Biblical “Shishak king of Egypt”
by
Damien F. Mackey
In my revised system, with King Solomon locked in
chronologically and historically
as Senenmut (Senmut) of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty,
during the reign of the female, Hatshepsut, the only plausible candidate for
the biblical “Shishak king of Egypt”,
who looted the Temple of Yahweh about five years after
Solomon’s death,
is Thutmose III, who co-reigned with, and who succeeded,
Hatshepsut.
Ever
since reading Dr. I. Velikovsky’s Ages in
Chaos (I) in the early 1980’s, I have embraced at least that part of his
thesis therein (Chapter 4, “The Temple in
Jerusalem”) that identifies pharaoh Thutmose III as the
biblical “Shishak king of Egypt” (I Kings 14:25-28):
In
the fifth year of King Rehoboam, 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 all the gold
shields Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made bronze
shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on
duty at the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the
king went to the Lord’s Temple, the guards bore the shields, and afterward they returned
them to the guardroom.
At
first I had simply accepted Velikovsky’s entire reconstruction uncritically,
but later, I - after having read various useful critiques of it - came to
believe that it required some modification. And more lately (writing now on 5th-6th
April, 2019), I have come to the conclusion that Velikovsky’s thesis stands in
need of some fairly extensive modification.
My
constant throughout all of this, though, is that Queen Hatshepsut was “the
Queen of Sheba” and that Thutmose III was “Shishak king of Egypt” - all as
according to Dr. Velikovsky.
Revisionists
who have looked to test the worth of Velikovsky’s “Shishak” thesis have
focussed upon, probably, three aspects of it: (i) the name; (ii) the geography; and
(ii) the booty.
As
well, there is the ever present issue of (iv) the chronology, with a requisite archaeology.
As
regards (iv) chronology (and the
archaeology is also a matter for serious consideration), I fully accept that
only Thutmose III - interwoven with Hatshepsut and Senenmut (Solomon) - can be
the biblical “Shishak”.
The
(i) name may, I think, have a simple explanation, as I noted in my article:
Pharaohs
known to Old Testament Israel
More than likely … the name
“Shishak” was the name by which young Thutmose III was known to king Solomon
and his court in his close relationship with his relative, Hatshepsut-Sheba.
Solomon had officials, secretaries, whose father was named “Shisha” (I Kings
4:1-3):
So King
Solomon ruled over all Israel.
And these
were his chief officials:
Azariah son of Zadok—the priest;
Elihoreph and Ahijah, sons of Shisha—secretaries ….
[End of quotes]
In
this same article I had pointed to the fact that the Bible, when actually
naming a pharaoh, was wont to use either the ruler’s nomen or praenomen, so
that any efforts to identify a biblical pharaoh through that ruler’s, say, suten bat name (Courville), or a nebty name (Habermehl), may be barking
up the wrong tree. One may search high and low, unsuccessfully (I suggest), to
find a “Shishak”- like pharaonic nomen
or praenomen.
Velikovsky
may thus have been basically correct regarding (i) the name by his not actually attempting to connect “Shishak” to any of
the Egyptian names of pharaoh Thutmose III.
He merely alluded to Josephus’s
information that the Egyptian conqueror’s name was “Isakos”, or “Susakos”, and
also to the Jewish tradition that ‘the name “Shishak” was from Shuk, “desire”, because the
pharaoh had wanted to attack Solomon, but had feared him’.
So
far, then, I am right with Dr. Velikovsky regarding the pharaoh’s name, and,
essentially, too, regarding his revised chronology.
However,
in this article I shall be proposing a slight, but highly significant, tweak to
the latter.
Chronology
(Archaeology)
“It is thought that after the death of Neferure, which perhaps occurred
in the eleventh year of Hatshepsut’s reign, [Senenmut] may have embarked upon
an alliance with Tuthmosis III which led Hatshepsut to discard him in the nineteenth
year of her reign, three years before the disappearance of the queen herself”.
Nicolas Grimal
It was probably inevitable
that the pioneering work done by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, in his Ages in Chaos (I), would later be found
to require some modification.
With his (a)
Hatshepsut as the biblical Queen of Sheba; and his (b) Thutmose III as the
biblical pharaoh Shishak king of Egypt, Velikovsky had gone for the jackpot. He
had looked to identify Hatshepsut’s famous Punt expedition with the Queen of
Sheba’s visit to King Solomon.
