12. A Brilliant Maneuver With a Sequel More Than Three Millennia Later
Pharaoh Thutmose III realized that the central route through Aruna was so obviously dangerous that no reasonable commander would risk his army in its ravines. He also guessed that the rebels would leave it unguarded because they would not expect the Egyptians to be so foolhardy as to run such an obvious risk and thus court disaster. So he took the central route. As he had guessed, it was unguarded. The Egyptians arrived at Megiddo sooner than expected, and caught the Canaanites flat-footed.
The result was a decisive victory that secured Egyptian hegemony over the region for centuries. The Bronze Age battle had a fascinating sequel 3,375 years later, during World War I. British General Edmund Allenby, an avid student of ancient history, was confronted with the same choice as Thutmose III as he led an army that advanced from the south against Ottoman and German forces entrenched in the Jezreel Valley. He stole a march upon them and burst unexpectedly in front of Megiddo with an advance through the central route via Aruna.
