Move over, Moses: A pharaoh may have created the ancient

Kingdom of Israel

haaretz.com · by Ariel David · April 14, 2019

Soon, Jews around the world will be celebrating Passover. As usual, Pharaoh will be

starring as the main villain for enslaving the Hebrews, killing their children and being

generally pig-headed about letting our people go. But perhaps on this Passover night

you could spare a thought for a different pharaoh, one who ruled over Egypt in the

middle of the 10th century B.C.E and may have played a very different role in the history

of the ancient Israelites.

The outsize role that Shishak, aka Sheshonq I, had in the affairs of the budding Israelite

kingdoms in Canaan is beginning to emerge thanks to new archaeological discoveries

and biblical scholarship.

But let's start with this: What do we actually know, and what do we not know, about the

early history of the ancient Hebrews?

Israel isn’t actually laid waste

The origins of the Israelites and their kingdoms are shrouded in mystery partly because

they date to the centuries that followed the collapse of multiple civilizations at the end of

the Bronze Age. Few textual and archaeological remains survived from the chaos that

engulfed most of the lands around the Mediterranean.

What we do know is that a group identified as “Israel” first appears in the historical

record in the Merneptah Stele, which has been dated to around 1210 B.C.E., shortly

before the Bronze Age collapse – around 3,230 years ago. This text describes the

Israelites as a nomadic or semi-nomadic people living in Canaan and the pharaoh

Merneptah boasts, somewhat prematurely, that “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no

more.”

Fast forward three and a half centuries, to the middle of the Iron Age, and Israel returns

to the stage of history with a bang. The Kurkh Stele records how at the epochal battle of

Qarqar in what is today northern Syria, in 853 B.C.E., the expansion of the Assyrian

empire into the Levant was (temporarily) stymied by a regional alliance that included

the biblical King Ahab, who is referred to as “Ahab the Israelite.”

But what happened in the intervening centuries? How did a band of nomads hounded

by Merneptah’s troops at the end of the Bronze Age, emerge into the Iron Age as a

powerful kingdom capable of fielding hundreds of chariots and checking the might of

Assyria?
 Sheshonq's name carved into a block of stone, possibly part of a victory stele, found in

Megiddo, northern Israel Meidad Suchowolski , Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

The Bible tells us that this process began when the 12 Israelite tribes united under the

kings Saul, David and Solomon to form a great kingdom, centered in Jerusalem,

sometime in the 11th 10th century B.C.E. The so-called United Monarchy fractured after
Solomon’s death, with the great king’s son, Rehoboam, retaining control only over

Judah and Jerusalem while the rebellious northern tribes broke away to form the

Kingdom of Israel under a ruler named Jeroboam.

However, many scholars doubt that there was a United Monarchy to begin with.

There is little hard evidence of this great kingdom, which was likely an ideology-driven

description of the Jerusalemite scribes who compiled this part of the Bible, probably in

the late 7th century B.C.E., hundreds of years after the days of David and Solomon.

So if the biblical story on the United Monarchy and its breakup cannot be taken as

history, how did the very real and historically-attested kingdoms of Israel and Judah

form?

One compelling new theory suggests it may have to do with the involvement in the

affairs of Canaan of a pharaoh named Sheshonq, or Shishak, depending who you ask.

Sheshonq’s military campaign in the Levant in the mid-10th century B.C.E. is one of the

earliest biblical accounts that can be partially corroborated through external sources.

And the Egyptian campaign’s significance for the history of the ancient Hebrews may be
even greater than the Bible lets on, theorizes Tel Aviv University’s Israel Finkelstein, one

of Israel’s top biblical archaeologists.

“There are almost no extra-biblical historical references for the Levant between the 12th

century and the Assyrian involvement starting in the 9th century,” Finkelstein tells

Haaretz. “For the 10th century the only extra-biblical information that is relatively

detailed is the evidence from the Sheshonq campaign.”

Sheshonq's triumphal inscription at Karnak, showing the god Amun surrounded by the list of

cities captured by the pharaoh during his campaign Olaf Tausch

MEGA (Make Egypt Great Again)

The Bible says that in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign (around 925 B.C.E.), a pharaoh

named Shishak attacked Jerusalem. He looted the city and “took away the treasures of

the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house; he took away everything.” (1

Kings 14:25-26)

Archaeologists have known for a couple of centuries that there is at least some historical

truth behind the biblical story, because Sheshonq recorded the exploits of his campaign

in Canaan on the walls of the temple of Amun in Karnak in Upper Egypt.

Back in 1926, archaeologists also uncovered Sheshonq’s cartouche carved into a stone

block at Megiddo, in today’s northern Israel, proving again that the pharaoh had been

active in the region.

