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Ages in Chaos #1
Ages in Chaos: A reconstruction of ancient history from the Exodus to King Akhnaton
Ages in Chaos is a book by the controversial writer Immanuel Velikovsky, first published by Doubleday in 1952, which put forward a major revision of the history of the Ancient Near East. Velikovsky had put forward his ideas briefly in Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History in 1945, but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject.
A second volume was due for publication shortly after this but was postponed. Instead it was followed eight years later by Oedipus and Akhnaton. In the last two years of his life Velikovsky published a further two works on ancient history: Peoples of the Sea and Rameses II and His Time. At the time of his death he considered that completing his reconstruction of ancient history would require a further two volumes: The Assyrian Conquest and The Dark Age of Greece; these were never published in English, but the manuscripts have long been available online at the Velikovsky archive. [1]
Velikovsky claimed in Ages in Chaos that the histories of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel are five centuries out of step. His starting point was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. Velikovsky made heavy use in this and later works on ancient history of the concept of "ghost doubles": historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were conventionally considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events.
Velikovsky's work has been harshly criticised, including by fellow chronological revisionists such as Peter James. In 1984 fringe science expert Henry H. Bauer wrote Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a Public Controversy, which Time described as "the definitive treatise debunking Immanuel Velikovsky".
A second volume was due for publication shortly after this but was postponed. Instead it was followed eight years later by Oedipus and Akhnaton. In the last two years of his life Velikovsky published a further two works on ancient history: Peoples of the Sea and Rameses II and His Time. At the time of his death he considered that completing his reconstruction of ancient history would require a further two volumes: The Assyrian Conquest and The Dark Age of Greece; these were never published in English, but the manuscripts have long been available online at the Velikovsky archive. [1]
Velikovsky claimed in Ages in Chaos that the histories of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel are five centuries out of step. His starting point was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. Velikovsky made heavy use in this and later works on ancient history of the concept of "ghost doubles": historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were conventionally considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events.
Velikovsky's work has been harshly criticised, including by fellow chronological revisionists such as Peter James. In 1984 fringe science expert Henry H. Bauer wrote Beyond Velikovsky: The History of a Public Controversy, which Time described as "the definitive treatise debunking Immanuel Velikovsky".
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
45 people are currently reading
446 people want to read
About the author
Immanuel Velikovsky
83 books129 followersImmanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. Earlier, he played a role in the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and was a respected psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Bible) to argue that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. In positioning Velikovsky among catastrophists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, and Johann Gottlieb Radlof[2], the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier noted ". . . Velikovsky is not so much the first of the new catastrophists . . . ; he is the last in a line of traditional catastrophists going back to mediaeval times and probably earlier." Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1100 – 750 BCE) and reconciling biblical history with mainstream archeology and Egyptian chronology.
In general, Velikovsky's theories have been vigorously rejected or ignored by the academic community. Nonetheless, his books often sold well and gained an enthusiastic support in lay circles, often fuelled by claims of unfair treatment for Velikovsky by orthodox academia. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair".
His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Bible) to argue that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. In positioning Velikovsky among catastrophists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, and Johann Gottlieb Radlof[2], the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier noted ". . . Velikovsky is not so much the first of the new catastrophists . . . ; he is the last in a line of traditional catastrophists going back to mediaeval times and probably earlier." Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in celestial mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology for ancient Egypt, Greece, Israel and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aimed at explaining the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1100 – 750 BCE) and reconciling biblical history with mainstream archeology and Egyptian chronology.
In general, Velikovsky's theories have been vigorously rejected or ignored by the academic community. Nonetheless, his books often sold well and gained an enthusiastic support in lay circles, often fuelled by claims of unfair treatment for Velikovsky by orthodox academia. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair".
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 3, 2012
Historians haven't been able to find an account of the Exodus in Egyptian records. That's because they were looking in the wrong time period. Currently, the majority guess places it in the time of Ramses II, a strong, stable society unlikely to allow the escape of a horde of slaves.
