View source for Shishak

{{short description|Egyptian pharaoh mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, identified with Shoshenq I}}
{{distinguish|Sheshach}}
'''Shishak''', also spelled '''Shishaq''' or '''Susac''' ({{Langx|he|שִׁישַׁק|translit=Šīšaq}}, [[Tiberian Hebrew|Tiberian]]: {{IPA|he|ʃiʃaq|}}, {{Langx|grc|Σουσακίμ|Sousakim}}), was, according to the [[Hebrew Bible]], an Egyptian [[pharaoh]] who sacked [[Jerusalem]] in the 10th century BC. He is usually identified with the pharaoh [[Shoshenq I]].<ref name="Sagrillo philological">Troy Leiland Sagrillo. 2015. "[https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa13642 Shoshenq I and biblical Šîšaq: A philological defense of their traditional equation]". In ''Solomon and Shishak: Current perspectives from archaeology, epigraphy, history and chronology; proceedings of the third BICANE colloquium held at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 26–27 March 2011'', edited by Peter J. James, Peter G. van der Veen, and Robert M. Porter. British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 2732. Oxford: Archaeopress. 61–81.</ref>

He supported [[Jeroboam]] against king [[Rehoboam]] of [[Kingdom of Judah|Judah]], and led a successful campaign through that country with a large army. Shishak did not destroy Jerusalem but took the treasures of [[Solomon's Temple]] and the king's house. His campaign records, found in the [[Bubastite Portal]] at [[Karnak]] and a relief at [[el-Hibeh]], list several conquered towns but fail to mention Jerusalem. The omission has sparked various theories, with some scholars questioning the historical accuracy of the Biblical account and others suggesting possible explanations for the omission. Shishak has also appeared in popular culture, notably in the film ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]''.

==Biblical narrative==
[[File:Karnak Tempel 19.jpg|thumb|200px|The [[Bubastite Portal]] at [[Karnak]], depicting a list of city states conquered by Shoshenq I in his Near Eastern military campaigns. Jerusalem does not occur in the list.{{r|finkelstein}}{{rp|174–175}}]]

Shishak's campaign against the [[Kingdom of Judah]] and his sack of Jerusalem are recounted in the [[Hebrew Bible]], in [[1 Kings 14:25]] and [[2 Chronicles 12:1-12|2 Chronicles 12:1–12]]. According to these accounts, Shishak had provided refuge to [[Jeroboam]] during the later years of [[Solomon]]'s reign, and upon Solomon's death, Jeroboam became king of the tribes in the north, which separated from Judah to become the [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Kingdom of Israel]]. In the fifth year of [[Rehoboam]]'s reign, commonly dated ca. 926 BC,{{r|finkelstein}} Shishak swept through Judah with a powerful army of 60,000 horsemen and 1,200 chariots, in support of Jeroboam. According to {{bibleverse|2|Chronicles|12:3|HE}}, he was supported by the [[Ancient Libya|Lubim]] (Libyans), the [[Sukkiim]], and the [[Kingdom of Kush|Kush]]ites ("[[Aethiopia|Ethiopia]]ns" in the [[Septuagint]]).

Shishak took away treasures of the [[Solomon's Temple]] and the king's house, as well as shields of gold which Solomon had made;<ref>{{bibleverse|1|Kings|14:25|HE}}; {{bibleverse|2|Chronicles|12:1-12|HE}} English-Hebrew</ref> Rehoboam replaced them with [[bronze]] ones.

