Digging Up Armageddon

The Search for the Lost City of Solomon

Eric H. Cline

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691200446
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

A vivid portrait of the early years of biblical archaeology from the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed In 1925, James Henry Breasted, famed Egyptologist and director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, sent a team of archaeologists to the Holy Land to excavate the ancient site of Megiddo—Armageddon in the New Testament—which the Bible says was fortified by King Solomon. Their excavations made headlines around the world and shed light on one of the most legendary cities of biblical times, yet little has been written about what happened behind the scenes. Digging Up Armageddon brings to life one of the most important archaeological expeditions ever undertaken, describing the site and what was found there, including discoveries of gold and ivory, and providing an up-close look at the internal workings of a dig in the early years of biblical archaeology.The Chicago team left behind a trove of writings and correspondence spanning more than three decades, from letters and cablegrams to cards, notes, and diaries. Eric Cline draws on these materials to paint a compelling portrait of a bygone age of archaeology. He masterfully sets the expedition against the backdrop of the Great Depression in America and the growing troubles and tensions in British Mandate Palestine. He gives readers an insider's perspective on the debates over what was uncovered at Megiddo, the infighting that roiled the expedition, and the stunning discoveries that transformed our understanding of the ancient world. Digging Up Armageddon is the enthralling story of an archaeological site in the interwar years and its remarkable place at the crossroads of history.

PART ONE

1920–1926

CHAPTER I

“Please Accept My Resignation”

Chicago’s excavations at Megiddo almost ended less than a week after they officially began. Just four days into the first excavation season, in early April 1926, Clarence S. Fisher, the newly appointed field director, sent a cable back to Chicago. In it, he stated bluntly: “HIGGINS’ ATTITUDE MAKES FURTHER ASSOCIATION IMPOSSIBLE STOP DUAL DIRECTION ALWAYS DESTRUCTIVE OF BEST RESULTS STOP PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION.”¹

It is perhaps fitting for a site that has seen so many major battles fought in its vicinity during the past four thousand years to also be the scene of a struggle for control of the excavations meant to unearth its secrets. However, Megiddo is not the first archaeological site at which such power struggles have taken place, nor will it be the last.

Breasted cabled back almost immediately, refusing to accept Fisher’s resignation and assuring him that there was only one director: “DEEPLY REGRET TROUBLE,” he wrote. “PLEASE UNDERSTAND YOU ARE SOLE DIRECTOR AT MEGIDDO STOP THERE IS NO DUAL DIRECTION AM CABLING HIGGINS STATING WORK IS UNDER YOUR SOLE INSTRUCTIONS.”²

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The tension had begun months earlier, when Clarence Fisher and Daniel Higgins both arrived at Megiddo in September 1925. However, the full story actually begins nearly a hundred years before that, in mid-April 1838, when Edward Robinson, an American minister, stood with his missionary colleague Eli Smith on top of a tall mound known in Arabic as Tell el-Mutesellim—“the Hill of the Governor.”

Robinson and Smith were in the Jezreel Valley of what is now the modern state of Israel, intent on locating biblical sites in the Holy Land. Already they had pinpointed dozens to their satisfaction, based on similarities between modern village names and ancient places.

MAP 1. Detail from the Survey of Western Palestine (Sheet VIII) by Conder and Kitchener (PEF-M-WS-54.2; courtesy of the Palestine Exploration Fund)

Robinson, who was a professor at Union Theological Seminary, was certain that Megiddo lay somewhere in the vicinity of Tell el-Mutesellim. However, he didn’t realize that he was actually standing on top of Megiddo at that very moment. In fact, he dismissed the mound as a possibility, stating, “The Tell would indeed present a splendid site for a city; but there is no trace, of any kind, to show that a city ever stood there.”³ Ultimately, Robinson decided that the nearby village of Lejjun covered both ancient Megiddo and Roman Legio.

Thirty-five years after Robinson and Smith, Lieutenants Claude R. Conder and Horatio H. Kitchener, who were surveying the western Galilee on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), also stood on top of Tell el-Mutesellim. This time, though, they did notice traces of ancient remains. The upper parts of the mound were covered with thorns or cultivated, but under the vegetation lay “a city long since completely ruined.” Everywhere they looked, there were foundations of buildings and broken pieces of pottery.⁴

Nevertheless, like Robinson and Smith, they still didn’t identify Tell el-Mutesellim as Megiddo.⁵ Their reluctance was based in part on the fact that, three years earlier, Conder had suggested that Megiddo might be located farther down the valley, at “the large ruined site of Mujedd’a at the foot of Gilboa,—a mound from which fine springs burst out.”⁶

The debate over the location of biblical Megiddo continued for another two decades, until the Scottish theologian George Adam Smith convincingly showed that Megiddo and Tell el-Mutesellim were one and the same. He did so by using both direct and indirect evidence, including connecting biblical passages to geographical locations and documenting mentions within Egyptian inscriptions in his 1894 book The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, which was a landmark publication in all senses of the word.⁷

