Three competing hypotheses have been proposed regarding the dynasty to which Sheshi belonged.
Hyksos ruler William C. Hayes,
Nicolas Grimal, Redford, and Peter Clayton identify Sheshi with
Salitis (also known as Saites). According to the
Aegyptiaca, Salitis was the founder of the
Hyksos 15th Dynasty. Alternatively, Bietak and Janine Bourriau have proposed that Salitis should be identified with
Sakir-Har, a poorly known ruler of the Second Intermediate Period who, in contrast to Sheshi, is known to have borne the title of "Hyksos". If Sheshi is to be equated with Salitis, then the seals of Sheshi discovered in Nubia suggest that the Hyksos allied themselves with the Nubians against the native Egyptian
13th Dynasty as soon as they arrived in the Nile Delta, an event which Grimal places at c. 1720 BC. Grimal envisions Sheshi's kingdom as comprising the entire Nile Delta and the Nile valley north of
Gebelein. According to Manetho as reported by
Josephus in
Against Apion, Salitis reigned from
Memphis, and fortified the existing town of
Avaris, which was to become the Hyksos' seat of power. Grimal and Hayes further equate Sheshi with
Sharek, a king whose sole attestation is found on a stone slab detailing the
genealogy of Ankhefensekhmet, a priest who lived at the end of the
22nd Dynasty c. 750 BC, some 900 years after Sheshi's estimated lifetime.
William Ayres Ward and the archaeologist Daphna Ben-Tor rely on
seriations of the seals of Sheshi and other kings of the Second Intermediate Period to date Sheshi to the second half of the 15th Dynasty, between the great Hyksos pharaohs
Khyan and
Apophis.
Vassal of the Hyksos Jürgen von Beckerath is less assertive about Sheshi's identity and assigns him to his combined
15th/
16th Dynasty, where he regroups Hyksos rulers whose chronological position is uncertain together with kings whom he sees as vassals of the Hyksos. Von Beckerath's analysis relies on the hypothesis that Manetho's 16th Dynasty comprised minor rulers of the Nile Delta region, called lesser Hyksos, who served the great Hyksos kings of the 15th Dynasty such as Khyan and Apophis. For Manfred Bietak, the large number of attestations of Sheshi suggests that he was an important Hyksos ruler, yet his inclusion in the 15th Dynasty may be doubtful given the total absence of monuments attributable to him. Thus, Bietak concludes that Sheshi should be placed in a group of West Semitic rulers who coexisted with the 15th Dynasty, possibly as vassals or partly independently from it, and some of whom even bore the title of "Hyksos". The existence of lesser Hyksos kings in Egypt is currently debated. Ryholt has shown that a statement in
Eusebius' epitome of the
Aegyptiaca indicating that the Hyksos had vassals contains a corruption of Manetho's original text. Thus, he rejects the hypothesis that the 16th Dynasty comprised vassals of the Hyksos and maintains instead that it was a native Egyptian dynasty independently reigning over the Theban region between the fall of the 13th Dynasty and the advent of the
17th Dynasty. These conclusions on the 16th Dynasty have been accepted by many scholars, including Ben-Tor,
James Peter Allen, Susan Allen, Baker and Redford. Yet, for both Redford and Bietak "without doubt, there were, under the umbrella of the fifteenth dynasty rulers, a series of vassals in southern and coastal Palestine, in Middle Egypt, and in Thebes. ... Such was the political system of the Hyksos, and typical of the
Amorite kingdoms in Syria and the city-states in Palestine".
King of the 14th Dynasty Ryholt and Baker reject the identification of Sheshi as a 15th Dynasty ruler. Ryholt observes that early Hyksos kings, such as
Sakir-Har and Khyan, are known to have adopted the title
Heqa khasewet meaning "ruler of the foreign lands", a title which Sheshi did not bear. In addition, the later of these two kings, Khyan, only adopted an Egyptian
prenomen during the second half of his reign—a practice that was followed by subsequent Hyksos kings. In contrast, if Sheshi is to be identified with Maaibre, then Sheshi bore a prenomen. This implies either that he was a Hyksos king reigning after Khyan, in contradiction with Khyan's known successors Apophis and
Khamudi and the fact that Sheshi did not bear the title of
Heqa khasewet; or that he belonged to another dynasty. Consequently, Ryholt suggests that Sheshi was actually a
14th Dynasty ruler, the 14th Dynasty being a line of kings of Canaanite descent possibly ruling over the Eastern Nile Delta immediately before the arrival of the Hyksos 15th Dynasty. Many Egyptologists accept the existence of the 14th Dynasty based on archaeological evidence and on the fact that about 50 kings are recorded in the Turin canon between the 13th Dynasty and the later Hyksos rulers. On the other hand, Redford proposed that these 50 kings constitute the genealogy of the Hyksos rulers and that the 14th Dynasty is chimerical. Based on a seriation of the scarab seals of the Second Intermediate Period available in 1900 AD,
George Willoughby Fraser was able to date Sheshi's reign to "a short dynasty before the Hyksos invasion". More recently, Ryholt obtained a similar result using his own seriation and places Sheshi before
Yaqub-Har and the great Hyksos rulers Khyan and Apophis and after Yakbim Sekhaenre,
Ya'ammu Nubwoserre,
Qareh Khawoserre and
'Ammu Ahotepre. Rolf Krauss independently reached the same conclusion. Given that the earliest 14th Dynasty ruler mentioned on the Turin canon is
Nehesy, a king who left several attestations of his reign in the Delta region, and that there is only space for one predecessor for Nehesy on the canon, Ryholt concludes that the earlier document from which the canon was copied had a
lacuna preceding Nehesy. Such lacunae are noted as
wsf on the canon and could cover any number of kings. Thus, Ryholt sees no obstacle with having Sheshi succeed 'Ammu Ahotepre and immediately precede Nehesy. ==Dating==