Shoshenq I
Shoshenq I | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sesonkhosis, Sesonkhis (Σέσωγχις) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pharaoh | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Reign | 943–922 BC[1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Predecessor | Psusennes II | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Successor | Osorkon I | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Consort | 22nd Dynasty |
Hedjkheperre Setepenre Shoshenq I (Egyptian ššnq; reigned c. 943–922 BC)—also known as Shashank or Sheshonk or Sheshonq I[note 1]—was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt and the founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt. Of Meshwesh ancestry,[2] Shoshenq I was the son of Nimlot A, Great Chief of the Ma, and his wife Tentshepeh A, a daughter of a Great Chief of the Ma herself; Shoshenq was thus the nephew of Osorkon the Elder, a Meshwesh king of the 21st Dynasty. He is generally presumed to be the Shishak mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and his exploits are carved on the Bubastite Portal at Karnak.
Chronology
The conventional dates for his reign, as established by
A 2005 study by Rolf Krauss of ancient Egyptian chronology suggests that Shoshenq I came to power in 943 BC rather than 945 BC as is conventionally assumed based on epigraphic evidence from the Great Dakhla stela, which dates to Year 5 of his reign.[5] Krauss and David Warburton write in the 2006 book Ancient Egyptian Chronology:
The chronology of early Dyn. 22 depends on dead reckoning. The sum of the highest attested regnal dates for Osorkon II, Takelot I, Osorkon I, and Shoshenq I, added to 841 BC as year 1 of Shoshenq III, yields 938 BC at the latest for year 1 of Shoshenq I...[However] The large Dakhla stela provides a lunar date in the form of a wrš feast in year 5 of Shoshenq [I], yielding 943 BC as his year 1.[6]
The Year 5 wrš feast is recorded to have been celebrated at Dakhla oasis on IV Peret day 25 and Krauss' exploration of the astronomical data leads him to conclude that the only 'fit' within the period of 950 to 930 BC places the accession of Shoshenq I between December 944 and November 943 BC—or 943 BC for the most part.[7] However, Dr. Anthony Leahy has suggested that "the identification of the wrš-festival of Seth as [a] lunar [festival] is hypothetical, and [thus] its occurrence on the first day of a lunar month an assumption. Neither has been proven incontrovertibly."[8] Thus far, however, only Dr. Kenneth Kitchen is on record as sharing the same academic view.[9]
A 2010 study by Thomas Schneider argued that Shoshenq reigned from 962 to 941 BCE.[10][11] Ido Koch in his 2021 book considered Schneider's chronology of Egyptian kings as a valuable integrative study.[12] However, recent archaeomagnetic dating at Beth-Shean, one of three early sites that could have been destroyed by Shoshenq I, shows 68.2% probability the destruction occurred between 935 and 900 BC, and 95.4% probability it occurred between 940 and 879 BC.[13]
Biblical Shishak
Shoshenq I is conventionally identified with the Egyptian king Shishak (שׁישׁק Šîšaq, transliterated),[14] referred to in the Hebrew Bible at 1 Kings 11:40, 14:25 and 2 Chronicles 12:2–9.[15] According to these passages, Jeroboam fled from Solomon and stayed with Shishaq until Solomon died, and Shishaq invaded Judah, mostly the area of Benjamin, during the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam, taking with him most of the treasures of the temple built by Solomon. The egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen proposes that Shoshenq's successor, Osorkon I, lavished 383 tons of gold and silver on Egyptian temples during the first four years of his reign and correlate it directly to the looting,[16] while the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims that the looting narrative in question "should probably be seen as a theological construct rather than as historical references".[17]
Shishak/Sousakim was also related to Jeroboam: "the wife of Jeroboam" is a character in the Hebrew Bible. She is unnamed in the Masoretic Text, but according to the Septuagint, she was an Egyptian princess called Ano:
- And
Archaeologists at Tel Gezer recently concluded that correlation of Stratum 7, (927–885 BC, 68.3% hpd), "with Shishak/Sheshonq I's [e]nd boundary, [included in] the biblical date for Shishak’s campaign [d]oes not fit well with [their] current 14C-based estimates for Sheshonq I," which they considered to be (c. 969-940 BC with 68.3% hpd, and 991-930 BC with 95.4% hpd) in Stratum 8.[20]
Origins and family
Shoshenq I was the son of Nimlot A and Tentsepeh A. His paternal grandparents were the Chief of the Ma
Foreign policy
He pursued an aggressive foreign policy in the adjacent territories of the Middle East, towards the end of his reign. This is attested, in part, by the discovery of a statue base bearing his name from the Lebanese city of
There are other problems with Shoshenq being the same as the biblical Shishak: Shoshenq's Karnak list does not include Jerusalem—his biggest prize according to the Bible. His list focuses on places either north or south of Judah, as if he did not raid the center. The fundamental problem facing historians is establishing the aims of the two accounts and linking up the information in them.[26]
