Our Choice For King So of Egypt: Pharaoh Tirhakah



 

 

Taken from university thesis: http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/5973

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Hoshea’s Call to ‘King So of Egypt’

The Syro-Palestinian resistance to Assyria - a resistance now to be supported by Egypt -

will be a consistent factor throughout the reign of Hezekiah, who, unlike his father, Ahaz,

would choose to be politically ‘pro-Egyptian’, as would Hezekiah’s contemporary,

Hoshea of Israel. Hoshea’s decision to throw off the Assyrian yoke and to court pharaoh

‘So’ was simply the next link - and by no means the last - in the chain of Syro-Palestinian

rejections of Assyrian overlordship. The invitation to ‘So’ was apparently the first

Egyptian-related incident that occurred during the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah,

having taken place in approximately the latter’s first year (c. 727 BC). According to the

account of it in 2 Kings 17:4:

“Hoshea … sent messengers to King So of Egypt, and

offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king

of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him”.

The king of Assyria was then

“Shalmaneser” (v. 3), who, in my scheme, was none other than Tiglath-pileser III.

1058

Op. cit., p. 17.

1059

See e.g. Wikipedia’s Harsiese B.

1060

Op. cit, p. 299.

366

And Irvine has, as we shall read on pp. 371-372 below, considered serious conflict by

this same Tiglath-pileser against Samaria. Commentators have had the greatest of

difficulty once again in determining the true historical identity of the biblical pharaoh at

this time, ‘King So of Egypt’. And so have I. ‘So’ has been variously identified as (a)

from a

conventional point of view, Egypt’s Turtan, Si’be, of Sargon II’s records;1061

Osorkon IV,

1062 if not a reference to a place (Saïs), rather than to an actual person;1063 or,

(b) by

revisionists, as, for instance, Ramses II1064; or Shoshenq III.1065 My own general

opinion until recently has been, consonant with my ‘alternative’ chronology, that of

Velikovsky, that ‘So’ was

a Shoshenq.1066 Were this to be the case, then it might have

been appropriate that the Palestinians, in referring to ‘So’, had used an abbreviation,

more technically ‘hypocoristicon’, for the name ‘Shoshenq’, which name - as we saw in

reference to Shoshenq I (p. 191) - was in fact sometimes abbreviated in Egyptian writings

as ‘Shosh’. But I have now moved away from this view.

Anyway Rohl, whose placement of Shoshenq III is about two decades later than mine,

has offered the following brief account of his choice of this Shoshenq III for ‘So’:

1067

For a while the new king of Israel [Hoshea], established on the throne by his

Mesopotamian masters, continued to pay the annual tribute to Assyria, now under

the rule of S

HALMANESER V. But Hoshea was also writing to Pharaoh So, asking

for his help to throw off the Assyrian yoke. According to the New Chronology,

the senior monarch in Egypt at this time was the long-reigned U

SERMAATRE

S

HOSHENK III. The biblical name ‘So’ is thus a hypocoristicon of Sho[shenk]

(Assyrian

Su[sinku]). The reality was that Shoshenk III was in no position to

campaign in Canaan because of the growing threat of his southern border from a

Kushite line of pharaohs which would soon rule Egypt as the 25

th Dynasty.

Certainly ‘So’ as related to the name, Shoshenq (

So-senk), would be far preferable I think

to Courville’s obscure

So element in the unwieldy Suten Bat name of Ramses II, as well

as being preferable also to Sieff’s and others’ O

sorkon for ‘So’.

According to Boutflower, whose identification of ‘So’ with Shabaka I shall actually be

accepting:

1068 “The Hebrew characters read “So” should probably be read “Seve”.”

Rohl names Shoshenq III ‘the senior monarch’ then in the land of Egypt, implying that

there was now more than one ruler there. And indeed he has, in line with convention,

22nd and 23

rd dynasty rulers side by side, with the 20th dynasty no longer in existence.

1061

Cf. Boutflower, The Book of Isaiah, p. 126; Gardiner, op. cit, p. 342.

1062

Cf. Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period …, p. 551; Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt, p. 342.

1063

Thus Grimal, ibid.

1064

Courville, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, vol. I, p. 297. I have discussed this in Chapter

11,

pp. 266, 286-287.

1065

Rohl, The Lost Testament, p. 448.

1066

‘From the end of the 18th Dynasty to the time of Ramses II’, p. 8; cf. Ages in Chaos, I, p. 174.

According to Clapham, ‘A Solution for the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt’, p. 2: “It is a central

synchronism of Velikovsky’s revision that Pharaoh So of the Biblical narrative should be identified with

Shoshenq of the 22

nd Dynasty …”.

1067

Lost Testament, ibid.

