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About 1457 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Thutmose III Bets Everything on a One-Man-Wide Mountain Pass at Megiddo

On the timeline · around About 1457 BCE · The New KingdomMiddle Kingdom & Foreign RuleThe New KingdomThutmose III Bets Everything on a One-Man-Wide Mountain Pass at Megiddo1,600 BCE1,550 BCE1,500 BCE1,450 BCE1,400 BCE1,350 BCE

What happened

Marching to crush a rebel coalition holed up at Megiddo, Thutmose III's own war council urged him to take one of two open, safer roads. He refused, choosing the narrow Aruna pass instead, a route so tight his army had to march single file and break down chariots and wagons to fit through, and told his commanders he would lead from the front rather than send them ahead. The coalition, certain no sane general would risk the pass, had split its defenses across the two easier roads and left the Aruna route unguarded. Thutmose emerged behind the enemy's lines with total surprise. After winning the field battle, his troops stopped to loot the enemy camp instead of chasing down the fleeing defenders, giving Megiddo's garrison time to bar the gates, so Thutmose encircled the city with a moat and wooden stockade and settled in for a siege that ran seven to eight months before it surrendered.

Why it matters

The campaign became the foundation of a 20-year run of roughly 17 military campaigns that pushed Egyptian control from the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, through Syria and the Levant, down to the Fifth Cataract of the Nile in Nubia, a reach beyond anything earlier pharaohs had held. Egyptian scribes recorded the Megiddo campaign in detail on the walls of the Temple of Amun at Karnak, producing what stands as the most complete surviving account of any ancient Egyptian military operation.

How we know

The primary account comes from military scribe Tjaneni's day-by-day record of the campaign, inscribed on the walls of the Temple of Amun at Karnak, including the debate over which road to take and Thutmose's own words to his commanders. This inscription is the source historians rely on for the tactical details of the march and siege.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient Egypt26 events · Three thousand years of pharaohs, from the first unification of the Nile valley to Cleopatra's death, and the two nineteenth and twentieth-century discoveries that let the modern world read and see it all again.View all →