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The Battleground Who Destroyed Megiddo? Was It David or Shishak? Timothy P. Harrison Sidebar: Megiddo at A Glance Did King David conquer and destroy Megiddo? Well, that depends partly on the date of Stratum VI. Let me explain why. Most scholars accept David as a historical figure who was an active military ruler in the period portrayed in the Hebrew Bible (the early tenth century B.C.E.). However, there is considerably less agreement on how to interpret the archaeological evidence for this period. That’s where Megiddo Stratum VI figures in. The dispute is over which archaeological material relates to the time...

At 8.45 on the morning of 15 April 136 BC, Babylon was plunged into darkness when the Moon passed in front of the Sun. An astrologer, who recorded the details in cuneiform characters on a clay tablet, wrote: "At 24 degrees after sunrise-a solar eclipse. When it began on the southwest side, Venus, Mercury and the normal stars were visible. Jupiter and Mars, which were in their period of disappearance, became visible. The Sun threw off the shadow from southwest to northeast." If present-day astronomers use a computer to run the movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun backwards...

[T]he exclusively masculine epithets referring to this individual in the same tomb and on a now-vanished block at Memphis, confirm that we are dealing with a man - as distinct from the pharaoh-queen Ankh(et)kheperure Neferneferuaten... Contrary to Ancient Egyptian custom, Smenkhkare is not presented under a coronation name and a birth name in his two cartouches, but under two coronation names. The explanation for this curious fact seems to me clear: both his royal names were composed on the occasion of his coronation. He therefore must have had another name beforehand... The absence of a birth name, the lack of...

Battlements Found at Egypt's Ancient East Gateway Wed Jun 30, 2004 01:52 PM ET CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian archaeological team has uncovered battlements from Pharaonic times at the ancient eastern gateway to Egypt in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, the Culture Ministry said Wednesday. The find includes three fortifications built in the area of Tharu, an ancient city which stood on a branch of the Nile that has long since dried up, a ministry statement said. The battlements stand on the ancient Horus Road, a vital commercial and military artery from ancient Egypt to Asia. The discoveries,...

Determining a reliable calendrical age of the Santorini (Minoan) eruption is necessary to place the impact of the eruption into its proper context within Bronze Age society in the Aegean region. The high-resolution record of the deposition of volcanically produced acids on polar ice sheets, as available in the SO42-time series from ice cores (a direct signal), and the high-resolution record of the climatic impact of past volcanism inferred in tree rings (a secondary signal) have been widely used to assign a 1628/1627 age to the eruption. The layer of ice in the GISP2 (Greenland) ice core corresponding to...

Science & Society 10/20/03Digging out the truth of Exodus By Helen Fields Egyptologist Manfred Bietak was reading a 60-year-old report of a dig near Luxor in Egypt when a surprising find caught his eye. Near a mortuary temple from the 12th century B.C., archaeologists had uncovered a grid of shallow trenches, which they guessed was the base of a workers' hut. Bietak, head of the Institute of Egyptology at Vienna University, recognized the floor plan as that of the four-room houses used by almost all Israelites from the 12th to the sixth century B.C. What was it doing in Egypt?...

Last Update: Saturday, September 27, 2003. 4:26pm (AEST)13th Century tablet could lead to lost archives of Ramses II The discovery of a stone tablet detailing diplomatic ties between the ancient Egyptians and Hittites in the 13th Century BC could be the key to the lost archives of Ramses II, according to archaeologists. Discovered at Qantir 120 kilometres north-east of Cairo, the tablet dates back to the time of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II (1298-1235 BC) and confirms his capital, Pi-Ramses, was in the Nile Delta. "Its the first time that such a written record has been found in the...