Shoshenq C

Shoshenq C High Priest of Amun in Thebes
Statue of the High priest of Amun Shoshenq, son of Osorkon I, from Karnak. Cairo, CG 42194
Predecessor	Iuput
Successor	Iuwelot
Dynasty	22nd Dynasty
Pharaoh	Osorkon I
Father	Osorkon I
Mother	Maatkare B
Wife	Nesitanebtashru and Nesitaudjatakhet
Children	Harsiese A and Osorkon D
Burial	Tanis?

Shoshenq C was the eldest son of the 22nd Dynasty pharaoh Osorkon I and queen Maatkare, the daughter of Psusennes II, and served as the High Priest of Amun at Thebes during his father's reign. Consequently, he was the most important official in Upper Egypt after the king himself. He has generally been equated with Heqakheperre Shoshenq II by the English Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen and viewed as a short-lived co-regent to his father based on the Nile God British Museum statue 8 which identifies him as the son of Osorkon I and Queen Maatkare, daughter of Hor-Psusennes but this assumption is unproven. In the statue, Shoshenq C is called "the Master of the Two Lands" and the formula "beloved of Amun" is enclosed within a royal cartouche. However, in the text of the statue, he is not given a specific throne name or prenomen, the use of a cartouche by a royal prince is attested in other periods of Egyptian history such as that of Amenmes, son of Thutmose I, and the documents depicts Shoshenq C as a simple High Priest of Amun on the side of the legs of the Nile God, rather than a king.

In addition, none of Shoshenq C's three wives used the title "King's Wife" in any of their artifacts. More significantly, none of his 3 children ever gave their father a royal title on their own funerary objects such as a Priest Osorkon whose funerary papyri is now in the St Petersburg Museum, or the God's Wife Karomama-Merytmut. Finally, as Helen Jacquet-Gordon perceptively notes in her Bi Or 32(1975) Book Review of Kenneth Kitchen's TIPE book, Shoshenq C's third child—the Priest (and future king) Harsiese A does not assign royal titles to his father on a Bes-statue in Durham Museum which he dedicated to his father's memory. Instead, Shoshenq C is only "designated the 1st Prophet of Amun without other [royal] titles." Hence, Jacquet Gordon's observation: if Shoshenq C had even "the slightest pretensions to royal rank, his son [Harsiese] would not have omitted to mention...[this] fact. We must therefore conclude that he (ie: Shoshenq C) had no such pretensions." All this evidence taken together suggest that the High Priest Shoshenq C was not a king in his own right and is not Shoshenq II, whose Royal tomb was found intact in Tanis.