There have been some possible suggestions and proposals from scholars regarding this issue. Some argue that the mention of Jerusalem was erased from the list over time. Others believe that Rehoboam's tribute to Shoshenq saved the city from destruction and therefore from the Bubastite Portal's lists. Some scholars even propose that Shoshenq claimed a conquest that he did not enact and copied the list of conquered territories from an old Pharaoh's conquest list.[27]
As an addendum to his foreign policy, Shoshenq I carved a report of campaigns in Nubia and Israel, with a detailed list of conquests in Israel. This is the first military action outside Egypt formally commemorated for several centuries.[26] This report of conquests is the only surviving late Iron Age text concerning Canaan.[28] as far as Damascus[29]
Domestic policy
Libyan concepts of rule allowed for the parallel existence of leaders who were related by marriage and blood. Shoshenq and his immediate successors used that practice to consolidate their grasp on all of Egypt. Shoshenq terminated the hereditary succession of the high priesthood of Amun. Instead he and his successors appointed men to the position, most often their own sons, a practice that lasted for a century.[26]
Burial
Shoshenq I was succeeded by his son Osorkon I after a reign of 21 years. According to the British Egyptologist Aidan Dodson, no trace has yet been found of the tomb of Shoshenq I. The sole funerary object linked to Shoshenq I is a canopic chest of unknown provenance that was donated to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (ÄMB 11000) by Julius Isaac in 1891.[30] This may indicate his tomb was looted in antiquity, but this hypothesis is unproven. Egyptologists differ over the location of Shoshenq I's burial and speculate that he may have been buried somewhere in Tanis—perhaps in one of the anonymous royal tombs here—or in Bubastis. However, Troy Sagrillo in a GM 205 (2005) paper observes that "there are only a bare handful of inscribed blocks from Tanis that might name the king (i.e. Shoshenq I) and none of these come from an in situ building complex contemporary with his reign."[31] Hence, it is more probable that Shoshenq was buried in another city in the Egyptian Delta. Sagrillo offers a specific location for Shoshenq's burial—the Ptah temple enclosure of Memphis—and notes that this king built:
fairly widely in the area, undoubtedly including a pylon and forecourt at the Ptah temple (Kitchen, TIPE 1996, pp. 149–150) ...It is, therefore, not completely improbable that he (i.e., Shoshenq I) built his tomb in the region. The funerary cult surrounding his "House of Millions of Years of Shoshenq, Beloved of Amun" was functioning several generations after its establishment at the temple (Ibrahem Aly Sayed 1996, p. 14). The "House of Millions of Years of Shoshenq, Beloved of Amun" was probably the forecourt and pylon of the Ptah temple, which, if the royal necropoleis at Tanis, Saïs, and Mendes are taken as models, could very well have contained a royal burial within it or the temenos.[32]
Sagrillo concludes by observing that if Shoshenq I's burial place was located at Memphis, "it would go far in explaining why this king's funerary cult lasted for some time at the site after his death."[32]
While Shoshenq's tomb is currently unknown, the burial of one of his prominent state officials at Thebes, the Third Prophet of Amun
Notes
References
- ^ R. Krauss & D.A. Warburton "Chronological Table for the Dynastic Period" in Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss & David Warburton (editors), Ancient Egyptian Chronology (Handbook of Oriental Studies), Brill, 2006. p. 493
- ^ "He came from a line of princes or sheikhs of Libyan tribal descent", The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 2002, v.7, p.733. An updated on-line version of the same article, containing the same quote and last updated as of 2014, can be found online at Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Flinders Petrie: Scarabs and cylinders with names (1917), pl. XLIX
- ^ M. Bierbrier, The Late New Kingdom in Egypt (c. 1300–664 BC), Aris & Philips Ltd (1975), p. 111
- ^ Rolf Krauss, Das wrŝ-Datum aus Jahr 5 von Shoshenq [I], Discussions in Egyptology 62 (2005), pp.43-48
- ^ Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss & David Warburton (editors), Ancient Egyptian Chronology (Handbook of Oriental Studies), Brill: 2006, p.474
- ^ Anthony Leahy, The date of the 'larger' Dakhleh stela (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1894.107a), GM 226 (2010), p.47
- ^ Leahy, GM 226 p.52
- ^ see 'The Libyan Period in Egypt.' Historical and Cultural Studies into the 21st-24th Dynasties: Proceedings of a Conference at Leiden University 25–27 October 2007, G. Broekman, RJ Demaree & O.E. Kaper (eds), Peeters Leuven 2009, p.167 where Kitchen states that there is 'no evidence whatsoever' that the wrš festival was a lunar one
- ^ Schneider, Thomas, (2010). "Contributions to the Chronology of the New Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period", in AeL 20, pp. 373-403.
