According to Thutmose III’s initial version of the story, the campaign that led to the Battle of Megiddo began when the prince of Kadesh, a Canaanite city-state in what is now modern Syria, inspired several dozen other Canaanite rulers, along with the ruler of Mitanni (Naharin) in Mesopotamia, to rebel against the newly crowned king of Egypt. They gathered at the site of Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley (which Thutmose calls the Qina valley, after the name of the brook that ran through the area).
Later versions looking back at the campaign, inscribed on other walls and stelae elsewhere in the kingdom – such as one inscription found at Gebel Barkal, written twenty-five years after the campaign – added additional details and embellished the account. One wonders how much they can be trusted at face value.
We are not told exactly how many troops the Canaanite rebels were able to muster, but Thutmose did say that the Egyptians killed so many men that “Their ranks were lying stretched out on their backs counted like fish in the bight of a net, while his majesty’s valiant army counted their possessions”. We are also not told how many men Thutmose brought to the battle. However, Donald Redford has – through some convincing mental gymnastics – estimated that the two sides were probably about equal, with ca. 10,700 men in the Canaanite forces and ca. 10,800 on
