:57]>> Yes. But one thing that we've got in Canaan during the Bronze Age, which would probably be similar to the Mycenaeans, there is no one great king of Canaan. There are a series of city-states, each with their own ruler, who the actual name for him in in um in Akkadian, it's either mayor or ruler or governor or king, whatever. But they're vassals. They're vassals to the Egyptians. They each have control of their city and the area around it, so a city-state. And we know, in part from the Amarna letters, that some of them are places that are still today, right? I'm where I'm actually doing um a upper-level seminar on the Amarna archives this semester because I have, wait for it, another new book out, Love, War, and Diplomacy on the Amarna archives, and we have city-states at Megiddo, at Hazor, at Acco, at Jerusalem, at Gaza, at Gezer, at Damascus, Byblos, Beirut, Tyre, Sidon, right? These names still resonate today.

[00:46:13]They're still in the news today. They are in the news back then, and they are each writing letters to the Egyptian pharaoh complaining about each other, right? There are just under 400 letters in the Amarna archive written to or from Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. About 50 are letters from the great kings that we've mentioned, the Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites, and so on.

[00:46:42]But there are about 300 that are are that are from these Canaanite vassal kings, including one guy, one of my favorites, the king of Byblos the by the name of Rib-Hadda. He writes 60 letters, 60, to the pharaoh.

[00:47:03]And they must have been coming two and three a day. And the Egyptian pharaoh, oh my god, from Rib-Hadda again? Who's he complaining about now? All right. So, we actually can get a pretty good idea of what life was like, but that's in the 14th century.

[00:47:18]Thutmose III would have been 100 years 120 years earlier in the 15th century, but those same city-states, they were already there. So, we can we can figure out what life was like at that time. So, there is no one great king in Canaan, just like I don't think there was any one great king over in Mycenaean Greece.

[00:47:39]But we are talking the same time period, right? Everybody is uh communicating with everybody. In fact, there is quite a lot of Mycenaean pottery found at these Canaanite sites.

[00:47:51]They are trading either directly or indirectly with the Mycenaeans. We find Mycenaean pottery at Megiddo, at Hazor, and elsewhere. So, it it's rather interesting, but it all comes to a screeching halt temporarily when the palace in stratum seven at Megiddo is burnt to the ground. And that's where we get the gold hoard, which is actually stratum eight, and then the ivory hoard, which is stratum seven, and that's what made Gordon Loud famous. Though they almost didn't find it. They almost closed down the dig in 1936 because they had run out of money.

[00:48:39]But then they suddenly found an extra $50,000.

[00:48:44]That was part of a grant that they had semi-forgotten about.

[00:48:48]And so, um they said, "Okay, one more year. One more year." Which turned out to be two more years. And during those two years, they found the gold hoard and the ivory hoard. So, they almost didn't find it, but they did. And these these two hoards, so well, clues in the name, so one's a lot of gold and one's a lot of ivory from Yes. India or further south?

[00:49:12]No, local probably. The gold hoard, which is stratum eight, that that actually might be closer to the time of Thutmose III. And that seems to be exactly what it sounds like, somebody buried a hoard intending to come back for it and did not. So, we don't know. A king, a prince, a princess, a queen, not sure.

[00:49:34]It's very near and partially under a wall in the palace. The ivories are, I think, almost more interesting. They were found in a separate area that Gordon Loud dubbed the treasury. It's a room with three chambers and the ivories [clears throat] are found scattered in those three, actually broken up so that piece a piece from the back chamber will match up with a piece from the front chamber.

[00:50:05]Obviously, something happened and they all got scattered. And what Loud and others and Loud actually published a book called the Megiddo ivories, he thought that in the destruction of the palace, a couple of boys and a camel got into the treasury and created havoc because when they excavated, they found what Loud said was the skeleton of a camel and a couple skulls and rib bones from young boys.

[00:50:43]And he thought they wandered down and they got, you know, locked in and then when the palace was destroyed round about, you know, 1177 or 1140, they died in there. Now, I think Loud was incorrect. There is a parallel from another site from the same time period up not so far away up in Syria and that one is obviously a tomb, a royal tomb. And I think that this is not a treasury but is a burial of who knows, somebody from the palace who died and those two boys, I don't think they got trapped in there during the collapse. I think they're buried in there. They it's a multi person burial, maybe multi-generational and we've got other tombs from Megiddo now that have been found recently where you can see there's, you know, eight, 10 bodies in there. So, I think this is a family tomb, if you will, and that is not a camel that is on top of the ivories. It is a donkey or something related, that kind of a species and we know that even in the early Bronze Age that in the Levant in Canaan, they are doing equid donkey burials where you put a guy or a woman in the burial and then you sacrifice a donkey or some sort of equid in there. I think that was is what we've got here and indeed I showed a picture of the so-called camel to a couple of friends who do archaeozoology and they're like, that's not a camel.