And he had looked
to identify Thutmose III’s most detailed and famous military campaign, his First (in Year 22-23), with Shishak’s
assault upon Jerusalem.
But big is not
always the best.
Byzantine
Christians in search of an appropriate Mount Sinai had hit upon the impressive
mountain, Jebel Musa, and had likewise, for the mountain of the Ark’s landing,
opted for the tall, snow-capped Mount Ararat in Turkey.
Both, I think,
missed the mark.
In retrospect,
Velikovsky was clearly wrong about Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition. By then, her
Year 9 as Pharaoh, Hatshepsut was no longer a queen. Moreover, Hatshepsut did not even personally accompany the
Punt expedition. And the miserable token gifts that Egypt gave to the Punt-ites
could hardly be likened to the lavish gifts that the Queen of Sheba had brought
to King Solomon. Chronologically, therefore, Velikovsky was out by a fair bit
on this one. (Though still ‘light years’ closer than are the conventionalists).
Now, what I shall
be proposing in this series is that Dr. Velikovsky was also out chronologically
– but only minimally – by identifying Thutmose III’s First campaign as the Shishak event.
To say this is new
for me. Chronologically I had - with Senenmut as King Solomon - locked in Thutmose
III’s First campaign as being very
close to the 5th year of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam (when Shishak had
attacked), with my acceptance of P. Dorman’s view that Senenmut had faded from the Egyptian scene (hence
died, as I had concluded) in Hatshepsut’s (also Thutmose III’s) Year 16.
{Peter F. Dorman, The Monuments of Senenmut:
Problems in Historical Methodology, London: Kegan Paul Ltd., 1988}
However,
whilst various historians do indeed favour Year 16 as being the last for
Senenmut, others would extend this, even as far as Year 19. Thus N. Grimal, for
instance, who has written (A History of
Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994. My emphasis):
It is thought that after the death of Neferure, which
perhaps occurred in the eleventh year
of Hatshepsut’s reign, [Senenmut] may have embarked
upon an alliance with Tuthmosis III which led Hatshepsut to discard him in the nineteenth year of her reign, three
years before the disappearance of the queen herself.
But, even if Year
16 were the correct date, that does not mean that Senenmut/Solomon had actually
died in, or close to, that year (as I had presumed). Hence, there is some
chronological space or wriggle room that might allow for the Shishak campaign
to have been one of the other (many) military campaigns of the Napoleon-like
(except Thutmose III never lost a battle) pharaoh - a campaign slightly later
than his First (Year 22-23).
And I now think
that such has to be the case.
The First campaign, that I have long held to
have been the Shishak event, does not appear to match up to it geographically.
I shall be elaborating upon this further on.
Velikovsky had
erred here, I believe, in ‘going for the jackpot’.
And what about the
impressive booty? For that, see last section.
Regarding the four
(i-iv) key Shishak issues that we identified previously:
- Name;
- Geography;
- Booty;
- Chronology (archaeology)
I would estimate
that Dr. Velikovsky was well on the right track with (i), and also that he came
extremely close with (iv). Later revisionists, like Dr. John Bimson (“Can There be a Revised Chronology Without a Revised Stratigraphy?”, SIS Review VoI.VII-3, 1978), had endeavoured to add an appropriate archaeology to
the Velikovskian scenario:
Although an exhaustive study of the LBA contexts of all
scarabs commemorating Hatshepsut and Thutmose III would be required to
establish this point, a preliminary survey suggests that objects from the joint
reign of these two rulers do not occur until the transition from LB I to LB II,
and that scarabs of Thutmose III occur regularly from the start of LB II
onwards, and perhaps no earlier [14]. Velikovsky’s chronology makes Hatshepsut
(with Thutmose III as co-ruler) a contemporary of Solomon, and Thutmose III’s
sole reign contemporary with that of Rehoboam in Judah [15]. Therefore, if the
revised chronology is correct, these scarabs would suggest that Solomon’s reign
saw the transition from LB I to LB II, rather than that from LB I A to LB I B.
