Everything about Shishaq totally explained
Shishak (
Hebrew: שישק,
Tiberian: [ʃiʃaq]) or
Shishaq is the biblical
Hebrew form of the first ancient Egyptian name of a
pharaoh mentioned in the Bible.
Shishaq 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 Shishaq with
Shoshenq I. This position was maintained by most scholars ever since, and is still the majority position. The fact that Shoshenq I left behind "explicit records of a campaign into Palestine (scenes; a long list of Palestinian place-names from the Negev to Galilee; stelae), including a stela [found] at
Megiddo" supports the traditional interpretation.
While Jerusalem isn't mentioned in the list of towns that Shoshenq seized, the Karnak reliefs of this pharaoh are damaged in several sections and some town's names were lost; therefore, many scholars believe that it would have been mentioned here. Specifically, the huge triumphal relief scene of Shoshenq I at Karnak, while extensive, is damaged in rows IV and XI where several Palestinian/Canaanite place names are permanently lost.
Shishaq identified as another Pharaoh
However, the Egyptologist
David Rohl, controversially proposed a massive revision of the traditional chronology of the ancient Near East, and attempted to identify Shishaq with
Ramesses II. A few scholars, such as
Peter James, who accept Rohl's criticism of identifying Shishaq with Shoshenq I while not his other theories, have sought to identify Shishaq with one of the other
Ramesses kings of this period with varying success. The so-called "James" chronology was first developed by Michael Sanders
(External Link
) and published in "Catastrophism and Ancient History"
(External Link) in 1985 many years before James published his revision.
David Rohl, and other followers of the New Chronology, assert that the identification of Shishaq as Shoshenq I is based solely on a reading made by
Jean-François Champollion of the text of Shoshenq’s Triumphal Relief near the Bubastite Portal of the temple of
Karnak at
Thebes. There, in a list of cities Shoshenq I'd boasted he conquered, Champollion had read the 29th city from the list as
y-w-d-h-m-r-k. He then surmised that this could mean
Yhuda Malkhut (
Hebrew: יְהוּדָה מַלְכוּת,
Tiberian: [jəhuðɔhmalxuθ]), that is, "Judah Kingdom" — an unlikely Hebrew phrase,
Malkhut Yhuda would be more natural — and concluded this list referred to the biblical Shishaq's invasion of Judah. However,
Max Müller (building on a related proposal by
Heinrich Brugsch) later showed that
y-w-d-h-m-r-k (yud-he-merek) should be read in Hebrew as Yad Ha-Melekh (יַדְ־הַמֶּלֶך,
Tiberian: [jaðhamːɛlɛx] meaning "Monument (lit. "hand") of the King", to the king of Judah.
Further, much controversy has resulted because from the list of cities in this inscription it appears that the target of Shoshenq's campaign wasn't the heartland of the kingdom of Judah (which is what the Bible seems to imply), but the northern cities that became the kingdom of Israel. Many of the cities listed are known today and their order clearly indicates the progression of a military campaign. The conquest of Jerusalem would have been given pride of place, not buried between two insignificant hill-towns hundreds of miles away. It could be Shoshenq only listed the cities he either destroyed, or whose garrisons he defeated in support of the break-away kingdom of Israel. It may be, however, that the text only lists cities that the Egyptians regarded as under their political control, and so not intended to be read as an itinerary or list of directly conquered cities at all, which would be in line with similar lists from elsewhere in Egypt.
Rohl further argued that Shishaq doesn't properly equate to how the Egyptian name Shoshenq would have been spelled by the contemporary Hebrews, and put forth his own identification of Shishaq with
Ramesses II, based on the
hypocoristic form
sysw which he claimed was used to refer to Ramesses and abused by the
Hebrews into
sysq (which Rohl claims is a pun on verbal root שׁקק
šqq, the
Hebrew word for "to attack, fall upon, storm").
In order for the name Shishaq to be read as Shoshenq, the "n" must be dropped—which automatically happens in
Biblical Hebrew before a
consonant—but for it to agree with
sysw, a "q" must be added, which doesn't correspond to any known
phonological rule in Biblical Hebrew other than puns, which are a bit more rare than
Rohl seems to suggest. In
Northwest Semitic languages (such as Hebrew) /š/ is usually used to record Egyptian /š/ and rarely /s/ after a certain point (as would be the case for
sysw), though it has been shown, by
Édouard Naville, that it was used in a number of cases, such as in Goshen, which derives from the Egyptian
gsm. This doesn't hold for
East Semitic languages such as
Akkadian, where confusion between /s/ and /š/ is evident. Rohl seems to suggest in his thesis that any "Semitic" evidence (such as Akkadian) will support his theory with very little caution.. Though Akkadian was used quite often throughout many ancient empires in correspondence, for this to be fully supported, one would probably need to assume his
New Chronology is correct.
In response to Rohl's theory, Egyptologists such as
Kenneth Kitchen have pointed out that no other known king of Egypt fits the identification as well as Shoshenq I. Setting the reign of Ramesses II three centuries later wouldn't only cause complications with the date of the
Battle of Qadesh, it would also conflict with the chronology of
Hittite history and with the very solid chronology of
Assyrian history.
Shishaq's Reign
He is best known for his campaign through Palestine, as recorded in the
Bible (
1 Kings 11:40; 14:25;
2 Chronicles 12:2-9). This campaign was also the fictional basis for the film
Raiders of the Lost Ark which speculated that Shishaq had stolen the
Ark of the Covenant, during his route through
Jerusalem, and had brought the Ark back to the city of
Tanis in
980 BC.
Shishaq had provided refuge to
Jeroboam during the later years of
Solomon's reign, and upon Solomon's death, Jeroboam became king of the breakaway tribes in the north, which became the
kingdom of Israel. In the fifth year of
Rehoboam's reign (commonly dated between 926 and 917 BC), Shishaq swept through the
kingdom of Judah with a powerful army, in support of his ally. According to 2 Chronicles, he was supported by "the
Lubim, the
Sukkiim, and the
Ethiopians."
Shishaq captured a number of cities of that kingdom, including
Jerusalem, where he pillaged the temple and the royal palace, and carried away the shields of gold which
Solomon had made. Although Judah was humbled, hostilities still continued between the two kingdoms; yet this was the only recorded intervention of a third party into the affairs of these two kingdoms during Rehoboam's reign.
Shishaq's name
Texts written in various ancient languages seem to indicate that the first vowel was both
long and
round, and the final vowel was short. For example, the name is written in the
Hebrew Bible as שישק [ʃi:ʃaq]. The variant readings in
Hebrew, which are due to confusion between the letters < י >
Yod and < ו >
Vav that are particularly common in the
Masoretic Text, indicate that the first vowel was long and received emphasis in pronunciation. The
Septuagint uses Σουσακιμ [susakim], derived from the
marginal reading שושק [ʃu:ʃaq] of
Hebrew. This indicates during the
2nd century BC Hebrew-speakers or Alexandrian Greek-speakers pronounced the name with an initial long
close back rounded vowel [u].
Further Information
Get more info on 'Shishaq'.
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