CHAPTER XVI

“Instructions Had Been Given to Protect This Property”

Just as the very first season of the dig almost ended a week after it began, back in 1926, so the last scheduled season actually did end before it could begin. Despite having enough money for a final season, the team had to shut down the dig for good before they could properly wrap up the entire project, for World War II brought a sudden halt to their efforts.1 The team members, or many of them at least, joined the war effort in various capacities and put the skills they had learned on the dig and in British Mandate Palestine to a different use—trying to stop the modern world from heading down the road toward a new Armageddon.

In early 1940, however, Loud was still optimistic and was hopeful that they would be able to start digging again in the fall. He began again to try to put together a team, months ahead of when they would be needed.2 In addition, as of early January 1940, Loud reported hearing rumors that Engberg had been nominated to succeed Nelson Glueck as the director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. Already by the end of that month, his appointment was “now a fact beyond rumor,” as Loud put it, with the Engbergs scheduled to sail over to British Mandate Palestine in June or July to assume their new role. Having Engberg in charge of the American School would be immensely beneficial to the Megiddo excavations, if they ever got back in the field again.

However, the war got in the way here too, and by the time that they were supposed to leave, the Engbergs’ departure had been postponed indefinitely. Ironically, Clarence Fisher, who was still in Jerusalem working on his pottery volumes, was asked to serve as interim director of the school until such time as the Engbergs were able to sail over, and he did so until his sudden death in late July 1941.3 Engberg never did take up his appointed position in Jerusalem; instead, Glueck took over again after Fisher died.

FIG. 51. Megiddo car overturned and totaled in collision in Iraq (courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)

Meanwhile, Loud was never able to seriously pursue the possibility of getting a team back together for a season in the fall, and so he eventually authorized Parker to begin selling off bits and pieces of the Megiddo equipment and to transport whatever furniture he could to Haifa for use in his own apartment. The piano, Loud’s pride and joy, was sent down to Jerusalem and given to the Vesters at the American Colony. The Megiddo car was sold to the British Army, which sent it to Iraq where it was promptly totaled in a collision with an oil truck. Loud learned of this later and quite by accident, when an unknown officer sent him photographs of the smashed car lying upside down on a desert road. Soon they also began to get requests from various organizations, such as the “Medical Authorities,” according to one letter from Parker, asking whether the expedition house could be used for various purposes, such as the storing of supplies.4

The two big pieces of Megiddo news in 1941 both involved Shipton. First was the fact that he was asked by the Department of Antiquities to write a Guide to Megiddo for the many tourists who were coming to visit the site. He agreed to do this, after receiving approval from Chicago, and the guide eventually appeared in late 1942.5

Possibly more important, though, at least to him, was his sudden marriage to Miss Hester Wood, who had apparently originally come to British Mandate Palestine to teach at the Girls’ College in Jerusalem but was now working in the governmental hospital in Haifa. According to Parker, she was “a jolly nice girl,” about the same age as Shipton. They had met back in February, had gotten engaged within six weeks, and were married in mid-May. The wedding itself was small, with only fourteen people invited to the ceremony in Haifa, but the engagement party that was held at Megiddo beforehand was huge, with 120 people present, including the Iliffes, Hamilton and his wife, and Clarence Fisher. Serge Tchoub reported that the saloon, the dining room, and even the Ping-Pong room of the dig house had been crammed full of guests. Shipton’s job was also going well; by now he had been promoted to a senior position—“Secretary of Spinney’s” was his official title, according to Parker (who continued to live with the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Shipton in Haifa).6

By 1942, both the dig house and the site had been taken over by British forces. In his 1991 book on the battle for Crete during World War II, Antony Beevor describes the training for British paratroopers that was held at the Ramat David airbase near Megiddo. More specifically, he also notes that “some students, especially those destined for intelligence gathering, would do another course afterwards on secret procedures—they included disguises, codes and dead-letter drops—at the American School of Archaeology in the valley of Megiddo.” Since there is no “American School of Archaeology” in the “valley of Megiddo,” this can only be the Megiddo dig house. This is confirmed by an obituary for one Ian Macpherson, published in the Telegraph for 12 January 2011, which states that, sometime prior to 1944, he had attended the “agents’ training course at Megiddo, near Haifa, where he was instructed in explosives, sabotage, and the dissemination of ‘black propaganda.’ ”7

It is at this same time that Loud himself either volunteered or was called up to serve in the US war effort. In early May 1942, he requested a leave of absence from the Oriental Institute.8 His request was duly approved and then subsequently renewed each year through 1945. During those years, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA, which was then run by “Wild Bill” Donovan. As part of his duties, Loud served as Nelson Glueck’s primary contact, for Glueck was also working for the OSS, but was stationed in the Middle East rather than in Washington, DC.9

As the war came to an end, Loud was offered a position with the Atlantic Refining Company—the same company for which DeLoach had been working since 1935. It was a job that he couldn’t pass up, he told Wilson, especially since he would be based in Cairo. With Wilson’s reluctant consent, and with the proviso that Loud would see the Megiddo II volume through to completion, Loud submitted his resignation from the Oriental Institute in January 1946, noting that he would “always look back on my affiliation with the Institute as one of the happiest associations for which one could ever wish.”10

Loud never returned to work at Megiddo, although he was relatively close geographically, living and working for Atlantic Refining in its Cairo office for the next decade. He thus joined Lamon and DeLoach as Megiddo alumni who went to work for oil and gas companies following their departure from the expedition.