According to [[Books of Chronicles|Second Chronicles]],

{{quote|When Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, he carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including the gold shields [[Solomon]] had made.|{{bibleverse|2|Chronicles|12:9|NIV}}}}

[[Flavius Josephus]] in ''[[Antiquities of the Jews]]'' adds to this a contingent of 400,000 infantrymen. According to Josephus, his army met with no resistance throughout the campaign, taking Rehoboam's most fortified cities "without fighting". Finally, he conquered Jerusalem without resistance, because "Rehoboam was afraid." Shishak did not destroy Jerusalem, but forced King Rehoboam of Judah to strip the Temple and his treasury of their gold and movable treasures.<ref name="Antiquities Book VIII">[http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/ant-8.htm Antiquities of the Jews - Book VIII], Chapter X.</ref>

Shishak was also related by marriage to Jeroboam. The [[wife of Jeroboam]] is unnamed in the [[Masoretic Text]], but according to the [[Septuagint]], she was an [[Ancient Egypt|Egypt]]ian princess called Ano:
:''And Sousakim gave to Jeroboam Ano, the eldest sister of [[Thekemina]] his wife, to him as wife; she was great among the king's daughters...'' <ref name=LXX>[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/11-3reigns-nets.pdf 1 Kings 12:24e], [[New English Translation of the Septuagint]]</ref>

==Shishak's name==
The spelling and pronunciation of Shishak's name is not consistent throughout the Hebrew Bible. It occurs three times as ''Šīšaq'' (שִׁישַׁק), three times as ''Šīšāq'' (שִׁישָׁק), and once as ''Šūšaq'' (שׁוּשַׁק).

==Identified as Pharaoh Shoshenq I==
In the very early years after the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, on chronological, historical, and linguistic grounds, nearly all Egyptologists identified Shishak with [[Shoshenq I]] of the 22nd dynasty, who invaded Canaan following the [[Battle of Bitter Lakes]].<ref name="Sagrillo philological" /> A common variant of Shoshenq's name omits its 'n' glyphs, resulting in a pronunciation like, "Shoshek".<ref>von Beckerath, Jürgen (1984) ''Handbuch der ägyptischen Königsnamen, München: [[Deutscher Kunstverlag]]'', page 257–258, 260–262, 264</ref> This position has been maintained by most scholars ever since, and remains the majority position today.

===Campaign records===
[[File:Bubastis portal at Karnak.jpg|right|thumb|325px|The [[Bubastite Portal]] at [[Karnak]], showing the [[cartouche]]s of Shoshenq I.]]

Shoshenq I left behind "explicit records of a campaign into Canaan (scenes; a long list of Canaanite place-names from the Negev to [[Galilee]]; stelae), including a stela [found] at [[Tel Megiddo|Megiddo]]" which supports the traditional interpretation.<ref name="K.A. Kitchen, 2003. pp. 10, 32">K.A. Kitchen, ''On the Reliability of the Old Testament'', William Eerdmans & Co, 2003. pp. 10, 32–34, 607. Page 607 of Kitchen's book depicts the surviving fragment of Shoshenq I's Megiddo stela which bears this king's cartouche.</ref><ref name="archpark.org.il">{{cite web|url=http://www.archpark.org.il/ |title=The Jerusalem Archaeological Park – timeline |publisher=Archpark.org.il |date= |accessdate=2022-04-30}}</ref><ref name=Study>[http://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/biiw/chapter7.pdf 'The First Oppressors: Shishak of Egypt' – BiblicalStudies.org pg1]</ref><ref name="Pierce1">{{Cite book |title=The Ancient Israelite World |last=Pierce |first=Krystal V. L. |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-00-077324-8 |page=662 |editor-last=Keimer |editor-first=Kyle H. |chapter=Egypt and the Levant in the Third Intermediate Period (Iron IB–IIIA) |editor-last2=Pierce |editor-first2=George A. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4beREAAAQBAJ&dq=The+Ancient+Israelite+World+Early+Dynasty+22&pg=PA662}}</ref>

