The Battle of Megiddo (1457 BCE)

The swinging of swords. The blaring of guns. A field piled high with skulls. Our species has engaged in violent warfare for thousands of years, and some of these battles have changed the course of history.

It's hard to know when human beings first engaged in warfare. In 1964, archaeologists discovered 61 skeletons at the Jebel Sahaba site in Sudan, which had arrowheads lodged in their bones. These skeletons were more than 13,000 years old, and some historians think they were the victims of one of the earliest battles in history.

But we'll never know for sure what happened there. This conflict took place before the invention of writing. The first written account of a historical battle came thousands of years later.

In the 1880s, archaeologists in Southern Iraq were brushing away a layer of sand, when they discovered a pile of ancient limestone shards.

These shards were jagged and faded – but they were covered by pictorial carvings. These carvings showed a troop of powerful soldiers marching into battle, with ugly vultures soaring above them, blotting out the sun.

The Stele of the Vultures, as it came to be known, was carved more than 4000 years ago. Beneath the pictures was a written inscription, describing a victory for King Eannatum of Lagash, an ancient Sumerian city-state.

But fragments of the Stele are missing. The inscription is incomplete.

The oldest complete inscription of a battle describes a fight that broke out in 1457 BCE. That's approximately a thousand years after the Stele of the Vultures was carved.

The inscription stretches across one of the walls at Karnak Temple, a sprawling complex of passages and chambers on the fertile bank of the Nile. While the sands shifted, and the river flowed, these temple walls survived the course of time.

The inscription speaks of Megiddo – a conflict between Egypt and a coalition of rival states. Megiddo wasn't just a battle. It was a battle that changed the world.

Egypt was once divided: a chaotic mess of feeble kingdoms, where vagrants wandered the dusty streets, muttering the names of gods. But from 1550 BCE onwards, these divided kingdoms were united under an impressive dynasty of pharaohs.

The New Kingdom era, as this period became known, saw Egypt emerge as a superpower: stable and prosperous, with glittering temples and impressive levels of literacy. Egyptian writing, or hieroglyphs, had been in use for almost 2000 years, but it wasn’t until the New Kingdom era that literacy really took off.

With such a massive rise in written sources, the New Kingdom has been widely studied by historians. Modern perceptions of Ancient Egypt are usually based on this period. Iconic pharaohs, like Tutankhamun, Ramesses II and Nefertiti, all ruled during the New Kingdom era.

One of the New Kingdom's lesser known pharaohs was Thutmose III. He was clever and charismatic, but probably not blessed with good looks. When his mummy was discovered in 1881, an Egyptologist wrote an unflattering account: “the forehead is abnormally low, the eyes deeply sunk, the jaw heavy.”

To begin with, the heavy-jawed Thutmose III had a difficult time in power. He had to share the throne with his step mother, Hatshepsut – a fiery woman who styled herself as a strong, masculine leader. She even wore a false beard – a symbol of pharaonic power.

She wielded more political influence than Thutmose. At least, she did until she died, after 22 years of co-rule. That was the moment when Thutmose III could finally emerge from her shadow.

Free at last from his powerful step mother, Thutmose III began to forge a reputation of his own.

He became known for his fierce ability on the battlefield – in the years following Hatshepsut's death, Thutmose took part in seventeen campaigns, and devastated every military force he came up against.

On every occasion, he brought an official scribe to keep careful note of his victories. The name of this scribe was Tjaneni, and he wielded a brush and a roll of papyrus with just as much skill as Thutmose wielded a spear.

The first report that Tjaneni wrote described the world-changing Battle of Megiddo.

At the start of the New Kingdom era, Egypt had taken control of a group of rival states called the Canaanites. They were based on the coast of the Mediterranean. A fertile area with rolling hills – perfect for farming sheep.

But the Canaanites were more than just shepherds. And they didn't take kindly to losing their independence.

During the reign of Thutmose, two of these states – Kadesh and Megiddo – revolted. They assembled a force of 15,000 warriors and a thousand horse-drawn chariots.

Megiddo owned an imposing fortress at the top of a steep-sided hill. The rebel army gathered at the fortress, cracking their whips and beating their shields as they waited for Egypt to respond.

When Thutmose heard what was happening, he mustered a force of 20,000 warriors, and marched towards Megiddo. Tjaneni, the scribe, was there to record it: “his majesty set forth in a chariot of fine gold, adorned with his accouterments of combat.”

