Archaeologists find Roman military amphitheater in Israel, with blood-red walls

At the foot of Tell Megiddo was a huge Roman army base. Home to more than 5,000 soldiers in the Jezreel Valley, first of the Legio II Triana and then the fearsome Legio VI Ferrata (the Ironclad Legion), it is the only full-scale legionary base of its kind ever found in the east of the Roman Empire from the second century C.E.
The camp was first found in a survey in the early 2000s. Now in the blazing heat of the summer excavation season of 2023, archaeologists have been digging up its principia, the control center and heart of the camp, its cemetery – and its amphitheater.

This was not an amphitheater for fun and culture. It was a military arena, situated in a steep oval basin carved out of the bedrock, and surrounded by stone walls evocatively painted blood-red.

In a sense, Legio – home to the Ironclads in the Jezreel Valley – didn’t have one amphitheater, it had two. The archaeologists excavating amid the chickpea fields of Kibbutz Megiddo have identified two phases of this monumental structure: a smaller, earlier phase and a later, expanded one. Situated to one side of the camp, it was clearly a ludus: a training ground for soldiers and/or gladiators to practice the arts of weaponry and armor, explains excavation leader Dr. Yotam Tepper. Maybe the troops were also treated to the odd Greek tragedy but that wasn’t the purpose, and we just note that this edifice was conveniently close to the camp cemetery.

The locations of excavations at Legio this year were no coincidence. The team co-directed by Tepper and archaeologist Dr. Matthew Adams, on behalf of the JVRP and the Albright Institute in Jerusalem with the support of the Israel Antiquities Authority and funding of American Archaeology Abroad, knew where hidden sites of interest were thanks to charting part of the Legio using ground-penetrating radar, flown over from Sweden.

GPR can “see” structures beneath the soil, though it can’t do more than that. In other words, it shows where there are streets, buildings and courtyards below the soil where archaeologists would be wise to dig. They haven’t surveyed the whole of the camp yet because of its sheer size. They plan to. Meanwhile, the GPR chart indicates that the camp at Legio is structured according to the usual Roman “blueprint” for army bases. However, while GPR can detect structures in the earth without excavating, one must dig to find out what the structures are.

It was in the course of uncovering the monumental entrance to the amphitheater, and remnants of its flooring and walls, that the archaeologists realized it had existed in two distinct phases: the earlier, smaller one and the later, bigger one. The crimson hue of the walls is inferred by remnants of paint on the stone blocks, but they are confident that the walls were covered in the color. It must have been an evocative sight.

Missing in action

The imperial legion camp at Legio was one of two in the Roman Empire’s east. The other was in Jerusalem: the camp of the Legio X Fretensis. But the existence of that legion camp remains enigmatic, in the sense that history tells us the terrifying legion was sent there to quell restive locals, but no architectural trace of the base has ever been found. Plausibly its ruins lie beneath areas where archaeologists dare not dig for fear of triggering World War III. And/or maybe its stones have been repurposed down to the very last one.

At Legio, the Roman camp is right there, lurking beneath the ploughed fields of the kibbutz. It was huge, about 500 by 300 meters (1,640 by 984 feet) in area, Tepper says. Just the small section surveyed with GPR has resulted in three separate digs, for starters: the amphitheater, the cemetery and the principia. (Soon to be excavated: the camp clinic, the archaeologists promise.)

What remains of the camp is well preserved, they enthuse. But the key word here is “remains.” “There has been massive robbery of stone blocks over the last 1,500 years,” Tepper explains, through to and including the Ottoman period. “When the Romans moved east, they didn’t take the blocks.”

Robbery is one way to put it, but repurposing stones from earlier buildings has been a thing since antiquity. Why would anybody in their right mind start quarrying and shaping limestone bricks if one can simply bend over and pick them up from an abandoned site? Any number of sites in Israel feature repurposed stones. In Legio’s case, whatever could be moved was moved, Tepper says.

Anyway, some walls thankfully remain where the archaeologists are digging, including walls of the central command center. The principia is no minnow either, measuring about 100 by 60 meters, Tepper notes. In it, the archaeologists are digging up the sacellum: a temple area, and its stone altar.

Who they were worshiping there, we do not know. But we may have a clue, because that’s where the archaeologists found the fragment of a statue: three toes. Whose toes? Presumably an emperor’s – hard to say which one. Not all Roman emperors were deified, but most were, and Hadrian – apparently the moving force behind the camp’s establishment – was among the post-mortem pantheon. The toes were made of ivory, an unusual find, Israel Antiquities Authority zooarchaeology expert Lee Perry-Gal confirms. Tepper qualifies that identification of the source as elephant remains subject to confirmation in the lab.

None of this work could have been done without the cooperation of the kibbutz. “For the first two weeks we worked in a chickpea field. We also invested in harvesting the chickpeas as low as possible to the ground,” Tepper says.

He also applauds the support of the IAA: Legio isn’t one of its excavations, but it’s involved in all archaeological investigation in Israel and is lending its expertise. The digs are being funded by a society Adams established to support archaeology in the Jezreel Valley in general, which, Adams points out, has been occupied by humans and their predecessors for well over a million years. He personally has also been involved in the Megiddo excavation for around 30 years.

