Résumé

In this work the reader has traveled to six ancient cities to study some of the buildings and artifacts that modern excavators have unearthed. These six places were referred to as stumbling blocks for the revised chronology. We were told that they could not come down by centuries in time, thus the revised chronology, a nice enough theory, was disproved by archaeological facts. What did we see?

At Mycenae, Tiryns, Troy, Pylos, Ugarit and Alalakh, we found numerous 500-700-year problems for the excavators and for those trying to trace the development of artistic and architectural types. We have examined palaces, temples, tombs, pots, pins, carved slabs, bowls, figurines, etc. We have come across stratigraphical sections that do not conform to the expected and accepted sequence of events. Everywhere we went we found unanswered questions, perplexing problems, and always these involved 500-700 years.

In this article only five places were visited, and these but briefly. The number of 500-700-year problems studied by this writer is quite large, and the more he reads, the greater the number swells. No ad hoc theory has yet been advanced which adequately explains any one of the cases, let alone all of them. Only a revision of ancient history, a shortening of Egyptian chronology, works for all the cases mentioned in this paper, and, in fact, for all others which this writer has researched.

If there were no problems, or only a couple of minor points not yet fully understood, it would be simple, indeed necessary, to accept the standard chronology. When, however, major “exceptions to the rule” appear in great numbers, and these form a consistent pattern,¹ it becomes very difficult to brush them aside and have faith in “the rule.” One must make a choice. Should archaeological evidence be forced to fit the Procrustean bed of historical theory, or should a new scheme be put forth to explain all the facts?

A few problems from a handful of sites do not prove that the revision is valid. Volumes could and need to be written to enumerate all the problems faced by the old scheme, which act as confirmations for the new. One article need not convince the skeptical reader that Velikovsky is right, but anyone reading this might start wondering: Just how sound is the accepted chronology?

References

1. As merely one case of consistency, let us reconsider the “12th-century” LH IIIC period. At Pylos we found 7th-century pottery mixed with the 12th. We have seen that stylistically LH IIIC figural pottery most resembles 7th-century ware. Stratigraphically 7th-century sherds were mixed with LH IIIC inside the Lion Gate of Mycenae. At Troy two LH IIIC structures were built over a 9th or 8th-century sherd, while 7th-century pottery was found stratified directly above, mixed with, and under LH IIIC. Many more cases exist (e.g., the perplexing mixture of LH IIIC with early 7th-century pottery in a stratum of Scoglio del Tonno near Taranto in South Italy). Why don’t stylistic and stratigraphical considerations cause the redating of this period? As was pointed out above, this period is connected with Pharaoh Ramses II. Utilizing other evidence, Velikovsky has redated this king from the 13th to the late 7th century BC.