127656 Immanuel Velikovsky AGES IN CHAOS VOLUME I FROM THE EXODUS TO KING AKHNATON Doubleday & Company, Inc. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK, 1952 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 52-5224 COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY IMMANUEL VELIKOVSXY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y, FIRST EDITION FOREWORD IN CHAOS was conceived in the spring of 1940. It was then that I realized that the Exodus had occurred in the midst of a natural and that As upheaval this catastrophe might prove be the to connecting link between the Israelite and Egyptian his- tories, if ancient Egyptian texts were found to contain references a to similar event. I found such references and before long had worked out a of reconstruction of plan ancient history from the Exodus to the conquest of the East by Alexander the Great. Already by October of the same year I had come to understand the nature extent of and that catastrophe. For a decade after that I worked simultaneously on Ages in Chaos and Worlds in Collision, the present work requiring the lion's share of the toil. in Ages Chaos covers largely the period dealt with in Worlds in Collision the eight hundred years from the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the invasion of Palestine by Sennacherib in 687 be- fore the present era, and the additional three and a half centuries to Alexander of Macedonia, altogether twelve hundred years of the history of the ancient East. But whereas the first work con- centrated on the description of the physical history of the period, the present work deals with its political and cultural aspects. The occurrence of a widespread natural catastrophe serves here only as the point of departure for constructing a revised chronology of the times and lands under consideration. I searched the records of one land after another and went from one generation to another, taking from everywhere hints and clues, to evidence and proof. Because I had to discover and collate them, that in this book is written like a detective story. It is well known detective work unexpected associations are often built on minute a hair on a window details: a fingerprint on a bar of metal, sill, a burnt-out match in the bushes. Some details of an archaeological, Vi FOREWORD minor chronological, or paleographic nature may seem matters, of in which the his- but they are the fingerprints an investigation is involved. Such tory of many nations in many generations vitally details are not included to make the reading difficult; they are necessary to establish the main thesis of this work. Therefore, any to a fruitless attempt to read this book cursorily will prove be undertaking. is established Correct strategy requires that once a bridgehead it should be fortified. Is it good judgment, instead, to open a second front against a new adversary? After the publication of Worlds in Collision) a volume describing two acts of a celestial and terrestrial drama, reconstructed from the collective memory of the human race, a wise and proper move would have been to strengthen my position by following with a volume of geological and paleontological evidence of the same dra- matic events in the life of the earth. And since this material from the realm of stones and bones is not rare but abundant, such an undertaking would seemingly not be difficult. It was therefore a great temptation for me to continue from where I had left off in Worlds in Collision, to prove again and again, from new angles, that catastrophes did take place and did disrupt .slow-moving evo- lution in inanimate as well as animate nature. And in fact, since the publication of Worlds in Collision, I have devoted myself to organ- izing the evidence from geology and prehistory to supplement the literary and historical evidence of cosmic catastrophism, and to writ- ing Earth in Upheaval, only little concerned with the storm aroused by my first book. But I found that the arguments presented in that book not were given a careful hearing, or even reading, particularly by those who protested the loudest. Would it help to produce in haste still evidence? inner more In my council on strategy, I de- cided to tarry no longer with Ages in Chaos, my opus magnum. I call Ages in Chaos the second front because, after having dis- rupted the complacent peace of mind of a powerful group of as- tronomers and other textbook writers, I offer here major battle to the historians. The two volumes of the present work will bo as dis- turbing to the historians as Worlds in Collision was to the astron- POREWOED Vli omers. It is conceivable that historians quite will have even greater difficulties in their views and in psychological revising accepting the of sequence ancient history as established in Ages in Chaos than the astronomers had in accepting the story of cosmic catas- in trophes the solar system in historical times. Indeed, a distin- who has followed this guished scholar, work from the completion of first draft in the 1942, expressed this very idea. He said that he knows of no valid the argument against reconstruction of history but that presented here, psychologically it is almost impossible to views in the course of change acquired decades of reading, writ- ing, and teaching. The to reconstruct attempt radically the history of the ancient twelve hundred in the life world, years of many nations and king- doms, unprecedented as it is, will meet severe censure from those in their who, teaching and writing, have already deeply committed to the old of themselves concept history. And many of those who look to acknowledged authorities for guidance will express their a disbelief that truth could have remained undiscovered so long, from which they will deduce that it cannot be a truth. Should I have heeded the abuse with which a group of scientists condemned Worlds in Collision and its author? Unable to prove the of it or book or any part wrong any quoted document spurious, the members of that group indulged in outbursts of unscientific fury. They suppressed the book in the hands of its first publisher by the threat of a boycott of all the company's textbooks, despite the fact that when the book was already on the presses the publisher agreed to submit it to the censorship of three prominent 'scientists and it passed that censorship. When a new publisher took the book over, this group tried to suppress it there, too, by threats. They forced the dismissal of a scientist and an editor who openly took an ob- of academic faculties jective stand, and thus drove many members into clandestine reading of Worlds in Collision and correspondenpe with its author. The of and still alert guardians dogmau.were, are, to stamp out the new teaching by exorcism and not by argument, which degrading the learned guild in the eyes of the broad public, to does not believe that censorship and suppression are necessary defend the truth. And here is a rule by which to know whether or Vlli FOREWORD not a book is spurious: Never in the history of science has a spurious book aroused a storm of anger among members of scientific bodies. But there has been a storm every time a leaf in the book of knowl- edge has been turned over. "We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side."1 A scientific approach requires, first, reading, then thinking and of an case investigation, and, lastly, the expression opinion. In the of Worlds in Collision the procedure was repeatedly reversed. Sci- entific rejection demands invalidation of the evidence presented. Nothing of the kind was done with Worlds in Collision. The few arguments offered whatever could be gathered from numerous re- in a debate with Professor viewsI answered point by point J. Q. Stewart, astronomer at Princeton University, published in the June 1951 issue of Harpers magazine, fourteen months after the publica- tion of the book. No argument was left unanswered, and no new one has been presented since then, though emotional outbursts have not ceased. Finally, a new strategy was employed: the views expounded in Worlds in Collision were appropriated piecemeal by those who first opposed them, though not with frankness and candor, but rather under the guise of showing how wrong the author of that heretical book is. At present no chapter of Worlds in Collision needs to be rewritten and no thesis revoked. Great are the changes in the political history of the ancient East in in 1 to offered Ages Chaos, claim the right fallibility in de- tails and I eagerly welcome constructive criticism. However, before proclaiming that the entire structure must collapse because an argument can be made against this or that point, the critic should carefully weigh his argument against the whole scheme, complete with all its evidence. The historian who permits his attention to be monopolized by an argument directed against some detail, to the extent of overlooking the work as a whole and the manifold proofs on it which stands, will only demonstrate the narrowness of his ap- proach to history. He will be like that "conscientious scientist,* Thomas Mann, Budderibrooks. FOREWORD IX Professor Twist, in Ogden Nash's verse, who went on an expedition to the jungles, taking his bride with him. When, one day, the guide brought the tidings to him that an alligator had eaten her, the professor could not but smile.