Shoshenq IV
| Shoshenq IV | |
|---|---|
| Pharaoh | |
| Reign | 798–785 BC (22nd Dynasty) |
| Predecessor | Sheshonk III |
| Successor | Pami |
Hedjkheperre Setepenre Shoshenq IV ruled Egypt's 22nd Dynasty between the reigns of Shoshenq III and Pami. In 1986, David Rohl proposed that there were two king Shoshenqs bearing the prenomen Hedjkheperre – (i) the well-known founder of the dynasty, Hedjkheperre Shoshenq I, and (ii) a later pharaoh from the second half of the dynasty, whom Rohl called Hedjkheperre Shoshenq (b) due to his exact position in the dynasty being unknown. Following Rohl's proposal (first suggested to him by Pieter Gert van der Veen in 1984), the British Egyptologist Aidan Dodson supported the new king’s existence by demonstrating that the earlier Hedjkheperre Shoshenq bore simple epithets in his titulary, whereas the later Hedjkheperre Shoshenq’s epithets were more complex.
Dodson suggested that the ruler that Kenneth Kitchen, in his standard work on Third Intermediate Period chronology, had numbered Shoshenk IV – bearing the prenomen Usermaatre – should be removed from the 22nd Dynasty and replaced by Rohl's Hedjkheperre Shoshenq (b), renumbering the latter as Shoshenq IV. At the same time the old Usermaatre Shoshenq IV was renumbered as Shoshenq VI. Dodson's historical summary of the new King Shoshenq IV's discovery and his supportive evidence for that king’s independent existence from Hedjkheperre Shoshenq I appeared in a seminal article entitled ‘A New King Shoshenq Confirmed?’ which appeared in 1993.
Rohl and Dodson's combined arguments for the existence of a new 22nd Dynasty Tanite king called Hedjkheperre Shoshenq IV are accepted by Egyptologists today, including Jurgen von Beckerath and Kenneth Kitchen – the latter in the preface to the third edition of his book on The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt.
As Dodson pointed out, while Shoshenq IV shared the same prenomen as his illustrious ancestor Shoshenq I, he is distinguished from Shoshenq I by his use of an especially long nomen – Shoshenq-meryamun-sibast-netjerheqaon which featured both the sibast ('son of Bast') and netjerheqaon ('god-ruler of Heliopolis') epithets. These two epithets were only gradually employed by the 22nd Dynasty pharaohs, starting from the reign of Osorkon II. By contrast, Shoshenq I’s nomen simply reads ‘Shoshenq-meryamun’. Shoshenq I's immediate successors, Osorkon I and Takelot I also never used epithets beyond the standard ‘meryamun’ (beloved of Amun). In his 1994 book on the Canopic Equipment of the Kings of Egypt, Dodson perceptively observes that when the sibast epithet ‘appears during the dynasty of Osorkon II’, it is rather infrequent, while the netjerheqawaset ('god-ruler of Thebes') and netjerheqaon epithets are only exclusively attested ‘in the reigns of that monarch’s successors’ – that is Shoshenq III, Pami and Shoshenq V. This suggests that the newly identified Hedjkhperre Shoshenq IV was a late Tanite-era king who ruled in Egypt either during or after the reign of Shoshenq III.
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