The redating of the abandonment of sites in this settlement core, placing it in the late tenth century—a time of supposed peace and prosperity under the rule of King Solomon—suggests that the traditional biblical chronology needs to be revised. How does this redating fit into the larger picture of what was happening in the region in this period? What brought about the abandonment of sites in the core of highlands settlement in the plateau of Benjamin? Can a possible answer to that question shed new light on the historical events and developments that underlay the biblical traditions about the rise and fall of Saul? Surprisingly, the answers to these questions come from an entirely unexpected source.
RETURN OF THE PHARAOH
If you mention the name Shishak to close readers of the Bible, a famous passage in the first book of Kings will immediately come to mind. This text has nothing to do with Saul or David, but comes from the time of David’s grandson Rehoboam, who, according to the traditional chronology of the Judahite and Israelite kings, reigned at the end of the tenth century BCE. According to the Bible, Rehoboam’s reign was one of rampant idolatry, when his Judahite subjects “built for themselves high places, and pillars, and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree; and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land” (1 Kings 14:23). Misfortune was not long in coming.
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. (1 Kings 14:25–26)
Establishing a secure chronology for this earliest phase of Israelite history is, as we have seen, extremely difficult. With a lack of datable inscriptions (presumably due to the decline of Egypt and the other major literate powers in this era), the possibility of confirming or precisely dating the biblical events is virtually nil. But the biblical passage referring to Shishak holds the key to one unique chronological anchor—or at least it has served as such for many decades. Early in the modern exploration of Egypt, scholars came upon a huge triumphal relief commissioned by Sheshonq I, a pharaoh of the Twenty-second Dynasty, who ruled in the tenth century BCE. Reviving the country after two centuries of decline, in which Egypt lost its leading role as a great world power, Sheshonq I embarked on a military campaign to the north—into the land of Canaan—that is recorded on the outer wall of the Hypostyle Hall in the great temple of Amun at Karnak. This is significant, for the consensus among Egyptologists and biblical scholars has long been that the Egyptian Sheshonq I and the biblical Shishak are the same historical personality.
The Shishak (Sheshonq I) campaign
In the Karnak relief, a gigantic image is shown of Sheshonq smiting his enemies and leading off a large group of prisoners of war. Each figure is identified with the name of a place that the pharaoh claimed to have conquered. This list of place-names provides apparent evidence for the likely route of Sheshonq’s invasion, though it has no clear geographical order. The places mentioned are organized in three groups in widely separated regions. The first group includes villages or towns in the coastal plain, in an area of the central hill country north of Jerusalem, in a sector in Transjordan along the Jabbok River, and in the Jezreel Valley. The second group includes places in the south, including the Beer-sheba Valley and, possibly, the Negev highlands. And the third, on a part of the relief that is damaged, seems to have included places along the southern coast. As we will see, it is highly significant that Jerusalem and the highlands of Judah—in fact the entire land of Judah—which are the pharaoh’s main target in the biblical story, are conspicuously absent from the Karnak list.
The biblical text puts Shishak’s campaign in the fifth year of Rehoboam, 926 BCE according to the widely accepted chronology of the Judahite monarchs. Yet this date is far from reliable, because of another case of circular reasoning. Due to the very fragmentary nature of Egyptian records in this period, it is difficult to provide the pharaohs of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties with exact dates. The reign of Sheshonq I has always been dated by his identification as Shishak, according to the traditional biblical chronology of the Judahite kings’ reigns. And to make things even more questionable, scholars seeking to confirm the historical accuracy of the Bible have done so by evincing the evidence of the Sheshonq relief. Neither one proves the other. Neither provides any independent dating evidence. So even though it is safe to say that Sheshonq and Shishak are, in fact, the same person, and that he ruled in the tenth century BCE, we are left with a considerable measure of uncertainty about when his famous northern campaign took place.
