=Thotmose III's Advance Against Megiddo.= Standing upon the mound of Megiddo it is not difficult to picture the great decisive battle, which the scribes of Thotmose III have recorded vividly and with great detail. His courage in rejecting the counsels of his generals to advance from the Plain of Sharon by a détour and his resolve to approach the city directly through the valley from the southwest command our admiration, for five miles to the south the valley narrows, affording a splendid opportunity for a determined enemy to attack an invading army with great advantage. Without opposition, however, the Egyptian army, with its gay oriental trappings, came up the valley. Its energetic king was in front, "showing the way by his own footsteps." Having reached the Plain of Esdraelon at the south of Megiddo, the king, late the same afternoon or in the night, threw out his left wing on the hills to the northwest of the city that he might command the roads leading along the western side of the Plain of Esdraelon. He thus both secured his line of retreat and was in a position to cut off fugitives in case he won the decisive battle. This position also gave him the easiest line of approach to Megiddo itself. =The Decisive Battle.= The following morning the king rallied his forces for battle. While his left wing retained its strategic position his right wing was drawn up on a hill to the southwest of the city. He was thus able to descend upon the forces of the allied Canaanite kings, who were drawn up in a north and south line before the city. Riding in a glittering chariot of elektrum, the indomitable warrior led the onset. Before this army, already a victor on many hard-fought battle-fields, the Canaanites at the first attack fled headlong to Megiddo. Finding the gates closed against them, many of the fugitives were drawn up the wall by their friends within. Elated by their easily won victory and attracted by the rich spoils in the camp of the vanquished king of Kadesh, the victors fell to plundering and thereby lost a precious opportunity to capture the city at once.