SHISHAK (shi'shAk). (Heb. shee-shak'), a king of Egypt contemporary with Jeroboam, to whom he gave an asylum when he fled from Solo mon (1 Kings xi:4o). He was the Sheshenk I of the monuments, first sovereign of the Bubastite twenty-second dynasty.
(1) The Origin of the royal line of which She shenk I was the head is extremely obscure. Lepsius gives a genealogy of Sheshenk I from the tablet of Harp-sen from the Serapeum, which, if correct,' decides the question. In this Sheshenk I is the son of a chief Namuret, whose ancestors, except ing his mother, who is called "royal mother," arc all untitled persons, and all but the princes bear foreign, apparently Semitic names. Sayce Crit., p. 361) says: "The dynasty of Shishak was of Lybian origin, and the rise of its founder was due to the power which the Lybian mercenaries had gained in the state. . . . It lasted one hundred and twenty years." (2) Relation. to 'Israel. The death of Sol omon closed the glory period of Israel. When Rehoboam assembled all Israel at Shechem his final reply to the reasonable demands of Israel ruptured the once united kingdom. Rehoboam was compelled to retreat for safety to the bounds of Judah—the original Davidic realm. Jeroboam, who had fled from the wrath of Solomon, and taken refuge in the court of Shishak, the new Libyan usurper of the throne of Egypt, was re called and hailed as king of the seceding tribes. This disruption of the united kingdom gave Sol omon's son the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while the remainder fell to the lot of the returning fugitive Jeroboam. Thus for more than two cen turies these rival kingdoms faced each other, gen erally in friendly, but sometimes in hostile rela tions. They fortified their realms against each other, and attempted to establish such political and religious policies as would guarantee patriotic fidelity on the part of their citizens and perma nency of government.
The new Pharaoh of the twenty-second dynasty, Shishak (Sheshenk) I, had dethroned the power of the king whose daughter Solomon had taken to wife. In this new court Jeroboam had been sheltered (r Kings xi :26-4o). Doubtless Shishak's ambition had stretched into Asia, which had been in early centuries the foraging ground of some of Egypt's greatest victors. We do not know whether Jeroboam had any part in suggesting an aggressive campaign in this direction, though his acquaint ance made in his brief Egyptian sojourn could not have been entirely forgotten. Whatever his mo
tive may have been, Shishak, in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam (1 Kings xiv :25-28), car ried his arms into Palestine. He overran the territory of Judah, stormed, captured and plun dered Jerusalem. He carried off to Egypt the immense treasures of Solomon's accumulation, and compelled the proud Rehoboam to acknowledge his supremacy. Shishak also ravaged considerable territory of the northern kingdom, including the capture of some of its prominent cities.
(3) Shishak's Inscription. On the southern wall of the court of the great temple of Amun at Karnak, Shishak has inscribed a sculpture repre senting this campaign. He enumerates 133 places, towns and fortresses that he captured, the north ernmost being Megiddo. In this sculpture, the giant figure of Shishak is represented as holding in his left hand the ends of ropes which bind long rows of captives neck to neck. Their hands are tied behind them, and the victor's right hand holds over others a rod with which he threatens them. The names of the conquered cities are inscribed on ovals or shields that cover the lower part of the body of each prisoner. Some of the most familiar names in this list are: Gaza, Taanach, Abel, Adullam, Bethanath, Beth-horon, Aijalon, Gibeon, Shunern, and Judah-Melcch, which the late Dr. Birch regarded as the name of the sacred city of Judah, Jerusalem. Prof. Sayce sees in the heads of the conquered those of Amorites, not of Jews. They are the fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, long-headed Amorites who are seen on the earlier monuments of Egypt. This seems to point to a general prevalence of Amorites among the Jews at this time.
Whether the resistance that Shishak met was so stubborn as to discourage further advances into Asia is unknown. Neither is there any evidence that lie exercised continued authority over the people and territory captured. Whatever may have been the immediate results to Judah and Israel of this incursion and plunder, it is evident that within the next fifteen years the northern and southern kingdoms met in a mortal combat without interference from any outside power. (Price, The Mon. and the O. T., 2d Ed., p. r42. sq.)