SHISHAK (shī’shăk, Heb. shîshaq, Egyp. Sheshonk). An Egyptian king, the founder of the Twenty-second or Libyan Dynasty. He was from a Libyan family that for some generations had been situated at Herakleopolis in the Fayyum. Libyan mercenaries were common in the Egyptian army in the Twenty-first Dynasty, and some of them rose to positions of rank. The weakness of Egypt during much of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties ironically permitted the Libyan-Egyptian Sheshonk to seize control of Egypt some two centuries after Ramses III had decisively defeated the Libyans. Shishak I located his capital at Bubastis (Pi Beseth, Ezek.30.17) in the eastern Delta. To secure the succession of his newly founded dynasty he married his son to the daughter of the last king of the Twenty-first Dynasty. Shishak was a vigorous leader, who inaugurated an aggressive foreign policy and attempted to recover the lost Asiatic Empire by force of arms. In the fifth year of Rehoboam king of Judah, c. 926 b.c.,