The Battleground

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Did King David conquer and destroy Megiddo? Well, that depends partly on the date of Stratum VI. Let me explain why.

Most scholars accept David as a historical figure who was an active military ruler in the period portrayed in the Hebrew Bible (the early tenth century B.C.E.). However, there is considerably less agreement on how to 030interpret the archaeological evidence for this period. That’s where Megiddo Stratum VI figures in. The dispute is over which archaeological material relates to the time of David’s reign, or, more specifically, over establishing the chronological connections that permit us to link the archaeological record to the events described in the Bible.

And Megiddo Stratum VI is the key.

Until recently, most scholars dated Stratum VI to the period just before the time of David, making him a candidate for its destruction; a later stratum would then represent the town of David and Solomon. However, in a series of articles,¹ as well as in a recent interview in this magazine,^a the head of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, Israel Finkelstein, has argued forcefully that Megiddo Stratum VI should be dated to the period of David and Solomon (otherwise known as the United Monarchy). Stratum VI was destroyed, he contends, by the Egyptian Pharaoh Sheshonq I, the Shishak of the Bible (1 Kings 14:25–26; 2 Chronicles 12:2–9).

All scholars agree that Sheshonq/Shishak cut a devastating swath through Israel in about 925 B.C.E. A list of towns he conquered and destroyed is inscribed in a poorly preserved hieroglyphic inscription in the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak. More than 50 towns are named, including Megiddo.

If Stratum VI was destroyed in 925 B.C.E., as Finkelstein contends, then it dates to the time of David and Solomon, or the United Monarchy. As I shall show, however, a later stratum preserves the destruction of Sheshonq/Shishak. Stratum VI therefore must have been destroyed earlier—by someone else, perhaps King David.

Why is this important? Put simply, the outcome of this debate has a direct bearing on our understanding of the historical development of the early Israelite Monarchy. If Finkelstein is correct, the cultural activities of the United Monarchy will be reflected in the remains of Stratum VI (and contemporaneous strata at other sites). If the traditional understanding is correct, however, then we must trace the historical development of the United Monarchy from evidence preserved in later strata.

Ancient Megiddo (Tell el-Mutesellim) sits at a strategic point along the corridor that the Levant forms between Egypt and Mesopotamia, where for millenia economic goods, peoples and ideas have passed. It is located at the entrance to the Wadi ’Arah, a key 031pass through the Mount Carmel Range that obstructs the north-south trunk route traversing the region.

In the 15th century B.C.E., Pharaoh Thutmosis III, the great empire builder of New Kingdom Egypt, campaigned north to subdue a coalition of rebellious principalities led by the city of Kadesh, on the Orontes River in modern Syria. His major obstacle was Megiddo, which had joined the Kadesh coalition. “The capture of Megiddo is as the capturing of a thousand cities,” the pharaoh said. He was successful, but only after a protracted siege of the defiant town. Over the centuries, Megiddo witnessed the passing of numerous invading armies and military campaigns, securing for itself a prominent place in the historical memory of the region, and earning it the apocalyptic designation as the scene of the final conflagration, the Armageddon of the Bible.

The basic stratigraphic sequence at Megiddo was established during the large-scale excavations conducted by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago between 1925 and 1939. Although the sequence has been refined over the years, it still remains fundamental to our understanding of the archaeology of the region. The precise chronologies for many of the individual cultural strata, however, continue to be hotly debated. Stratum VI is a case in point.

The stratigraphic sequence of an ancient settlement provides us with only a relative chronology. It tells us 032which stratum was earlier and which was later. The deeper we go, the earlier we get. To arrive at an absolute chronology (a specific time), we need additional lines of evidence, such as radiocarbon data or an event of known date derived from a historical (that is, a textual) source. In the case of Stratum VI, was it destroyed by Sheshonq/Shishak, as Finkelstein contends, or was it destroyed earlier, perhaps by King David?

As it appears in the Oriental Institute’s preliminary excavation reports, Stratum VI was a rather poorly preserved phase. It turns out that most of the data on the excavated stratum never found its way into these initial publications, which were not intended as final reports. Detailed archival records of the Oriental Institute’s excavations reveal that Stratum VI was in fact remarkably well-preserved, having been destroyed by fire. Photographs depict articulated human skeletons in various contorted poses, obviously killed by falling debris, with rooms full of smashed pottery vessels, and burnt wooden pillar supports still standing in place. Clearly, destruction was both swift and complete, freezing the settlement as it existed at the time of this event.

Moreover, the horizontal exposure of Stratum VI was considerable—about 75,000 square feet when all excavation areas are combined, or over 10 percent of the entire site. The well-preserved remains of Stratum VI, therefore, offer an extensive and revealing glimpse of town life during the cultural period represented by this stratum.