Finkelstein, as well as other scholars, suspects that the biblical authors used the memory

of Sheshonq’s raid to construct a parable about Solomon’s and Rehoboam’s sins, and the

subsequent punishment meted out by God through the pharaoh. “The looting of the

temple is a trope that returns several times in the biblical text as a form of punishment,”

Finkelstein points out.

Map showing the main locations in Canaan mentioned in Sheshonq's list at Karnak: Where is

Jerusalem? Courtesy of Israel Finkelstein

However, while the Bible would arguably highlight the fate of Jerusalem, the

archaeological record shows that Sheshonq’s campaign was much more significant than

a mere predatory raid to loot the capital of Judah. Also, we can’t actually be sure that

Sheshonq was in Jerusalem at all.

The inscriptions at the Karnak temple list dozens of towns that Sheshonq conquered in

Canaan – but Jerusalem and other important locations in Judah are not among them.

This may simply be because some of the names on the list have been lost, or it may

signal that Jerusalem and its surroundings were of no interest to the conquering

pharaoh.

In any case, the text in Karnak – and the cartouche found at Megiddo – show that the

campaign was not a pinpoint raid but a much broader effort to restore Egypt’s

hegemony over Canaan and other territories that had been ruled by the pharaohs during

the New Kingdom period, from the 15th century B.C.E. to the 12th century B.C.E.

“Empires do not raid. Egypt does not raid,” Finkelstein says. “For Sheshonq this was

about restoring the great empire of Egypt in Canaan.”

Sheshonq and his successors in the 22nd dynasty unified Egypt after a long period of

division and infighting that accompanied the end of the Bronze Age.

Back home, Sheshonq engaged in a massive building program the likes of which had not

been seen since the time of Ramses II, explains Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, curator of

Egyptian archaeology at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Abroad, he attempted to restore Egyptian supremacy, not necessarily just through

military might, but also through political alliances and trade relations. His influence

reached deep into the Levant, as evidenced by the fact that statues of Sheshonq and his

successors have been found as far as Byblos, in today’s Lebanon, Ben-Dor Evian notes.

In the past, archaeologists have interpreted destruction layers found at sites across

Israel as linked to Sheshonq’s raid. But more accurate dating using carbon-14 has shown

those devastations mostly date to periods preceding or following the campaign and

cannot be conclusively connected to it. This also makes sense given the modus operandi

of the ancient Egyptians, who were more interested in establishing economic supremacy

than descending Atilla-like on their enemies.

“They didn’t destroy anything if they could avoid it,” Ben-Dor Evian says. “They looked

for control, for buffer zones and to enjoy things from Canaan that they couldn’t get at

home, like olive oil and wine.”

For example, we know from the Karnak list that during his campaign Sheshonq

penetrated deep into the Be’er Sheva valley and possibly the Negev Highlands, in today’s

southern Israel. In the decades that follow his campaign, archaeologists see a flowering

of settlements and prosperity in the region. This is likely because Sheshonq

successfully diverted the copper trade from the mines in the Arava valley away from its

northerly direction toward Syria and Mesopotamia and back west toward Gaza and

Egypt, Ben-Dor Evian says.

King Jeroboam, aka pharaoh's brother-in-law

It is against this background of statecraft that we have to understand Sheshonq’s

involvement in the affairs of early Israel.

In antiquity, it was common practice for builders of empires, including the pharaohs, to

conquer a territory and replace its ruling dynasty with a local leader who would act as a

vassal king.

It is only a theory, but Finkelstein says there are several clues that suggest the birth of

the northern Kingdom of Israel may be the result of political arrangements put in place

by Sheshonq in the aftermath of his campaign.

The first clue is in the Bible itself, where Sheshonq/Shishak is strongly linked with the

founder of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam.

Jeroboam is described as an official who led a failed rebellion against Solomon and

found refuge at Shishak’s court to escape the Israelite king’s wrath (1 Kings 11).

Jeroboam then returned to Canaan upon hearing of Solomon’s death and led the people

against Rehoboam, successfully breaking away and forming the northern kingdom (1

Kings 12).

In the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Bible, there are additional verses

about Jeroboam’s stay in Egypt that were not included in the traditional Hebrew text. In

this version, Jeroboam’s connection to Shishak/Sheshonq is even stronger: he marries

the pharaoh’s sister-in-law, who bears him a son.

While Solomon’s role in the story is likely the result of a later redaction of the biblical

text, the connection between Sheshonq and Jeroboam may be a historical memory of

the actual relationship between the pharaoh and the founder of the Kingdom of Israel,

Finkelstein posits.

