The surviving record gives many details of the Egyptian army’s long march to the city of Megiddo and its position on the day of battle on the Plain of Jezreel facing the city. The battle at Megiddo pitted THUTMOSE III, the ruler of Egypt, against a coalition of Canaanite forces. Many ancient accounts of battles were written for a similar purpose-to serve as propaganda*-making the accuracy of their information highly questionable. Moreover, scholars realize that it was written in a literary style intended to glorify the achievements of the king. Yet even the fullest account of the battle, which was recorded on the walls of the great temple of the god AMUN at KARNAK in Egypt, has many missing sections of text. This is the earliest Near Eastern battle for which detailed descriptions survive. An example is a battle fought at MEGIDDO in the Levant*, which took place around 1456 B. Surviving information about even the best-documented conflicts is often vague and incomplete. Modern historians have a difficult time reconstructing ancient battles. The centerpiece of warfare, though, remained the pitched battle, in which land armies maneuvered for position and then clashed on the battlefield. With the development of large states and empires, wars were fought on a larger scale, and sieges*, fighting at sea, and multiyear campaigns in distant lands became commonplace. The fighting forces of these states and empires also grew larger and more organized, becoming ARMIES consisting of professional SOLDIERS with an array of WEAPONS AND ARMOR and commanded by ranks of officers. In some cases, they developed into imperial* powers controlling vast territories. Over the course of several thousand years, the states of the Near East grew larger, stronger, and more centrally organized. City-states* fought for control of land and water resources. Nomads* raided the fields and pastures of settled communities, whose inhabitants fought to protect their crops and livestock. The earliest wars were disputes between small, loosely organized forces wielding hunting tools such as clubs, spears, and bows and arrows. They also fought civil wars, which involved internal rebellions or uprisings. They fought defensive wars to protect their territories from aggression and offensive wars to conquer new lands. The peoples of the region waged war for three main reasons. Wars and warfare played an important role in the societies of the ancient Near East.
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