[End of quote]
With the latter
part of the 54-year reign of Thutmose III dipping down into the early reign of
King Asa of Judah, as I would estimate, and with King Ahab arriving on the
scene roughly two decades later, in the 38th year of Asa (I Kings
16:29), then the archaeology seems to me to fit, given my identification of the
rebuilding of Jericho at the time of Ahab at the Iron Age I level. On this, see
e.g. my article:
Hiel's
Jericho. Part One: Stratigraphical level
Vern Crisler,
whilst also locating King Ahab stratigraphically at “the early Iron Age”, has (differently
from Dr. Bimson) Thutmose III at Late Bronze I B which then raises problems:
Velikovsky
and Ages in Chaos: A Critique:
Velikovsky theorized that Thutmose 3 was
biblical Shishak. The weakness of this correlation is evident in that
Velikovsky had to indulge in a speculative identification of the “Kadesh”
defeated by Thutmose 3 with the city of Jerusalem defeated by Shishak. In
addition, the correlation of the treasures taken from Jerusalem by Shishak with
the bas-relief of Thutmose 3 at Karnak is erroneous.61
Worse still is the fact that Thutmose 3
reigned during the LB1b archaeological phase. That would mean those who
followed him would have lived during the LB2a and LB2b phases.
So if Thutmose is identified with the
tenth century, then the LB1b phase would also be identified with the tenth
century. As we’ve discussed, this runs up against the Samaria Paradox. The
building of a city on the hill of Samaria by Omri and Ahab during the early
ninth century BC corresponds with the early Iron Age. So to accept a tenth
century date for LB1b Thutmose 3 means all the following Egyptian kings, along
with the LB2a and LB2b periods have to be squeezed into about 20 years. The
reason they cannot be after Samaria is because the Late Bronze Age had already
ended by the time Samaria was built. And Shishak had to have invaded Judah
sometime just before the beginning of the ninth century (using Thiele’s dates).
So that leaves virtually no time at all for the eighteenth and nineteenth
dynasty kings. And if that weren’t bad enough, it leaves no room for the two
Late Bronze Age strata, LB2a and LB2b.
Pharaoh marches
up to Jerusalem
What will be suggested here is that, whilst Dr.
Velikovsky was perfectly correct in adhering to the conventional line that
Thutmose III’s Mkty referred to the
strong fort of Megiddo,
he erred in his view that the pharaoh’s Kd-šw pertained to
Jerusalem (Kadesh, “holy”).
Although
I had initially accepted Dr. Velikovsky’s reinterpretation of Thutmose III’s First campaign quite uncritically, that
changed after I read Dr. Eva Danelius’s modification of it in her article, “Did Thutmose III
Despoil the Temple in Jerusalem?” (SIS
Review, Vol. II, 3). This article I have until recently considered to be
one of the truly useful - and necessary - modifications of Velikovsky, though
without wiping out his important foundations.
The
strong point about Danelius’s article, I have long thought, was her explanation
of the topography of the pharaoh’s First
campaign, which seemed to account far better for the feared Aruna road to Mkty that Thutmose III had decided to take - even in the face of
strong protests by his military staff - than did the seemingly “broad and open valley Wâdy 'Ârah
to Megiddo that the pharaoh is generally considered to have taken.
And,
even though I must now reject Dr. Danelius’s explanation in favour of the
conventional one, I have to admit that I still find to be quite mystifying the
topographical aspect of it.
Dr.
Velikovsky’s own explanation for the topographical situation (see also below)
was this: “Now
as to the approach to Megiddo being a narrow pass - by what it is now, it
cannot be judged what it was almost three thousand years ago. There could have
been artificial mound-fortifications the length of the pass”.
Anyway,
this is what Dr. Velikovsky would write to Dr. Danelius about her article:
A Response to Eva Danelius
by Immanuel
Velikovsky
Dr Velikovsky
sent comments to Dr Danelius after reading her paper, and has requested that
some of these be printed here:-
My view of the
paper of Dr Danelius is given here extracted from a personal letter to her,
dated March 14, 1977.
Dr Danelius is a
very gifted researcher and innovator, and she herself carries the
responsibility for challenging Breasted and all others: I do not wish that any
authority I may carry should overshadow the discussion of my work.
