Historical Summary

ONE of the earliest war correspondents of history was an Egyptian scribe named Thaneni, who followed Thothmes III, the "Napoleon of Egypt," on the great campaigns which took him across western Asia to the Euphrates River.

"I followed the Good God, Sovereign of Truth, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkeperre (Thothmes III)," wrote Thaneni. "I beheld the victories of the king which he won in every country. . . . I recorded the victories which he won in every land, putting them into writing according to the facts."

Pharaoh had commanded that the report of his campaigns be inscribed on the walls of the great Karnak Temple of Ammon, and the annals which Thaneni had accordingly prepared were based upon the daily record kept by the royal secretaries, a copy of which on a roll of leather was preserved in the very same temple.

The most dramatic incident in the annals relates to the victory of Thothmes over the forces of Syria at Armageddon, or Megiddo (1479 B.C.). This strategic town on the plain of Jezreel, where, centuries later, Josiah fell resisting Pharaoh Necho, where in the First World War the British started to roll up the Turkish forces and push northward, and where, according to the author of Revelation, the mighty battle of the nations was to be fought before the Last Judgment, marked a temporary haven for the Syrian fugitives defeated on the battlefield. Had not the soldiers been so intensely preoccupied with gathering up the booty, the Egyptians would not have permitted these remnants to slip through their fingers and take refuge behind the walls of the town. Such, at least, is Thothmes’s alibi. The narrative of these stirring events, preserved in the following selection, has been translated from the hieroglyphics by the Egyptologist, E. A. T. W. Budge.

These Egyptian annals have some of the quality of an Homeric epic. Only four years after Armageddon, General Thutii, one of Thothmes III’s top commanders, used the Trojan-horse technique in capturing Joppa, port of southern Palestine. He enticed the prince of that city to a conference and told him in confidence that he was prepared to switch sides. Accepting Thutii’s statement at face value, the prince of Joppa asked to see King Thothmes’s celebrated club. Thutii had the dub brought in, and, standing before the prince, shouted: