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The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age
Eric H. Cline
(Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000) 251 pp., 30 maps, 17 illus., $27.95 (hardback)
In the last 4,000 years, Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Philistines, Hasmoneans, Greeks, Muslims, Crusaders, Mongols, Palestinians, Ottomans, Britons, Germans, Arabs and Israelis have all been locked in combat in the blood-soaked Jezreel Valley, in northern Israel. Small wonder that the author of Revelation identified this inauspicious site as Armageddon (from Har Megiddon, or Mount of Megiddo), the site of an end-time confrontation between good and evil.
In The Battles of Armageddon, Eric H. Cline, professor of ancient history and archaeology at George Washington University, offers a comprehensive and lucid analysis of the history and geography of this portentous region. It chronicles the 34 conflicts that have taken place there, from the imperial exploits of Pharaoh Pepi I (c. 2350 B.C.) through Deborah, Gideon and Saul and the First Jewish Revolt against Rome; then come the Islamic invaders, the Crusaders and Napoleon, and finally, in our own time, the 1948 War of Independence, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Cline moves fluidly through the epochs, carefully pointing out the historic, topographic and tactical commonalities among the conflicts, so that battles are not left as discrete, isolated events. Throughout, the author poses the question: Why has this region attracted such continuous, momentous conflict?
Topography, Cline finds, provides the key. The Jezreel Valley, which links the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, was a critical juncture in the trade routes connecting Egypt with Mesopotamia. North-south travel through the region required passage through the 20-mile valley.
Cline does an outstanding job of making his diverse expertise in the archaeology of the region and in related texts accessible to the popular reader, although different audiences will approach the book with different priorities. Readers interested in the Bible lands will find a marvelously compact introduction to the topography that accounts for the battles. Travelers to the region will enjoy bringing the book with them as they visit or simply drive by these sites and survey the topography. Maps and battle diagrams inserted throughout help the reader follow each conflict. The armchair-bound who want to enhance their understanding of the canonical texts will appreciate Cline’s accounts of the Biblical battles. Cline’s real strength lies in the commentaries on the Bible, which integrate archaeological knowledge, non-Biblical and Biblical sources and fine, critical reasoning.
A case in point is his discussion of Revelation: Cline suggests that the author of this book chose Megiddo-Armageddon and the Jezreel Valley as the site for the appearance of a messiah-king because the last independent Davidic king, Josiah, had been murdered here in 609 B.C.
Readers whose primary interest is military history will probably skip over this extended discussion of the “murder” of Josiah, however. As a Greco-Roman historian, this reviewer found some of Cline’s comments here parochial in the extreme: The death of Josiah “was like a stone thrown into the pond, for it had a larger ripple effect with enormous repercussions,” and 059it “was literally a disaster of biblical proportions for the entire Western world.”
Part of the problem is that Cline, who is also a senior staff archaeologist at Tel Megiddo, offers a “home team” perspective on each battle, showing greater interest in whoever holds the valley at the moment of conflict. At times, this tight focus on one valley can seem like tunnel vision that screens out the significance of greater international developments (for example, the successes of the Assyrian leader Ashur-Dan II).
In other cases, however, this home-team approach offers valuable insights that might otherwise have been missed. For example, when discussing the Crusader invasions, he uses the well-studied Latin sources to explain events not from the perspective of the invading Crusaders but from that of their Muslim opponents, led by Saladin. In so doing, Cline cogently demonstrates the importance of an earlier engagement in the Jezreel Valley for the outcome of the subsequent, more famous battle at the Horns of Hattin, where Saladin decisively defeated the Crusaders in 1187.
I must take exception, however, to the home-team perspective in Cline’s unfortunately abbreviated report on Roman involvement with Judea before the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Cline’s desire to define a home team leads him to frame the conflict as simply “between Jewish and Roman forces.” Readers are left with the impression that the Romans, led by Pompey in 63 C.E., simply created a subject province in Judea. Cline suppresses evidence of deep and even armed conflict among Jewish factions, some of whom identified more with the international order represented by Roman authority than with what they considered the outlaw elements of the Jewish insurrection. He also fails to mention that the Romans had been invited by some Jewish factions and that their mission resulted in the re-creation or even liberation of the state. A more nuanced treatment would be helpful to the novice reader, who might be misled by Cline’s omissions.
The book would also benefit from a more penetrating analysis of the military aspects of the ground conflicts. Those military buffs expecting a discussion of strategy will be disappointed to find that the book goes only as far as the tactical or grand tactical level. Cline rarely considers objectives—surely a crucial consideration when evaluating success or failure. His explanation of events would have been greatly strengthened had he asked systematically whether the invaders wanted immediate passage through the valley (to aim force at some other target), continued dominance of the area (for ease of passage at any time), outright occupation, screening of a port on the coast, or any other strategic possibility.
Cline’s lack of background in this area is shown in his surprise at the diversion to Damietta in Egypt in the Fifth Crusade (1217–1218). He seems unaware that those supposedly fighting for the Holy Land had personal territorial aims and that Egypt was increasingly a target of the Crusaders simply because it had great wealth to loot.
Nor does Cline often drop below the level of tactics to look at actual combat. He treats all chariots for almost two millennia as equivalent on all terrain in the valley and hills regardless of whether they discharged missiles or whether they tried to ride down opposition on foot. In addition, cavalry and chariots are usually seen as an opaque, indivisible, interchangeable unit, and infantry is pretty much infantry regardless of type. Cline’s knowledge of the land is so thorough that readers will be led to expect this kind of detail on the battles, only to be frustrated.
I wish the book were 25 or 30 percent longer—and that’s a high compliment to the author. Cline’s great command of his chosen subject might have enabled him to answer all of these questions, had he only raised them. Even as it stands, Cline’s detailed treatment of engagements within the terrain and his extensive bibliography will make the book a real treat for archaeology buffs and a useful starting point for scholars of matters both military and Biblical.
The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age
Eric H. Cline
(Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000) 251 pp., 30 maps, 17 illus., $27.95 (hardback)
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