There are many reasons why battles occur. Most often they result from reasons “political”—what we today might deem ideological. Other battles result from economics—the need to acquire limited resources. And some are caused by miscommunication and confusion.

But where battles occur is a more interesting question. Many people will often exclusively point to notions of strategy, tactics and logistics. Fascinated by large arrows on maps, and order of battle lists, geography becomes subsumed; a factor to be considered last. Critics of Operation Market-Garden, for example, focus on the poor planning; the native geography—in that case marshlands separated by many streams—become yet another factor that the Great Strategists failed to take into account.

In truth, I would posit that geography causes battles. Technology and societies change, but geography rarely does. The nature of historiography itself is partly to blame. Historians break themselves up into unnatural subsets—the biblical historians, the classical historians, the medieval historians, the Great War historians, and so forth. Often the geography they study is the same, but these divisions mean that rarely is the land itself taken into account.

Or to put it another way, battles repeat themselves. The grand reasons, the specific societies, the level of technology, these all change. But the same battles are fought again and again, often with similar tactics and deployments, because the lay of the land demands it.

The greatest example of this may be the site of Armageddon itself. The term is a corruption of the Hebrew Har Megiddo and means literally “the mount of Megiddo.”(1) Tel Meggido is located in the Jezreel valley in present day Israel. According to the archaelogical record the site has been continuously occupied by more than thirty cities over a period of far more than four thousand years. John, the author of the biblical book of Revelations, chose Tel Meggido for the site of the final battle because it already had been so often a battlefield. The Jezeel valley measures only 20 miles long by seven miles wide but is strategically important because it lies at junction of roads running north-south and east-west. Whoever had control of Megiddo had control of one of the major trade routes of antiquity, the Via Maris (the “Way of the Sea”) connecting Egypt to Mesopotamia. Any army attempting to move from Egypt to Mesopotamia or the reverse had to go through that one valley.

Archaeological evidence shows occupation of the site for six millennia, from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period in the seventh millennium B.C.E. to the Persian period in the mid-first millennium B.C.E.(2) During the period of the Roman occupation the valley was the site of the VIth Legion.

Megiddo began to dominate the surrounding countryside in the 4th millennium B.C.E. (ca. 3500) – at the dawn of urbanization in the Levant.(3) The earliest description of a major war in antiquity is a record of the Egyptian campaign of Thutmose III against a union of the Canaanite city-states. The Canaanites, who chose to make their stand at Megiddo, were routed when the Phraraoh choose the most direct and therefore dangerous route through the ‘Aruna pass. The Canaanites were routed and Thutmose took Megiddo after a seven month siege, setting the stage for the incorporation of Canaan as part of the new kingdom.

In the late 4th, 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C.E. Megiddo was probably the most powerful city-state in the north of Canaan. When the Canaanite city-states revolted against Pharaonic attempts at hegemony, it was at Megiddo that they assembled to do battle. The Egyptian army, led by Pharaoh Thutmose III, surprised the rebels by choosing the most dangerous route of attack – through the narrow ‘Aruna Pass. After routing the Canaanite forces and capturing rich booty, Thutmose III laid siege to the city for seven months. His decisive victory enabled him to incorporate Canaan as a province in the empire of the New Kingdom. The description of the battle of Megiddo is the earliest account of a major war in antiquity.(4)

There were repeated battles at Tel Meggido over the next few thousand years as the Egyptians, Persians, and local rulers like Joshua sought to acquire this valuable ground. Romans, Parthians, Muslims and Crusaders all battled at Meggido. Even Napoleon said of the Jezeel valley that there was “no more perfect battlefield than this.”

What many people do not realise is that Tel Meggido has continued to be a battlefield even into modern times. During the Palestinian campaign in World War I, British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, leading an Australian cavalry division and the Tenth Indian infantry, dislodged from the advantageous heights of the mound a group of about 100 Turkish fighters defending the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire. Although merely a minor skirmish, the symbolism led Allenby to revive the name Meggido.(5) Indeed, Meggido continued to be the site of combat during the 1967 Six Day War.

So what does this mean? Perhaps the best thing a general can keep in mind when planning a battle is the old adage “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.”


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(1) http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Armageddon.htm
(2) http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/megiddo/
(3) http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/megiddo/history.html
(4) http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/megiddo/history.html
(5) Palmer, Alan, Victory 1918, Grove Press, NY. ©1998