[00:52:34]Yeah, that's that's a donkey or something something related. So, I think that Loud misinterpreted it and he was digging a tomb that was connected to the palace and you've got an animal burial in there. I don't know, maybe a favorite donkey that the boys used to ride and I don't know how the boys died or whatever but I think that's what we've got there. So, the gold hoard and the ivory hoard are very different in terms of how they got there because I think the gold hoard really is hidden by somebody when the palace was being attacked but the the ivory hoard I think is from a a tomb.

[00:53:13]And then the last thing I'll say and then I'll shut up for a while is Gordon Loud was announced this to the world. It was put on display in New York and Chicago, the ivory and the gold.

[00:53:26]And then he excavated beneath took out that palace, threw it away and [clears throat] went to see what was underneath.

[00:53:39]There was stuff underneath from um stratum nine and 10 and 11 and 12 but nothing like what he had found. So, there is now just this gaping hole in the side of the mound. I mean, you're actually he took away that side of the mound so it's almost like a cliff face but he only took away half of the of the palace. The other half is still there in the mound and if you look at the bulk, the side that he left which goes up about 50 ft, you can see the walls of the palace still they're not jutting out but you can see them and that's where the archive is. That's where Beer Beeridyas archive but there's a good 20 ft of stratified remains above including the Neo-Assyrian palaces that Chicago excavated from stratum three from the 8th and 7th centuries BC and they are directly on top like right vertically on top of the Late Bronze Age palace. So, we would have to pull a Chicago and pick up and throw away the Neo-Assyrian palaces in order to get down to the other half of the Late Bronze Age palace and that will almost likely never happen.

[00:55:09]Eric sadly, we're running out of time but I'd ask so many more questions if I could about that next stage which is post-Bronze Age collapse, the Iron Age but you did mention earlier how the evidence is there at the time of the United Monarchy then divided, the Northern Kingdom of Israel and then also mentioned the Neo-Assyrians as well. So, the archaeology is revealing that during the Iron Age during, you know, between two and 3,000 years ago Megiddo remains important, a prominent place for many, many centuries following. Yes, absolutely. Even after the destruction [clears throat] of the Late Bronze Age, Megiddo is immediately rebuilt and probably by David and or Solomon.

[00:55:56]Their city is then promptly destroyed but it looks like it's by an earthquake, right? When in doubt, if it's not human it's an earthquake. And but Megiddo continues on in importance and indeed in the time of Ahab and Omri, Megiddo is important and it may well, it's been suggested that Megiddo was where they raised horses and contributed we have one Neo-Assyrian inscription that talks about the Battle of Qarqar in 853 and Ahab, the Israelite is mentioned by name as having brought 2,000 chariots to that battle. We know that from the biblical account and the Neo-Assyrian extra-biblical account. So, yes, Megiddo continues in importance right down through the Neo-Assyrian period and then even into the Neo-Babylonian and the Persian period it looks like it is finally abandoned in the Hellenistic period. So, as I mentioned at the top of the interview, when Alexander the Great comes through, I think it's abandoned by that time but the big question is why? I think the water in the water tunnel gave out. I think an earthquake could have affected it or something like that but since you need food, water and defense to make a site a good place and if you suddenly don't have water that's it. So, Megiddo then it is abandoned and is never occupied again except for a couple of sparse buildings here and there in the Ottoman period but off the mound that's when we get Roman Legio. The Roman camp, yes.

[00:57:40]Exactly and then even another area that is inhabited afterwards. So, the region is inhabited but the mound itself is really only until the Persian period, I would say. But still, that's 5,000 years of history on that one mound, 20 levels, 110 ft. I mean, Eric, what a story and really interesting to see that there's still much more to discover from Megiddo in the years ahead.

[00:58:09]But that is that is the truth about Armageddon as mentioned right at the start. It's not just a thing from the Bible, not just an event at the end times, it is also a place. Yes, absolutely and if if things get more peaceful over there, they will be excavating and anybody listening to this could volunteer to go dig at Armageddon yourselves.

[00:58:30]>> [laughter] >> Eric, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. My pleasure, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me back on.

[00:58:41]>> [music]