Digging up Armageddon

Back in 1925, the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, led by James Henry Breasted, sent a team of archaeologists to look for the city King Solomon is said to have built in the 10th century BCE. Their work at Megiddo in Israel, the place whose name gave us Armageddon, shed major light on one of the most significant cities of the biblical era. The reports and papers those first excavators published are still read and argued over by archaeologists in the region.

The official publications reveal little about the everyday life of the team or the human stories behind their finds. Eric Cline, an archaeologist and historian who spent two decades excavating at Megiddo himself, draws on decades of letters, cablegrams, postcards and diaries to tell that backstory. He places the Chicago team against the Great Depression in the United States and the mounting unrest in British Mandate Palestine. Cline's account often reads more like a drama than a dry field report, offering a rare view of how an early biblical-era dig actually operated.

The book also follows the site from its first discoveries to its latest excavations, setting it within the broader story of how civilizations rose and fell, from the Neolithic Revolution to the Romans.