ABSTRACT
SHABAKA, '2a{3£lKwv, the son of Kashta, the Nubian king of Thebes, by his wife Shop-en-apt, was the first of three kings of the Nubian Dynasty of Egypt, and reigned about twelve years; the number of years assigned to his reign by Manetho is eight, but a rock inscription in the Wildi Hammftmat, wherein both he and his sister Amen:irt,1s are mentioned, is dated in his twelfth year. He adopted a prenomen, and called himself" king of the South and North," and" son of the Sun," like the ancient kings of Egypt, but he only had one name to distinguish him in his three capacities of the representative of Horus, and lord of the shrines of Nekhebet and Uatchet, and the Horus of gold, i.e., " Seqeb-taui,"rj LI ::: . Of the circumstances which attended the accession of Shabaka to the throne of Egypt we know nothing, but it is quite certain that he
discovered how impossible it was to rule Egypt from Napata, which was over 750 miles from Thebes, and that he took possession of Egypt, meaning to live there and to make his rule effective, both in the Theba!d and in the Delta. In the course of his journey through Egypt to the north he appears to have become enraged with Bocchoris, for according to one tradition he burnt him alive, and according to another he flayed. him alive. Of his wars the hieroglyphic inscriptions tell us nothing, but we seem to have allusions to one of them in the cuneiform inscriptions and in the Bible. In 2 Kings xvii. 4 it is said that "the king of Ascyria found con-" spiracy in Hoshea ; for he had sent messengers to So "king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king "of Assyria, as he had done year by year : therefore the "king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison." . . Many scholars take the vww that So, N,D, of
the Book of Kings (LXX. ~wa, ~ova, ~w(3a, Vulgate Sua), and the Shabaka of the Egyptian texts are one and the same person, but others think they are not, and they have good reason for their opinion, for it is not by any means certain that "So" is the transcription of the name Shabaka. In the time of Ashurbani-pal (B.C. 668-626) the Assyrians were acquainted with the Egyptian name Shabaka, for under the form Sha-ba-ku-u, T Tf' ~,:::T I§J <, it occurs in the Annals of that king; 1 but it is not certain that they were in
the time of Sargon (B.C. 721-705). That Sargon made war on a confederacy of kings of Syria and Palestine, among whom was I.Ianunu, T H< ++• of Gaza, is quite certain, and we know from his inscriptions that one of the allies of I.Ianunu was an Egyptian officer of high position called Sib', T =F!EU a~o+-T, or Sib'e, T =F!EU a,.._,._T ~n,l and that he was, in fact, the "commander-in-chief (tur-dan-nu) of Egypt," 6. ~ ==TH + ~ .. , ~ r~~ ,._TT<T-Now the Assyrian name Sib', or Sib'e, not Shabi, or Shabe, as some write the name, confounding =Fl:JJ shab with ~!EIJ sib, may very well be the equivalent of the name "So," 2 or vice vm·sa, but it does not follow that either form is a transliteration of the Egyptian, or Nubian, name Shabaka. Moreover, Sargon's annalist seems to have drawn a distinction between Sib'e, the "tartan of Egypt," and the king of Egypt, for, while he tells us that it was Sib'e who came to help Hanno, or I.Ianunu, of Gaza, and that he escaped by himself "like unto a shepherd 3 whose sheep have been stolen," he says in a line or two lower down that it was "Pharaoh, T .tT-AA a,.._,.._T ==rn~. Pi-ir-'-u, of Egypt," who paid tribute to his master. From this
passage we see that the title Pharaoh, the Egyptian ~ J], Per-na, "Great house," was regarded by the Assyrians as a proper name. It is possible that the receipt of tribute from "Pharaoh of Egypt" took place long after the battle of Rapihu, from which Sib'e ran away, and that there was an interval of some years between the two events, but it is hardly likely, and there is no evidence that Sargon's victorious arms reached the borders of Egypt on two occasions.
