The Real Armageddon

Introduction

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Armageddon Story

2:19Hey all, welcome to the ancients. Spring is here, summer is just around the corner in the UK, the weather is turning up and we are turning on the ancients today to Armageddon. Now, why do you ask? Well, it is no secret. We know how much you love it when we do episodes on ancient catastrophes and collapses. We've seen the stats. Your Pompeys, your Maya collapses, your Sodom and Gomorrah's, your, or what else is there, Bronze Age collapses, prehistoric plagues, etc. Look, I get it.

2:50I am equally fascinated by those topics. But the team and I realised a few weeks back now, we realised that we haven't ever covered one of the biggest carnage words in our dictionary, Armageddon, which has its own fascinating ancient story, the story of a biblical event, but more importantly, of an actual place. And that is what we're delving into today with a guest who certainly fits into the category of fan favourite on the ancients.

3:21He is none other than Professor Eric Klein. Let's go. Armageddon.

Biblical Armageddon

3:39Today, the word immediately conjures images of the end of the world, of apocalyptic catastrophes, of God's final judgement, and Bruce Willis in an astronaut suit. But Armageddon isn't just a concept or a prophesied event. It's a place. An ancient city called Megiddo, situated in modern-day Israel. Megiddo is to be the setting of the final cataclysmic battle between good and evil, where the armies of the world shall gather,

4:11at least according to the Book of Revelation. But Megiddo's story, it extends far further than its biblical significance. Occupied for thousands of years, from the Neolithic period right through the Bronze Age and Iron Age, before its final abandonment just over 2,000 years ago, this site was a key centre for trade, politics, and military affairs in the ancient Levant, owing to its position on a crossroads that linked Egypt, Syria,

4:42and Mesopotamia. If that wasn't enough, in more recent times, Megiddo has achieved iconic status as an archaeological site, playing a key role in the birth of the modern discipline, and is still being excavated today.

4:57Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of the real Armageddon, with Professor Eric Klein, from the George Washington University. Eric is the author of Digging Up Armageddon, The Search for the Lost City.

Professor Eric Klein

5:17Eric, welcome back to the show. Ah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me on. As always now, it is now a tradition. What tie are you wearing? In honour 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. 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,

5:47it's a place. It is an actual place. Most people do not realise it. But yes, it is Megiddo, the site of Megiddo. In fact, that's where the name comes from. Armageddon is Har-Megiddo. In Hebrew, that's the mound or mountain of Megiddo. And Armageddon originally had an H. It was Har-Megiddon originally. But, you know, in Greek, the way you do an H, it's a rough breathing, and it looks like an apostrophe.

6:18So at some point, when, you know, the various manuscripts were being copied, some monk left the apostrophe off, and Armageddon 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, 1616. But so when people say to me, you know, where were you excavating from 1994 to 2014? I'm like, I was digging in Armageddon. They're like, that's not a real place. I'm like, actually it is. Come on, I'll show you it.

6:48So Megiddo is Armageddon, and our T-shirts from each season on the back, they said, I survived Armageddon. Love it. And so, basically, this is a site now from 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, the renewed excavations, as they're called, which are a consortium

7:18headed by Tel Aviv University, they started 1992, 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,

7:48I mean, you name it, they're throwing all the new high-tech stuff at it, so the excavations at Megiddo are getting more and more and more interesting, in part because there's so much there. I mean, there are 20 cities, one on top of another, covering 5,000 years of history.

Megiddo History

8:07Because we had just done the Trojan War as well, and that's many different layers of cities, settlements, there. That's only 9. Only 9. Only 9. This is at least 20. 20. 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 legionnaires' camps right at the base of Megiddo,

8:37right, 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. 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, and actually, as it grew over the years,

9:07it became even better for defense because you could see farther and farther away. So, when excavation started at the mound in 1903, it was 110 feet tall. It's now about 70 feet tall because, as we'll talk about, Chicago took off the top couple of 20 feet or so. But still, in order to get to the top of the mound to excavate, you have to walk up a 70-foot tall mound first thing, five in the morning.

9:38You know, let's get that heart racing and get those steps in. Gosh. Eric, the majority of this chat, we will focus on the archaeology and what's actually been discovered at Megiddo, but we have to start off with biblical Armageddon. And so, we have to go to everyone's favorite yet strangest book in the whole of the Bible, the Book of Revelation. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. We're basically John, and it's not quite clear which John. It's not the Apostle John.

