Archaeologists have recently discovered a richly appointed burial chamber, thought to be 3,600 years old, in the ancient fortress city of Megiddo—known in the New Testament as Armageddon. Philippe Bohstrom writes:

The extraordinary discovery . . . has stunned archaeologists, not only for the array of wealth found in the tomb but also for the potential insight it may provide into the royal dynasty that ruled this powerful center before its conquest by Egypt in the early 15th century BCE. . . . The chamber contained the undisturbed remains of three individuals—a child between the ages of eight and ten, a woman in her mid-thirties, and a man aged between forty and sixty—adorned with gold and silver jewelry including rings, brooches, bracelets, and pins. The male body was discovered wearing a gold necklace and had been crowned with a gold diadem, and all of the objects demonstrate a high level of skill and artistry. . . .

The grave goods point to the cosmopolitan nature of Megiddo at the time and the treasures it reaped from its location on the major trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with jewelry, the tomb contained ceramic vessels from Cyprus and stone jars that may have been imported from Egypt. The rich adornment of the tomb’s inhabitants appears to indicate a complex and highly stratified society, in which an exceptionally wealthy and powerful elite had been elevated above most of Megiddo’s society. . . .

Currently a broad DNA study is being carried out on many individuals unearthed at Megiddo—those from the “royal” tomb as well as those who received less elaborate burials in other domestic areas of the site. The ancient DNA results could for the first time reveal whether the common inhabitants of the Canaanite city-state were of the same background as the elite. “These studies have the potential to revolutionize what we know about the population of Canaan,” said [the excavation’s director, Israel] Finkelstein, “before the rise of the world of the Bible.”

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.