A New Armageddon Erupts Over Ancient Battlefield
nytimes.com
The year 2000 has come, but not Armageddon. All is quiet at the
battleground the writer of the Book of Revelation may have had in mind for
the millennial clash between good and evil, a place in northern Israel known
as Megiddo.
Archaeologists are
familiar with almost
every inch of this
mother of all
battlefields. They have
known for a century
that a 25-acre mound 18
miles southeast of
modern Haifa is the site
of Megiddo
(meh-GEE-doh), an
ancient city mentioned
eight times in the Bible.
The word
"Armageddon,"
appearing in Revelation
16:16, is thought by
many scholars to be a
corruption of the Hebrew "Har Megiddo," meaning the hill or mound of Megiddo.
But recent research has drawn new attention to Megiddo and its environs, a place
that has known repeated warfare over more than 4,000 years, supporting its
apocalyptic mystique. The last eight years of systematic excavations have also
revealed startling evidence that threatens to touch off a pitched battle among
biblical scholars, an Armageddon not to end the world but to rewrite the history of
Israelite royalty, possibly toppling David and Solomon from their lofty pedestals.
Megiddo owes its place in history and its association with doomsday to its
strategic location on one of the most important military and trade routes of the
ancient world, linking Egypt in the south with Syria and Mesopotamia to the north
and east. In the Bible and also in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, the city and the
adjacent Jezreel Valley are cited as scenes of bloody battle for pharaohs and kings,
Canaanites, Philistines and Israelites. The walls of the Karnak temple in Egypt
describe the victory of Thutmose III in 1479 B.C., when he charged through a
narrow pass in the Carmel mountain range to surprise the King of Kadesh at
Megiddo.
Long after Megiddo itself became a buried ruin, sometime after 500 B.C.,
Byzantines, Crusaders, Mongols and, in more recent times, Napoleon, the British
in World War I and Israelis and Arabs fought there, as if rehearsing for the world's
climactic war.
Combing the archives to research a book, "The Battles of Armageddon," to be
published this year, Dr. Eric H. Cline, an archaeologist at the University of
Cincinnati, who has excavated at Megiddo, counted 34 battles fought at the city or
its surrounding valley. About a dozen of the wars occurred in biblical times.
"No wonder a writer of the New Testament concluded that the final battle between
good and evil would take place there," Dr. Cline said in an interview.
One of the last and most fateful battles fought at Megiddo in biblical times
matched Josiah, a king of Judah and the last royal descendant of the House of
David, and the Pharaoh Necho II in 609 B.C. Josiah's defeat and death paved the
way for the Babylonian exile of the Jews beginning in 586 B.C.
"This defeat also raises the interesting question that since the last member of the
House of David was killed in battle there, perhaps that is where the next member
will show up in the Second Coming," Dr. Cline said, referring to Jesus, who was
said to be a descendant of King David.
The evidence linking Megiddo to Armageddon is all circumstantial, and some
scholars are skeptical of associations of the battle site with any specific place. The
writer of Revelation, possibly John the Apostle, is thought to have had Rome in
mind as the evil empire that would be vanquished in battle, a vision perhaps meant
to comfort first-century Christians that good would ultimately triumph over their
Roman persecutors.
Even if the end is not nigh, excavations at Megiddo, one of the richest
archaeological sites in Israel and the entire Middle East, have brought scholars to
the brink of a battle of their own over one of the most crucial periods in biblical
history. Impressive architecture that had seemed to underscore the glory of Israel
under David and Solomon is now suspected of having been built a century later, in
the 9th instead of 10th century B.C.
The revised chronology, if proved correct, would cast doubt on the Bible as a
reliable document of the history of early Israel. The united kingdom that David the
Hero and Solomon the Wise were supposed to have forged out of Israel and Judah
might not have been as grand and powerful as depicted. The first full-fledged
Israelite kingdom may instead have emerged under Jeroboam I, Omri or even Ahab,
who is vilified in the Bible as the idol-worshiping husband of the notorious
Jezebel.
Describing their last eight years of
digging at Megiddo, Israeli and American
leaders of the expedition wrote in the
November-December issue of
Archaeology magazine that "many of the
most basic archaeological and historical
conclusions about the city are now in
dispute."