The [[Bubastite Portal]], a relief discovered at [[Karnak]], in [[Upper Egypt]], and similar reliefs on the walls of a small temple of [[Amun]] at [[el-Hibeh]], shows Pharaoh [[Shoshenq I]] holding in his hand a bound group of prisoners. The names of captured towns are located primarily in the territory of the [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|kingdom of Israel]] (including [[Tel Megiddo|Megiddo]]), with a few listed in the [[Negeb]], and perhaps [[Philistia]].<ref name="K.A. Kitchen, 2003. pp. 10, 32" /><ref name="archpark.org.il" /><ref name=Study /> Some of these include a few of the towns that Rehoboam had fortified according to Chronicles.<ref>{{bibleverse-lb|2|Chronicles|11:5-12|HE}}</ref> However, the inscription makes no mention of Jerusalem itself, nor of [[Rehoboam]] or [[Jeroboam]]. Various explanations of this omission of Jerusalem have been proposed: its name may have been erased, the list may have been copied from an older pharaoh's list of conquests, or Rehoboam's ransoming the city (as described in the Second Book of Chronicles<ref>[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+12%2C7&version=NCV 2 Chronicles 12, 7–10]</ref>) would have saved it from being listed.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem? |journal=[[Biblical Archaeology Review]] |url=https://www.academia.edu/1234219 |last=Levin |first=Yigal |date=July–August 2012 |issue=4 |volume=38 |pages=43–52}}</ref>{{rp|45}} Other scholars, notably [[Israel Finkelstein]], doubt the historicity of the biblical narrative that Shoshenq conquered Jerusalem, arguing that Jerusalem was an insignificant settlement in the 10th century BC and that the biblical story was constructed by later Jerusalemite authors to promote the [[United Monarchy]] narrative.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Finkelstein |first1=Israel |title=The Campaign of Shoshenq I to Palestine: A Guide to the 10th Century BCE Polity |journal=Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins |date=2002 |volume=118 |issue=2 |pages=109–135 |url=https://www.academia.edu/1947772/Finkelstein_I_2002_The_Campaign_of_Shoshenq_I_to_Palestine_A_Guide_to_the_10th_Century_BCE_Polity_Zeitschrift_des_Deutschen_Pal%C3%A4stina_Vereins_118_109_135 |access-date=19 April 2025}}</ref>

===Critical questions===
It has been claimed{{who|date=March 2023}} that the numbers of Egyptian soldiers given in Chronicles can be "safely ignored as impossible" on [[Egyptology|Egyptological]] grounds; similarly, the numbers of chariots reported in 2 Chronicles is likely exaggerated by a factor of ten—leading 60,000 horses through the [[Sinai Peninsula|Sinai]] and [[Negev]] would have been logistically impossible, and no evidence of Egyptian cavalry exists from before the [[Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt|27th Dynasty]].<ref name="sagrillo">{{cite conference |first=Troy Leiland |last=Sagrillo |url=https://www.academia.edu/1387905 |title=Šîšaq's army: 2 Chronicles 12:2–3 from an Egyptological perspective |conference=The ancient Near East in the 12th–10th Centuries BC: Culture and history; Proc. of the international conference held at the University of Haifa, 2–5 May 2010 |series=Alter Orient und Altes Testament: Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments |volume=392 |location=Münster |publisher=Ugarit-Verlag |year=2012 |pages=425–450}}</ref> Some authors, such as [[Israel Finkelstein]], deem the treasures taken by Shishak as unlikely, alleging the material culture of 10th century Jerusalem and surroundings to have been too primitive to allow for any treasure that an Egyptian pharaoh would have been interested in. Finkelstein concludes that the looting narrative "should probably be seen as a [[theology|theological]] construct rather than as historical references".<ref name="finkelstein">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Finkelstein |first=Israel |author-link=Israel Finkelstein |editor1-last=Amit |editor1-first=Yairah |editor2-first=Ehud |editor2-last=Ben Zvi |editor3-last=Finkelstein |editor3-first=Israel |editor4-first=Oded |display-editors = 3 |editor4-last=Lipschits |encyclopedia=Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Naʼaman |title=The Last Labayu: King Saul and the Expansion of the First North Israelite Territorial Entity |url=https://www.academia.edu/1070440 |year=2006 |publisher=Eisenbrauns |isbn=9781575061283 |pages=171 ff}}</ref>{{rp|175}} By contrast, Krystal V. L. Pierce has pointed that a relief from Karnak records Sheshonq I presenting the tribute from his Levantine campaign to [[Amun-re|Amun-Re]], and that the Pharaoh used the tribute to finance the construction of several monumental structures across Egypt.<ref name="Pierce1" />