However, in Chicago, there still remained some small hope that a return to the site would eventually be realized. Back in November 1942, when Loud took his first leave of absence, Harold Nelson, who was serving as the acting director of the Oriental Institute at the time, had sent a letter to Hamilton, the director of antiquities. In it he had written that they intended to resume the excavations when conditions permitted, and requested “an official recognition” of their claim to the site, with a concession that would last through the war and then for an additional “period of one year after the cessation of hostilities.” Hamilton was happy to oblige, and actually did them one better—sending a note in February 1943 saying: “I am very glad to learn that it is the intention of the Oriental Institute to resume excavations at Megiddo as soon as conditions permit. You may rest assured that no license to excavate at Megiddo will be granted, within two years of the cessation of hostilities in Europe, to any other person or institution without the consent of the Oriental Institute.”11

That hope, however, was never fulfilled. By the end of World War II, the site was in bad shape, despite the maintenance efforts of Parker and Tchoub. A visit to the site in the spring of 1946 by Parker and Hamilton revealed damage to the city gate, the city wall, the stables, the water shaft of the tunnel, and one of the buildings with standing stones. Some of the damage was due to erosion, but some was caused by the local villagers using the exposed remains as a quarry and removing large stones, for instance from the stables, for their own building projects.12

The Chicago team itself also removed some stones from the site, for Shipton told Hamilton in 1944 that three Masonic lodges had asked whether they could have “some of the foundation stones belonging to the Solomonic period at Megiddo and which have Masons’ marks inscribed.” The lodges in question were the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the Grand Lodge of England, and the King Hiram Lodge, Shipton said. Permission was eventually granted, and although we now know that the stones with such markings most likely belong to the period of Omri and Ahab rather than Solomon, by 1952 the stones had been sent to Chicago, where they were received in good order and presumably delivered to the lodges.13

All of this, however, paled in comparison to what happened in 1948, during and immediately after the Israeli War of Independence. Three separate incidents involving Megiddo and the dig house occurred during that year: the battle that was fought on 30–31 May, looting that took place sometime between late June and late July, and a fire that destroyed most of the dig house in mid-October.

The year had begun with Olof Lind facing a crossfire of bullets, from both Arab and Jewish forces, on his orchard property just south of Haifa in January. His servants escaped to Athlit and then to Deir Yassin, only to be swept up in (and to survive) the events there in early April, while Lind himself eventually fled to Sweden in late May.14 He left just five days before the battle that was fought at Megiddo, when Israeli forces from the Golani Brigade charged up the ancient mound, using the cut made at the southeast by the Chicago excavators that they called Area CC.

The Israelis took control of the site without firing a shot as the Arab forces beat a hasty retreat. They then used its height to provide covering fire for their own forces, who raced across the fields to take the police station at the Megiddo crossroads some thirteen hundred meters away. This was located where the prison stands today, complete with its recently discovered Jesus mosaic mentioned in a previous chapter. They also posted soldiers, reportedly to protect the dig house and the exposed remains on the site, but more to guard against possible Arab attacks. Serge Tchoub and his wife were taken into custody at first but then later released, according to Parker.15

Remnants from these military actions were recovered in 2008–14 by the Tel Aviv Expedition in their Area Q, located at the southeastern edge of the mound, in the form of hundreds of spent cartridge cases from machine-gun fire. They also discovered that several Neo-Assyrian rectangular rooms from Stratum III in this area, which had been exposed by Fisher during the 1925–26 season and thereafter left untouched by the Chicago excavators, had been rearranged by either the Arab or Israeli forces to create foxholes for the soldiers and firing platforms for the machine guns.16

Following the battle, several prominent archaeologists, including Immanuel Ben-Dor, whom we have met previously, as well as Shemuel Yeivin and Benjamin Maisler (later to become much better known as Benjamin Mazar), stopped by Megiddo during a tour of the north in late June 1948. They reported that the dig house hadn’t suffered any damage and that some of the artifacts, plus the Chicago dig library, had been transported for safekeeping to the museum in Haifa. Other items were still present in three rooms and a storeroom; the archaeologists recommended that these should be “removed to a place of safety at Haifa” as well.17

Unfortunately, their suggestions were not followed. Within a month, the dig house was severely ransacked and many of its furnishings stolen, reportedly by individual soldiers or groups from within the Israel Defense Forces searching for supplies. The three archaeologists returned at the end of July to assess the damage; their subsequent report was somber.18

