As I write these lines, … behind me rises Har-Megiddo, “the Mount of Megiddo,” or as known to the Western world in its Hellenized form, “Armageddon.” Towering high above the plain, Armageddon was an imposing stronghold, … now deeply covered by the rubbish of thousands of years, green with billowing grain and bright with nodding anemones. Our first trenches have been thrust into the vast mound, … [and] already … [our] workmen have brought out an inscribed block bearing Egyptian hieroglyphs.¹

—James Henry Breasted, March 1926