Nicky Nielsen tells the story of a battle that supercharged the rise of Egypt’s greatest warrior-pharaoh – at a city that would for centuries be linked with the end of the world
The King of Kadesh knew that he had gambled both his position and his life. Not only had he instigated a revolt against the Egyptian pharaoh, Thutmosis III, but he had also allied with Egypt’s enemy, the kingdom of Mitanni. More perilous still, he had left the safety of his own stronghold in Syria.
In the spring of 1457 BC, the king had led an army south to the fortress city of Megiddo on the outskirts of the Jezreel Valley in what is now northern Israel. And there he formed an alliance with the prince of Megiddo, another disgruntled vassal of the Egyptian empire. Their combined Canaanite army numbered perhaps 20,000 soldiers.
The rebel commanders were confident in victory. Their scouts had informed them that Thutmosis had left Egypt at the head of an army not much larger than their own. And they had a trump card: the city of Megiddo itself. This heavily defended settlement at the foot of Mount Carmel controlled the vital trade route that ran from Egypt along the Mediterranean coast towards the cities of Tyre and Byblos.
The rebels knew that Thutmosis, desperate to put down their uprising before it gathered an unstoppable momentum, would launch an attack on Megiddo. What they didn’t know was where that attack would come from.
There were three routes to get to the city, and only two of those were practicable for an army as large as Thutmosis’s. Knowing the terrain, the Canaanite rulers placed strong forces at the head of the two most likely routes, intending to slow down the Egyptian king and degrade his army before he even reached their encampment beneath Megiddo’s imposing battlements.
We do not know where the Canaanite rulers were as they prepared for battle on an April morning in 1457 BC. Perhaps they were inspecting their troops or dining in one of Megiddo’s sumptuous palaces. But whatever they were doing, their plans changed radically at the arrival of one of their scouts, panic clouding his eyes. The scout collapsed and forced out his dreadful message. The Egyptian king had taken the third route, the one no one believed possible. His army was intact, and
