Battle of Megiddo

Overview

The Battle of Megiddo is the encounter in which Josiah, king of Judah, went out against Necho II of Egypt as the Egyptian army marched north, and was killed. It ended the reign under which Judah's last thorough religious reform had been carried out, and left the kingdom a dependency of Egypt.

The Biblical Account

Two accounts survive. 2 Kings 23:29-30 records that Necho went up to the king of Assyria at the river Euphrates, that Josiah went to meet him, and that Necho killed him at Megiddo when he saw him; his servants carried his body by chariot to Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 35:20-24 gives a fuller version, in which Necho sends word that his quarrel is not with Judah, Josiah refuses to turn back and disguises himself for the fighting on the plain of Megiddo, and is struck by archers and dies of his wounds. Both accounts place the death at Megiddo and tie it to an Egyptian march toward the Euphrates.

What the Babylonian Chronicle Records

The Babylonian chronicle covering these years, known as Chronicle 3 in Grayson's edition and held as tablet BM 21901, describes the same campaign from the Babylonian side. It records that Ashur-uballit II, the last Assyrian king, together with Egyptian forces, gave up Harran, and that in the following summer a large army from Egypt crossed the Euphrates and joined him in an attempt to retake the city, which failed. That northward march is the one the biblical account has Josiah going out to meet.

The tablet names neither Josiah nor Megiddo, and does not mention Judah at all. The connection between the two records is made by scholars matching dates: the chronicle fixes when the Egyptian army went north and how far, and the biblical account places Josiah's death at that moment. The chronicle is evidence that the campaign happened and when. It is not independent attestation of a battle at Megiddo, nor of Josiah's death.

Consequences

Judah passed under Egyptian control. Necho deposed Josiah's son Jehoahaz after a reign of three months and installed his brother Jehoiakim in his place, imposing tribute. Egyptian authority over the region lasted until the Battle of Carchemish, where Babylon broke the Egyptian army and took the Levant. The Babylonian Chronicles are the principal source for that sequence.