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Comet seen at Julius Caesar’s death (44 BCE), closely associated with
the planet Venus.
Yellow marble, from Tunisia. Courtesy Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence
Antique, Arles, France.

Velikovskian Chaff and Wheat: Venus
Mar 27, 2009

*Science progresses in a variety of ways.*

One way that science progresses is through a careful evaluation of
arguments advanced by earlier scholars in the field. For the sake of
academic honesty, this has to be done in a completely dispassionate
manner. The work of pioneers, Nobel-prize winners and other prestigious
people cannot be judged by different standards than that of the least
noticed postgraduate student.

The maverick Russian-American polymath, Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979),
deserves recognition for his pioneering statements about the role of
electromagnetic activity in space and the importance of catastrophic
events even in historically recent periods. Yet science has no place for
worship and it is incumbent on modern researchers to scrupulously
evaluate each of Velikovsky’s many claims in the light of current knowledge.

One of Velikovsky’s boldest ideas was that the planet Venus is a
relative newcomer in the solar system: during the mid-2nd millennium
BCE, it would have erupted from the interior of the planet Jupiter and
have inflicted damage to the earth’s atmosphere and biosphere with its
conspicuous cometary tail before settling in its present orbit and
shedding its appendage. How does this analysis fare when approached
today with an open but a sternly critical mind?

To begin with the negative end of the spectrum, many of the sources
Velikovsky cited in support of the Venus theory need to be axed. Of the
numerous ‘ethnic’ traditions of catastrophic import he cites, involving
darkness, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, celestial combat and an
inversion of east and west, hardly a single one bears any apparent
connection to Venus or the 2nd millennium BCE.

The entire discussion of the comet Typhon, though important in its own
right, really bears no relationship to Venus, except, perhaps, for the
very tenuous chronological association implied in the contrived
chronicles of a much later date. Moreover, Velikovsky’s observation that
“in the third millennium only four planets could have been seen, and
that in astronomical charts of this early period the planet Venus cannot
be found” has been proven plain wrong.

Though “astronomical charts” or, indeed, any form of ‘astronomy’ did not
yet exist prior to the 2nd millennium BCE, incontrovertible evidence for
Venus’ existence has been uncovered in Mesopotamian records dating from
the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BCE onwards. Sumerian texts of this
early date plainly identify the goddess Inanna as a “star” associated
with the morning and the evening. Egyptologists are agreed that the /
sb? dw?t/ or the ‘morning star’ abundantly mentioned in the Egyptian
Pyramid Texts, finalised in 2200 BCE, is the planet Venus.

While Velikovsky’s claim of a ‘recent’ Venus was reasonable and worth
testing, it has now been falsified and must be binned. If anything,
Venus is the first one of the planets to be mentioned in the
Mesopotamian literature.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of historical sources, at least three
of Velikovsky’s conclusions concerning Venus must be salvaged and can be
strengthened with much additional evidence.

First, Velikovsky’s citation of the Roman intellectual, Varro, to the
effect that Venus “changed its color, size, form, course, which never
happened before nor since,” presents a genuine puzzle to modern
historians of the solar system. The citation itself is unambiguous and
not suspicious, but it needs to be resolved exactly how and when Venus’
colour, appearance and movement were modified.

In addition, the so-called Venus Tablet of Ammi?aduqa (7th century
BCE?), which presents the oldest known set of Venus observations,
remains a mystery. Specialists are urged to investigate whether the data
given in the tablet could consistently describe not the present orbit of
Venus, but any other course the planet might have followed.

Second, Velikovsky’s argument that Venus once sported a cometary tail
stands up to close scrutiny and can be buttressed with a mass of
additional evidence. In modern terms, a plausible explanation for the
ancient testimony would be the assumption that Venus’ large
magnetosphere had acquired a visible glow in historical times, at a time
when the inner solar system was brimming with electrical activity.

Third, Velikovsky rightly drew attention to the voluminous body of
mythical traditions concerning the birth of the morning star. The
spectacular ascent to heaven of the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, in
Aztec mythology, is a textbook example for this motif. However,
Velikovsky hopelessly muddled the issue by force-fitting this mythical
event into the 15th century BCE.

In reality, the birth of the morning star represents one of the final
chapters in the global cycle of creation mythology. In the traditions of
numerous cultures, the background to the story is the transfer of
mythical beings such as gods and ancestors from their original home on
the ‘earth’ into the sky, where they live on in the form of celestial
bodies. When the protagonists of the myth were thus placed in the sky as
stars and planets, the hitherto dark sky was for the first time
illuminated and the process of creation reached completion. This episode
bears a close relationship to the collapse of the polar column and is
best evaluated on a par with the mythology of the axis mundi as a whole.
It cannot be isolated from this narrative context.

In conclusion, Velikovsky’s conviction that Venus originated no earlier
than 1500 BCE is untenable. Nevertheless, more robust than ever is the
case that Venus has experienced a recent change in its orbit, however
slight; that it featured a filamentary tail; and that its first
appearance formed part of the complex chain of events anciently known as
‘creation.'

Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs