Eric Cline

So the battle at Megiddo is by Thutmose III

is one of the famous battles from antiquity, right?

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 that's recorded.

They're all there.

They're all there.

Megiddo functions, yeah, it's under Egyptian control at first, but then, yes, one by one, they each rule in turn.

The problem is trying to find them.

So, for instance, we know after the Late Bronze Age collapse, we know that there's immediately a city built on the ruins, Iron Age Megiddo, and that's probably the time of David and Solomon's

In the United Monarchy, I'm always careful not to call it the United Kingdom because that's another entity, you know, like where you are right now.

So the United Monarchy, but then when Solomon dies, that splits into the divided kingdoms with the northern kingdom of Israel up north and southern kingdom of Judah down south.

Megiddo is part of the northern kingdom of Israel.

And there are Iron Age remains there, probably something of David, probably something of Solomon.

Very hard to identify, though.

The Chicago excavators, as we'll talk about, thought they had found Solomon's stables.

They're now no longer thought to be Solomon's.

They're probably Ahab or Omri from like 100 years later.

But people have been looking for Solomon at Megiddo since the earliest excavations, you know, 1903, 1905, and certainly when Chicago got there in 1925.

There is, in fact, yes.