Shiloh
Shiloh names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Shiloh BATTLE OF, one of the most memorable battles of the American Civil War
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
BATTLE OF, one of the most memorable battles of the American Civil War. Shiloh was a locality in Hardin co., Tenn., near Pittsburgh Landing, on the Tennessee, and 88 miles E. of Memphis. It took its name from a log chapel known as "Shiloh Church." The battle was fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, Grant and Sherman leading the Federals, and Albert S. Johnston and Beauregard the Confederates. The first day the Confederates, taking the Federals by surprise, drove them from their lines with heavy loss in men and guns; but the second day the Federals, having received reinforcements under Buell, and largely outnumbering the Confederates, regained their lines, and forced the Confederates to retreat to their former position at Corinth. General Johnston was killed on the first day. The Federal loss was placed at 13,573; the Confederate at 10,699.
Shiloh in sacred geography
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in sacred geography, a town of Ephraim, Palestine, situated about nineteen miles northeast of Jerusalem. It lay in a plain and was a convenient meeting place for Israel. The ark of the covenant rested in a sanctuary here before Jerusalem was made the capital. Shiloh may therefore be regarded as the capital of Israel for a time. The name has been given to a locality on the Tennessee River eighty-eight miles east of Memphis.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town of the tribe of Ephraim, the first permanent resting-place of the Tabernacle; the home of Eli and Samuel; and long the religious center of Israel. The site is well ascertained-a ruinous village_hidden among the hills 20 miles N. of Jerusalem.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's 1921 account of the battle still holds in outline; modern tallies put the two days' casualties at roughly 23,700, with about 13,000 Union and 10,700 Confederate, and Shiloh remains the shock that ended any expectation of a short war. The ground itself had already been set aside as Shiloh National Military Park in 1894, and it is now run by the National Park Service, with the log meeting-house rebuilt and the Confederate burial trenches marked. The biblical Shiloh has changed far more: the mound of Khirbet Seilun, the "ruinous village hidden among the hills" of Collier's, was dug by a Danish expedition in the 1920s and 1930s, by Israel Finkelstein's team in the 1980s, and again since 2017, revealing a walled Bronze Age town and a destruction layer around 1050 BC that many link to the Philistine defeat of Israel described in 1 Samuel. The site lies in the occupied West Bank, beside the Israeli settlement of Shilo, and is run as an archaeological and tourist park "
Written for this edition, 2026.