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Shabaka (or Shabaka Neferkare, 'Beautiful is the Soul of Re
Ra

Ra is an ancient Egyptian Solar deity . By the Fifth dynasty of Egypt he became a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon, with other deities representing other positions of the sun....
') was a Kushite pharaoh
Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt, only during the New Kingdom, specifically, during the middle of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt....
 of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt
Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt

The Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, also known as the Ethiopian or Nubian dynasty, was a line of rulers originating in the Kingdom of Kush. They reigned in part or all of Ancient Egypt from 760 BC to 656 BC.....
, between (721 BC – 707/706 BC). He succeeded his brother Piye
Piye

Piye, was a Kushite king and founder of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt who ruled Egypt from the city of Napata, located deep in Nubia, Sudan....
 on the throne, and adopted the throne name of the 6th-dynasty ruler Pepi II. Shabaka's reign was initially dated from 716 BC to 702 BC by Kenneth Kitchen
Kenneth Kitchen

Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies, University of Liverpool, England....
. However, new evidence indicates that Shabaka died around 707 or 706 BC because Sargon II
Sargon II

Sargon II was an Neo-Assyrian Empiren king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V....
 (722-705 BC) of Assyria states in an official inscription at Tang-i Var (in Northwest Iran)--which is datable to 706 BC--that it was Shebitku
Shebitku

Shebitku was the third king of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt who ruled from according to Dan'el Kahn's most recent academic research. He was the nephew and successor of Shabaka....
, Shabaka's successor, who extradited Iamanni of Ashdod to him as king of Egypt.






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Shabaka (or Shabaka Neferkare, 'Beautiful is the Soul of Re
Ra

Ra is an ancient Egyptian Solar deity . By the Fifth dynasty of Egypt he became a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon, with other deities representing other positions of the sun....
') was a Kushite pharaoh
Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. In antiquity this title began to be used for the ruler who was the religious and political leader of united ancient Egypt, only during the New Kingdom, specifically, during the middle of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt....
 of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt
Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt

The Twenty-Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, also known as the Ethiopian or Nubian dynasty, was a line of rulers originating in the Kingdom of Kush. They reigned in part or all of Ancient Egypt from 760 BC to 656 BC.....
, between (721 BC – 707/706 BC). He succeeded his brother Piye
Piye

Piye, was a Kushite king and founder of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt who ruled Egypt from the city of Napata, located deep in Nubia, Sudan....
 on the throne, and adopted the throne name of the 6th-dynasty ruler Pepi II. Shabaka's reign was initially dated from 716 BC to 702 BC by Kenneth Kitchen
Kenneth Kitchen

Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies, University of Liverpool, England....
. However, new evidence indicates that Shabaka died around 707 or 706 BC because Sargon II
Sargon II

Sargon II was an Neo-Assyrian Empiren king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V....
 (722-705 BC) of Assyria states in an official inscription at Tang-i Var (in Northwest Iran)--which is datable to 706 BC--that it was Shebitku
Shebitku

Shebitku was the third king of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt who ruled from according to Dan'el Kahn's most recent academic research. He was the nephew and successor of Shabaka....
, Shabaka's successor, who extradited Iamanni of Ashdod to him as king of Egypt. This view has been accepted by many Egyptologists today such as Aidan Dodson, Rolf Krauss, David Aston, and Karl Jansen-Winkeln among others because there is no concrete evidence for coregencies or internal political/regional divisions in the Nubian kingdom during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. All contemporary records suggest that the Nubian Pharaohs ruled Egypt with only a single king on the throne, while Taharqa
Taharqa

Taharqa was a pharaoh of History of ancient Egypt and a member of the Nubian or Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt. His reign can be dated from 690 BC to 664 BC....
 states explicitly on one of his Kawa
Kawa

The name "Kawa" comes from the Polish word for coffee – a play on words since Java is another familiar name for coffee....
 stelas that he assumed power only after the death of his brother, Shebitku.

Shabaka's reign is significant because he consolidated the Nubian Kingdom's control over all of Egypt from Nubia down to the Delta region. It also saw an enormous amount of building work undertaken throughout Egypt, especially at the city of Thebes
Thebes, Egypt

Thebes was a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile . It was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian Nome ....
. In Karnak
Karnak

The Karnak temple complex, universally known only as Karnak, describes a vast conglomeration of ruined temples, chapels, pylons and other buildings....
 he erected a pink granite statue of himself wearing the twin crowns of Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
. Shabaka succeeded in preserving Egypt's independence from outside foreign powers especially the Assyria
Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
n empire under Sargon II
Sargon II

Sargon II was an Neo-Assyrian Empiren king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V....
. The most famous relic from Shabaka's reign is the Shabaka stone
Shabaka Stone

The Shabaka Stone is a relic from the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt. It is a stone slab measuring 66 cm in height and 137 cm in width and was incised with the remaining Egyptian hieroglyphs of a worm-ridden, decaying papyrus....
 which records several Old Kingdom documents that the king ordered preserved. Despite being relative newcomers to Egypt, Shabaka and his family were immensely interested in Egypt's past and the art of the period reflects their tastes which harked back to earlier periods. Shabaka would grant refuge to king Iamanni of Ashdod after the latter fled to Egypt following the suppression of his revolt by Assyria in 712 BC.

Death

Shabaka is assumed to have died in his 15th regnal year
Regnal year

A regnal year is a year of the reign of a monarch. From Latin regnum meaning kingdom, rule.The oldest dating systems were in regnal years, and considered the date as an ordinal number, not a cardinal number....
 based on BM cube statue 24429, which is dated to Year 15, II Shemu day 11 of Shabaka's reign. From the evidence of the Tang-i Var inscription, Shabaka was already dead by 707 or 706 BC. He was buried in a pyramid
Pyramid

A pyramid is a building where the outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a point. The base of pyramids are usually quadrilateral or trilateral , meaning that a pyramid usually has four or five faces....
 at el-Kurru and was succeeded by his nephew Shebitku
Shebitku

Shebitku was the third king of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt who ruled from according to Dan'el Kahn's most recent academic research. He was the nephew and successor of Shabaka....
, Piye's son, following the Kushite tradition of succession from brother to brother, to son of the first brother. Shebitku would eventually be succeeded by Tantamuni--a son of Shabaka.