Summary: New pottery discoveries provide the first evidence for Egyptian forces stationed in the city of Megiddo at the time of Biblical King Josiah’s death.
In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him, and Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo, as soon as he saw him. – 2 Kings 23:29 (ESV)
Josiah’s Death at Megiddo
King Josiah is remembered in the Bible as the last ruler of Judah who “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:2). According to Scripture, Josiah met an untimely death at the hands of Pharaoh Necho II in about 609 BC at Megiddo in Northern Israel, also known as “Armageddon” in Greek. Recently, archaeological artifacts have been uncovered corroborating this Biblical narrative.
Massive amounts of Egyptian and Greek pottery were unearthed at Megiddo providing evidence that Pharaoh Necho’s Egyptian forces along with Greek mercenaries did indeed have a significant presence in the area at the end of the 7th century BC. These archaeological discoveries are important as they demonstrate the historical reliability of the Bible, something skeptics are reticent to admit.
Area X Layers
Excavations at Megiddo have been ongoing since 1920, but one section in the northwest corner of the site called Area X had not yet been researched until recently. Here archaeologists found the remains of a mudbrick wall and two successive buildings with well-preserved layers dating from the 8th to 6th centuries BC. One large building contained a cache of pottery, at least five rooms and a paved courtyard.
The earliest layers excavated contained evidence of Israelite occupation which occurred around the 10th-9th century BC, when Megiddo was part of the Kingdom of Israel. Before that, in the early Bronze Age, Megiddo was an important Canaanite city that controlled the surrounding fertile lands of the Jezreel Valley and the key international trade routes connecting the northern and southern Levant, with Syria and Mesopotamia on one end and Egypt on the other.
After the Israelite occupation layers, excavations showed a fiery destruction layer from around 732 BC, when Assyrian troops under Tiglath-Pileser III took control. Just a few years later, the Israelite capital Samaria fell and the northern Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist. The Bible says a large segment of the population was deported, leading to the tradition of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel. Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, survived the onslaught, persisting for a while as a vassal state of Assyria.
Later excavation layers showed evidence of Assyrian occupation as Megiddo became the capital of the local Assyrian province and home to a mixed population of Israelites and deportees from around the Assyrian Empire.
Assyrians Abandon Megiddo
The rising powers of the Babylonians and Medes eventually caused the Assyrians to abandon Megiddo. In 609 BC, Egypt, an Assyrian vassal at the time, was called to aid the struggling empire. The Egyptians sent an army under Necho’s leadership which marched through Judah on its way to assist Assyria.
This was during the First Temple period when Josiah was ruler over Judah. King Josiah and his army met the Egyptians at a nearby mountain pass where the two armies clashed at Megiddo.
The books of Kings and Chronicles give the account of how Josiah attempted to block Necho’s advance but was killed in the battle that followed.
In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. King Josiah went to meet him, and Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo, as soon as he saw him. – 2 Kings 23:29
Neco king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out to meet him. But [Neco] sent envoys to [Josiah], saying, “What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war. And God has commanded me to hurry. Cease opposing God, who is with me, lest he destroy you.” Nevertheless, Josiah did not turn away from him, but disguised himself in order to fight with him. He did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God, but came to fight in the plain of Megiddo. And the archers shot King Josiah. And the king said to his servants, “Take me away, for I am badly wounded.” So his servants took him out of the chariot and carried him in his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the tombs of his fathers. All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. Jeremiah also uttered a lament for Josiah; and all the singing men and singing women have spoken of Josiah in their laments to this day. – 2 Chronicles 35:20-25
Egyptian and Greek Pottery
During the recent excavation, researchers found no destruction layer signaling the end of Assyrian control over Megiddo but they did identify a sudden change in the pottery remains. This included the large amount of Egyptian and eastern Greek pottery, archaeological evidence of Necho’s army.
The amount of pottery surprised the researchers. “The number of Egyptian vessels is double or even triple the amount found in the entire Levant for that period,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Haifa University, the longtime leader of the Megiddo dig. His recent Area X findings were published in two papers earlier this year in the Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament.
