Archaeologists have discovered recent evidence backing up the biblical account of the Battle of Megiddo.
The battle is recorded in each 2 Kings and a pair of Chronicles and is given because the explanation for death for King Josiah, who was noted for being a pious king and can also be recorded within the New Testament as an ancestor of Jesus.
Josiah is praised within the biblical text for his zeal in turning Israel away from idolatry and towards worship of the Lord. He can also be noted for encouraging the people to watch the Passover, with 2 Kings 23:22 going up to now as to say: “Surely there was not holden such a passover from the times of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all of the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.”
However, it was to not last. The Old Testament accounts say that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt got here with a military “to fight against Charchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him”.
Despite Necho warning Josiah that he had not come to fight him, Josiah is recorded as opposing him anyway. In the ensuring battle Josiah is shot by an archer and dies.
2 Kings gives Josiah this epitaph: “And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, in keeping with all of the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.”
Now archaeologists have found pottery fragments in the realm suggesting that there was indeed an Egyptian presence across the time of the battle in 609 BC.
Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist on the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University and the lead creator of a study describing the finds, told Live Science that in addition to Egyptian pottery, the stays of Greek pottery were also found, likely as a result of the Egyptian practice of hiring Greek mercenaries on the time.