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Breasted had been wanting to begin digging at Megiddo ever since June 1920, for the site had lain untouched following the conclusion of Schumacher’s excavations fifteen years earlier. It was Lord Edmund Allenby, hero of the Allied forces in the Middle East during World War I and victor of the battle fought at Megiddo in 1918, who convinced Breasted that he should begin a new series of excavations at the ancient site. “Allenby of Armageddon,” as he was frequently called, though his official title was “Viscount Allenby of Megiddo,” had won the 1918 battle at the ancient site in part because of Breasted’s multivolume publication, Ancient Records of Egypt, which appeared in 1906. In one of those volumes, Breasted translated into English the account of Pharaoh Thutmose III’s battle at Megiddo. Breasted’s translation allowed Allenby to successfully employ the same tactics thirty-four hundred years later.⁸

However, June 1920 was a tense time. There had been riots in Jerusalem a few months earlier, back in February and March, when the British announced their intention to implement the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 and create a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. More riots, with nine people killed and nearly 250 injured, took place just a month before Breasted’s attempted visit to Megiddo, when Easter Sunday and the Muslim celebration of Nebi Musa coincided.⁹

As it was, Breasted had to content himself with seeing Megiddo from a distance that June. In part, this was because it wasn’t considered safe to cross the last few miles owing to bandits, but it was also because of a frustrating series of car problems and dysfunctional directions. “After having driven for hours along the hills on the north side of the plain of Megiddo, until we were far up toward Nazareth,” Breasted wrote the next day, “we found that neither of our drivers knew the road.… For over two hours we drove over plowed fields and dry stubble land … staring helplessly at the walls of distant Megiddo which challenged us from across the plain.”¹⁰

Although he had failed to make it to Megiddo, from Nazareth Breasted could see a mixture of sights and sites—geographical, historical, and religious. From here, the Jezreel Valley appeared like a triangle lying on its side. Its tip was out of view, off to the west by Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea, while its broad base lay approximately twenty-four miles (38 km) to the east, at the Jordan River.

The valley itself is quite narrow where Breasted stood, just eleven miles (18 km) across as the crow flies, which is why Napoleon reportedly once called it “the most perfect battleground on the face of the earth.”¹¹ Perhaps fittingly, somewhere between Megiddo and Nazareth, in the heart of the valley, the “secret” Israeli air force base of Ramat David is now located. It is not shown on any maps of the region but, ironically, has its own Wikipedia page. It’s certainly not a secret to any of the inhabitants in the valley, or the modern excavators at the ancient site, who are treated to daily sights of F-16 jets taking off and then landing again at ear-shattering volume.

To the west, just shy of the Mediterranean, Breasted could see Mount Carmel in the distance. Here, the Hebrew Bible says, Elijah once had a contest with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:16–46); a Carmelite monastery now marks the reported spot.

To the east, he could see Mount Tabor. According to the biblical account, the Israelite troops of Deborah and Barak charged down its slopes, fighting against the forces of the Canaanite general Sisera, probably in the twelfth century BCE (Judges 4:1–24). The Transfiguration of Christ reportedly took place here more than a thousand years later; three separate churches now mark the spot at the summit of the mountain—the largest one was commissioned by Benito Mussolini.

Even farther east, and almost out of sight for Breasted, lay Mount Gilboa. Here, the Bible tells us, King Saul and three of his sons met their deaths at the hands of the Philistines in the eleventh century BCE (1 Samuel 31:1–12; 1 Chronicles 10:1–12). Nearby is the site of ancient Jezreel, where Jezebel was reportedly thrown out of a window and then trampled to death (2 Kings 9:10, 30–37).

MAP 2. Megiddo and surrounding area, drawn by Edward DeLoach; published in Guy 1931: fig. 2 (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)

Much closer, also to the east and not more than a thousand yards away from the site of Megiddo, Breasted spied the junction where the Musmus Pass—also known as the Wadi Ara and the Nahal Iron—comes into the valley. It was through this pass that the armies of both the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III and the Allied commander General Edmund Allenby successfully marched in 1479 BCE and 1918 CE, respectively, en route to capturing Megiddo. In recording his victory on the walls of a temple in Luxor down in Egypt, Thutmose said that the capturing of Megiddo was “like the capturing of a thousand cities.”¹²

Thutmose was not exaggerating, for Megiddo controlled the entrance to the Jezreel Valley from the west throughout antiquity. The Via Maris (literally the “Way of the Sea,” as the later Romans called it) ran through the valley, serving as a main road for travelers and armies alike moving between Egypt in the south and Anatolia (modern Turkey) or Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in the north. As both Breasted and Thutmose III well knew, if you controlled Megiddo, the rest of the region followed. Virtually every invader of the area fought a battle here in antiquity.

For Breasted, as it is...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface: “Welcome to Armageddon”
• Prologue: “Have Found Solomon’s Stables”
• Part One: 1920–1926
• Part Two: 1927–1934
• Part Three: 1935–1939
• Part Four: 1940–2020
• Epilogue: “Certain Digging Areas Remain Incompletely Excavated”
• Cast of Characters: Chicago Expedition Staff and Spouses
• Year-by-Year List of Chicago Expedition Staff plus Major Events
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index