There is an existing description of the Plagues, however, by an Egyptian eyewitness. The Ipuwer Papyrus describes the same plagues as the Bible does. Ipuwer wrote his account at the end of the Middle Kingdom, a time which included the death of their pharaoh by drowning, followed by their conquest by the Hyksos and the Egyptian Dark Ages. The difference in time between this point and the currently popular guess is about six centuries. By the time Egypt has surviving written records again, it is possible to lay those records alongside the Palestinian-Syrian histories, shift them six centuries, and match up the wars, diplomacy, and cultural styles.
No one has been able to do more than guess at who was the King of Punt visited by Pharaoh Hatshepsut. No one has been able to more than guess at who was the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon. That's because they seemed to be six centuries apart. The records of these two visits show the same events and the same gifts exchanged.
The el-Amarna letters, a cache of diplomatic correspondence found in Ahknaton's abandoned capitol, describe events in Syria-Palestine that no one had been able to match up. Shift them six centuries, and they match the events described in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, the Mesha Stele of Moab, and Assyrian records.
Funerary styles and styles of jewelry disappear for six centuries and then reappear in another place. Styles of written records do the same. Based on those written record styles, philologists were forced to theorize an entire people whose existence couldn't be found by archaeologists.
The culprit in all this is Egyptian star dating. Velikovsky, a genius on the level of Einstein – in fact, the two were friends – added an appendix to his final book of historical revision, exposing the guesswork on which Egyptian star dating was based. With all those lovely star maps on the walls they found, Egyptologists just had to use them, so they took a stab at an unidentifiable proper name and stated firmly that this guessed identification had to be the time that matched the maps. The resulting wild stretches of explanation become unnecessary when star dating is tossed out and the normal comparisons of culture and historical events are used.
There is an existing description of the Plagues, however, by an Egyptian eyewitness. The Ipuwer Papyrus describes the same plagues as the Bible does. Ipuwer wrote his account at the end of the Middle Kingdom, a time which included the death of their pharaoh by drowning, followed by their conquest by the Hyksos and the Egyptian Dark Ages. The difference in time between this point and the currently popular guess is about six centuries. By the time Egypt has surviving written records again, it is possible to lay those records alongside the Palestinian-Syrian histories, shift them six centuries, and match up the wars, diplomacy, and cultural styles.
No one has been able to do more than guess at who was the King of Punt visited by Pharaoh Hatshepsut. No one has been able to more than guess at who was the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon. That's because they seemed to be six centuries apart. The records of these two visits show the same events and the same gifts exchanged.
The el-Amarna letters, a cache of diplomatic correspondence found in Ahknaton's abandoned capitol, describe events in Syria-Palestine that no one had been able to match up. Shift them six centuries, and they match the events described in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, the Mesha Stele of Moab, and Assyrian records.
Funerary styles and styles of jewelry disappear for six centuries and then reappear in another place. Styles of written records do the same. Based on those written record styles, philologists were forced to theorize an entire people whose existence couldn't be found by archaeologists.
The culprit in all this is Egyptian star dating. Velikovsky, a genius on the level of Einstein – in fact, the two were friends – added an appendix to his final book of historical revision, exposing the guesswork on which Egyptian star dating was based. With all those lovely star maps on the walls they found, Egyptologists just had to use them, so they took a stab at an unidentifiable proper name and stated firmly that this guessed identification had to be the time that matched the maps. The resulting wild stretches of explanation become unnecessary when star dating is tossed out and the normal comparisons of culture and historical events are used.
January 20, 2011
For years scholars have said that the Old Testament is myth because they cannot find any corroborating evidence for the calamities of Moses' Egypt in the Egyptian sources. As a mater of fact they can't find contemporary corroboration for very much of the Old Testament. Now comes Velikovsky who says that the traditional chronology of the OT is off by 600 years, with this adjustment everything fits nicely. I loved this book because it adds context to the scriptures from contemporary sources, making the OT much more understandable and enjoyable. Questions about what the OT world was like, who was the Queen of Sheba, what did the plagues of Moses do to the Egyptian Empire are just a few of the subjects covered.