Your paper on
Hatshepsut* is an important contribution. With your paper on Thutmose III and
Megiddo I am not in accord. I would still follow Breasted as to the position of
Megiddo, and these are my considerations in short:
It seems to me
that things went this way: When Jeroboam, upon the death of Solomon, returned
from Egypt, he did not succeed immediately in taking over the entire area of
the northern tribes. Megiddo was one of the fortresses (the main) built by
Solomon, and it withstood the secession. Four or five years thereafter,
Thutmose III moved into Palestine, and as his first step he "took the
fenced cities which pertained to Judah" (II Chronicles 12:4). Rehoboam
hurried to defend Megiddo. Thutmose did not put siege to Jerusalem: he wished
first to eliminate the strategically-dominating stronghold that was a thorn in
his plan. After a pitched battle outside of the gate, in which the King of
Kadesh participated, he was hoisted to the fortress - after a while the King of
Kadesh (Rehoboam) went out of the fortress and "humbled himself";
Jerusalem was not besieged: already at the walls of Megiddo the surrender and
the loot of the Temple and the palace of Jerusalem were agreed upon.
This was about
-940. Megiddo was not handed over by Thutmose to Jeroboam, but was kept as a
fortress enclave in the land that was a divided vassalage (North-South), with
an Egyptian-appointed commander.
….
Also the name of
the brook (Taanak) referred to by Thutmose III next to Megiddo:
"One of the
roads - behold it is to the east of us, so that it comes out at Taanach. The
other - behold, it is to the north side of Djefti, and we will come out to the
north of Megiddo ..."
Taanach is also
next to Megiddo in the Bible (I Kings 4:12). Your equation of Taanach with the
Tahhunah ridge does not strengthen your thesis.
Now as to the
approach to Megiddo being a narrow pass - by what it is now, it cannot be
judged what it was almost three thousand years ago. There could have been artificial
mound-fortifications the length of the pass. Think, for instance, of Tyre of
the time of Shalmaneser III or Nebuchadnezzar (who besieged it for 13 years),
or even of the days of Alexander, when it withstood a protracted siege. Today
its topography is completely changed.
The story as I see
it explains what you see as insurmountable difficulties. I was asked what I
think of your essay, and before I let it be known, I tell you this in the
spirit of constructive co-operation. …
[End of quote]
My
biggest problem with Dr. Danelius’s thesis, even while I had been keenly
accepting it, was that combination of a Megiddo-like name Mkty (My-k-ty) with a Taanach (T3-'3-n3-k3). As Dr. Velikovsky had written to Dr. Danelius: “Taanach is also
next to Megiddo in the Bible (I Kings 4:12). Your equation of Taanach with the
Tahhunah ridge does not strengthen your thesis”.
But, on the positive side again, I had
found Dr. Danelius’s account of the Aruna
road to fit linguistically far better than does 'Ârah. She wrote:
When
identifying the name transcribed "Aruna": (1) it must be
remembered that the third letter represents the so-called
"semi-vowel" w (u), which may indicate a sound of vowel
or consonant character; true vowels were not written in Egyptian or Hebrew
(72). In the case of Biblical Hebrew, where exact pronunciation is of the
utmost importance, this gap has been filled about 1,000 years ago by Rabbis
living at Tiberias, who added vowels to their manuscript, and that is the
pronunciation used to this day. Thus it happens that the name Aruna has been
preserved in written Hebrew letter for letter, though pronunciation is slightly
different. It is the original name of the place on which the Temple had been
built, the so-called "threshingfloor of Araunah the Jebusite" (73).
(2)
In other words, the road dreaded by the officers was the camel-road leading
from Jaffa up the so-called Beth Horon ascent to Jerusalem, approaching the
city from the north. In the time of David it led to the threshing-floor of
Araunah the Jebusite; in the time of Rehoboam it led to the Temple Mount which
had been built at that place. The inhabitants, though, continued to use the
ancient name for the road.
[End of
quote]
She also wrote with reference to
professor Breasted’s prize student, Harold H. Nelson: “As an afterthought,
Nelson warns not to be deceived by the Arabic name (wadi) 'Ara:
"Etymologically, it seems hardly possible to equate (Egyptian) 'Aruna with
(Arab) 'Ar'arah." (51)”.
Unfortunately for Danelius,
though, an Araunah road is nowhere to be found in the Bible.
So,
instead of tortuously following Dr. Danelius to discover how the pharaoh’s Mkty might pertain to Jerusalem:
Among the
names enumerated as designating Jerusalem is Bait-al-Makdis, or in brief,
Makdis, corresponding to Beithha-Miqdash in modern Hebrew pronunciation.