Dr. Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist at
Tel Aviv University, said the excavations
had exposed the shakiness of
chronological framework of biblical
history from the 11th through the 9th
centuries B.C. Lower dates by as much as
a century on everything, he argued
recently in the journal Near Eastern
Archaeology, "better fit the direct
archaeological evidence and liberate our
chronological structure from too heavy a
dependence on an uncritical reading of
the biblical text."
The Megiddo team also discussed its
findings in interviews and in reports at
conferences in November in Cambridge, Mass., of the American Schools of
Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature.
One of the archaeologists, Dr. David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University, discovered
that the large city gate, usually associated with the biblical references to
Solomon's building activity at Megiddo, actually rested in a layer of ruins from the
century after Solomon, even according to the standard chronology. This surprise
set in motion further research, including revised estimates of pottery dates, leading
to Dr. Finkelstein's unsettling attack on biblical credibility.
Dr. Finkelstein contends that the palaces and other monumental ruins of Megiddo
are confined to a narrow layer, dated to the first half of the 9th century B.C., a
generation or more after Solomon's reign. Two volumes on the excavation findings
are to be published this year.
But the absence of inscriptions in those ruins leaves room for doubt about Dr.
Finkelstein's chronology, and considerable controversy.
Another leader of the expedition, Dr. Baruch Halpern of Pennsylvania State
University, is one holdout, believing that the gate and several other palace
buildings were indeed constructed during Solomon's rule and that the biblical
description of Solomon's influence at Megiddo is reliable.
"These 'Solomon' gates haunt us," Dr. Ussishkin said, discussing Dr. Finkelstein's
revised chronology. "I feel he's largely right. But my view is that we archaeologists
are the technologists, and the historians and other scholars should give the
interpretations."
Sharing the view of many biblical scholars, Dr. Ann Killebrew, an American, who is
an archaeologist at the University of Haifa, said that because of insufficient
evidence, "the jury's still out" on the issue of whether or not the palace and gates
of Megiddo were built by Solomon.
Nonetheless, a group of mostly European scholars, called "biblical minimalists" by
their critics, has seized on the Megiddo findings and Dr. Finkelstein's
interpretations to support their view of the Bible as a poor source of historical
knowledge. Any record of King David independent of the Bible was bare until
1993, and the translation of the inscription found then, referring to the "House of
David," is disputed by some scholars.
Dr. Philip R. Davies, a professor of religious studies at the University of Sheffield
in England, has said, "The figure of King David is about as historical as King
Arthur."
David's position in history is a foundation of some Zionist claims to Palestine as a
homeland for Jews and of Christian theology, since Jesus was said to be a
descendant of the House of David.
The minimalist position, say scholars who profess to be neutral on the issue, is in
part a reaction to earlier practices of many archaeologists whose main goal in
digging was to establish the credibility of the Bible as history and who sometimes
bent their interpretations accordingly.
Megiddo's storied past has emerged over the last century through successive
excavations first by Germans before World War I and the University of Chicago
after the war, then mostly by Israeli archaeologists in recent decades. Digging
deep into the mound, they uncovered remains from 6,000 years of continuous
settlement, beginning around 6500 B.C. The ruins revealed the transition from the
Bronze to the Iron ages, from Canaanite to Israelite occupation.
Two distinct layers of
ruins have provoked
the smoldering
controversy. The lower
layer contains remains
of two or three palaces
and many houses,
probably a major
Israelite administrative
center and usually
ascribed to Solomon.
When it was destroyed
by fire, another city
rose at the site, this
one with all the marks
of a heavily fortified
military center. It, too,
was eventually
destroyed by fire.
While they have been digging, archaeologists have also been developing
Megiddo as a tourist attraction. The Israel National Parks Authority, working with
the archaeologists and the Ename Center for Public Archaeology in Belgium, will
begin this spring offering visitors virtual-reality reconstructions of the excavated
ruins.
"If you want to see biblical archaeology, Megiddo is the place," said Dr. Killebrew,
an adviser on this project. "And the view from Megiddo is spectacular, one of the
few remaining biblical landscapes. From there you can see the entire Jezreel Valley,
Mount Tabor, the hills of Nazareth and Mount Gilbor on a clear day."
Archaeologists plan to resume excavations at Megiddo this summer, investigating
ruins that may or may not be from Solomon's reign and ever bearing in mind the
site's association with end-of-the-world prophecies.
"We are at Megiddo," Dr. Finkelstein said, "not only because of its beauty and the
archaeology, but because of Armageddon." |
