Could Megiddo have been destroyed by fire in 2-3 hours?

Angela

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It's from Tel Megiddo that we get the word Armageddon. According to some Christians this will be the site of the last battle between Jesus and Satan at the end of the world. It's also one of the oldest settlements in history, and one of the first to be studied archaeologically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Megiddo

These scientists think, from their reconstructions, that it could have been destroyed very quickly, but there are skeptics.

http://www.archaeology.org/news/4902-161011-burned-mud-bricks

"REHOVOT, ISRAEL—According to a report in Live Science, Ruth Shahack-Gross and Mathilde Forget suggest that it may have only taken two to three hours for fire to have destroyed the entire city of Tel Megiddo some 3,000 years ago. A previous study found that mud bricks at the site had reached 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit. While working at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Shahack-Gross and Forget made new mud bricks, and then tried to determine how quickly the bricks would catch on fire by placing them in a hot oven and timing how long it took the bricks’ cores to reach 1,112 degrees. The scientists found that the larger bricks took longer to heat than smaller bricks, and that wood beams, furniture, mats, stored food and oil, and bedding probably helped the fire at Tel Megiddo to spread. Critics point out that in an actual fire, a home’s bricks would probably have been heated only on one side. “We are totally aware of the fact that the experiment, [which was done] in controlled conditions in the lab, does not mimic what happened in the past,” responded Shahack-Gross."

Tel Megiddo as it is today:
Megiddo-Early-Bronze-sacrificial-altar-aerial-tbs120360011-bibleplaces.jpg


Megiddo, originally a Canaanite city, as it would have looked:
megiddo.jpg



megiddo-map.jpg


 
Biblical stories and legends in general are often based on historical facts even if some became distorted or exaggerated to suit the needs of the religious leaders. Megiddo could have been the site of an important historical battle between the ancestors of the Jews and their enemies. The battle would have been converted into religious story with Jesus and Satan later.

The Wikipedia page on Canaan says that the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua are marked down on a list as one of the nations to be exterminated, and later as a group which had been annihilated by the Israelites. If the early Christians in Israel descended from the Israelites then they would be the good people on Jesus' side, and the Canaanites the evil people on Satan's side. George Bush Jr. did not invent the "with us or against us" mentality. He probably got it from reading too much the Bible.
 
Nicely planned city fort. Well fortified and defended one way in. Obviously it was hard to conquer. Royal capital and merchant center I guess. For ordinary farmer it would be terribly cumbersome to go in and out few times a day to the field.
To destroy stone and brick city in just 3 hours it is impossible. Perhaps one block or city section in extremely hot and windy weather.

We can gauge our common sense on similar recent phenomena of big devastating fires. For example the historic fire of Chicago in 1871 needed a day to burn through 6 km square of the city. Mind you that 2/3 of Chicago was made of wood, and even sidewalks were made of wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire
 
I guess the fort was constructed or conquered by the Egyptian colonisers and deserted by them about 1200 BC.
Who destroyed it is unknown. For a while the Sea Peoples were the suspect.
How fast the mudbricks burn depends largely on the straw content inside.
I don't think the mudbricks could have propagated the fire.
I think the bricks must burst first because of high temperature, allowing oxygen to get to the straw.
Solid wooden beams can't propagate a fire neither. A solid wooden beam construction is more fire-proof than a steel construction.
Steel constructions collapse at 400 °C, that is what happened to the Twin Towers.
There must have been a lot of materials that burn easily inside the city, causing very high temperatures.
 
There are 26 separate layers at Megiddo, reaching back to 7000 BCE and forward to 586 BCE. During that time period, it was repeatedly destroyed. This is just one of those times, although it was perhaps the most catastrophic.

The original walls and temple complex seem to date to its Canaanite phase.

"Megiddo's Early Bronze Age I (3500–3100 BCE) temple has been described by its excavators as "the most monumental single edifice so far uncovered in the EB I
Levant and ranks among the largest structures of its time in the Near East."[2]The first wall was constructed in the Early Bronze Age II or III period.["

The Egyptians only enter into the situation later, with Thutmose III, who reigned from 1479 to 1425 B.C.E. The model shows the city under their rule. After more destruction and battles, the OT relates that Solomon had the walls rebuilt.

The references to a cataclysmic battle at the end of the world is from The Book of Revelations in the New Testament.
 

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