Battles Still Rage at Megiddo
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Battles Still Rage at Megiddo, The Cradle of Biblical Archaeology
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As early as the 15th century BCE, Megiddo led a confederation of rebel Canaanite cities which attempted to overthrow Egyptian rule in Asia, only to be defeated by an Egyptian army led by Pharaoh Thutmose III. According to the Bible, King Solomon later made Megiddo the center of a royal province of his united monarchy. The city continued to flourish under the kings of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and its monuments are among the most elaborate Iron Age remains unearthed in Israel. After the Assyrian conquest (732 BCE), Tiglath-pileser III made Megiddo the capital of an Assyrian province. In 609 BCE Josiah, King of Judah, was slain at Megiddo by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, an ally of the crumbling Assyrian army in its last-ditch efforts against the Babylonians. Megiddo's long history as an international battleground is aptly reflected in the name Armageddon, "the mount of Megiddo" of eschatological fame.
Megiddo has been excavated three times in the past - by German, American and Israeli expeditions. These excavations revealed the remains of almost thirty cities built one on top of the other. Although their discoveries were rich and numerous, the stratigraphy and history of the site have remained elusive. Almost every layer and major feature has become the focus of fierce scholarly debate. TAU's Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology has returned to Megiddo, using state-of-the-art techniques to try to introduce new order into the present chaos.
The TAU team, headed by Profs. David Finkelstein and David Ussishkin, includes senior collaborators from Pennsylvania State University, the University of Southern California, Layola Marymount University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Rostock (Germany) and the University of Bern (Switzerland).
In the eastern sector of the mound, a previous University of Chicago team uncovered a series of Bronze Age temples. The TAU researchers are clarifying their dating and layout and have recently uncovered the largest late fourth millenium BCE temple in the entire Levant. The long narrow corridors between the monumental walls of the temple were found filled with thousands of bones, remains of ancient sacrifices. University archaeozoologists have now reconstructed which animals were brought to the temple, their gender and age, which parts were preferrentially offered and how the remnants were deposed.
On a previously unexcavated lower terrace of the mound, the researchers uncovered the remains of the town which faced the armies of Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century BCE. Nearby, in the Late Bronze city gate, they also uncovered remains from the last days of Canaanite Megiddo, before it was put to the torch, apparently by Sea People, in the 12th century BCE. The gate was blocked and ovens were built in its chambers, probably by refugees from the countryside who gathered in the city for its last stand.
Surprisingly, Megiddo at the beginning
of the Iron Age was as large as during the Bronze Age. Both cities stretched over the entire mound, the upper tel and the lower terrace alike. Peaceful and prosperous, Iron Age Megiddo traded with Phoenicia, Cyprus and beyond. This last Canaanite occupation was burned to the ground. According to conventional views it
dates to the late 11th century and was destroyed by King David.
According to Finkelstein it dates to the 10th century BCE and was destroyed in the late
10th century, either by the expanding Israelite Northern Kingdom or by the Egyptians. A set of C-14 samples taken
from burned timber in the destruction layer indeed seems to date to the 10th century BCE.
Two elaborate palaces built of ashlar blocks were previously assigned to the 10th century BCE and regarded as prototypical Solomonic structures. Their destruction was assigned to the campaign of Pharaoh Shishak in the late 10th century. However, the excavations of Ussishkin and Woodhead at nearby Jezreel, possibly the winter palace of biblical King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, suggest that the two sites were destroyed at the same time. According to Finkelstein, the two Megiddo palaces were built by an early king of the Northern Kingdom, not King Solomon. To help clarify chronology, the TAU team has started uncovering the entire area of the ashlar palace near the edge of the northwestern sector of the mound.
Past excavations have not shed much light on the last days of Israeli Megiddo, mainly because of their emphasis on monumental buildings. On the northern edge of the mound, the TAU team uncovered a more modest domestic neighborhood from that era. The houses were burned, with household utensils smashed on the floors, under a thick layer of destruction debris. The pottery assemblage retrieved from the destruction layer is the richest found anywhere in the north. The finds also include an elaborate cult stand and clay bullae with typical 8th century BCE iconography. The function of the famous pillared buildings ("Megiddo Stables") of this city - whether stables, storehouses, army barracks or marketplaces - has been fiercely debated. The TAU team, together with colleagues from the Weizmann Institute, is now trying to utilize modern scientific methods in order to resolve this dispute as well.
So Megiddo remains a "battleground." Past excavations at Megiddo laid the foundations of biblical archaeology. The new TAU excavations should revise past notions and help develop a new history of Megiddo and ancient Israel.
