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Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable?

A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes

— K. D. Sethna


cover
Price: Rs 100

Soft Cover
Pages: 104
Dimensions (in cms): 14x22
   
Publisher: The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A.





About Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable?

The historian Immanuel Velikovsky has radically challenged the accepted times and sequences of Egyptian and Near-Eastern history in his work "Ages of Chaos". The four fundamental themes of the revised chronology are the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the invasion of the Hyksos or Amu, the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, and her successor Pharaoh Thutmose. In this book K. D. Sethna closely questions Velikovsky's "valiant attempt on many fronts to bring down the antiquity of Near-Eastern history by almost six hundred years".


REVIEW



In 1987 author-poet K.D. Sethna wrote a critical appraisal on Immanuel Velikovsky's radical attempt to shorten the history of antiquity by 600 years, and which was only first published last year. By the straightforwardness of his appraisal, without an introduction on Velikovsky (1895-1979), it is evident that the author assumes — not unjustified — that the average reader in 1987 was familiar with Velikovsky, but time has since reduced his fame to a mere shadow. Hence, a few notes to enlighten the shadow: as a physician and psychoanalyst, Velikovsky's cataclysmic and historical theories not only sparked an extreme controversy, but proved to be a source of inspiration for numerous science-fiction movies, future generation science-fiction writers and modern scientists entranced by a future collision of the Earth with a meteorite or comet. Although the fact that Velikovsky was a psychoanalyst is usually obscured by controversy, it is by his own admission the initiating source for his historical research. After writing an essay on Freud's Moses and Monotheism — Velikovsky studied psychoanalysis under Wilhelm Stekel, a co-worker of Freud — he "came upon the idea that traditions, legends and memories of genetic (historical) origin can be treated in the same way in which we treat in psychoanalysis the early memories of an individual." He called it, "an analytic experiment on Mankind [..] an approach to the reconstruction of history." (cit. John MacGregor) So it is perhaps well to bear in mind that — although un-addressed by Sethna — for Velikovsky revising the chronology of the four fundamental themes of antiquity served a twofold purpose: to validate his cataclysmic theory and the theory of collective amnesia — an offspring of Freud's inherited racial memory!

          The four fundamental themes addressed by K. D. Sethna in his book are: (i) the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, (ii) the invasion of the Hyksos or Amu, (iii) the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, and (iv) her successor Pharaoh Thutmose III.

          Sethna has set sail upon a voyage seemingly void of any poetry or spirituality, yet has accepted the serious and commendable burden of examining the records of antiquity, to be able to respond in a meticulous and objective way. Early on Sethna already sees no other option but to comment — an appraisal that will circumnavigate each theme — "we may mark an inconsistency by which Velikovsky tries to turn everything into grist for his mill."

          While closely examining Velikovsky's philology, Sethna not only discovers that it is defective but "slanted in his own favour," this in order to square the chronology of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt with the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos; and the latter to be identical with the Amalekites; Queen Hatshepsut to be identical with the Queen of Sheba; the land Punt with Israel, and Thutmose III with the Old Testament's Pharaoh Shishak.

          Time and time again Sethna is not only confronted with a lack of coherency — which elucidates how a straightforward tale becomes "completely illogical [..] and a mess of scriptural sense" — the moment he resorts to the actual documents, he realizes that Velikovsky has taken the "selections out of context, and turned them to his own purpose"; he mistakes "psychological presence to be physical"; he assigns words of an Egyptian god to a human being and deliberately omits sentences! But a reader familiar with Velikovsky will hardly be surprised — reconstructing history by psychoanalysis validates Velikovsky's singular method!

          Only half way Sethna is already forced to conclude — a bleak but objective judgement that ultimately applies to each theme of the chronology, and a conclusion with which we may end this appraisal — that "Velikovsky's many-sided attempt to change the historical chronology [..] radically, [..] fails irretrievably on a substantial number of counts."

          Summarizing, we may assume that the book was especially written for people interested in the ideas of Velikovsky. But the absence of an analysis of these ideas in the light of the Integral Yoga will make it perhaps less interesting for the average sadhak. Finally, it is somehow tragic to observe how Velikovsky failed to sense the spiritual and poetic in every sacred scripture, myth or papyrus he studied — only in apocalyptic verses around the world did he recognize the synthesis of his cataclysmic ideas, ideas that inevitably made him a fervent believer of pralaya.

— Robbert Stephan Schrover

R. S. Schrover is an accomplished artist and author, whose interest in the works of Sri Aurobindo first began in 1979. He currently resides in the Netherlands.

June 2003