I keep a notebook by my bedside at night, in case the muse should visit, or something worthwhile should appear in a dream. Last night our dog, Betty, woke me up in the middle of the night, while I was dreaming about a great, mythical serpent. I knew that it was called something like "seshonq," and I wrote that in the notebook.
Checking the Internet this morning, I found that the only thing similar was Sheshonq, the name of an Egyptian pharaoh, founder of the twenty-second dynasty. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as "Shishak" (1 Kings 11:40, 14:25; 2 Chron. 12:2-9). I looked him up in my Holman Bible Dictionary, and found that his name was of "uncertain meaning." But perhaps my dream can shed a little light on this.
I recognized right away that the second part of the name, "onq," has to be "life" (Middle Egyptian "ankh;" Sahidic Coptic "onh," or "Onq."). I didn't know the meaning of the "shesh."
My library took a severe hit in the course of our recent move from one continent to another. I do still have a small booklet by Bruce Metzger, which is a list of all the most frequent words in the Coptic New Testament. I went through the booklet from cover to cover, and found that the most fitting word was "she," which means "hundred" (sorry, this computer is not set up to show the Coptic alphabet). "Sheshe" could then mean "hundreds," "a thousand," or simply "many," which is the meaning I had in my mind. Why should I have had any meaning at all in my mind? An interesting question, and one that I'll answer someday if you ask me.
So, back to the dream. Why would a great, mythical serpent have been called "Sheshonq?" It seems to me that the "many lives" is a reference to the snake's shedding of her skin, in turn symbolic of human reincarnation.
Here is how Pharaoh Shishak's name is written in the Hebrew Bible:
שִׁישַׁק
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the name looks like this:
𓆷 𓆷 𓈖 𓏘
This clearly suggests that the Hebrew letter "Shin," is related to the Egyptian letter that looks like lotus flowers growing out of a pond (they both sound like "sh"). I was not aware of this relationship.
Pay attention to those dreams! They can be very instructive.
Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.
