SESAC (Heb. Šīšaq, Septuagint Σονοαχία). — Pharaoh of Egypt (Šešonq I), founder of the Twenty-Second Dynasty (934–913 B.C.), whose capital he transferred to Bubastis in the Delta, instead of Tanis.
He established a nephew at Thebes as high priest, and there constructed, in front of the hypostyle hall of the temple of Amon at Karnak, a large colonnaded courtyard, with extensive decoration in bas-relief and an inscription in which he recalls his military exploits and enumerates, among other things, the cities of the Kingdom of Judah and 50 of the Kingdom of Israel that he conquered. Here there is an allusion to his campaign against Roboam, king of Judah, in the fifth year of that monarch’s reign, recorded in I Reg. 14:25–26 and II Par. 12:2–9.
Since Solomon had persecuted Ieroboam, the latter took refuge with S. and remained there until Solomon’s death (I Reg. 11:40); hence the hypothesis arose that Ieroboam himself had incited S. to invade Palestine. But after invading the Kingdom of Judah, the Pharaoh also plundered a considerable part of the Kingdom of Israel, over which Ieroboam himself had meanwhile ascended as the first dissident king. There is nothing to prevent us from believing that S., with the intention of taking reprisals against those who had been friends of the preceding Twenty-First Dynasty (Solomon was related to the king of the Twenty-First Dynasty overthrown by S.), may have encouraged the disturbances that arose after Solomon’s death and led to the division of Palestine into two mutually hostile kingdoms, and may then have wished, in order to increase his prestige and obtain substantial booty, to attack Roboam, Solomon’s successor. S.’s incursion into Palestine, accompanied, as II Par. 12:3 says, by 1,200 war chariots and 60,000 horsemen, as well as by a multitude of Libyans, Sukhijilm (Vulg. “Troglodytae”), and Ethiopians, led to the plundering of Jerusalem, from which he carried off the treasures of the Temple and the royal palace, and in particular the golden shields that Solomon had had made for the “house of the forest of Lebanon.”
J. H. Breasted, Ancient records of Egypt, IV, Chicago 1927, p. 348 ff.; G. Ricciotti, Stor. d'Israele, I, 4th ed., Turin 1947, pp. 43, 83, 95, 177, 376–77; P. Gilbert, Esquisse d'une hist. de l'Egypte ancienne et de sa culture, Brussels 1949, p. 78.