ancient site of Megiddo, courtesy, Wikipedia |
After the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, the site of
Megiddo was allotted to the tribe of Menasheh and it was situated near the
border with the tribe of Zvulun. The famous ruins of the horse stables, originally thought to date from the time of Solomon,
is now dated a century and a half later to the time of Ahab. The Battle of
Megiddo (609 BCE)
was fought between Egyptian pharaoh Necho II and the Kingdom of Judah, resulting
in the defeat of Judah and the slaying of its king Josiah. But its importance
soon dwindled, and it was finally abandoned around 586 BCE. Since that
time it has remained uninhabited, preserving ruins pre-dating 586 BCE without
settlements ever disturbing them. The Book of Revelation mentions an apocalyptic battle at Armageddon (Revelation 16:16).
The name “Armageddon” was derived from the Hebrew "Har Megiddo",
meaning "Mount of Megiddo" and has become a byword for the end of the world.
Kibbutz Megiddo, located
less than a mile from the ancient site, was founded
in 1949 by a small group of Holocaust survivors from Hungary and Poland who
organized at the end of World War II and
fought in the War of Independence. In 1952, another group of immigrants from Lebanon and Mexico joined
the kibbutz. In 1959, they were joined by immigrants from Argentina. Pope Paul VI's
visited the site in 1964 during his trip to Israel. It was there that he met
with Israeli dignitaries, including President Zalman Shazar and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Yigael Yadin, an Israeli soldier and archaeologist, conducted excavations at the tell in 1960, 1966,
1967, and 1971 for the Hebrew University. Megiddo
has most recently (since 1994) been the subject of biannual excavation
campaigns conducted by the Megiddo Expedition of Tel Aviv University, currently co-directed by Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin,
with Eric H. Cline of The George
Washington University serving as
Associate Director (USA), together with a consortium of international
universities.
On October
11, 1989, a Syrian MiG-23MLD defected
to Israel, landing at Megiddo. The aircraft was afterwards flown by IAF's Flight Test Center and is now on display in the IAF museum in Hatzerim.
In November
2000, due to demographic problems and economic instability, the kibbutz members
decided to change the lifestyle and structure of the kibbutz in a way that
every member is now responsible for his or her own livelihood and the kibbutz
provides only some welfare services. Also, ownership of housing units and
businesses were transferred from the kibbutz to the residents. In 2007, two new
neighborhoods were built in the west and north with 108 housing units.
Today, Kibbutz Megiddo is under the
jurisdiction of the Megiddo Regional
Council. On the west side is the Megiddo
Forest and on the east is the Legio
Archaeological Site and beyond that, Megiddo
Junction of Highways 65 and 66.
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