To reach Megiddo, the Egyptians had to cross the Carmel mountains: a jagged ridge of limestone, dotted with cracks and caves.

There were three possible routes. Two were wide and safe, while the third was narrow and treacherous – a shadowy crack in the limestone ridge which was barely wide enough to squeeze the shoulders of a horse.

The Egyptians gathered at the foot of the mountains, trying to decide what to do. Thutmose's generals urged him to follow one of the wider, easier routes.

But Thutmose shook his heavy-jawed head, and led his army to the narrow route instead. He told his generals that the Canaanites would expect them to take a wider path. By taking the narrow route instead, Thutmose hoped to catch the enemy by surprise.

The Egyptians squeezed along the narrow path, walking single file, with Thutmose leading the way. Their shoulders rubbed the limestone walls, and the sky was nothing but a blue-white sliver far above their heads.

When the path finally ended, they stepped out into the open, blinking against the sun. When their eyes adjusted, they saw the Canaanites guarding the other two paths, just as Thutmose had predicted. The rebel forces didn't even notice that the Egyptian army had arrived.

With a flick of his wrist, Thutmose moved his troops into an aggressive, three-pronged formation. Then he led them on a galloping surprise attack, smashing the Canaanites from behind.

The Canaanites scattered. Some of them managed to make it back to the fortress at the top of the hill, but they were only delaying the inevitable. After a prolonged siege, the Canaanites surrendered, and Thutmose was declared victorious.

After the Battle of Megiddo, Thutmose III returned to Egypt. His golden chariot gleamed in the sun, while his army carried the spoils of war: hundreds of chariots, thousands of sheep, and the royal armor of the King of Megiddo himself.

But this battle proved to be a lot more significant than a pile of Canaanite loot.

Riding a wave of self-belief, Thutmose engaged in sixteen more battles over the course of his rule, and he won every single one of them. Subsequent pharaohs built on these victories, expanding north into the regions now known as Syria, Libya and Palestine.

Some historians talk about ‘The Club of Great Powers’, referring to a group of empires that took shape during this period: Assyria, Babylon, the Hittites, Mitanni, and Egypt. They were the first of their kind – international superpowers with vast, complex territories.

The big question is this: would Egypt have still become a superpower if the Battle of Megiddo had gone differently?

Imagine, for a moment, that the Canaanites had predicted that Thutmose would take the narrow path. They set up an ambush, ready to strike just as soon as an Egyptian poked his head into the light. Thutmose was riding at the front of the line. When he stepped from the path, he was hit by a hundred spears at once, and died before he hit the ground.

With their pharaoh gone, Egypt could have lapsed into a period of chaos, just like the one which preceded the New Kingdom era. They would have never built an empire, and iconic pharaohs like Tutankhamen and Ramesses II would have never come to power.

This style of thinking is called counterfactual history. It helps historians to put events into perspective.

It's worth pointing out that everything we know about the Battle of Megiddo comes from Tjaneni's report. And, while it's certainly a valuable source, it does need to be treated with caution.

Thutmose comes across suspiciously well throughout the entire account, probably because Tjaneni wanted to boost his patron’s reputation. Maybe someone else had the clever idea to take the narrow path through the mountains. Or maybe Tjaneni’s report is true. It's hard to know either way.

Thutmose was evidently pleased with Tjaneni’s write up. That's why he had the words inscribed on the walls of the temple at Karnak. Tjaneni’s original papyrus scrolls have long been lost, but these walls allow us to read about the Battle of Megiddo today.

Whether Tjaneni's report is reliable or not, one thing is certain – the Battle of Megiddo had another interesting impact.

The Book of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, describes a battle to end all battles. It takes place between the forces of good and evil: forks of lightning slash the sky, while earthquakes shudder the earth.

This battle takes place at a site called Armageddon. That word is a Greek transliteration of ‘Har Megiddo’, or ‘Mount Megiddo’ – the location of the famous Canaanite fortress that Thutmose overthrew.

This connection is no coincidence. The writer of Revelation probably used Tjaneni's writings as a source of inspiration. The victory of good over a coalition of evil could even be based on the Egyptian army and the coalition of Canaanite states.

One way or another, it's hard to argue that this battle didn't change the world.