Velikovsky's Sources

[donmillion]

The purpose of this posting is to announce the availability of a new on-line resource for Velikovskian studies ("Velikovsky's Sources") at http://donmillion8.wix.com/velikovskyssources, and to explain the reasons for it.

In recent and forthcoming issues of the C&C Review, I have been presenting a series of papers examining Velikovsky's uses of his sources in the Ages In Chaos series. Their origin lay several years ago, in an on-line discussion in the New Chronology forum, in which I sought to defend aspects of Velikovsky's chronology, and as part of that endeavour bought an original edition of Naville & Griffith's Mound of the Jew. I was disturbed to find how thoroughly Velikovsky had misrepresented the El Arish shrine inscription, to the extent of even (in seven instances) significantly altering the actual wording of the text.

That was the first of three circumstances which led, ultimately, to my C&C papers and this posting. A year or so later, I attempted to write an essay defending Velikovsky's "Hatshepsut/Queen of Sheba" equation against the allegations made in David Lorton's paper, "Hatshepsut, the Queen of Sheba, and Immanuel Velikovsky" (http://reocities.com/Athens/academy/1326/hatshepsut.html). I found that, despite his claiming that he would cite Velikovsky's "relevant passages in full" so as to "escape the frequent complain on the part of Velikovksy’s supporters that his critics misrepresent or misquote him", the earlier sections of Lorton's paper did indeed misrepresent him at several points. There were also numerous weaknesses in the early part of that argument. For example, to support the idea that the Queen of Sheba came from Yemen and not from Egypt, he wrote that, "as a glance at a map will show, ... the southwest corner of Arabia, which is only a little to the east of due south from Israel, [is] a more likely origin for the 'queen of the South' than Egypt, which is decidedly to the southwest". Lorton should have looked; a glance at a map showed me that Thebes (longitude 32.6° E) is less than 3° from due south of Jerusalem (35.2° E), whereas Taiz (44.0° E), very close to "the southwest corner of Arabia", is "decidedly" to the southeast of Israel by almost 9°.

However, my essay fell apart when I reached the section in which Lorton discusses Velikovsky's use of Hatshepsut's Deir el Bahari inscriptions. Obtaining a library copy of Breasted's Records, Vol 2, I found that Lorton was correct in his allegations that Velikovksy had severely misquoted the inscriptions. There were no actual changes of Breasted's wording, but very significant omissions. I tried to find justifications for these (I'd put a lot of work into the essay so far), but eventually abandoned the work as hopeless.

My faith in Velikovsky's scholarly integrity was disturbed by these realisations (I could hardly call them "discoveries"), but the mass of evidence gathered by the unfortunate Eddie Schorr ("Israel Isaacson") left me still convinced that a 500-year anomaly in ancient chronology remained to be explained. At this juncture, Eric Aitchison, who is dedicated to a similar Velikovskian revision rather than the 250- or 350-year revisions of James and Rohl, invited me to join his email group. In a discussion of what seemed to be one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for a major chronological displacement, I was led to find, via the Internet, the sources that Velikovsky used in his discussion of the supposed "Greek tiles of Ramses III"--and found that there, too, he had manipulated his quotations to make it appear that his sources were saying things they had not in fact said, and that there too he had suppressed without discussion important information--especially a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Greek-letter tiles, not involving chronological revision, a reason which I later found was accepted by Eddie Schorr.

At a later stage, I found that Velikovsky had similarly misused (or possibly seriously misunderstood) his sources in relation to the identity of Nectanebo I, and to the PRST wars of Ramses III. First, however, in the context of a long series of exchanges on the El Arish shrine, I undertook to find and investigate the sources for his "Arabian Amalekites" theories in the same volume of Ages In Chaos, which led in turn to investigation of his use of the Biblical accounts of the Amalekites. I found that he had seriously abused his sources in both those cases, especially in the case of the Islamic sources--discoveries which resulted in my first two C&C papers.

My papers on the Greek-letter tiles, Ramses II, Nectanebo I, and other topics are yet to be written. However, the purpose of this posting is not to start a discussion on these matters (though members are welcome, of course, to follow up on what I've written above), but to announce the commencement of a major work in trying to assemble into one place as many as possible of Velikovsky's sources for the Ages In Chaos series. It will be a long labour which may never be completed, involving not only transcriptions of English from old, faded publications, but the transcription also of hieroglyphs, and translations from Latin, German, and French. However, the work has been begun, and the results can be seen at the web site. All are welcome to browse the works so far uploaded, which consist of pdf files with Prefaces by myself. The sources uploaded so far are a patchwork relating to various chapters of Ages In Chaos and Peoples of the Sea, with more to come as time permits.

Share and enjoy!

