In the very early years after the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, on chronological, historical, and linguistic grounds, nearly all Egyptologists identified Shishak with
Shoshenq I of the 22nd dynasty, who invaded Canaan following the
Battle of Bitter Lakes. This position has been maintained by most scholars ever since, and remains the majority position today.
Campaign records at
Karnak, showing the
cartouches of Shoshenq I. Shoshenq I left behind "explicit records of a campaign into Canaan (scenes; a long list of Canaanite place-names from the Negev to
Galilee; stelae), including a stela [found] at
Megiddo" which supports the traditional interpretation. The
Bubastite Portal, a relief discovered at
Karnak, in
Upper Egypt, and similar reliefs on the walls of a small temple of
Amun at
el-Hibeh, shows Pharaoh
Shoshenq I holding in his hand a bound group of prisoners. The names of captured towns are located primarily in the territory of the
kingdom of Israel (including
Megiddo), with a few listed in the
Negeb, and perhaps
Philistia. However, the inscription makes no mention of Jerusalem itself, nor of
Rehoboam or
Jeroboam. Various explanations of this omission of Jerusalem have been proposed: its name may have been erased, the list may have been copied from an older pharaoh's list of conquests, or Rehoboam's ransoming the city (as described in the Second Book of Chronicles) would have saved it from being listed. Other scholars, notably
Israel Finkelstein, doubt the historicity of the biblical narrative that Shoshenq conquered Jerusalem, arguing that Jerusalem was an insignificant settlement in the 10th century BC and that the biblical story was constructed by later Jerusalemite authors to promote the
United Monarchy narrative.
Critical questions It has been claimed that the numbers of Egyptian soldiers given in Chronicles can be "safely ignored as impossible" on
Egyptological grounds; similarly, the numbers of chariots reported in 2 Chronicles is likely exaggerated by a factor of ten—leading 60,000 horses through the
Sinai and
Negev would have been logistically impossible, and no evidence of Egyptian cavalry exists from before the
27th Dynasty. Some authors, such as
Israel Finkelstein, deem the treasures taken by Shishak as unlikely, alleging the material culture of 10th century Jerusalem and surroundings to have been too primitive to allow for any treasure that an Egyptian pharaoh would have been interested in. Finkelstein concludes that the looting narrative "should probably be seen as a
theological construct rather than as historical references". By contrast, Krystal V. L. Pierce has pointed that a relief from Karnak records Sheshonq I presenting the tribute from his Levantine campaign to
Amun-Re, and that the Pharaoh used the tribute to finance the construction of several monumental structures across Egypt. ==Fringe theories==