I have just come across a review of my book, The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine, in JSOT 30.5 (2006): 51-52. The review is written by Diane Edelman. It is just a one paragraph review, and she mostly just summarizes what I have to say. At the end of the review, however, she says:
His analysis leaves unexplained three points: (1) why a pharaoh would establish a political alliance with a foreign commoner, marrying one of his daughters to him, (2) why the geographical scope of the list is limited to Cisjordan, unlike the wider range found in other such lists; and (3) why there are so many unique sites here that are not attested earlier or later.
I wanted to point out that I did, in fact, discuss all three of these points. In the conclusion on pp.98-99, I discuss the campaign from a foreign policy standpoint, suggesting that Shoshenq established a political alliance with Jeroboam in order to weaken Solomon’s kingdom. This policy changed the situation in Palestine. Egypt went from being faced with a relatively strong nation under Solomon, a nation that controlled the others in the region, to being faced with numerous weak nations, one of whom was in alliance with Egypt. This would have been a much more favorable situation as far as Egypt was concerned.
I addressed her third point on pp.44-46, where I discussed possible sources for the topographical list in Shoshenq’s relief. I think onomastic lists are a strong candidate for the source of the topographical list. Onomastic lists were kept up to date by the scribes so that they had an accurate catalog of cities. Since the other examples of topographic lists are from the Late Bronze Age, we should not be surprised that the Shoshenq list is different. It comes from several centuries after the lists of Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramses II, and Ramses III. The cities in Canaan had changed greatly during that those centuries, and the onomastic lists would have reflected those changes.
As for the list being limited to the Cisjordan, there are some sites, such as #22 (Mahanaim), which are located in the Transjordan. Given how incomplete the list is and the fact that we are unable to identify a large number of the sites, I don’t think we can say that the list is limited to the Cisjordan. I doubt the we have sites outside of Palestine (with the exception of ##1-9, which include Egypt, Nubia, and Libya), but the presence of Mahanaim means that we cannot rule out sites in the Transjordan.
If anyone is interested in reading a short summary of my dissertation, Bible and Interpretation has an on-line version of a paper I gave on the topic at the SBL meeting in 2000.