Moreover, it is unclear whether he carried out his campaign in his early years on the throne or in his later days. There is even a serious debate among Egyptologists whether Sheshonq I carried out one or more northern campaigns. If we take into consideration all these factors, the Sheshonq campaign could have taken place almost any time in the mid to late tenth century BCE, not necessarily during Rehoboam’s reign.*
What was the purpose of this campaign? Many biblical scholars have traditionally described the Egyptian invasion as a razia—little more than a destructive raid, designed to cause maximum damage but leave no permanent presence, but a reexamination of the evidence suggests that it should be seen as the revival of a centuries-long ambition by the pharaohs of Egypt to reconquer and control its former Canaanite possessions.
SHISHAK’S HIDDEN STRATEGY
For centuries the great pharaohs of Egypt’s New Kingdom (the Late Bronze Age in the fifteenth to twelfth centuries BCE) had placed great importance on their empire in Canaan for its strategic military and trade routes and its agricultural wealth. In times of Egyptian power, the city-states of Canaan were administered by the pharaohs, either directly, through the establishment of Egyptian garrisons and government centers, or indirectly, by vassal princes. Yet Egyptian domination of Canaan crumbled in a time of great upheaval at the end of the Late Bronze Age, around the mid–twelfth century BCE. The destruction of the old palace-based culture of the Canaanite cities and the arrival and settlement of the Sea Peoples—with the Philistines prominent among them—created an entirely new political landscape. In the period that followed, when the northern highlands experienced dramatic demographic expansion, some of the old Canaanite cities in the fertile and strategically important valleys seem to have experienced a revival of urban life.
The Sheshonq I relief from the temple of Amun at Karnak, Upper Egypt
In the Jezreel Valley, the once great city of Megiddo slowly rose from the ruins of Late Bronze Age destruction. Signs of a neo-Canaanite renaissance are also visible at the nearby city of Taanach, at Rehov in the Beth-shean Valley, and at Kinnereth and Tel Hadar by the Sea of Galilee. On the basis of the pottery vessels produced at these centers, as well as metal and stone objects, cult remains, and architecture, it is clear that the old Canaanite traditions continued. More important, new carbon 14 dating results from Megiddo and other sites place this period of presumably independent Canaanite revival squarely in the tenth century BCE. And this neo-Canaanite system in the northern valleys came to a violent end, with devastation by fire recorded at every excavated site.
Far to the south, in the desert regions of the Beer-sheba Valley and the highlands of the Negev, an entirely different phenomenon was occurring, and it challenged Egyptian control in another way. An extensive network of desert settlements arose, the most important of which was Tel Masos, located in the very heart of the Beer-sheba Valley on the ancient east-west caravan route, near a group of freshwater wells. Excavations there revealed evidence for cultural contacts with the Philistine and Phoenician coast in the west and northwest, and with the copper production centers of the Arabah and southern Transjordan on the southeast. A small settlement was also established for the first time at Arad, a place specifically mentioned in the Sheshonq I topographical list.
Archaeologically, Tel Masos and the other sites in this area seem to represent the emergence of a desert chiefdom, created when favorable econ
omic conditions associated with trade-related prosperity brought about the sedentarization of pastoral nomads in this area. Located along the trade routes connecting the Arabah and the Dead Sea with the Mediterranean, Tel Masos apparently served as a way station for the overland transport of copper from the Arabah Valley and possibly also goods from Arabia to the trading centers on the Mediterranean coast.
It is therefore fairly easy to see the possible motivations for two major objectives of Sheshonq I’s campaign. Though many biblical scholars have traditionally described it as a one-time raid (particularly because the traditional chronology placed it after the creation of the biblically described vast and powerful kingdom by David and Solomon), reanalysis of the archaeological evidence suggests that it should be seen as an attempt by Egypt to revive its empire in Canaan.
