…Karnak, in Upper Egypt, in certain sculptures on the walls of a small temple there.

The sculptures on the Triumphal Relief near the Bubastite Portal of the temple of Karnak at Thebes represent the king, Shoshenq, holding in his hand a train of prisoners and other figures, with the names of the captured towns of Judah, the towns which Rehoboam had fortified.

However, from the list of cities in this inscription it appears that the target of Shoshenq's campaign was not the heartland of the kingdom of Judah (which is what the Bible seems to imply), but the northern cities that became the kingdom of Israel.

Many of the cities listed are known today and their order clearly indicates the progression of a military campaign.

The conquest of Jerusalem would have been given pride of place, not buried between two insignificant hill-towns hundreds of miles away.

It could be Shoshenq only listed the cities he either destroyed, or whose garrisons he defeated in support of the break-away kingdom of Israel.

It may be, however, that the text only lists cities that the Egyptians regarded as under their political control, and so not intended to be read as an itinerary or list of directly conquered cities at all, which would be in line with similar lists from elsewhere in Egypt.