I immediately picked up the sequel, Worlds in Collision, which explains how the Planet Venus burst into our galaxy at the time of Moses and caused the Nile to turn to blood. Veikovsky is as comfortable with Astronomy as he is with Egyptology. He is one of the most brilliant writers I have read. These books are controversial because all of the traditional historians are protecting their old tortured research which never made sense anyway. I hold back the coveted fifth star from my rating only because this is very deep material and not everyone will enjoy it to the degree that I did.
I immediately picked up the sequel, Worlds in Collision, which explains how the Planet Venus burst into our galaxy at the time of Moses and caused the Nile to turn to blood. Veikovsky is as comfortable with Astronomy as he is with Egyptology. He is one of the most brilliant writers I have read. These books are controversial because all of the traditional historians are protecting their old tortured research which never made sense anyway. I hold back the coveted fifth star from my rating only because this is very deep material and not everyone will enjoy it to the degree that I did.
November 15, 2009
I have settle on 4 stars for this book as well as Worlds in Collision based on enjoyment value. This book recosiders time lines for ancient history in the near east (Ancient Egypt and Israel). The idea is that accepted time lines are out of step and the events recorded did happen but earlier.
This book like Velikovaky's first work received less than enthusiastic reviews form the acidemic community. Still it's a good and enjoyable read whatever you may think of it.
This book like Velikovaky's first work received less than enthusiastic reviews form the acidemic community. Still it's a good and enjoyable read whatever you may think of it.
November 3, 2016
I read Immanuel Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos on and off for a month or two. It's heavy going, and I wasn't encouraged to persevere by Velikovsky's reputation as a fringe theorist among fringe theorists. Eventually I said 'sod it' and decided to flip through the bits on Akhenaten (which genuinely does interest me) and call it a day. It's probably enough to say that this book really isn't worth your time. The basic argument is that somehow (I didn't pick up how) the accepted chronology of ancient Egypt includes a non-existent 600 year period. This is why the histories of Egypt and of the Jewish people don't match up. I had a hard time following how Velikovsky was making this point, although that may reflect the stop-start way I read it. He certainly seemed to follow the approach of most fringe theorists (Erich von Daniken and Gavin Menzies are also offenders) of declaring that because a piece of evidence might conceivably demonstrate such-and-such, it proves such-and-such. It's not helped by Velikovsky's nondescript prose style which does nothing to hold the reader's interest. If it were half the length and tightly written it would be a diverting argument, but as it stands it's really a book for experts in ancient near-Eastern history, and experts in ancient near-Eastern history have uniformly said it's drivel.
June 7, 2017
Velikovsky shows us that 1 + 1 makes 2. Not 1 or 3, as present and past historians will make us believe. Over half a century now, I have read and reread Velikovsky's books. And quite a few other specimens on different subjects. Besides that, there is the site WWW.VARCHIVE.ORG for anyone who might be interested. Velikovsky may be sailing on free winds on details, but his overall view is correct. In my not so humble opinion, free-thinkers like him are the people that this planet needs. On subjects like history, economy, fysics and filosofy I would advise anyone to read Immanuel Velikovsky, Silvio Gesell, Mark McCutcheon and Baruch de Spinoza respectively. And, please, do away with the frozen school-, and religion-originated cobwebs in your brain.
December 26, 2014
I would highly recommend this book to anyone with a background in Ancient Near Eastern history who enjoys reading an opposing viewpoint. While few will be convinced by Velikovsky's highly controversial theories, that shouldn't prevent one from finding this book ingenious, thought-provoking, and thus a great deal of fun!