1068

Op. cit, p. 126.

367

But I still have in contention that very last Ramesside, Ramses XI, who, I have suggested,

may have been Hezekiah himself. In fact Hezekiah may have been Ramesside on two

counts: a 20

th dynasty Ramesside on his paternal side (tracing back to Seti-nakht/Joash of

Judah), and a 19

th dynasty Ramesside from his mother, Abi, a daughter of Zechariah (see

pp. 372-373), and possibly, then, the daughter of the last 19

th dynasty king, Merenptah.

But, with the rise of Shoshenq III, the power of the 20

th dynasty was seriously weakened.

However, though I have biblically extended Shoshenq III, by tentatively identifying him

with Rezin, I do not think that he is the best candidate for ‘So’, as according to Rohl.

First of all, his reign seems to fall short - albeit only just - of the time of Hoshea’s call to

‘So’. And, even if a few more years could be squeezed out of him, he would by now have

been a very old pharaoh; something akin to Ramses II at the advanced stage that

Courville had identified him as So’. There is that other Shoshenq, I(B) - now generally

designated IV - closely following III, and IB’s approximately decade-long reign would

equip him nicely, chronologically, to be ‘So’. If this were the case, then Velikovsky

would have been right in a sense, though quite fortuitously, in his naming of Shoshenq IV

as ‘So’. However, this Shoshenq appears to have been a fairly ephemeral character, about

whom we know little. ‘So’, on the other hand, ought to be a character of real substance.

In attempting to ascertain, and explain, who I think ‘So’ actually was, I need to resort to a

further biblical principle; one that has stood me in good stead so far. It is this:

The Bible

does not generally introduce a person of note (in connection with Israel) in one isolated

case, but tends to identify, or round out, this person somewhere else.

We have just been

considering the case of the “son of Tabeel”, who seems to appear out of the blue, without

any specific identification - but I have looked to link him with the biblical Rezin. And in

Chapter 4

(p. 98), I had connected Jehu’s unknown officer, Bidkar, with Obadiah of the

same period.

1069 Can this principle offer us a clue also for the unqualified ‘King So’?

The clues at this time are scarce indeed. Apparently Egypt was of no vital interest at all to

the biblical scribes. The only scriptural character of note south of Judah who I think can

possibly complement ‘So’ at this time was Tirhakah, king Hezekiah of Judah’s ally;

though admittedly 2 Kings 19:9 specifically labels him “King Tirhakah of Ethiopia” -

‘So’, on the other hand, being a king of Egypt. But this Tirhakah will turn out to be a

figure of the greatest complexity, and significance, striding a very large stage indeed; he

being for instance, as we shall find, both a ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia. Tirhakah will in

fact be my primary key for unlocking the mysteries of this most complex period of

history and especially for the 25

th dynasty. He will of necessity be multi-identified,

beginning with Tirhakah = Shabaka, to be properly explained as this chapter develops.

As I briefly mentioned above, I shall be favouring Boutflower’s view that Shabaka (my

Tirhakah) was ‘So’. I shall also be favouring Boutflower’s rendering of ‘So’ as

Seve:1070

“S

eve” … is to be identified with Shabaka [Shabako] the son of Kashta, who succeeded

his father in 715” [sic].

The name ‘So’, it seems, can be variously rendered: e.g. Seve;

Sua; Soan

(Josephus1071); Soa, Soba, Segor (LXX).

1069

In my Job’s Life and Times, I connected Job of no genealogy or patronymic with Tobias of Tobit’s

substantial genealogy.

1070

Op. cit, p. 126.

1071

Antiquities, 9:14:1.

368

Most interestingly, in my new context, the Lucianic recension of the LXX has ‘So’ as an

“Ethiopian, living in Egypt”

(one Adrammelech). Presuming for the present, then, that

Tirhakah is Shabaka (i.e. ‘

Soba an Ethiopian in Egypt’), then this composite king of ours

has some attributes that might well qualify him for ‘So’: e.g. (i) his name

Soba-Shabaka

(cf.

So-Seve) – though ‘So’ is spelt with a samek and Shebna with the equivalent of a

shin,

the ‘Shibboleth’ factor (as discussed in Chapter 8, p. 191) might explain this

difference; (ii) his approximate chronological era; (iii) he was at least pro-Egyptian,

certainly anti-Assyrian; (v) he was of renowned military and strategic ability, as we are

going to find out. None of the pharaohs Shoshenq of this era, on the other hand, appears

to have ‘So’-like attributes, with only Shoshenq I, of an earlier era, having at least,

appropriately, campaigned in Palestine. I shall be developing this vital biblical character,

‘King So of Egypt’, further, especially in 7, in relation to Egypt’s TIP.


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