Digging up Armageddon

About this book

"In 1925 a team of archaeologists was sent by famed archaeologist James Henry Breasted, the Director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, to search for the city that King Solomon built in the tenth century BCE. These excavations are rightfully famous for the light they shed on one of the most important cities in biblical times: the ancient city of Megiddo, in Israel, the site of Armageddon. The books and articles that the original participants published are still used, and debated, by archaeologists working in the region today. However, these scholarly publications provide only a small window into the daily activities of the team members and the stories behind their amazing discoveries. Using a treasure trove of other writing - including more than three decades' worth of letters, cablegrams, cards, and diaries, archaeologist and historian Eric Cline, who spent twenty years digging at Megiddo himself, brings the Chicago excavators and their discoveries to life situating them against the backdrop of the Great Depression in the United States as well as the growing troubles and tensions in British Mandate Palestine. Their story, as recounted by Cline, often reads more like melodrama than dry archaeological report and provides a unique a glimpse of the internal workings of a dig in the early years of biblical archaeology. In the course of telling their story, Cline gives readers the full picture of an archaeological site from its first discoveries to its most recent excavations placing it all in the larger scheme of the rise and fall of civilizations, from the Neolithic Revolution through the Romans"--