In the northern valleys, an obvious goal would have been to assume control over the main cities. In the south, Sheshonq’s goal would have been to take over the emerging desert polity of Tel Masos and to establish control over the southern trade. The fact that these Egyptian goals were at least partially achieved is shown by the discovery of a fragment of a large victory stele set up by Sheshonq at Megiddo, a place mentioned in the Karnak relief. The wave of abandonment evident at Tel Masos in the Beer-sheba Valley and at a group of sites to its south in the Negev highlands suggests that the independence of the rising desert trading chiefdom was also shattered at this time.
But what of a list of place-names in the central and northern highlands and on the Transjordanian plateau that also appear on the Karnak relief? From the time of the New Kingdom in the Late Bronze Age, Egyptian pharaohs had generally refrained from sending troops into the sparsely settled, wooded, rugged hill country, where chariots would be more of a military burden than an advantage, and hostility from the isolated, mobile population could be anticipated. Yet the Karnak relief mentions such place-names as Adamah, Succoth, Penuel, and Mahanaim, all located along the Jabbok River, an area in Transjordan that had never been of great interest to the Egyptian pharaohs. It also mentions places in a very restricted area of the highlands immediately to the north of Jerusalem, including Gibeon, Beth-horon, and Zemariam (near modern Ramallah).
Could it be just a coincidence that both these areas of especially intense Early Iron Age settlement—which had never before been of particular interest to the Egyptians—were closely connected with Saul’s activities in the biblical tradition? Could it be a coincidence that the Sheshonq list mentions Gibeon, which many scholars see as the hub of the Saulide family and territory? Could it be a coincidence that the area to the north of Jerusalem is exactly the one where we find (in sharp contrast to the situation elsewhere in the highlands) a cluster of sites that were abandoned in the tenth century?
Something attracted the attention of the Egyptian pharaoh to these remote areas of relatively little geopolitical importance. A reasonable possibility is that the area around Gibeon and the settlements along the Jabbok River in Transjordan were the main centers of an emerging territorial-political entity strong enough to endanger the renewed Egyptian interests in a direct way.
WHY IS JERUSALEM NOT MENTIONED?
The Bible, for its part, knows only one target for Shishak’s campaign. In the terse report of 1 Kings 14:25–26, the pharaoh’s only mentioned objective is to attack Jerusalem, the capital of the Davidic dynasty. At this point in the Deuteronomistic History, Jerusalem had been a powerful and prosperous capital for about eighty years. David had reigned there as king of all Israel and had established a great empire. His son Solomon succeeded him and greatly embellished the capital city, constructing an elaborate palace and Temple complex. Since Solomon’s wealth was legendary it is little wonder that the Bible reported Shishak’s great haul of Temple booty from his attack on Jerusalem, including “the shields of gold which Solomon had made.”
Biblical scholars have long considered the Shishak invasion mentioned in 1 Kings to be the earliest event described in the Bible that is supported by an extrabiblical text. Yet Jerusalem—target of the pharaoh’s march into the highlands—does not appear on Sheshonq’s Karnak list.
For some scholars, the reason is simple. The name Jerusalem has simply not been preserved on the weathered Karnak relief. This is possible, but highly unlikely, since the rows of bound figures that designate captured places in the highlands just to the north of Jerusalem are in a relatively good state of preservation, and since no other Judahite town—in the highlands or in the Shephelah—appears in the list. It is thus not just a case of a single name that is missing; the entire land of Judah does not seem to be mentioned at all. And yet the urge to harmonize the Bible with the Karnak inscription has been persistent and has led some scholars to suggest that because Jerusalem was saved from destruction by a heavy ransom and left standing (according to the Bible), it was not included in the official list of conquered towns.
Yet if the biblical account is reliable about the greatness of tenth-century BCE Jerusalem and about the sheer scale of booty Sheshonq plundered from the Temple, would he and the carvers of his triumphal inscription have been so modest as not to mention this humiliation of the rulers of such a prominent city and formidable state? Such modesty would be out of character with centuries of Egyptian tradition in presenting the conquests of their pharaohs in outlandishly bombastic and self-laudatory ways.