June 28, 2017
Reconstructing Egyptian and Biblical history
13 April 2014
When I first heard of Immanuel Velikovsky it was suggested that he was a nutter, however a cursory glance across the Goodreads community actually suggest that there is some acceptance of his theories (and I would be one of them, if we restrict ourselves to this book). I wasn't really sure why people referred to him as a nutter until I discovered that another of his books, Worlds in Collision involved a theory that Venus was originally a moon of Jupiter that was ejected from its orbit and as it passed by Earth there was a worldwide catastrophe. Now, I have not read that book so I cannot tell what his research is like, or what evidence that he relies upon to support that hypothesis, but I must admit that the evidence that he uses to support his arguments that the Biblical and the Egyptian timelines that we currently use are out of sync by a period of about 600 years is quite sound.
The problem with ancient history is that our reconstruction of it requires an immense amount of guess work, and the further back in history that we go, the foggier it becomes. This is because the amount of literature that has come down to us from that period becomes much less. Personally I feel that our acceptance of the current timelines of Egyptian history are not based on any really solid foundation, and in many cases we are using assumption and simply forcing pieces of evidence together the way one would force pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together if they do not fit. As with the jigsaw puzzle, the resulting picture is an inconclusive jumble of rubbish that in the end does not make sense - which also ends up creating further excuses to reject the Bible as a legitimate historical text.
Velikovsky is not the only scholar who dares to question the accepted history with regards to the Biblical and the Egyptian history, as David Rohl also goes down that path with his book, though I will not necessarily discuss this here as I also intend to write a commentary on that book. However I feel that the problem that Velikovsky faced is not so much the research that formed the foundations of this book, but rather his other book, World's in Collision, which I suspect that many in the scientific and scholarly community found hard to swallow. Yet when one goes into the world of accepted scholarship one tends to encounter a group of people who are so set in their ways that any major change to any accepted theory is met with huge amounts of resistance. I find it funny that the Christian (or in fact any) religion is attacked, suggesting that they are backward and resistant to change, when we also find this stubborness within the scientific community as well.
I also discuss these theories in my blog post on Exodus: Gods and Kings
13 April 2014
When I first heard of Immanuel Velikovsky it was suggested that he was a nutter, however a cursory glance across the Goodreads community actually suggest that there is some acceptance of his theories (and I would be one of them, if we restrict ourselves to this book). I wasn't really sure why people referred to him as a nutter until I discovered that another of his books, Worlds in Collision involved a theory that Venus was originally a moon of Jupiter that was ejected from its orbit and as it passed by Earth there was a worldwide catastrophe. Now, I have not read that book so I cannot tell what his research is like, or what evidence that he relies upon to support that hypothesis, but I must admit that the evidence that he uses to support his arguments that the Biblical and the Egyptian timelines that we currently use are out of sync by a period of about 600 years is quite sound.
The problem with ancient history is that our reconstruction of it requires an immense amount of guess work, and the further back in history that we go, the foggier it becomes. This is because the amount of literature that has come down to us from that period becomes much less. Personally I feel that our acceptance of the current timelines of Egyptian history are not based on any really solid foundation, and in many cases we are using assumption and simply forcing pieces of evidence together the way one would force pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together if they do not fit. As with the jigsaw puzzle, the resulting picture is an inconclusive jumble of rubbish that in the end does not make sense - which also ends up creating further excuses to reject the Bible as a legitimate historical text.
Velikovsky is not the only scholar who dares to question the accepted history with regards to the Biblical and the Egyptian history, as David Rohl also goes down that path with his book, though I will not necessarily discuss this here as I also intend to write a commentary on that book. However I feel that the problem that Velikovsky faced is not so much the research that formed the foundations of this book, but rather his other book, World's in Collision, which I suspect that many in the scientific and scholarly community found hard to swallow. Yet when one goes into the world of accepted scholarship one tends to encounter a group of people who are so set in their ways that any major change to any accepted theory is met with huge amounts of resistance. I find it funny that the Christian (or in fact any) religion is attacked, suggesting that they are backward and resistant to change, when we also find this stubborness within the scientific community as well.
