Battle of Megiddo under Thutmose III
- Date
- c. 1457 BCE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Canaan / Levant (Megiddo, Israel)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
Thutmose III defeated a coalition of Canaanite and Syrian city-states, led by the king of Kadesh, at Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley.
Choosing the risky narrow Aruna pass against his generals' advice, he surprised the enemy and won the field, then besieged the city for seven months until it surrendered. The campaign is the earliest battle in history recorded in reliable detail: a daily journal kept by the scribe Tjaneni was later inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Amun at Karnak (the Annals of Thutmose III), preserving troop movements, tactics, and a detailed tally of plunder. Megiddo controlled the Via Maris, the principal route between Egypt and Mesopotamia, so the victory secured Egyptian dominance over the Levant. It opened roughly two decades of campaigns through which Thutmose III extended Egyptian power to the Euphrates, forging the largest empire Egypt would ever hold.
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Empires active in c. 1457 BCE
- New Kingdom of Egypt1550 BCE – 1077 BCE
- Hittite Empire1650 BCE – 1178 BCE
- Shang Dynasty1600 BCE – 1046 BCE
- Mitanni1500 BCE – 1300 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related military & conflict events
- Thutmose I Conquers Kush and Destroys Kermac. 1500 BCE
- Late Bronze-Age Collapse and the Sea Peoplesc. 1177 BCE
- Hittite sack of Babylon ends the Old Babylonian dynastyc. 1595 BCE
- Battle of Mingtiao and the Founding of the Shang Dynastyc. 1600 BCE
- Battle of Kadesh between Egypt and the Hittitesc. 1274 BCE
- Battle of Muye and the Zhou Conquest of Shangc. 1046 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
The Kingdom of the Hittites
The standard readable narrative history of the Hittite state.
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