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March 2, 1964

Dear Dr. Ralph:

I need many words to express to you my thanks; not to be effusive, I shall say only that the test now performed and reported by you is to me the first achievement in many efforts that span more than a decade, the goal of which was to have the New and Late Kingdoms of Egypt checked by RC.

The answer I usually received was an assertion that the error-margin of the method exceeds by far any uncertainty in historical datings and that therefore the tests are not needed for the period I was concerned with. Now it is clear that the conventional dates for this period, too, are by centuries out of conformity with carbon dates whereas the uncertainty of the method is counted only in decades.

The date you have obtained for the wood from the tomb of Tutenkhamen (either 1030 or 1120, or a figure in between) lies half-way between that of the conventional chronology (-1343) and its revision (ca. -840) as offered in Ages in Chaos. But you have not incalculated the age of lumber at the time it was used. Dr. Iskander Hanna said to Mrs. Fuhr that he thought the lumber’s age could be 30 years.

Would you kindly tell me: 1) whether the specimens of the two different trees (Cedrus Libani and Zizyphus spina Christi) were tested separately or summarily, and if separately, what was the carbon age of each of the fragments,

2) whether generally the wood from the inner and the outer rings and from the trunk and the branches show the same carbon age and if not, whether the differences reflect the age of formation (rings)’?

  Very cordially,
  Immanuel Velikovsky