I also discuss these theories in my blog post on Exodus: Gods and Kings
January 13, 2013
Historical verification of the ten plagues in Egypt, the Solomon's temple, and other documented evidence that confirms biblical chronoloy, showing for instance that a 600-year period in our standard books of ancient history actually never existed.
October 11, 2013
Say what you will about the man's theories, they are extremely controversial, he backs them up with more outside references than anything else I've ever seen.
June 24, 2010
The foundation is sound. Will your mind be opened or will you force it to stay closed?
July 18, 2011
Makes a compelling case that we need to realign biblical narrative history with Egyptian and other archaeological findings
February 23, 2012
Despite the crazy idea of the book, immanuel velikovsky is genius it's the most sagacious book i have ever read ......if you are interested in history , donot hesitate to read it.
May 4, 2012
Contemporary thinking often re-evaluates or challenges accepted time frames in human history. Velikovsky is fascinating. Love his writings!
January 17, 2014
Fascinating research into alternative timelines for ancient history.
February 24, 2014
thought provoking
August 24, 2015
Changed the game in geology!
Read
August 11, 2016How our history is based on big mistakes
May 18, 2020
What is for me most questionable about Ages In Chaos is not its suggested reconstruction of ancient history—which after all is a structure mostly assembled in the past 200 years from fragmentary and / or later sources—but rather his willingness to accept at face value early biblical accounts (from the Torah) which seem frankly unbelievable in many cases. On the other hand his weaving together of material from the “books of the kings” with the Amarna letters and Deir El-Bahri carvings seem much more likely to be possible.
November 30, 2018
Amazing work for its time (published in 1952). Worthy of reading for the depth of artifacts that he compiles. His conclusions are rather out-dated, but even so, most other revisionist theorists owe him a debt for being the first to realize the problematic nature of the 19th century archaeological beliefs about Egypt that were prevalent (and still are in many cases) at the time.
October 29, 2021
Absolutely unbelievable the way Velikovsky rights the wrongs of our beliefs about the timeline of ancient history. He is able to tie in the events of the Bible with the histories all the ancient peoples, with credibility, the use of steles, ancient writings, etc.
October 4, 2021
Outstanding history lesson
A different view of mankind's history. History being righted. Would read all of his books. affordable. are affordable and hopefully still available. .
A different view of mankind's history. History being righted. Would read all of his books. affordable. are affordable and hopefully still available. .
June 4, 2023
Velikovsky! I always wanted to read a book by him. He gets described by Asimov as the most ridiculous of all pseudo scientists. How bad is he really? I was curious. Now it happened that the hotel I was staying in had three of his books. Not the collision unfortunately. I had no idea that he also had tried to rewrite history.
It begins with his discovery that the Hyksos were identical with the Amalekites. Why not? But then he finds he has a discrepancy of 600 years to explain. The Exodus did not happen during the new Kingdom but the middle one. To tell the truth I do not care one way or the other.
The writing is clear. Everything in itself sounds quite rational even convincing. There are some interesting things. His etymology of pontifex. But all in all it is not enough. In this case I am happy to stay with the majority of scientists.
It begins with his discovery that the Hyksos were identical with the Amalekites. Why not? But then he finds he has a discrepancy of 600 years to explain. The Exodus did not happen during the new Kingdom but the middle one. To tell the truth I do not care one way or the other.
The writing is clear. Everything in itself sounds quite rational even convincing. There are some interesting things. His etymology of pontifex. But all in all it is not enough. In this case I am happy to stay with the majority of scientists.
June 22, 2009
naturalist view of ancient history
February 17, 2022
Awesome and novel ideas about some of the great mysteries in history. Book is a bit dry as Velikovsky goes into quite a bit of detail to make his case on some points.
January 13, 2024
Love Velikovsky. Great alternative histories acurate to historical evidence.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews