Battle of Megiddo
Thutmose III destroyed a Canaanite coalition at Megiddo around 1457 BC in the first battle in history for which a detailed account survives. A confederation of some 330 Canaanite and Syrian rulers under the king of Kadesh had gathered at Megiddo, which commands the pass through the Carmel ridge on the road between Egypt and Mesopotamia — the most strategically valuable point in the Levant. The Egyptian army reached Aruna with three possible approaches. Two were wide and safe, going round the ridge to north and south; the third was a defile so narrow that men would have to march single file, horse behind horse, strung out for miles and destroyed if the enemy held the exit. His officers argued for the safe routes. Thutmose took the defile, on the reasoning that the enemy would expect the safe ones and would be waiting on them — and said, in the inscription, that whoever wished could take the other road, and that they would then hear he had gone alone. The army emerged onto the plain unopposed and formed up overnight. The battle was won quickly and then thrown away. The Egyptian troops stopped to plunder the abandoned camp, and the Canaanites got into the city, whose defenders hauled them over the walls by knotted clothing. The siege took seven months. His scribe Tjaneni recorded the campaigns on the walls at Karnak, with the order of march and an inventory of the spoil, and it is the earliest detailed military narrative anywhere. The place-name became Armageddon.
- Year: 1457 BCE
- Category: Military