-- Don Mills

[bsbray]

I think this is a great idea and valuable resource, and if I could be of any help in it, let me know. I have experience with websites from installing Apache on a server to coding the pages in HTML and CSS. I could also lend a hand tracking down where books and other source documents can be found, though of course I may not always be able to actually physically access them since a lot of them seem fairly specialized, dated and in foreign languages (though I do speak French and am learning German).

[donmillion]

Thanks "babray", and apologies for having first ignored and then temporarily mislaid your email making a similar offer. (I've got it somewhere, along with your name!) The site is on hold for the moment because life has been too busy to expend my "chronological revision" efforts in more than one direction. Although the work has been very relevant to the theme of "Velikovsky's Sources", I've been concentrating on co-authoring a few papers for the C&C Review. I hope to get back to the site, and to you, in a couple of weeks. On the other hand, shortly after that I'll be taking a three-week break back in New Zealand for our son's wedding, so it might not be until after that!

Regards,

--Don

[donmillion]

My concern in the "Velikovsky's Sources" website is with the chronological aspects of the "Ages in Chaos" series of books--or rather, with Velikovsky's use of the sources he used to establish and support the details of his chronology.

However, the interests of many SIS members lie with the numerous variant "catastrophism" hypotheses sparked by Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision". In that book, as in "Ages in Chaos", Velikovsky often played fast-and-loose with his sources. An appreciation of the details behind the elements Velikovsky incorporated into his "Venus and Mars" scenarios is essential to evaluating their reality, and reconstructing what, if anything, was really going on in the heavens in the 16th to 8th Centuries BC. Fortunately the work of exploring and reproducing those sources was performed by the mathematician Bob Forrest in a series of volumes under the generic title, "Velikovsky's Sources".

"Velikovsky's Sources" is long out of print, but Forrest produced a series of magazine articles summarising the book, which were subsequently bound and published as "A Guide to Velikovsky's Sources". That volume, too, is almost unobtainable; but Bob has kindly supplied me with a copy, and (together with the publisher's estate) has granted permission for me to reproduce it on the "Velikovsky's Sources" web site.

Because of restrictions imposed by the web site host, I have been uploading the book as a series of pdfs, one for each chapter (see http://donmillion8.wixsite.com/velikovskyssources/worlds-in-collision )--a work about 50% complete at the present time (1 January 2017). However, the scanned quality is unsatisfactory and can't be improved, and the division into more than 20 separate files is tedious. Consequently, I'm seeking Forest's permission to edit the book into a single file with better quality of text and graphics.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of "know thine enemy"--or in the spirit of, "there's two sides to every story"--I commend Bob's book to SIS members, even in its current incomplete and fragmented form.

[donmillion]

Dear Members,

I'm pleased to announce that I have uploaded a complete copy of Bob Forrest's A Guide to Velikovsky's Sources to my "Velikovsky's Sources" web site at http://donmillion8.wixsite.com/velikovskyssources/worlds-in-collision.

Bob's standpoint for the book was Uniformitarian, and there are points at which his uniformitarian bias shows. It cannot be denied, however, that at many points he reveals how Velikovsky manipulated evidence to support his ideas in Worlds in Collision.

For example, Velikovsky referred to "pre-Columbian" Aztec records of Venus as "the star that smoked", in a context which implied a dating comparable with the Exodus events. But following up his footnote reference--much easier now, in the age of the Internet, than it was in the 1950s--brings you to an "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle"-style chronology of occurences, not in the 15th Century BC, but in the 1530's A.D. There are pre-Columbian entries in the chronology--it begins in the 12th Century AD--but only a handful of 16th century A.D. entries mention Venus or smoking stars.

As Bob himself says, his work can't be seen as having disproved Velikovsky's catastophist view of ancient history; but it can be seen as having removed a large proportion of Velikovsky's evidence. Surely this is valuable work--sorting the chaff from the wheat--and ought to be properly recognised.

I recommend the book to all members.

Don Keith Mills

[bsbray]

Don,

Thank you for providing this resource. I've downloaded it, and if I ever return to Velikovsky's work I will certainly consult it. But because of all of the things I've been reading since I first came across him, I have plenty of reasons to doubt Veikovsky's theories on their face.

I don't know if you are familiar with Graham Hancock's work collecting literature on the celestial impact which many now believe ended the last glacial maximum, while simultaneously initiating the Younger Dryas through a sort of "nuclear winter," but the a 'smoking star' sounds very much like a comet to me. And if a comet was in fact the cause of the cataclysm as Hancock and others argue (he cites some pretty formidable sources, including a recent study on micro-diamonds found throughout the northern hemisphere with many contributing authors from multiple institutions), then that sounds like a pretty good candidate for a 'smoking star' associated with disaster.