2304 AM · ≈ 1457 BCE · world history
Thutmose III and the Battle of Megiddo
The Egyptian army breaks the alliance of Canaanite kings at Megiddo and reaches the Euphrates.
Thutmose III leads his army through a narrow mountain pass his advisers warned against, and appears before Megiddo unlooked-for. The Canaanite coalition flees into the city, and the siege lasts seven months. The scribes recorded the campaign day by day and carved the account on the walls of Karnak—the earliest detailed description of a battle in history. In seventeen campaigns the king carries Egypt's borders from Nubia to the Euphrates, taking the sons of defeated rulers to be raised in Memphis. Megiddo will be a battlefield many times again.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the annals of Thutmose III on the walls of Karnak — a day-by-day record of the Megiddo campaign
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — seventeen campaigns and an Egyptian frontier from Nubia to the Euphrates
Basis: documents and evidence.