The10th century Arab writer who mentions this name calls himself Mukadassi =
the Jerusalemite (102). The name Mâkdes was still used by the Samaritans (a
Jewish sect who never left the country, who trace their ancestors to three of
the northern tribes of Israel) at the beginning of this century, when
discussing with Rabbi Moshe Gaster their attitude towards Jerusalem (103), and
a local shop outside Damascus Gate still bears the inscription: Baith
el-Makdis.
And, instead of following Velikovsky and
Danelius to
discover how the pharaoh’s Kd-šw
might pertain to Jerusalem (Velikovsky), or the land thereabouts (Danelius):
(4) Finally, the eastern
opening of the road lies in a district called "Jebel el Kuds" in
Turkish times, "Har Kodsho" by the Hebrews, both names meaning the
same: "The Mount of the Holy One", "The Holy Mount". In
other words Kd-sw was not the name of a city, but of a land. This
explains too why it always heads the Egyptian lists referring to campaigns into
so-called Palestine. According to Conder, there were around 20 towns and
villages in the "Jebel el Kuds", which, in his time, belonged to the
area under the Mutaserrif of Jerusalem (75). In Biblical times it belonged to
the tribe of Benjamin. Conder describes it as "one of the most difficult
to survey on account of the ruggedness of the hills and the great depth of the
valleys" (76). The Aruna road reaches the Har Kodsho/Land of Benjamin
roughly 10 km north of the Temple Mount, when it turns south and finally runs
along the watershed till it reaches its destination (see Map 1) ….
it
is easier for me now to accept (despite my topographical protestations) -
especially in light of the chronological considerations that I raised in Part
Two (i) - that the standard view of the geography of Thutmose III’s First campaign is correct. According to
the typical view, Mkty represents
Megiddo and Kd-šw represents Qadesh
on the Orontes.
Here
is a colourful account of Thutmose III:
Thutmose III The Napoleon of Ancient Egypt 1479 – 1425 BC
….
Some
believe Rameses II was the greatest Egyptian ruler but this not true; he spent
Egypt’s wealth on massive building projects where as Thutmose III actually
created Egypt’s wealth. Thutmose III possessed the archetypal qualities of a
great ruler. A brilliant general who never lost a battle, he also excelled as
an administrator and statesman. He was an accomplished horseman, archer,
athlete, and discriminating patron of the arts. Thutmose had no time for
pompous, self-indulgent bombast and his reign, with the exception of his
uncharacteristic spite against the memory of Hatshepsut, shows him to have been
a sincere and fair-minded man.
Thutmose
III had spent the long years of his aunt Hatshepsut’s reign training in the
army. This kept him away from court politics but nevertheless prepared him well
for his own role as pharaoh because great ability in war was considered a
desirable quality in the ancient world. Egyptian pharaohs were expected to lead
their armies into foreign lands and demonstrate their bravery on the field in
person. After a few victorious battles, a king might return home in triumph,
loaded with plunder and a promise of annual tribute from the defeated cities.
But during Hatshepsut’s reign, there were no wars and Egypt’s soldiers had
little practice in warfare.
The
result was that Egypt’s neighbors were gradually becoming independent and when
this new, unknown pharaoh came to the throne; these other kings were inclined
to test his resolve.
In
the second year of his reign, Thutmose found himself faced with a coalition of
the princes from Kadesh and Megiddo, who had mobilized a large army. What’s
more, the Mesopotamians and their kinsmen living in Syria refused to pay
tribute and declared themselves free of Egypt.
Undaunted,
Thutmose immediately set out with his army. He crossed the Sinai desert and
marched to the city of Gaza which had remained loyal to Egypt. The events of the
campaign are well documented because Thutmose’s private secretary, Tjaneni,
kept a record which was later copied and engraved onto the walls of the temple
of Karnak.
This
first campaign revealed Thutmose to be the military genius of his time. He
understood the value of logistics and lines of supply, the necessity of rapid
movement, and the sudden surprise attack. He led by example and was probably
the first person in history to take full advantage of sea power to support his
campaigns.
Megiddo
was Thutmose’s first objective because it was a key point strategically. It had
to be taken at all costs. When he reached Aruna, Thutmose held a council with
all his generals. There were three routes to Megiddo: two long, easy, and level
roads around the hills, which the enemy expected Thutmose to take, and a
narrow, difficult route that cut through the hills.