“Chronologically it works well,” he says. “Theoretically, Sheshonq could have been the

one who installed Jeroboam as his vassal.”

The Saulide entity

There is no direct proof that this occurred, but there is some archaeological evidence

that points in this direction. Finkelstein summarized this argument in an article titled

“First Israel, Core Israel, United (Northern) Israel” published last month in the

journal Near Eastern Archaeology.

Some 3,100 years ago, the core of Israelite territory – from the highlands north of

Jerusalem to the Jezreel valley – doesn’t have the hallmarks of having been a powerful

United Monarchy, as the Bible claims. To archaeologists, it appears instead that the

region was divided into a patchwork of proto-Israelite city-states vying for hegemony.

The earliest of these entities, centered around Shechem (today’s Nablus) and nearby

Shiloh was later replaced by a polity based in Gibeon, near today’s Ramallah.

Finklestein calls this formation the “Saulide entity” because many of the earliest stories

about King Saul take place in the Gibeon area, suggesting the Bible may preserve a germ

of historical memory from this period.

 The Kurkh Monolith, which mentions King Ahab the Israelite David Castor

Whether or not someone called Saul led them, the Israelites from Gibeon built the

earliest fortified sites in the area, and may have slowly begun expanding their territory
in multiple directions. Signs of destructions in the highlands and the Jezreel valley,

previously attributed by some to Sheshonq’s raid, have been shown by carbon-14 dating

to be from an earlier period: Shiloh and probably also Shechem fell at the end of the 11th

century B.C.E., while Megiddo and other sites in the valley were devasted in the mid

10th century B.C.E., close but not close enough to be attributed to Sheshonq.

The proto-Israelites annoy Egypt

While we cannot be sure who was responsible for these destructions, the prolonged

period over which they happened fits more the pattern of the progressive expansion

northward of the Gibeon formation than that of a single campaign by the Egyptians,

Finkelstein says.

In fact, an attempt by the Saulide entity to expand toward the Jezreel valley and the

coast would likely have been the immediate trigger for Sheshonq’s intervention.

“As long as people are killing each other in the highlands, the pharaoh doesn’t care,”

Finkelstein says. “But when they start to expand toward the coast and the Jezreel valley,

the breadbasket of Canaan and a key trade route, then Egypt faces a problem.”

This theory also helps explain something unusual in the Karnak text. Pharaohs

campaigning in Canaan usually stuck to the coast and the valley to protect their strategic
interests, and avoided taking their armies into the highlands, where supplies were

scarcer and they would be more vulnerable to attack.

But, according to his inscription at Karnak, Sheshonq went deep into the highlands,

conquering Gibeon and then marching on eastward across the river Jordan.

“Pharaohs didn’t enter the highlands unless there was a good reason, so this means that

in the Gibeon area there was a threat to Egyptian interests,” Finkelstein says.

And in fact, archaeologically, the Gibeon entity declined after the time of Sheshonq. It

was supplanted by the Kingdom of Israel, which ruled from Shechem and later Samaria.

To summarize Finkelstein’s theory, the birth of the Kingdom of Israel may have

happened like this: Sheshonq came to Canaan, saw the uppity inhabitants of the

highlands as a threat, so he conquered them and installed a vassal ruler over them.

While there is no firm proof, “it is absolutely possible” that the pharaoh was

instrumental in establishing this kingdom and its first rulers, says Ben-Dor Evian, the

Egyptologist from the Israel Museum.

As for Israel’s southern neighbor, Judah, it is harder to even theorize about a possible

role of Sheshonq in the affairs of that kingdom, given that we have no firm extra-biblical
evidence of his presence there. However, the Judahite material culture of this period

does show signs of Egyptian influences, Ben-Dor Evian notes. Archaeologists have

uncovered locally-made seals with crude hieroglyphs, some them even spelling out the

name Sheshonq.

In the late 8th century B.C.E., more than 200 years after the pharaoh’s campaign, the

seal of the Judahite King Hezekiah still displayed the ankh – the Egyptian symbol of life

– in its iconography.

Of course, whatever role Sheshonq may have played in the rise of the Israelite kingdoms,

his intention was likely to keep them under Egypt’s sphere of influence. But this was not

to be. By the first half of the 9th century B.C.E, Egypt’s imperial ambitions began to fade

as internal divisions took hold of the country once again, while a strong Israelite dynasty

– led by King Omri and then Ahab – transformed the northern kingdom into an

independent regional power.

It is perhaps no coincidence that in this period, Israel and Judah begin to appear as

important players in near eastern chronicles such as the Kurkh stele. Having emerged

from the long shadow of Egypt, the Israelites were finally free to make their own mark

on history.

Ariel David