Indeed, the problem goes far beyond selective preservation of data or rhetorical styles. As we have seen, new analyses of the archaeological data from Jerusalem have shown that the settlement of the tenth century BCE was no more than a small, poor highland village, with no evidence for monumental construction of any kind. And as we noted in examining the rise of David, archaeological surveys have revealed that at that time the hill country of Judah to the south of Jerusalem was sparsely inhabited by a few relatively small settlements, with no larger, fortified towns.
At the time of the Sheshonq campaign, Judah was still a marginal and isolated chiefdom in the southern highlands. Its poor material culture leaves no room to imagine great wealth in the Temple—certainly not wealth large enough to appease an Egyptian pharaoh’s appetite. From the archaeological information, we must come to a conclusion that undermines the historical credibility of this specific biblical narrative. The reason that Jerusalem (or any other Judahite town or even village) does not appear on the Karnak inscription is surely that the southern highlands were irrelevant to Shishak’s goals.
The central highlands sites that do appear in the list are clustered closely together in the area just to the north of Jerusalem, precisely where Early Iron Age settlements were densest—and precisely where the Bible places the home region of Saul. Here we can see evidence for a north Israelite entity that was completely different in nature from the dimorphic bandit chiefdom to the south. The hub of this northern entity—described in the Bible as Saul’s “kingdom”—was located around Gibeon, which was probably the center of a highland chiefdom of considerable power. From the example of Labayu in the Amarna letters (and also, in fact, from what we know about highlands-lowlands relationships in later times) we can read the archaeological and historical evidence as indicative of a highlands polity with an expansionist intent.
The biblical narrative describes Saul’s military protection of the settlements in Gilead, his campaigns against the Philistines, his stunning raid against the desert-dwelling Amalekites, and his last fateful battle in the Jezreel Valley. If we recall the description of the territories bequeathed to Saul’s heir, Ish-bosheth, we see that it closely matches the Sheshonq list in linking a cluster of places in the hill country north of Jerusalem with the Jabbok River area in Transjordan—a phenomenon not known in other periods. This can hardly be a coincidence. What we have here is a unique glimpse at a dramatic—and heretofore unrecognized—conflict between a resurgent Egypt and an aggressive highland entity that biblical traditions associate with Saul.
This northern highland polity—it was still too decentralized and informal to call it a kin
gdom—may also have endangered the security of the trade routes in the coastal plain and across the Jezreel Valley. Egypt apparently recognized the threat. With its hundreds of villages and relatively large population, this was an area that had to be brought under control, despite the long reluctance of Egyptian forces to venture into the rugged, forested highlands.
The archaeological evidence suggests that this actually happened: the places just to the north of Jerusalem that appear on the Karnak list (and that the biblical tradition describes as the core of Saul’s activity) were the scene of a significant wave of abandonment in the tenth century BCE.
The conclusion seems clear: Sheshonq and his forces marched into the hill country and attacked the early north Israelite entity. He also conquered the most important lowland cities like Megiddo and regained control of the southern trade routes. But his triumphal inscription did not and would not have mentioned Jerusalem or Judah, an isolated chiefdom that posed no immediate threat—or was already resigned to the reality of Egyptian rule.
THE FORGOTTEN BETRAYAL
We can only hypothesize what kind of a relationship might have existed between the northern and southern highland chiefdoms in the tenth century BCE, and we need to remember that most probably there was no sense of shared Israelite identity yet. There were important differences between the two regions. Certainly the population and potential power of the northern highlands far outweighed the resources of the scattered pastoralists and few villages of the south. Northern domination—or perhaps occasional northern attempts at domination of the southern highlands—seems plausible. Yet in the Bible, David and Saul are not depicted as regional rivals, but as characters in a single drama, in which their individual stories are closely intertwined. David was Saul’s young minstrel, his all-too-popular warrior, his son-in-law, and ultimately his successor to the throne of all Israel. David’s activities in Judah and his employment as a Philistine vassal occurred only when he was forced to flee for his life from the growing madness of Saul.
David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition Page 7