How the unpublished records of Megiddo Stratum VI were rediscovered is a story in itself. It begins with a graduate seminar organized by the late Douglas Esse at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1988. In preparing for the seminar, Esse noticed an inconsistency between unpublished archival records and the existing published reports. Later, during the summer of 1990, while examining the Oriental Institute photo archives, he came across images depicting the well-preserved remains of a violently destroyed settlement—part of an extensive record of unpublished material documenting the destruction of Stratum VI. Realizing that a considerable portion of the stratum remained unpublished, Esse began gathering these records, intending to produce a monograph on Megiddo Stratum VI. He was working on this project at the time of his death in the fall of 1992.² I was one of Esse’s former students, and in 1997 the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications awarded me a grant to complete the project.³

The greatest exposure of Stratum VI occurred in 1934, when an archaeologist named P.L.O. Guy was director of the Oriental Institute’s expedition. He was assisted by Robert Lamon and Geoffrey Shipton. During the off-season, however, the director of the Oriental Institute, the eminent Egyptologist James Henry Breasted, dismissed Guy. Breasted was dissatisfied primarily with the slow progress of the excavations.

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Guy was replaced by Gordon Loud, who moved quickly to accelerate the pace of the project, shifting excavation strategy from the horizontal exposures preferred by Guy, to the more confined trenches still visible today. With Guy no longer actively involved in the project, however, the Stratum VI material was soon forgotten. Although some of the Stratum VI pottery did make it into the final report of the ensuing 1935 through 1939 seasons, no work was ever done on the stratigraphy, explaining why the context of this pottery is only minimally described.⁴

To determine the date of Stratum VI we must turn first to the immediately preceding Stratum VII, which also came to an abrupt and catastrophic end. Two hieroglyphic inscriptions help us date this stratum. The first was found on an ivory pen case that bears the cartouche of Ramesses III. From other sources, his reign is dated securely to the 12th century B.C.E., between 1182 and 1151 B.C.E. The second inscription is on the base of a bronze statue. It bears the cartouche of Ramesses VI, who also reigned in the 12th century B.C.E., from 1141 to 1133 B.C.E. Though found in Stratum VIIB, the statue base almost certainly was deposited during the life of Stratum VIIA, presumably just prior to its destruction. The destruction of Stratum VIIA must therefore have occurred after the reigns of these two pharaohs, sometime in the second half of the 12th century B.C.E. In archaeological terms, this period marks the end of the Late Bronze Age city of Megiddo. The next cultural stratum at Megiddo, Stratum VI, represents the first Iron Age settlement, what archaeologists call Iron Age I, which is generally dated from about 1200 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E.

The demise of Late Bronze Age Megiddo (Stratum VIIA) provides dramatic evidence of the decline of the Egyptian empire. Egyptian withdrawal created a power vacuum that enabled new social forces, economic ties and political alliances to emerge—the Philistines (one of the Sea Peoples), the early Israelites, and the Canaanite inhabitants of the surviving Late Bronze Age cities were all part of the new mix. And this is amply reflected in the archaeology of Megiddo Stratum VI.

Whether Stratum VI was a lingering Canaanite enclave, an outpost of Philistine expansion or an early Israelite settlement has been hotly debated ever since the Oriental Institute first uncovered the stratum. The answer may be that it was all three—and more.

Surveys in the central hill country of Canaan reveal an explosion of small sedentary settlements—between 250 and 300 of them—during Iron Age I. Descriptions in the Book of Judges (see Judges 1:19 and following) indicate that this was precisely the territory settled by the early Israelites. These settlements reflect a pattern of dispersed agrarian communities engaged in basic subsistence, a rather striking departure from 035the far more affluent and less insular city-state culture of the preceding Late Bronze Age.

The coastal lowlands, meanwhile, experienced a decidedly different pattern of settlement. There the archaeological record reflects the settlement of the migrating Sea Peoples, including the Biblical Philistines, who formed a pentapolis around the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza. In addition, Late Bronze Age Canaanite communities, linked to the preceding era of Egyptian domination, continued as isolated enclaves interspersed along the principal transit corridors through the region.

The effect of these disparate settlement processes was the creation of a mosaic of culturally distinct communities, each striving to maintain viability in a dynamic and increasingly competitive environment. While distinct sociopolitical entities did eventually emerge, intermingling was also pervasive, as is evident in the archaeological remains excavated at Megiddo.

The pottery of Megiddo Stratum VI reflects a diverse mix of potting traditions, including Cypriot, Phoenician and Philistine.⁵ In one large complex, Building 2072, excavators found an exceptional example of Philistine pottery, the “Orpheus Jug” (so called because of its Orpheus-like figure who plays a harp before an assembly of animals.).⁶ Building 2072 also produced a stamp seal that has been identified recently as a Philistine anchor seal;⁷ two offering stands, found in an adjacent room, suggest a cultic function for the room.

