Horsing Around in Toronto

“Come to our session on Megiddo,” a grinning Israel Finkelstein, director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology and co-director of the renewed excavations at Megiddo, urged me as we chatted at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Toronto last November. “Lord Allenby will be there.” A magical name indeed. The legendary Edmund Allenby commanded Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary forces in World War I. On December 11, 1917, the last Turkish troops having fled, then-General Allenby made his official entry into Jerusalem by famously dismounting his horse and, out of respect for Jerusalem, walking on foot through Jaffa Gate. The official proclamation of British victory was then read at the Citadel.