In their report, they noted that there was now a camouflaged area for wounded soldiers in the middle of Schumacher’s Great Trench, and defensive trenches had been dug into the slope of the tell. However, they said that the damage to the actual site was minimal, and that it was the dig house that had suffered the most. Shocked by what they now saw, they wrote that “in general the offices look as if after a real ‘pogrom.’ ” They noted that “files and papers were thrown down on the earth, torn, and ruined; closed cupboards were broken open, glasses shattered, objects piled into heaps upon each other without order.” Condemning what had happened in the strongest possible terms, they concluded, “In this case the private property of a scientific team from a friendly country was molested and robbed in a vandalistic, irresponsible way.” In response to the filing of their account, a government committee was immediately formed and an investigation commenced. This committee eventually issued two reports in April 1949.19

In the meantime, however, the misfortunes continued. In mid-October 1948, a soldier decided “to burn out a hornet’s nest situated in the roof of one of the outside buildings” and instead burnt down the entire dig house, according to Parker. It was impossible to estimate the cost of the damage, he said, for “the house and outside buildings are completely wrecked.”20 Both he and Serge Tchoub compiled lists of their own personal items that had been lost, as well as a much longer list covering ten full pages of items that had been in the house. They sent the lists to the insurance company, which balked at paying, since they had not been occupying the house at the time. Instead, the insurance company suggested that the Israeli military or government should reimburse the Oriental Institute for all of the losses.21

Parker eventually wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in early June 1949. In his letter, he documented what he had personally witnessed while visiting the site and the dig house the day before, on 1 June, in the company of the consul and vice-consul of the United States of America. It is worth quoting in full, for it is an accounting of the damage done during both the looting in July 1948 and the fire in October 1948:22

Sir,

I desire to place on record that I, representing the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, in company with the United States of America Consul, Mr. Bloodworth, and the Vice Consul, Mr. Crosby, visited and inspected the Megiddo Expedition House and premises yesterday, the 1st June, and found:—

  1. The whole house and premises completely abandoned.
  2. The whole place in a complete state of chaos.
  3. That everything movable (absolutely) has been removed.
  4. That every fixture, including bathroom, sanitary, electric, down to the last glazed tile has been removed.
  5. That all internal doors of rooms, built in cupboards, etc. have been removed.
  6. That more than half of the windows including the anti-malaria appliances have been removed.
  7. That all the light railway, except a few containers, has been removed.
  8. That the power station and battery room has been completely destroyed, with all valuable materials, such as switchboards, dynamos, etc., removed.

I would refer to your letter F.O./H/173/6263, addressed to the Director of the Oriental Institute, para 2, sub para 3, in which you stated that instructions had been given to protect this property. I regret to inform you that judging by what we saw yesterday, such instructions have been completely ignored.

I shall be most grateful if for the purpose of my report to the Oriental Institute I could be informed as to what steps are being taken to protect the Megiddo site and what remains of the property.

Parker followed this up a week later with a shorter, but just as specific, letter to Wilson back at the Oriental Institute. In it he noted that when he and the American officials arrived at the site, they found it “abandoned and open to anyone who wished to enter.” Furthermore, everything was in chaos; Parker wrote that he had never before seen “such willful destruction; the whole house interior and exterior has been stripped of everything moveable. All interior fixtures, baths, ablution basins, lavatory appliances, electric fittings, refrigerator, etc. etc., have been removed. They even took away all glazed tiles from bathrooms, bed rooms, and kitchen, and you know what beautiful bathrooms, etc., we did have. Well, the whole place is a shamble[s].” He concluded by saying: “It all makes me very sad when I think of the efforts the Oriental Institute has made to preserve the site equipment and house for further research. To restart again we would have to go back to the position and conditions prevailing, as far as equipment etc. is concerned, to 1926.”23

In the end, the insurance company refused to admit any liability and suggested again that the military or government should be held responsible, so Parker continued his efforts with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.24 Eventually, years later and after yet another committee had deliberated, a substantial amount in damages was paid to the Oriental Institute. Yeivin later said that the amount was “more than 10,000 Lira” in compensation, which the Israeli government paid in order to avoid a huge public scandal. That was the equivalent of nearly half a million dollars today.25

In late 1954, Parker was given a supplementary retirement bonus as thanks for his nearly thirty years of service and finally parted ways with the Oriental Institute. He moved to Cyprus for a few years, as mentioned, and then finally returned to England, where he died in London in December 1979.26 The same sort of retirement bonus was given to Serge Tchoub at about the same time. When last heard from, also in about 1954, he was living in Haifa and still working as a chauffeur, despite being sixty-five years old at that time.27

On 18 January 1955, the Oriental Institute quietly signed over the Megiddo dig house to the government of Israel (specifically the Israeli Department of Antiquities and Museums) for the nominal sum of “One Dollar ($1.00).” The Chicago excavations at Megiddo were officially over, three decades after Clarence Fisher and his small team first arrived at the site in 1925.28