The Bubastite Portal at Karnak (Triumphal Relief of Shoshenq I)

The Bubastite Portal is the south gate of the great first court of the temple of Amun at Karnak, in ancient Thebes. It was built by Shoshenq I, founder of Egypt’s Twenty-second Dynasty. A stela left in the sandstone quarries at Silsila (Quarry Stela of Shoshenq I at Gebel es-Silsila (No. 100)) records that he ordered stone for the court in his twenty-first year, so the relief on the wall beside the gate was carved near the end of his reign.

The scene follows an old Egyptian pattern. The king, whose figure has now almost vanished from the wall, raises his mace over a group of kneeling captives, while Amun and the goddess of Thebes lead forward more than 150 small bound figures. Each figure stands for a place, and its name is written in an oval ring on its body. About half of the names can still be read. They include Megiddo, Taanach, Shunem, Beth-shean and Rehob in the north, Gibeon, Beth-horon and Aijalon in the hills north-west of Jerusalem, Mahanaim east of the Jordan, and Arad in the south.

The text that goes with the scene is a speech of Amun praising the king in stock phrases. It gives no date and tells no story of the campaign, and it does not name Judah, Rehoboam or Jeroboam. Jerusalem is not among the names that survive; two rows of the list are almost wholly destroyed and other names are lost. What the relief establishes for Shishak Invades Judah is that Shoshenq campaigned in Palestine and claimed towns in both Hebrew kingdoms. The link with the fifth year of Rehoboam comes from Kings and Chronicles.