August 18, 1942

Dear Professor Pfeiffer,

taking into consideration that the publication of my work in the ‘Semitic Series’ would after all demand the help of some foundation, I came to the conclusion not to request the acceptance of my Mns. into this Seires. I think that my book should appear without help of foundations, and might be arranged with a Unviersity Press or general publisher on a regular commercial basis.

I visited, with approval of Professor Wolfson, the Harvard University Press, and I was told by the secretary that my Mns might be of interst for the publication at expences of the Press, and he asked me to leave the Mns. for reading. As I would like to give it to the Publisher with an explaining preface, I did not leave it. — I showed the secretary a letter of Prof. Horace M. Kallen of New York (known to Wolfson) who accepted without reservation my reconstruction of the history.

I shall give my Mns, acc. to your suggestion, to one of the larger Publishers, preferably a University Press (Harvard Press). In the last case, the Press will surely ask your opinion. Anyway I like to hope that you will show also henceforth the same interest in my work; I think also that you would like to reject or to accept my reconstruction, and therefore will again give attention to the Mns when provided with a preface, and a few missing chapters.

Would you regard as desirable some tables of comparison to be placed at the end of the work? I adjoin here one: Jeremiah 46 - Kadesh poem. About 18 tables like this might serve as addenda to the book.

Whe I asked you visiting you on August 6th: did any difficulty arise out fo the reconstruction of ancient history?, you put before me the question: Do not the objects of art bring testimony against the reconstruction?

I would like to give a few more details in answer to your question on the attached page.

Please, kindly handle also in the next future the material as trusted to you and Prof. Wolfson only.

A few remarks about the testimony of art, applied to the reconstruction of the history.

Time of Thutmose III. A chapter in the Mns is devoted to comparison fo the objects of sacral art brought by T.III from Palestine with the objects of Salomo’s Temple. The non-sacral booty too is of a higher perfection and design than a pre-Israelite Canaan should be credited with. ‘We learn from the booty carried into Egypt—chariots inlaid with silver, gold-plated chariots, etc.—of the astounding civilization of syria at that period (T III).’
(S. Mercer, Extra-Biblical sources..., p. 10)

Time of Ikhnaton and El-Amarna. The ivory of Samaria has Hebrew signs of the character of Mesa stele. They are recognized as having originated in the time of Ahab (L. Sukenik in the book of Crowfoot). Here quotations from Crowfoot, ‘Early Ivories from Samaria,’ 1938.
p. 9 ‘The subjects of these plaques are all Egyptian’
p.18: ‘The formed of winged figures on the ivories...are derived from Egyptian models. Tutelary goddesses of this type stand at the four corners of the shrine of Tutankhamun’.
again p.18: ‘Three winged sphinxes with human heads... It is an Egyptian features—see for ex. the human-headed lion in the chariot from the tomb of Tutankhamun—
p. 34: ‘The same elements recur again and again ... the type goes back to the Egyptian art of the 18th Dynasty’

Time of Ramses II and the war with the ‘Hittites’. Here a few quotations from O. Puchstein, Pseudohethitische Kunst, 1890. In 1912, he wrote ‘Boghaskoi, die Bauwerke’, and at that time the archive of Boghaskoi was already unearthed. I shall look in that work, and probably I shall find that under the weight of established coevality of Boghaskoi-archive and the time of Ramses II, Puchstein did not support any more his view that the ‘Hittite art’ was a product of the seventh century.

‘Aus derartigen Abweichungen dürfen wire den Schluss ziehen, dass es sich in Boghazkoi um einheimische Götter handelt, deren Bilder erst in 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr. unter dem Einfluss assyrischer Vorstellungen so wie wir es sehen ausgeprägt worden sind. Sie lassen sisch tatsächlich mit den Göttern in Eubereinstimmung bringen, die nach griechisch-römishen Quellen in späterer Zein in Kappadokien verehrt wurden.’

Another quotation from the same ‘Vortrag

of Puchstein:

‘Weisen alle jene Bildwerke deutliche Kennzeichen einer viel späteren Entstehungszeit aug; es ist daher ausgeschlossen, dass sie Schöpfungen der ägyptischen Cheta sein könnten’.

‘Jedenfalls gibt es weder hier noch in Nordsyrien ein Zeugnis dafür, dass die sogennanet hethitische Plastik schon in dem 10. Jhrhundert existierte. Diese Thatsache scheint mir mit den Ansichten von Sayce unverinbar zu sein. Für ihn liegt die grösste Machtentfaltung des Hetitischen Reiches und damit aud die Blüte der hethitischen Kunst fast um ein halbes Jahrtausend vor der Zeit, in der die erhaltenen altkommagenishcen un kleinasiatischen Denkmäler entstanden sind’

‘Die Kunst ist... als ein merkwürdiges Zeichen der ehemals hochentwickelten Kultur der kleinasiatischen und kommagenischen Bevölkerung in der Zein fon 1000-600 zu betrachten’. (p. 13, 14, 21, 22)

The author of these lines did not suspect that the art of Boghaskoi still was coeval with Chta of Ramses II, but that Ramses II himself lived in the seventh century.

Time of Ramses III.
The bas-relief: Ramses III sets out upon his campaign against the Libyans.

‘The king is shown, in the attitude of some hero on a Greek vase painting, int he act of mounting his chariot’.
(Medinet Habue, 1924-28. The epigraphic survey of the Great Temple of Medinet Habut, by H. Nelson, Explanation to the picture of the p. 17.)

The bas-relief: Heads of Shardana warriors.

‘Two heads of young Shardana warriors from relief at Medinet Habu: c. 1190 B:C. The European, in fact Greek type is very noticeable: the face of (f) closely resembles that of a well-known head of a young man of the VIth-Vth cent. in the Acropolis Museum at Athens’ (The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. of plates I, by C.T. Seltman, p. 152).

The head-apparel of Peleset is identical with head apparel of the Persians of Persepolis. This we discussed already.

Also the ships used by the ‘Peleset’ as pictured in Medinet Habu (especially the peculiar form of the rudder) can be compared with the ships and their rudders on coins which according to the reconstruction were struck in the years of this campaign. Compare the pictures in ‘Medinet Habu’ of Nelson and Hölscher with Plate XIX.2 also XIX.5 in G. Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Phoenicia, 1910. These coins were stamped in Sidon, c. 384-370 and 370-358, resp.