- ^ Finkelstein, Israel, (2020). "Saul and Highlands of Benjamin Update: The Role of Jerusalem", in Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart (eds.), Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives, SBL Press, p. 49.
- ^ Koch, Ido, (2021). "Appendix: Chronology of Egyptian Kings", in Colonial Encounters in Southwest Canaan during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, Series: Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, Volume 119, Brill, pp. 131-132.
- ^ Vakmin, Yoav, et al., (2022). "Reconstructing biblical military campaigns using geomagnetic field data", in: PNAS, Vol. 119, No. 44.
- ^ Troy Leiland Sagrillo, 2015, 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
- ^ E.g. Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on 1 King 11, accessed 4 June 2017
- ^ K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William Eerdmans & Co, 2003. p. 134
- ISBN 9781575061283.
- ^ 1 Kings 12:24e, New English Translation of the Septuagint
- ^ Brenton Septuagint (English Translation) 1 Kings 12:24e.
- PMID 37967047.
- ISBN 9780856682988.
- ^ Troy Leiland Sagrillo, 'The Geographic Origins of the "Bubastite" Dynasty and Possible Locations for the Royal Residence and Burial Place of Shoshenq I.' In The Libyan period in Egypt: Historical and cultural studies into the 21st–24th Dynasties, edited by G.P.F. Broekman, R.J. Demarée, and O. Kaper. Egyptologische Uitgaven 23, Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters. 2009:341–359.
- ^ K.A. Kitchen, "The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (c.1100-650 BC)," Aris & Phillips Ltd. third edition. 1996. p.289
- ^ Kitchen, "The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt" p.290
- ^ K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William Erdsman & Co, 2003. pp.10, 32-34 & p.607 Page 607 of Kitchen's book depicts the surviving fragment of Shoshenq I's Megiddo stela
- ^ ISBN 9781119620891.
- ^ Biblical Archaeology Society Staff (27 March 2017). "Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem". Biblical History Daily. Biblical Archaeology Society. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
- ISBN 9781575061283. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
- ISBN 978-1-009-41257-5.
- ^ Aidan Dodson, The Canopic Equipment of the Kings of Egypt, Kegan Paul Intl, (1994), pp.83-84
- ^ Troy Leiland Sagrillo, "The Mummy of Shoshenq I Re-discovered?," Göttinger Miszellen 205 (2005), p.99
- ^ a b Sagrillo, p. 100
Bibliography
- M. Bierbrier, The Late New Kingdom in Egypt (c.1300-664 BC), Aris & Philips Ltd, (1975)
- Ricardo A. Caminos, Gebel Es-Silsilah No. 100, JEA 38 (1952), pp. 46–61
- Rupert L. Chapman III, Putting Shoshenq I in his Place, Palestine Exploration Quarterly141, 1 (2009), pp. 4–17
- M. Georges Daressy, Les Parents de Chéchanq Ier, ASAE 16 (1916), 3
- Aidan Dodson, The Canopic Equipment of the Kings of Egypt, Kegan Paul Intl, (1994)
- Erika Feucht, Zwei Reliefs Scheschonqs I. aus El Hibeh, SAK 6 (1978), 69-77
- Alan H. Gardiner, The Dakhleh Stela, JEA 19 (1933), 19-30
- Rolf Krauss, Das wrš-Datum aus Jahr 5 von Shoshenq [I], Discussions in Egyptology 62 (2005), pp. 43–48
- Yigal Levin, 'Sheshonq I and the Negev Haserim', Maarav 17 (2010), pp. 189-215.
- Yigal Levin, "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.
- Thomas E. Levy, Stefan Münger, and Mohammad Najjar, “A Newly Discovered Scarab of Sheshonq I: Recent Iron Age Explorations in Southern Jordan”, Antiquity 88, 341 (September 2014).
- Troy Leiland Sagrillo, 'The Mummy of Shoshenq I Re-discovered?,' GM 205 (2005), pp. 95–102
- Troy Leiland Sagrillo, 'The Geographic Origins of the "Bubastite" Dynasty and Possible Locations for the Royal Residence and Burial Place of Shoshenq I.' In The Libyan period in Egypt: Historical and cultural studies into the 21st–24th Dynasties, edited by G.P.F. Broekman, R.J. Demarée, and O. Kaper. Egyptologische Uitgaven 23, Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters. 2009: pp. 341–359
- Troy Leiland Sagrillo, 'Šîšaq’s army: 2 Chronicles 12:2–3 from an Egyptological perspective' In The ancient Near East in the 12th–10th Centuries BCE: Culture and history; proceedings of the international conference held at the University of Haifa, 2–5 May 2010, edited by Gershon Galil, Ayelet Gilboa, Aren M. Maeir, and Dan’el Kahn. Alter Orient und Altes Testament: Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments 392. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. 2012: pp. 425–450.
- Troy Leiland Sagrillo. 2015. "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.