Bubastite Portal (Shoshenq I Campaign Relief, Karnak)

Overview

Shoshenq I, founder of Egypt's 22nd Dynasty, added a gateway and the great First Court to the Amun temple at Karnak. On the outer south wall beside that gate (the 'Bubastite Portal') is a triumph scene. Amun and the goddess of Thebes lead rows of bound captives to the king, and each captive's body is a crenellated oval holding a place name. Breasted (1906) counted 156 ovals; about 75 names were still legible, and the fourth and tenth rows were almost entirely lost.

The legible names include towns in the Jezreel and Beth-Shean valleys and the central hills: Taanach, Shunem, Beth-Shean, Rehob, Hapharaim, Mahanaim, Gibeon, Beth-Horon, Aijalon, Megiddo. There is also a long series of Negev names, many of them compounds built with 'field' and similar words. Breasted read Nos. 71-72 as 'the Field of Abram'. Jerusalem does not appear among the surviving names. Breasted wrote that it 'must have been lost in one of the lacunae'.

A fragment of a large Shoshenq I stela was picked out of Schumacher's spoil at Megiddo by the Oriental Institute team in the 1920s. Breasted, in Fisher's 1929 report, took it as evidence that Shoshenq set up a victory monument in one of the towns on his list.

In its own words

Thou wentest forth in victory, and thou hast returned in might; thou hast united [...]; I have [...] for thee the countries that knew not Egypt, that had begun to invade [thy] boundaries, in order to cut off their heads.Amun's speech to Shoshenq I, J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt IV (Chicago, 1906) §720, p. 356

What the evidence shows

• Triumph scene: 156 captive-ovals in ten rows (65 led by Amun, 91 by the goddess of Thebes); about 75 names legible in 1906 (Breasted ARE IV §718).
• Legible names include Taanach (14), Shunem (15), Beth-Shean (16), Rehob (17), Hapharaim (18), Mahanaim (22), Gibeon (23), Beth-Horon (24), Aijalon (26) and Megiddo (27) (Breasted §712-713).
• Nos. 71-72 read by Breasted as p3 hqr 'brm, 'the Field of Abram' (§715).
• No. 29, Yw-d-h-m-rw-k, had been rendered 'the king or kingdom of Judah'; Breasted (§713) says it 'is, of course, not to be rendered' so.
• Jerusalem is not among the preserved names (Breasted §717; Breasted in Fisher 1929 p. xii: 'Shishak's list ... does not mention it').
• The accompanying inscriptions are 'made up of stereotyped phrases drawn from earlier monuments' (Breasted §709).
• A fragment of a round-topped Shoshenq I stela, about 20 inches thick and restorable to about 5 ft wide, was recovered from Schumacher's dump at Megiddo (Breasted foreword to Fisher, OIC 4, 1929).

Open questions

• Where is Jerusalem? 1 Kgs 14:25-26 says Shishak 'came up against Jerusalem' and took the temple and palace treasures. Breasted (ARE IV §717, 1906) held that the name 'must have been lost in one of the lacunae', since 31 names in rows 4 and 10 and 12 others are destroyed. In Fisher 1929 he states simply that the Karnak list 'does not mention it'. The wall itself shows only that Jerusalem is not among the surviving names; whether it was ever carved cannot be read from the damaged rows.
• Is the list a route or a composite? Breasted (1906, §711-712) read the list by geographic clusters and noted that it seems to mix towns of Israel and Judah (e.g., No. 19 possibly Adoraim). K. A. Wilson's monograph The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine (FAT II/9, 2005; reviewed by Hoffmeier, BASOR 349, and Kitchen, JSS 54) and A. Dodson's 'The Palestinian Campaign(s) of Shoshenq I' (2023) take up how far the relief records one historical route. Their arguments have not been reviewed for this entry.
• Does No. 29 name Judah? Nineteenth-century readers rendered Yw-d-h-m-rw-k as 'the king or kingdom of Judah'. Breasted (1906 §713) rejected this, calling it the 'much-discussed' name. The wall supports only the consonantal sequence; what the name means was not settled from a primary source cited here.

Sources

1. The Epigraphic Survey, Reliefs and Inscriptions at Karnak, Vol. III: The Bubastite Portal (Oriental Institute Publications 74; Chicago, 1954), DOI 10.83354/t9xk-af97 link editio princeps
2. J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. IV: The Twentieth to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasties (Chicago, 1906), §§709-722 link translation
3. C. S. Fisher, The Excavation of Armageddon (Oriental Institute Communications 4; Chicago, 1929), foreword by J. H. Breasted, pp. xi-xiii, DOI 10.83354/esg6-7r44 link excavation report
4. K. A. Wilson, The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine (FAT II/9; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-157859-5; reviews by J. K. Hoffmeier, BASOR 349 (2008) 88-91 and K. A. Kitchen, JSS 54 (2009) 274-276 link study
5. A. Dodson, 'The Palestinian Campaign(s) of Shoshenq I,' in Weseretkau 'Mighty of Kas' (Lockwood Press, 2023) 295-306, DOI 10.5913/2023853.18 link study

Checked against new publications through 2026-09.