Saturday, March 22, 2014

More evidence for Shishak being Tuthmosis III

The Tablets of Ras Shamra of Ugarit are contemporary with the 18th Dynasty. This is agreed by Conventional and Revised chronology. The Amarna letters record Ugarit's destruction (Letter 151). So none of them could be referring to any 22nd dynasty Pharaoh.

One of the Ugarit tablets uses the name. "Le mot swsk semble, un nom propres, a rapprocher peut-etre de l'egyptien Sosenq, hebreu Sosaq, et Sisag." Dhorme, Revue biblique, XL (1931),55.

This is definitive proof on top of everything cited before that Shishak should be looked for in the 18th Dynasty.

I argued before for trying to find Shishak among Egyptian names of Tuthmosis, but I now mostly reject that.

Shishak is a Hebrew name that means "greedy of fine linen"-Strong# 7895. It's similar to Sheshach Strong # 8347 which is an Atbash encryption for Babylon and means "thy fine linen". It's possible referring to conquerors who pillage the Temple as something about fine Linen is a pattern.

Shishak actually has two different spellings across it's various appearances in the Masoretic text of Kings and Chronicles.  Shin-Yot-Shin-Qoph and Shin-Vav-Shin-Qoph, it's numbering in the Strong's is based on the Yot version being the presumed default, the latter spelling would be pronounced Shushak.  Yot and Vav have in common that they started being used as Vowls once later Hebrew scribes become more concerned with representing vowels.  So that they are interchangeable in regards to this name suggests to me that originally neither was there.  And Shin-Shin-Qoph is the spelling of Strong's number 8349, which is the Hebrew name Shashak, the name of a Benjamite mentioned in 1 Chronicles 8:14&25.

The Hebrew root it comes from in Shesh, Strong's number 8336, which means Linen.  The only difference between 8347 and 8349 is Jeremiah's ends with Kaph rather then Qoph.  Those two represent similar sounds, but I think Jeremiah used a different letter only to fit his Atbash.

So the name is not Egyptian and not the Pharaoh's actual name, period.

Velikovsky's source for proving that Ahmose had a wife named Tahpenes or Tanthap/Tanthape (to tie in with 1 Kings 11:19-20) isn't in English so I can't verify it.  The source in question is Gauthier, Le Livre des rois d'Egypt.  Wikipedia doesn't list a wife with that name for Ahmoses, nor for Khamose, Amenhotep I or Tuthmosis I.

The relevant passage of 1 Kings seems weird regardless of chronology.  That Pharoh's wife would wean her sister's son for her.  But hardly impossible.

On checking The Hebrew, I noticed the word for Queen used here, isn't really a word for Queen, it's not a feminine form of Melek or Sar.  It means Mistress.  So this is probably a lesser wife of his Harem and not an actual Queen or Royal wife.

The source for the claim that Genubath is mentioned by name in 18th dynasty Egyptian records of Tuthmosis III as Gebybatye is Breasted Records Volume II Section 474.

The Ugarit Poem of Keret refers to an army of Tereh, who parallels both the Biblical Zerah the Ethiopian of the days of King Asa, and the Egyptian campaigns in this region during the reign of Amenhotep II. As I said before I equate Zerah with User-tatet, Amenhotep's Nubian (Ethiopian) commander.

Menhet, Menwi and Merti were three minor foreign-born wives of pharaoh Thutmose III who were buried in a lavishly furnished rock-cut tomb in Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud. Two of their names are West-Semitic in origin though none are Hurrian. ( Christine Lilyquist, The Tomb of Thutmosis III's foreign wives: A survey of Architectural Type, Contents and Foreign Connections in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge 3–4 September 1995; ed. C.J. Eyre, Uitgeberij Peeters, Leuven, 1998. pp.679-680).

The possibility of them being connected to either the House of David or Jeroboam I find interesting.

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