Other finds previously made at Legio and its environs have included mosaics and inscriptions. One inscription in the camp specifically cites the Legio VI Ferrata. At the early proto-church right next door inside what is today Megiddo Prison, a mosaic featuring early Christian symbolism was found that states: “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.”

Apropos the mosaics and the IAA, it is mulling an international road show for the stone art – a notion the archaeologists do not applaud. They think the mosaics should stay where they are: they would be a key attraction in an envisioned future national park that would encompass Tell Megiddo, where Armageddon is supposed to begin, according to Christian tradition; the Roman camp, unique in the eastern Empire; the third-century proto-church, apparently one of the earliest houses of worship for Christians and now inside Megiddo Prison; the Roman-era Jewish village of Kefar Othnay, also right there; and another village for people presumably serving the soldiers in Legio.

Seeing red

Legio was built under Emperor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 123, and was abandoned in the late third century or perhaps the early fourth century when the Roman army was moved eastward, Tepper says. The team hopes to pinpoint the specific time. It was strategically located on a major intersection passing below Tell Megiddo. Note that when the Roman legion built their base, the town of Megiddo was already a ruin. It had risen and fallen several times, before being destroyed once and for all over a thousand years before the Romans arrived.

While the legion in Jerusalem was devoted to stamping out the Jewish rebellion du jour, the Ironclads were not; the Bar Kochba rebels (from 133 to 135) weren’t active in the Galilee, Adams observes. The Ironclads were involved in pursuing the emperor’s eastward ambitions, and now we know the soldiers trained for that purpose in their blood-red ludus.

In fact, the team expected to find an amphitheater because it should have been there. “Maybe the missing Jerusalem camp had a ludus too. We don’t know,” Tepper shrugs.

Its arena was an oval about 40 by 50 meters. It was while excavating the gateway that the team realized the amphitheater had two phases. And they think they know exactly why it’s there: It was built at the specific spot where locals had been mining clay-rich rock for millennia, the archaeologists discovered. The Romans continued the practice because they needed clay for roof tiles and pottery, though kilns have not been found in Legio. At least not yet. The dimensions of the amphitheater precisely match the width of the clay vein, the archaeologists point out – and it was built at the same time as the principia.

“When you build a legion camp, you need lots of raw materials to make roof and floor tiles, and pipes,” explains archaeologist and historian Dr. Mark Letteney. “The width of the amphitheater and the clay configuration are identical,” he adds, driving home the point.

The troops would sit on dirt terracing down the steep slopes. “Amphitheaters didn’t always have stone seats,” Tepper observes, but some would have had seating made of wood, though that is more a possibility for European venues, less so in Israel.

Even without stone seating, building the amphitheater was a vast effort. This season, while excavating the walls of the second, later phase, the team identified the keystone of a monumental arch at its gate.

This part of the valley is hilly, but gently so; why build this ludus when they had open flattish spaces in which they could train all around them, and a large courtyard in the center of the principia? “This has the virtue of allowing other people to watch from high above, from the stands,” Letteney observes.

In short, the Romans dug out the clay they needed, from a vein that had been exploited for centuries before, thereby creating a big hole in which they built the amphitheater. Roman efficiency at its finest.

As the excavations progress, the training ground for Roman troops could be quite the tourist attraction. One can just see the kiosk selling ice cream, plastic swords and fake blood for the kiddies.

The Route 66 conundrum

There is one snag facing the vision of a great archaeology park at Megiddo. There are a few, actually, but one is the plan to move a stretch of the eastern lowlands road Route 66, which would carve a swath through one side of this unique archaeological find.

This would be a pity for posterity because there’s nothing like this camp in the eastern Empire, Tepper says.

“It’s true that life goes on,” he says, and so does progress, but this is a unique find – the camp of a whole Roman legion: there’s nothing like it anywhere in the east and it’s complete, leaving aside the stolen stones. The only possible peer is the theoretical camp in Jerusalem that is either buried under 2,000 years of debris or has been stolen stone by stone over the centuries, but this one is right here, he points out. Why build a road over that? Build it somewhere else.

Co-director Adams has a different take. ”Build the highway. Go ahead,” he says. “In any case, it’s a principle in archaeology not to excavate a site completely but to leave some for later generations of archaeologists with better technology. So build the road! Leave the part of the camp underneath it unexcavated and expect to explore it on a future day – even if it’s in 500 years.”

That was unexpected.

He elaborates: On the one hand, given the Roman rigidity in camp construction, it’s “pretty predictable” what will be found in the section slated for roadway – the camp is symmetrical. But one tiny little find can change the whole picture, if it doesn’t get lost in the flurry.

“Archaeology by definition involves destruction; with today’s technology, there’s only so much data the team can extract,” he explains. So, from Adams’ perspective, go for it. Build the road over part of the camp. Don’t excavate ahead of time, pave it over and preserve it pristine for generations to come, when they have better technology and better reason to excavate.

We can hope. When excavating this summer, the temperature was hovering just short of 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). But as climate change bites down, it’s going to get very hot in the valley of Armageddon.