==Fringe theories==
Other identifications of Shishak have been put forward by chronological revisionists, arguing that Shoshenq's account does not match the Biblical account very closely, but these are considered [[Fringe theory|fringe theories]]. In his book ''[[Ages in Chaos]]'', [[Immanuel Velikovsky]] identified him with [[Thutmose III]] of the 18th dynasty.<ref>{{cite book |first=Immanuel |last=Velikovsky |title=[[Ages in Chaos]] |location= London |publisher= Sidgwick and Jackson |origyear=1953 |year=1977 |isbn=-0-283-35257-4}}</ref> More recently, [[David Rohl]]'s [[New Chronology (Rohl)#Shishaq|New Chronology]] identified him with [[Ramesses II]] of the 19th dynasty,<ref>{{cite book |first=David |last=Rohl
  |title=A Test of Time
  |location=London
  |publisher=Century
  |year=1995
  |isbn=978-0-7126-5913-0}}</ref> and [[Peter James (historian)|Peter James]] has identified him with [[Ramesses III]] of the 20th dynasty.<ref>{{cite journal| last=James | first= Peter | year = 2017 | title= The Levantine War-records of Ramesses III: Changing Attitudes, Past, Present and Future | journal= Antiguo Oriente | volume= 15 | pages= 57–147 | url= https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.centuries.co.uk%2F2017-levantine-james.pdf&pdf=true}}</ref>

==In popular culture==
Shishak is mentioned in [[Steven Spielberg]]'s action-adventure film ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark]]'' as the pharaoh who seized the [[Ark of the Covenant]] from the [[Temple of Solomon]] during his raids on [[Jerusalem]] and hid it in the [[Well of Souls]] in [[Tanis]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book | author= Rohl, David M. | authorlink = David Rohl | year= 1995 | title= Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest | publisher= Crown Publishers, inc. | location= New York}}
* [[Kenneth Kitchen]], '[https://books.google.com/books?id=KK3eFcbIGN0C&pg=PA113 Egyptian interventions in the Levant in Iron Age II]'. In Dever, William G. (ed.). Symbiosis, symbolism, and the power of the past: Canaan, ancient Israel, and their neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina. Eisenbrauns, Seymour Gitin, 2003: pp. 113–132
* [https://biu.academia.edu/YigalLevin Yigal Levin]; '[https://www.academia.edu/2098800 Sheshonq I and the Negev Haserim]', Maarav 17 (2010), pp. 189-215.
* Yigal Levin, '[https://books.google.com/books?id=VwxYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT433 Sheshonq’s Levantine Conquest and Biblical History]'. In: Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, & John H. Walton (eds.), Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.
* Troy Leiland Sagrillo. 2015. "[https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa13642 Shoshenq I and biblical Šîšaq: A philological defense of their traditional equation]." In ''Solomon and Shishak: Current perspectives from archaeology, epigraphy, history and chronology; proceedings of the third BICANE colloquium held at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 26–27 March 2011,'' edited by Peter J. James, Peter G. van der Veen, and Robert M. Porter. British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 2732. Oxford: Archaeopress. 61–81.
* {{cite book | author= Muchiki Yoshiyuki| year= 1999 | title= Egyptian Proper Names and Loanwords in North-West Semitic | publisher= Society of Biblical Literature | location= Atlanta }}

==External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20080512172332/http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Wilson-Campaign_of_Shoshenq_I_1.htm The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I in Palestine], by Kevin A. Wilson
*[http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/sheshonqi.htm The Palestine Campaign of Sheshonq I]
*[http://www.templemount.org/TMTRS.html The Sack of Jerusalem on Templemount.org]
{{The Bible and warfare}}
{{authority control}}

[[Category:Pharaohs in the Bible]]