Karnak Relief of Shishak

The Karnak Relief of Shishak is a monumental stone carving on the outer southern wall of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak, located in Luxor (ancient Thebes), Egypt. The relief depicts Pharaoh Shoshenq I (reigned c. 943-922 BCE), the founder of Egypt's 22nd (Bubastite) Dynasty, in the traditional pose of a conquering pharaoh: standing before the god Amun, holding a group of bound captives by the hair, with a raised mace in his other hand.

Below and around this scene, the relief presents a topographical list of approximately 150 place names arranged in oval cartouches (name rings), each representing a city, town, or region that the pharaoh claimed to have conquered or brought under his control during a military campaign in Palestine.

The relief is carved on a section of the Karnak Temple known as the Bubastite Portal, an entrance structure added by Shoshenq I between the Second and Third Pylons of the temple. The portal was decorated with this campaign scene to commemorate the pharaoh's greatest military achievement and to present the spoils as an offering to Amun, the chief god of Thebes.

The identification of Shoshenq I with the biblical Shishak was one of the early triumphs of comparative biblical and Egyptian studies. The name Shoshenq (Egyptian: Ssnq) corresponds well with the biblical Shishak (Hebrew: Shyshaq), and the chronological match is precise: the Bible places Shishak's invasion in the fifth year of Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:25), shortly after the death of Solomon and the division of the united monarchy, which fits well with Shoshenq's known dates.

First Kings 14:25-26 records: "In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. He took away the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king's house. He took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made." Second Chronicles 12:1-12 provides a more detailed account, noting that Shishak came with 1,200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, and "people without number" including Libyans, Sukkiim, and Ethiopians, and that he took many cities of Judah before advancing on Jerusalem.

The topographical list at Karnak is partially damaged but preserves enough names to reconstruct the scope of the campaign. Significantly, the list includes many sites in the northern kingdom of Israel and the Negev, not just Judah. Cities such as Megiddo, Taanach, Beth-Shean, Gibeon, Aijalon, and numerous Negev sites appear on the list. A fragment of a stele bearing Shoshenq's name was found at Megiddo, confirming that the pharaoh reached that site.

The campaign's geographical scope is broader than what the biblical account suggests. The Bible focuses on Shishak's attack on Jerusalem and Judah, but the Karnak list reveals that the pharaoh also campaigned extensively through the northern kingdom of Israel and the Negev. Some scholars have argued that the campaign was directed more against Israel than Judah, perhaps because Jeroboam I (who had been sheltered in Egypt before becoming king of Israel, 1 Kings 11:40) had failed to maintain the alliance that Shoshenq expected after supporting his rise to power.

The absence of Jerusalem from the surviving portions of the topographical list has generated discussion. It is possible that Jerusalem appeared in a now-damaged section of the relief, or that the biblical account of Rehoboam paying tribute (1 Kings 14:26, 2 Chronicles 12:9) meant that Jerusalem submitted without a siege and therefore was not listed as a conquered city.

The Karnak relief has been studied by generations of Egyptologists and biblical scholars. Kenneth Kitchen's detailed analysis of the topographical list, reconstructing the campaign's route through Palestine based on the sequence of place names, has been particularly influential. Kitchen argued that the names follow a coherent geographical itinerary, allowing the campaign route to be traced through the Jezreel Valley, across the central highlands, and down into the Negev.

The campaign dates to approximately 925 BCE, making it one of the earliest precisely dated events in the history of Israel and Judah after the division of the monarchy. It provides a crucial chronological anchor for the biblical timeline.