Shoshenq I (Hedjkheperre)

The rise of the Libyans

Shoshenq I founded the 22nd Dynasty and fundamentally transformed the political landscape of Egypt. He was the Great Chief of the Ma (Meshwesh), a powerful Libyan tribe that had gradually settled in the Nile Delta over several generations. He leveraged his position as the supreme military commander and his familial connections to the previous 21st Dynasty to legitimize his rise to power. His kingship was officially sanctioned by the oracle of the god Amun in Thebes, marking a peaceful transition of power.

A unified Egypt

Unlike his immediate predecessors who tolerated a divided Egypt, Shoshenq I actively unified the country. He appointed his own sons to key strategic positions: one son became the High Priest of Amun in Thebes (commanding the military in the south), while another commanded the garrison at Herakleopolis.

The Canaanite campaign

To solidify his legacy as a traditional pharaoh, he launched a massive military campaign into Canaan around 925 BCE. He divided his forces to strike multiple targets, successfully capturing over 70 cities and territories, including Megiddo and cities in the Negev desert. Biblical texts equate him with "King Shishak" who supposedly looted Jerusalem, though his own Egyptian inscriptions do not explicitly list Jerusalem among his conquests. He died shortly after this campaign before he could fully re-establish a permanent Egyptian empire in the Levant.

The Bubastite Portal and a missing city

The main evidence for the campaign is a huge relief at Karnak known as the Bubastite Portal, which lists more than 150 conquered towns as bound captives beneath name-rings. Jerusalem is conspicuously absent from the surviving portion of the list, even though the biblical account makes it Shishak's central target, and scholars disagree over why: some argue the relevant name-ring has simply been lost to damage, others that King Rehoboam's tribute spared the city from being recorded as conquered, and Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen has proposed that a damaged group of signs on the list may actually read "Heights of David," an oblique reference to Jerusalem's territory. A fragment of a monumental stela bearing Shoshenq's cartouche, found at Megiddo itself, remains the clearest independent confirmation that the campaign reached that far north.