Shishak, also spelled Shishaq or Susac (, Tiberian: , ), was, according to the Hebrew Bible, an Egyptian pharaoh who sacked Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE. He is usually identified with the pharaoh Shoshenq I.
He supported Jeroboam against king Rehoboam of 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
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. 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. In the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign, commonly dated ca. 926 BCE, Shishak swept through Judah with a powerful army of 60,000 horsemen and 1,200 chariots, in support of Jeroboam. According to , he was supported by the Lubim (Libyans), the Sukkiim, and the Kushites ("Ethiopians" 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; Rehoboam replaced them with brass ones.
According to Second Chronicles,
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.
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 Egyptian 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...
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. A common variant of Shoshenq's name omits its 'n' glyphs, resulting in a pronunciation like, "Shoshek". This position has been maintained by most scholars ever since, and remains the majority position today.
Campaign records
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 Megiddo" which supports the traditional interpretation.
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 (including Megiddo), with a few listed in the Negeb, and perhaps Philistia. Some of these include a few of the towns that Rehoboam had fortified according to Chronicles. 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) would have saved it from being listed.