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A momentous confrontation. “At Taanach, by Megiddo’s waters,” according to an ancient battle poem in Judges 5, the general Sisera led a well-equipped army, including charioteers, into combat against an Israelite force hastily assembled by Deborah and Barak. Adam Zertal suggests that Sisera himself may have been a Shardana warrior—and that the poem and the prose account of the battle (Judges 4) indicate that el-Ahwat may well be the fortress from which Sisera’s army marched forth. Like many armies before and since, Zertal says, Sisera’s army advanced through the narrow ‘Aruna Pass to gain access to the fertile Jezreel Valley to the east, drawn by the Israelite tribal force, which had massed at Mount Tabor and then marched west toward Megiddo, crossing the Kishon River. Attacking Sisera’s troops at the opening of the pass, the makeshift Israelite army managed to drive their foes back to their stronghold, which in the Bible is called Harosheth ha-Goyim. El-Ahwat, Zertal argues, which is located on the southwestern edge of the same pass, is to date the best candidate for that Biblical site.