The northernmost side room in Building 2072 contained more than 20 perforated cylindrical loomweights, associated with weaving activity. Many of these loomweights had the slightly pinched mid-section characteristic of non-perforated loomweights commonly found at Philistine sites such as Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron. Described as “spoolweights,” these clay cylinders have links to Cypriot and Aegean weaving traditions.⁸

Interestingly, buildings with plans and architectural features similar to Building 2072 have been uncovered at several other Iron Age I sites in the vicinity of Megiddo. These include a two-building complex at ’En Hagit (on Mount Carmel), a cluster of buildings at Tell Keisan (Stratum 9a-c), the so-called “Oil Maker’s House” at Yokneam (Stratum XVII) and a number of possible buildings in Area D at Tell Qiri (Stratum VIII). This geographical distribution has raised the prospect of a shared lowland architectural tradition.⁹

More specifically, it is possible that Building 2072 reflects a distinctively Philistine presence at Megiddo. Architectural evidence from Early Iron Age Philistine levels at Ekron (Tel Miqne) would seem to support this interpretation. Excavations at Ekron have uncovered a large structure, Building 350, which excavators have dated to the 11th century B.C.E.¹⁰ Part of a larger complex, Building 350 consisted of a partially roofed central hall flanked on its east by a row of three smaller rooms. As with Building 2072, the side rooms produced a wealth of pottery and small finds, including non-perforated cylindrical loomweights (in the northern room) and the remains of a cultic shrine in the central room. The similarity in plan, size and methods 060of construction evident between these two buildings at Megiddo and Ekron, as well as the types of associated small finds and their distribution, argues in favor of a shared cultural tradition.

Shortly before his dismissal in 1934, Guy uncovered an extensive residential neighborhood along the southern edge of the tell.¹¹ In contrast to Building 2072, the houses in this area were furnished with rows of wooden posts used as roof supports, an architectural feature reminiscent of the pillared houses commonly found in the Iron Age I highland settlements usually attributed to the early Israelites. Many of these houses also contained large saddle querns and grinders, ovens, bins and stone-lined pits (or silos), as well as large quantities of collared-rim storage jars (pithoi) and other vessel types traditionally associated with early Israelite highland material culture.¹²

The cultural diversity exhibited in these material remains underscores the fluid social and economic ties that linked Megiddo with its neighbors. Megiddo, in effect, probably served as a neutral location where these disparate communities could bring their products to market.¹³ In short, Megiddo Stratum VI appears to have been a remarkably heterogeneous community comprised of individuals from widely varying social and cultural backgrounds who found themselves drawn together by the powerful forces at work in the rapidly changing world of the Iron Age I period.

Stratum VI ended suddenly and catastrophically. The extent of the devastation is captured in graphic photographs taken during the excavations and described in vivid detail by Guy in his correspondence with Breasted:

There had obviously been a disaster of some sort in VI, of which the fire was the culmination, and that disaster may have been either a battle or an earthquake. In the course of it a number of people had perished. Some skeletons were found crushed under walls in positions of obvious agony, but a number of others had been buried…It looked as if survivors had come back after the catastrophe and had left where they were those bodies which had been hidden by fallen walls but had hastily buried those who were visible…The disaster, whatever it was, had been pretty sudden, for most of the rooms contained very large quantities of pottery in situ, and this gave us a most representative collection of types.¹⁴

So who destroyed this settlement?

This question has long been a topic of intense speculation and debate. William Foxwell Albright, the dean of American Biblical archaeologists until his death in 1971, credited the establishment of Stratum VI to the Israelites’ expansion, following their victory in the Jezreel Valley against a Canaanite coalition, as immortalized in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). Albright dated this conflict, which we are told occurred “by the waters of Megiddo” (Judges 5:19), to 1125 B.C.E. According to him, the destruction of the Stratum VI settlement then occurred sometime during the mid-11th century (about 1050 B.C.E.) or later, presumably a result of the northward expansion of the Philistines.¹⁵

The staff of the Chicago expedition, however, strongly disputed Albright’s characterization and dating of the stratum. They preferred to emphasize the Late Bronze Age Canaanite connections evident in the pottery and other material culture, and attributed its violent end to natural causes, possibly an earthquake, which they dated to the end of the 12th century B.C.E.¹⁶

The German scholar Carl Watzinger was the first to link the devastation of Stratum VI to the 925 B.C.E. campaign of Shishak I.¹⁷ Shishak’s reign marked a brief resurgence of Egyptian military and economic power in the Levant.

