It has long been claimed that Ramesses II is the Pharoah who persecuted the Israelites before the Exodus. The reference to Pi-Rameses and the assumption that Shoshenk and Shisak are one and the same, has led scholars under the Orthodox Chronology to believe that Ramesses II was the Pharoah who persecuted the Israelites before the period of the Exodus.
However David Rohl has found evidence which proves Ramesses II actually lived 350 years later in the time of the Late 18th and Early 19th Dynasties of Egypt. This time frame matches the end of the 10th Century BC in Palestine when Rehoboam becomes King of Judah and the Temple of Yahweh was plundered by Shishak. Rohl claims Shishak is none other than Ramesses II.
The inscription on the Jerusalem Block on top of the pylon of Ramesseum at Thebes reads “The town which the king Ramesses II plundered in Year 8 – Shalem.” Shalem is the name used for Jerusalem. Kenneth Kitchen did a detailed study of the war reliefs of Ramesses II and confirms that Ramesses II went up against Jerusalem in 925 BC. His campaign was conducted in the mountainous region of Palestine. – in the Judean hill country.
Can Shishak be linked to Ramesses?
On the stele at Karnak there have been found two treaties from antiquity documenting the peace negotiated at the end of hostilities. A stele or stela is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected as a monument, very often for funerary or to commemorate battles or victories. There is a Hittite Treaty and an Egyptian Treaty covering the same event. This is quite unique in the annals of the ANE.
The full name for Ramesses II in Egyptian is Usermaattre-Setepenre-Ramessu-Meryamun. In the Hittite Treaty the name recorded for the Egyptian Pharoah is recorded as Washmuaria-shatepnaria-Riamashesha-maiamana. I am sure the similarity of the names doesn’t escape you even though you may not read Egyptian hieroglyphics nor Cuneiform Text. But even the untrained eye can spot the similarity between Ramessu (Egyptian) and Riamashesha (Hittite). Hittite text consistently transcribes the Egyptian hieroglyphic ‘s’ with a cuneiform ‘sh’ – wash shatep for user setep. Shoshenk is Susinku. In the mortuary temple for Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, Ramesses name is Sese (Ss). The short name for Ramesses II in Hittite is in fact Shishak. The [s] has become [sh] and the vowel changes according to language differences and a final [k] has been added, according to the phonological rules of language change between hieroglyphics and cuneiform.
Linguistically the names match, suggesting Ramesses II is the Egyptian Pharaoh who plundered Jerusalem in the 8th Year of his reign. This matches the attack on Jerusalem in 925 BC when Rehoboam was king in Israel. Not only that but the description of the battle campaign waged in the hill country of Palestine at that time matches very well across all three historical records of Egypt, the Hittite Kingdom in the treaties in the stele at Karnak and Israelite record from the books of Samuel and Kings.
All that was needed to bring these stories into alignment was for Egyptologists to rethink their dating of Egyptian history under the pharaohs and its seeming mismatch with what is recorded in the Bible. When the Egyptian historical record is shifted 350 years further forward everything matches.
Hang on to your hat. There is a lot more to come in following Nuggets. I told you we would work our way through the findings under the New Chronology nugget by nugget.
Source: A Test of Time by David Rohl