Authors: Israel Finkelstein,Neil Asher Silberman
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 economic 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 kingdom—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.
In the case of David, we have already suggested that the early folktales incorporated into the biblical narrative preserve memories of the rise of a bandit chief to the rulership of Judah, which itself matches a pattern of political leadership in the highlands that had gone on for centuries. Likewise, the emergence of a northern highlands alliance—associated with Saul in the biblical tradition—is also consistent with the archaeological and Egyptian textual evidence. But one last element must be accounted for before we can attempt a historical reconstruction of the interactions of the northern and southern leaders, Saul and David. Nowhere in the biblical story of the early Israelite kingdom is there a hint of any serious threat from Egypt.
*
The Philistines are the most prominent enemy. Their raids against the towns of Judah prompt David’s saving actions; their attempts at domination in the northern highlands provide the context for some of Saul’s most memorable military feats. It was the Philistines who won the final, great victory over Saul at Mount Gilboa, and it was they who hung the headless bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of the great fortress city of Beth-shean nearby (1 Samuel 31:10).
What were the Philistines doing so far away from their coastal enclave? What were they doing in the heart of the highlands? There is no extrabiblical clue—archaeological or historical—that the Philistines ever formed a united army that could intervene so far away from their home territory. What were they doing in the northern stronghold of Beth-shean? This towering site, located at a strategic crossroads of overland trade routes south of the Sea of Galilee, has been repeatedly excavated and has been recognized as one of the most important Egyptian fortresses and administrative centers in Canaan in the Late Bronze Age, with its complement of Egyptian-style residency and shrines. In the tenth century, Beth-shean had far declined from its former splendor, but apparently remained a potential strongpoint for renewed Egyptian rule. The reason for the biblical reference to Philistine presence at Beth-shean and the highlands in this period may lie in the Philistines’ relationship to Egypt—and that might shed new light on the historical realities of the careers of David and Saul.
It is important to note first of all that no Philistine cities are mentioned in the triumphal list of Sheshonq. This omission may be due to the damaged state of the Karnak inscription, but it may have a strategic explanation as well. Though their coastal enclave could potentially have tried to block the passage of Egyptian troops northward, apparently no fighting took place there. The takeover of the southern desert trade routes could only have been in the interest of the coastal Philistine cities, with their access to Mediterranean maritime commerce. The weakening of the aggressive northern chiefdom would have allowed them wider territorial security. The coastal Sea Peoples, including Philistines, had long served as Egyptian mercenary forces, and their role as Egyptian allies in this campaign and its aftermath seems quite plausible.