BUBASTITE DYNASTY

the 22nd dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 945c. 730 BC), ruled by Libyans. Libyan soldiers had long been employed in the Egyptian army, and military chiefs had settled in the large towns and acquired wealth and power while the native rulers had grown weaker and weaker. The rulers of the 22nd dynasty were clearly, from their names, of foreign extraction, and their genealogy indicates a Libyan origin. Sheshonk I (the biblical Shishak), the founder of the dynasty, seems to have fixed his residence at Bubastis in the Nile delta, married his son to the daughter of the last king of the Tanite dynasty, and secured Thebes. Whereas King Solomon of Israel appears to have dealt with a 21st-dynasty king on basically an equal footing, Sheshonk sacked Jerusalem and carried off an enormous treasure in about 930 BC. Osorkon I inherited a prosperous kingdom from his father and succeeded in making his son high priest of Amon, but no further progress was made. It required a strong hand to curb the Libyan chieftains, and divisions soon began to show themselves in the increasingly feudalized kingdom. The 23rd, or Theban, dynasty (c. 823c. 732 BC) was contemporaneous with the end of the 22nd and was dominated by another branch of the Bubastites. By then the kings of both the 22nd and the 23rd dynasties had little hold upon the subject princes, who spent the resources of the country in feuds among themselves.