Manetho is the source for two events from Bakenranef's reign. The first is the story that a
lamb uttered the prophecy that
Egypt would be conquered by the
Assyrians, a story later repeated by such classical authors as
Claudius Aelianus (
De Natura Animalis 12.3). The second was that Bakenranef was captured by
Shebitqo, a king of the
25th Dynasty, who executed Bakenrenef by having him burned alive. A
Kushite king, Shebitqo extended his rule over the whole of Egypt, which had been split since the
21st Dynasty.
Diodorus Siculus, writing about three centuries after Manetho, adds some different details. Diodorus states that although Bakenranef was "contemptible in appearance", he was wiser than his predecessors (1.65). The Egyptians attributed to him a
law concerning
contracts, which provided for a way to discharge
debts where no
bond was signed; it was observed down to Diodorus' time (1.79). For this, and other acts, Diodorus included "Bocchoris" as one of the six most important lawgivers of ancient Egypt. For a minor kinglet briefly in control of the
Nile Delta, this is an unexpectedly prominent ranking: "He was a surprising choice,"
Robin Lane Fox observes, "Perhaps some Greeks, unknown to us, had had close dealings with him; from his reign we have
scarab-seals bearing his Egyptian name, one of which found its way into a contemporary Greek grave on
Ischia up near the
Bay of Naples." Ischia was the earliest of eighth-century BC Greek colonies in Italy. The Roman historian
Tacitus mentions that many Greek and Roman writers thought he had a part in the origin of the
Jewish nation: Shebitqo deposed and executed Bakenranef by burning him alive at the stake. This effectively ended the short-lived 24th Dynasty of Egypt as a potential rival to the Nubian 25th Dynasty. Although the Manethonic and classical traditions maintain that it was Shebitqo's invasion which brought Egypt under Kushite rule, the king burning his opponent, Bocchoris-Bakenranef, alive, there is no direct evidence that Shebitqo did slay Bakenranef, and although earlier scholarship generally accepted the tradition, it has recently been treated more sceptically.
Legal reforms King Bakenranef has been credited with initiating a
land reform, but the brevity of his reign and the small geographical extent of the area he ruled, together with the indirect character of the historical evidence for it, has cast some doubt upon this. Diodorus credits Bakenranef with abolishing
debt slavery, a claim based upon a now-lost work by the historian
Hecateus of Abdera. It is possible that Hecateus invented the story in order to support an ideological debate over debt slavery in Greek society. ==Contemporary records==