10:08It's another John. And he goes into a cave and basically has a dream. And this is what is 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

Book of Revelation

10:31that 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 we've got all kinds of imagery that we can go into, but, you know, basically, it is good versus evil,

11:01and 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 they picked this site for Armageddon for the penultimate battle, and I wrote about this, I had a book that came out in 2000 called The Battles of Armageddon, and I don't know if you'll remember, you're probably too young, but in the run-up to 2000,

11:33we 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 book about all the battles that have been fought at Megiddo and publish it before Y2K, and I'll make a fortune and I can retire. But as it turned out, I found out that there were 34 battles that have been fought there,

12:03and so it took me 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,

12:33when Deborah fights Barak, it is by the river, right by Megiddo. Saul and Jonathan are killed on Mount Gilboa, which is just down the valley from Megiddo. We've also got like one of the earliest night battles is fought there. So, by the time of John in, you know, in the early centuries A.D., they would have already known this to be a place with a huge

13:05history for battles. And when you're looking around, where do you put

Location and Importance

13:09like 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. But then, of course, after that, you continue to have battles. You know, Saladin comes there and fights the Crusaders. The Mamelukes and the Mongols fight there. Napoleon fights at Mount Tabor just down the road.

13:40And, 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. So, at one point, 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

14:11having said that. I think he was actually talking about Belgium, but, you know, I can't prove that. So, anyway, this is why I think Armageddon made its way into 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 makes a lot of sense to me to explain it that way. I love the fact there's a Basil of Thermopylae in World War II, I believe, and a Basil of Megiddo in World War I.

14:42That's so interesting. Battle of Armageddon. You mentioned the valley there, 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 bronze, iron, and even in Stone Age times? Yes, absolutely. So, Megiddo today is in what would be considered northern Israel, but it's not very far into the north. The Jezreel Valley, the valley of Esdrelon,

15:13cuts across all of modern-day Israel. It's shaped like a triangle on its side. So, the tip is over in modern-day Haifa, and the base of the triangle is over at the Jordan River. So, that's about, what, 30 or 40 miles east-west across modern Israel. But north-south, it is only three miles wide at its narrowest and seven miles wide

15:43at its widest. So, if you're cutting across, it's 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,

16:14and that goes right here. If you're a Canaanite and you want to go to Mesopotamia, 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. 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

16:44is 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, probably even back in the Neolithic already, but certainly by the beginning of the second millennium, we've got Canaanites fighting there. And then,

17:15all the way through, I think the last battle, per se, that I documented was 1967 or maybe even 1973, there were some air skirmishes because one of the airfields is right there in the valley. So, 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 and the geography,

17:46that hasn't changed. It's amazing to think that even in Iron Age times, more than 2,000 years ago or around that time, it was already well-known as a battle site, hence the biblical link. So, thank you for explaining that, Eric.

Battle of Thutmose III

17:58But 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? Yes, it is. Next question. Okay, fine. No, no, I'm kidding. Can you tell us more? I'm kidding. Yes, it is. But 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

18:29picked 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, when he came to the throne in his first year, we think it's about 1479 BC, the Canaanite rulers 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 day book,

19:01if you will, a diary, a campaign journal, and then when they got back, they put up a concise version on the walls of one or more of the temples down in Egypt. So he says things like, we began marching after 10 days. We got to the site of Yechem, and we stopped and held a council. And this is what it says on the wall. So it is recording

19:31what 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. Please do. And also, so the enemy, because 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 Egyptians versus local Canaanites? Is that what you think? It is, and yet, yes, it's Egyptians

20:01versus, we're told, about 30 local Canaanite princes. But among them and led by them is the prince or king of Kadesh. 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.

20:32All right? Okay. So what happens is that Thutmose III has come to the throne. He's really young, like eight 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,

21:03so 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. So there's something going on there with him. He probably needed to see a therapist, but we won't go into that. 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. So they march up,

21:34he says, in like 10 days. They march up to Yechem 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. 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. It's known as the Wadi Arra, the Nahal-Iron.

Excavations at Megiddo

22:01It's still used today to get up there. The other two ways are more roundabout. One goes around to the north and comes out by Yokniam, and the other comes around to the south and comes out by Tanakh. Well, his generals said, please don't go up the middle route. It's suicide, basically. 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.

22:32That'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. And we're told 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.

23:02The 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 and that was it. He captured Megiddo. There is a battle when the Canaanites come, you know, too late and he beats them. But he did make a major mistake which he admits he let his men stop to loot the camps of the Canaanite rebels which were all around Megiddo.

23:34That 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. And it then took them at least three months if not eight 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 cost you. Right.

24:04So 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 and that's it. He puts down the rebellion. And so it is not only a victory for him, but it's, like we said, the earliest recorded battle. And the Egyptians then really never relinquish control until about 1140 BC, which is, you know,

24:34300 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. It's up there along with all the other battles that one learns, like Thermopylae and Salamis and all of that. 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

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