Dear Mr. Wiseman: In the Sunday, November 26th, issue of New York Times, p. 139, I found a report (rather garbled) of a rich caché discovered in Nimrud by David Oates, dating from the time of Shalmanassar III. This was good news because I expect that the synchronical scheme of Ages in Chaos will find there its validation. Although the newspapers report omits to reveal the period of Egyptian art presumably imitated in ivory and other material, I am quite confident that the finds must point to Amenhotep III and Akhnaton. Cf., please, Ages in Chaos, esp. pp. 320-3 and 327-32. I shall be very thankful to you if you could inform me where I could gather more information on the found caché and also, if you would wish, to draw the attention of the finder to the circumstances that would made superfluous the assumption of fake and imitation filling large store rooms in the headquarters of the Assyrian army. The ivories of Nimrud and Samaria will, if I am right, be of the same radiocarbon age as the ivories from the end of the 18th dynasty. The British Museum certainly hasor can procurespecimens for such comparison. It is admitted (letter of A. F. Shore of your Museum, dated August 11, 1960; Radiocarbon, volume 3, for 1961, publ. by the Amer. Journ. of Science) that the New Kingdom in Egypt and the contemporary Ancient East were not submitted to radiocarbon test; the period from the end of M. K. to the Ptolemies covers over 13 centuries in accepted chronology. Is not such test made now mandatory after the discovery of the Egyptian ivories in Nimrud? Very
sincerely,
Immanuel Velikovsky. |