His
generals advised him to go the easy way, saying of the alternative, “Horse must
follow behind horse and man behind man also, and our vanguard will be engaged
while our rearguard is at Aruna without fighting.” But Thutmose’s reply to this
was, “As I live, as I am the beloved of Ra and praised by my father Amun, I
will go on the narrow road. Let those who will, go on the roads you have
mentioned; and let anyone who will, follow my Majesty.”
When
the soldiers heard this bold speech they shouted in one voice, “We follow thy
Majesty whithersoever thy Majesty goes.”
Thutmose
led his men on foot through the hills “horse behind Horse and man behind man,
his Majesty showing the way by his own footsteps.” It took about twelve hours
for the vanguard to reach the valley on the other side, and another seven hours
before the last troops emerged. Thutmose, himself, waited at the head of the
pass till the last man was safely through.
The
sudden and unexpected appearance of Egyptians at their rear forced the allies
to make a hasty redeployment of their troops. There were over three hundred
allied kings, each with his own army; an immense force. However, Thutmose was
determined and when the allies saw him at the head of his men leading them
forward, they lost heart for the fight and fled for the city of Megiddo, “as if
terrified by spirits: they left their horse and chariots of silver and gold.”
Thutmose on the walls of Karnak Temple
The
Egyptian army, being young and inexperienced, simply lacked the control to take
the city immediately. Thutmose was angry. He said to them,
“If only the troops of his Majesty had not given their hearts to spoiling the things of the enemy, they would have taken Megiddo at that moment. For the ruler of every northern country is in Megiddo and its capture is as the capture of a thousand cities.”
“If only the troops of his Majesty had not given their hearts to spoiling the things of the enemy, they would have taken Megiddo at that moment. For the ruler of every northern country is in Megiddo and its capture is as the capture of a thousand cities.”
Megiddo
was besieged. A moat was dug around the city walls and a strong wooden palisade
erected. The king gave orders to let nobody through except those who signaled
at the gate that they wished to give themselves up. Eventually the vanquished
kings sent out their sons and daughters to negotiate peace. According to
Thutmose, “All those things with which they had come to fight against my
Majesty, now they brought them as tribute to my Majesty, while they themselves
stood upon their walls giving praise to my Majesty, and begging that the Breath
of Life be given to their nostrils.”
They
received good terms for surrender. An oath of allegiance was imposed upon them:
“We will not again do evil against Menkheper Ra, our good Lord, in our
lifetime, for we have seen his might, and he has deigned to give us breath.”
Thutmose
III is often compared to Napoleon, but unlike Napoleon he never lost a battle.
He conducted sixteen campaigns in Palestine, Syria and Nubia and his treatment
of the conquered was always humane. He established a sort of “Pax Egyptica”
over his empire. Syria and Palestine were obliged to keep the peace and the
region as a whole experienced an unprecedented degree of prosperity.
His
impact upon Egyptian culture was profound. He was a national hero, revered long
after his time. Indeed, his name was held in awe even to the last days of
ancient Egyptian history. His military achievements brought fabulous wealth and
his family resided over a golden age that was never surpassed.
He
was also a cultured man who demonstrated a curiosity about the lands he
conquered; many of his building works at Karnak are covered with carvings of
the plants and flowers he saw on his campaigns. He also set up a number of
obelisks in Egypt, one of which, erroneously called Cleopatra’s Needle, now
stands on the Embankment in London. Its twin is in Central Park in New York.
Another is near the Lateran, in Rome, and yet another stands in Istanbul. In
this way, Thutmose III maintains a presence in some of the most powerful
nations of the last two thousand years.
One
can see from maps that reconstruct Thutmose III’s First campaign that Jerusalem was not a concern of the pharaoh’s at
this early stage. He had his hands full quelling the major rebellion incited
against Egypt by the kingdom of Mitanni, and led by the ruler of Qadesh, which
coalition had used the fort of Megiddo in northern Israel as a rallying point.
From the biblical accounts of “Shishak” it is
apparent that the pharaoh did not even have to lay siege to Jerusalem. We
earlier looked at the brief account of it given in I Kings 14:25-28. Here now
is the longer version of it in 2 Chronicles 12:1-12:
Shishak Attacks Jerusalem
After Rehoboam’s position as king was established and he had become
strong, he and all Israel with him abandoned the law of the Lord. Because they had been unfaithful to the Lord, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem in the fifth year of King
Rehoboam. With twelve hundred chariots and sixty
thousand horsemen and the innumerable troops of Libyans, Sukkites and Cushites
that came with him from Egypt, he captured the
fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem. Then the prophet
Shemaiah came to Rehoboam and to the leaders of Judah who had assembled in
Jerusalem for fear of Shishak, and he said to them, “This is what the Lord says, ‘You have abandoned me; therefore, I now abandon you to
Shishak.’”
The leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves
and said, “The Lord is just.”
When the Lord saw that they humbled themselves,
this word of the Lord came to Shemaiah: “Since they have humbled
themselves, I will not destroy them but will soon give them deliverance. My
wrath will not be poured out on Jerusalem through Shishak. They will, however, become subject
to him, so that they may learn the difference between serving me and serving
the kings of other lands.”
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. So King Rehoboam made bronze shields
to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at
the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the king
went to the Lord’s temple, the guards went with him, bearing the shields, and afterward
they returned them to the guardroom.
Because
Rehoboam humbled himself, the Lord’s
anger turned from him, and he was not totally destroyed. Indeed, there was some
good in Judah.
This was a massive army led by “Shishak king
of Egypt”, and I suspect that the biblical account may be telescoping two (or
more) accounts that include the massive First
campaign. The “Shishak” incident I would now locate to one of Thutmose III’s
slightly later campaigns, perhaps his second in Year 24, or either of the two
after that:
Thutmose's second, third, and fourth
campaigns appear to have been nothing more than tours of Syria and Canaan to
collect tribute. Traditionally, the material directly after the text of the
first campaign has been considered to be the second campaign. This text records
tribute from the area which the Egyptians called Retenu, (roughly equivalent to
Canaan), and it was also at this time that Assyria paid a second
"tribute" to Thutmose III.
“Traditionally,
the material directly after the text of the first campaign has been considered
to be the second campaign”. This allows for
the booty famously recorded by Thutmose III at Karnak to belong collectively to
the pharaoh’s first few campaigns.
For more on that booty, see next part of this
article.
Pharaoh’s
bas-relief treasures - Karnak
Dr. Velikovsky’s hopeful attempt to identify the
Karnak pieces with items from the reign of King Solomon (Temple and palace) has
been seriously compromised by misidentifications.
Great
credit is due to Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky for his having identified (in Ages in Chaos, I) the biblical “Shishak
king of Egypt” with the mighty pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt’s Eighteenth
Dynasty. Had he not done this, we would still be like those poor souls in
Plato’s Cave groping about in conventional darkness, being unable to find
access to clarifying light.
As
a pioneer, though, it was probably inevitable that Velikovsky would provide
solutions that would later need some modification. And, if this present series
is on the right track, Velikovsky, whilst arriving at a most adequate
chronology, and name origin, for “Shishak”, chose the wrong pharaonic campaign,
the First campaign (the biggest one),
as constituting the biblical “Shishak” incident.
Now,
the Karnak bas-reliefs that tend to be coupled with that First campaign were eagerly embraced by Velikovsky as illustrating
the magnificent treasures plundered from Solomonic Jerusalem. Whilst I have
argued in this series that the First
campaign could not have been the “Shishak” one, geographically for sure, and
probably chronologically, it is still possible that Velikovsky was correct
about the Karnak bas-reliefs insofar as these may also have included booty from
the campaigns immediately following on from the First. At least the Second
one.
But
Dr. Velikovsky’s hopeful attempt to identify the
Karnak pieces with items from the reign of King Solomon (Temple and palace) has
been seriously compromised by misidentifications. Most unfortunate of all, perhaps,
was his misidentification of one of the Karnak objects with the Ark of the
Covenant itself.
This has been exposed by Creationist Patrick Clarke in his article: “Was Thutmose III the biblical Shishak?— Claims
for the ‘Jerusalem’ bas-relief at Karnak investigated”
Clarke takes several objects identified by Velikovsky and shows that
they cannot be what Velikovsky claimed them to have been. I have checked each
one of these using A. Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of
Hieroglyphs, and have found them to be exactly as Patrick Clarke
has written.
However, it
should be noted that Clarke has examined only a very few items: the supposed
Ark of the Covenant; some priestly garments; a fire altar; lamps; showbread,
and found Velikovsky to be wanting in each of these cases. That does not
discount some of the many other articles that appear on the bas-relief from
pertaining to Solomonic Jerusalem.
Serious
revisionists ought to make a fresh start on investigating this.
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