HOLY LAND: MEGIDDO NATIONAL PARK, ARMAGEDDON

The site has seen more battles than any other location on Earth.  No wonder Armageddon is associated with the end of civilization, at least according to Revelations 16:16 and about seven thousand years of history atop Har Megiddon.   Armageddon is often considered a corrupt version of Har Megiddon. 

Har Megiddon (Hebrew for hill of Megiddo) was just that, “the end”, for dozens of civilizations (excavations have identified about twenty-five layers of settlements dating back to the 6th millennium BCE) as each fought to be king of this strategically located hill. 

I can’t really speak to the conflicts over the centuries, nor predict the end of civilization, but from the top of this UNESCO World Heritage Site in Northern Israel, the view alone was to die for.   

Oops!  Did I just say that?!

Smart investors (and ancient civilizations struggling to survive) know the first rule of real estate is location, location, location.  

In ancient times, two important roads passed by Megiddo.  One road (eventually known as the Via Maris, Way of the Sea during Roman occupation) took travelers from the Mediterranean Sea to the fertile plains of central Eretz Yisroel.  The other road went from Egypt all the way to the countries of Ashur (Assyria), Persia, and Bavel.  Whoever controlled Megiddo controlled the crossroads of the Middle East.

Although the site was inhabited from approximately 7000 BC to 586 BC, the first significant remains date to the Chalcolithic period (4500 BC – 3500 BC).  The first identified temple of Megiddo was constructed in the Early Bronze Age I period (3500-3100 BC). 

A total of 17 temples were built in the course of 2,000 years of the city, starting from the early Canaanite period (3300-2900BC). The round altar below is the lowest level - the first temple. The layers of wall behind it and to the left are from different periods in that history.

I can’t imagine the work that went into the excavations, the earliest in 1903, when archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher uncovered 20 layers of settlements during his two years of excavations.  He is also credited with uncovering the Jeroboam seal of a senior official who served the king of Israel from 783-743 BC.   

The seal was sent as a gift to the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople and since then was lost.  A bronze copy prepared by Schumacher is kept in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.

The first wall at Megiddo was constructed in the Early Bronze Age II or III period (2800-2300 BC), but it provided little protection during the Middle Bronze Age when it was subjugated by Thutmose III, the sixth Pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteen Dynasty following the famous Battle of Megiddo in 1478 BC.  

The city was destroyed around 1150 BC and eventually resettled by early Israelites during King Solomon’s reign from 928-968 BC.   King Solomon’s “city of chariots” came with a new fortified gate, 

undoubtedly to protect his huge investment, 40,000 stalls for horses and 12,000 horsemen(First Kings: 4:26), although according to Second Chronicles 9:25, the number of stalls was recorded as 4,000; the horsemen still numbered 12,000.    

Either way, those numbers and much of the excavated ruins explained the ghostly horse figures strategically placed throughout the site, 

and one very charming chariot driver ready for battle.    

Jimmy, a.k.a. Ben-Hur.

The palm trees looked real (ya think?), albeit a bit out of place in otherwise barren landscape.   A few prop people here and there would have been a nice touch to complete the picture.

Eventually, the Egyptian city was replaced by an un-walled Philistine town before that town was destroyed, possibly by Aramaean raiders, and rebuilt, this time as an administrative center for Tigiath-Pileser III’s occupation of Samaria. 

By 586 BC, the town’s importance had dwindled; the site was eventually abandoned during the Persian rule.  Despite the growth of towns nearby, Megiddo was left untouched.         

I was ready to abandon the ten-acre site forty minutes into our tour as the temperature soared into the nineties.  

Ancient grain silo from King Jeroboam II (8th C BC).

Our underground exit through the city’s ingenious subterranean water system (the tunnel allowed the city access to the spring located outside the walls of the city during long sieges when the water supply might otherwise be cut off) provided respite, albeit for some, claustrophobia, too.

As I approached the light at the end of the tunnel, I wondered if the decisive battle between good and evil, as prophesized by St. John in the New Testament, would truly come down to this historic battle site, to Har Megiddo, Armageddon.   

I wondered, too, how many before me had uttered a silent prayer for peace.