Although scholars have continued to debate the cultural character of the Stratum VI settlement, over the intervening years most have chosen to follow Albright’s mid- to late-11th century B.C.E. date for its destruction. In a passing reference made in 1951, however, the distinguished Israeli historian Benjamin Mazar suggested that the destruction of Megiddo Stratum VI should be attributed to the military campaigns of David.¹⁸

The key to resolving this debate lies in the strata that seal Stratum VI. Immediately above the destruction debris of Stratum VI were the fragmented remains of Stratum VB. Superimposed on this occupational phase, in turn, and in large part obliterating it, were the substantial remains of Stratum VA/IVB. Dominated by a series of monumental structures, the settlement of Stratum VA/IVB reflects a decisive shift in the character and function of the site. Despite the considerable debate that has occurred in recent years regarding the date of this stratum, there has been general agreement that it, too, experienced a decisive destruction.

In their stratigraphic reconstruction, P.L.O. Guy and the Chicago expedition assigned the impressive architectural remains of Stratum VA/IVB to the reign of Solomon (see, for example, 1 Kings 9:15), 062and attributed its destruction to Shishak’s 925 B.C.E. campaign. Their case rested in large part on the chance discovery of a stela fragment bearing Shishak’s cartouche. Although the expedition found the inscription in a dump adjacent to a trench excavated by the German engineer Gottlieb Schumacher earlier in the century, Guy was confident that it had come from the earliest stratum uncovered in the trench, namely Stratum VA/IVB.¹⁹

Though this stratum would appear to be the logical choice for the original location of the stela fragment with Shishak’s cartouche, the stratum’s formal architecture and evidence of destruction do not eliminate the possibility that the stela originated from another stratum. Guy’s description of its discovery, however, makes clear that Schumacher’s excavations in this area had not reached the destroyed remains of the preceding Stratum VI, rendering it an unlikely candidate for the settlement destroyed by Shishak’s army, as Israel Finkelstein, and Watzinger before him, have proposed.

When we compare the pottery from Stratum VA/IVB with pottery from nearby sites,²⁰ the Stratum VA/IVB settlement clearly dates, in relative chronological terms, to the early Iron Age II period (specifically Iron IIA), or the tenth century B.C.E.²¹

Recently published radiocarbon dates also reinforce this conclusion. At Tel Rehov, in the Jordan Valley south of the Sea of Galilee, excavations conducted by Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University have uncovered a sequence of well-preserved Iron IIA cultural strata. Most important, carbonized grain samples from several different sealed loci preserved in the destruction of Stratum V there have produced a calibrated date range between 935 and 898 B.C.E. Since Rehov is included in the list of cities conquered by Shishak, his 925 B.C.E. campaign clearly represents the most likely historical event that could have caused the destruction of this stratum at Tel Rehov.²²

As noted earlier, the similarity between the Rehov Stratum V assemblage and the pottery of Megiddo VA/IVB confirms their relative contemporaneity. Thus, comparative stratigraphy and the ceramic evidence, together with radiocarbon data and the documentary/epigraphic record, point decisively toward a late-tenth-century date for the destruction of the Stratum VA/IVB settlement at Megiddo, which Shishak I almost certainly brought about.

Of course, a secure date for the destruction of Stratum VA/IVB also helps to narrow the time range possible for the destruction of Stratum VI. The destruction of Stratum VIIA in 1140/30 B.C.E. (as determined by the cartouches of Ramesses III and Ramesses VI) and the destruction of Stratum VA/IVB by Shishak in 925 B.C.E. provide the chronological parameters for the life of Stratum VI. It must have existed for the most part during the 11th century B.C.E., just before, in Biblical terms, the United Monarchy of Israel. If we are to leave a reasonable amount of time for Strata VB-VA/IVB, Stratum VI must have been destroyed toward the end of the 11th century, or early in the tenth century at the latest.²³

Since Shishak I could not have destroyed the Stratum VI settlement; the kings of the early Israelite Monarchy remain the only viable, historically attested political figures from this period. Megiddo does not appear to have been part of the territory claimed by the Israelites at the time of Saul’s death (see 2 Samuel 2:8–9), but clearly was within the Israelite realm by the reign of Solomon (see 1 Kings 4:12; 9:15). David (c. 1010–970 B.C.E.) therefore represents the most plausible historical figure responsible for laying waste to the community whose remains are entombed in Megiddo Stratum VI.a

Did King David conquer and destroy Megiddo? Well, that depends partly on the date of Stratum VI. Let me explain why. Most scholars accept David as a historical figure who was an active military ruler in the period portrayed in the Hebrew Bible (the early tenth century B.C.E.). However, there is considerably less agreement on how to 030interpret the archaeological evidence for this period. That’s where Megiddo Stratum VI figures in. The dispute is over which archaeological material relates to the time of David’s reign, or, more specifically, over establishing the chronological connections that permit us to link […]