Necho’s attempt to assist the Assyrians didn’t go well. He campaigned in the northern Levant twice, in 609 and 604 BC, before being decisively defeated by the Babylonians at the battle of Carchemish. The Babylonians then poured into the region, setting the stage for the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple in c. 586 BC. These events were highlighted in our recent film The Israel Dilemma.
King Josiah’s Reforms
“Josiah was only eight years old when he began to reign” in Judah, according to 2 Kings 22:1. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 22:2). Josiah’s reign was a stark contrast to his wicked father King Amon and grandfather King Manasseh.
While repairing the Temple, the Law of the Lord was rediscovered and read to King Josiah. In response, he tore his clothes in lament. Josiah called for national repentance with a renewal of the covenant between the people and God. He set out to reform the kingdom, cleansing the Temple of all pagan worship, destroying idolatrous high places and reinstituting the observance of the Passover. He reigned for 31 years and, after he died in battle against Pharaoh Necho, his son Jehoahaz became king.
Evidence of Necho’s Army
Area X artifacts are the first archaeological evidence from Judah of Necho’s campaign. “The analysis of the objects showed that the building which was excavated was constructed around the middle of the seventh century BCE, shortly before Pharaoh Necho killed King Josiah,” said Finkelstein.
Petrographic studies have confirmed the pottery came from the Nile Valley or the Delta, suggesting they were not locally produced imitations, according to the researchers. It is also unlikely that the Egyptian ceramics were imported because they were crudely made and poorly fired.
“These are not decorative tableware representative of the era and the Jewish tradition,” said Dr. Assaf Kleiman, co-researcher from Ben-Gurion University. “Therefore, it is very difficult to argue that someone in Megiddo, a displaced person or a surviving Israelite, suddenly became interested in inferior Egyptian pottery and decided to import it into his home.”
The finds point to Necho’s army receiving a regular provision of supplies from Egypt, according to Finkelstein. Most likely, the Egyptian and Greek pottery is waste left over from Pharaoh Necho’s Egyptian forces combined with Greek mercenaries who were professional soldiers hired to serve in a foreign army.
Revelation’s Armageddon
The area’s Greek name, Armageddon, comes from the Hebrew har Megiddo or Mount Megiddo, although the site is not really a mountain, but a tell or mound created by the accumulation of human settlements built one on top of the other over thousands of years.
In the Bible, the plain of Megiddo, or Armageddon, is famous for two great victories and two great tragedies in Israel’s history. The defeat of the Canaanites by Deborah and Barak is recorded in Judges 4, and Judges 6-8 tells of Gideon’s success over the Midianites. The tragedies that occurred here include the death of Saul the first King of Israel and his sons (1 Samuel 31:8) and the death of King Josiah.
The word Armageddon only occurs once in the Bible in the Book of Revelation, where the climactic, future battle between God and the forces of evil is said to take place (Rev. 16:12-15). After the sixth angel pours out his bowl of judgement the “kings of the whole world assemble” for battle “at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.”
In Rev. 19:11-20 a final battle happens at the second coming of Christ where he defeats the forces of the Antichrist. Many take this to be a description of the Battle of Armageddon from Rev. 16.
Megiddo has already been the site of many epic battles throughout history among nations including the: Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, armies of Napoleon, as well as more recent battles during World War I and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
Conclusion
The evidence from Area X excavations makes a “compelling argument to recreate the ethnic and cultural makeup at Megiddo at the time” of Josiah’s death, agreed Prof. Aren Maeir, a leading Iron-Age archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University.
“Based on comparisons to other sites in the Levant at the time, the finds from Megiddo do seem to argue for the presence of Egyptian and Greek soldiers, along with locals and exiles from the Mesopotamian region,” he said. “They seem to provide very nice material evidence of the background of Josiah’s untimely death.”
In other words, there is archaeological evidence for the Egyptian army with Greek mercenaries at ‘Armageddon’ at the time when Josiah was killed. This perfectly aligns with what the Bible tells us happened. We can be confident in what God’s Word says. Keep Thinking!
TOP PHOTO: Aerial photo of Tel Megiddo. (credit: AVRAM GRAICER, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
