Driving north to Tel Megiddo, I am traveling back in time.
Receding behind me, the Wi-Fi cafe culture of Tel Aviv, the white city on the beach. Looming ahead, Highway 6, tracing the Via Maris, the major trade route of the ancient world. Stretching from Egypt to Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), the road passed the overlook city, Megiddo, making the community atop the mound a player in the history of wars and men.
One of the most embattled sites of antiquity, Megiddo has another name: Armageddon, the place the book of Revelation says we will savage each other in the last days of Earth.
Back in Tel Aviv, sirens will soon be sounding, the Iron Dome defense system blasting missiles out of the sky. Atop Tel Megiddo, I’ll mainly hear wind and doves. The contrast is deceptive: Beneath the dusty mound, or tel, are at least 20 layered cities destroyed by war, by fire, now densely packed and superbly preserved through millennia.
