f over one thousand yed s records of Egyptian history have
been compared with the records of the Hebrews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and
finally with
those of the Pranci
ng Greeks, with a re
ulting correspondence which
denotes synchronism.
For a spacef over one thousand yed s records of Egyptian history have
been compared with the records of the Hebrews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and
finally with those of the Prancing Greeks, with a reulting correspondence which
denotes synchronism.
In Volume I of Ages in Chaos it was shown in great detail why
Akhnaton of the Eighteenth Dynasty must be placed in the latter part of
the ninthcentury. If
Akhnaton flourished lin
-840 and not in -1380, the
ceramics from Mycenae found in the palace of Akhnaton are younger by five
or six hundred years than they are presumed to be, and the Late Mycenaean
period would accordingly move forward by about half a thousand years on
the scale of time.
I wished to have radiocarbon tests that would clarify the issue. I did not need the test in order to strengthen my view on the age of the Eighteenth and the following dynasties, for I considered the evidence that I had presented in Ages in Chaos to be strong enough to carry the weight of the revised scheme. But in view of the novelty of my contentions I realized that a confirmation from a physical method would be of great import for the acceptance of my work.
The efforts that I spent in order to achieve radiocarbon examination of any suitable object from the New Kingdom in Egypt were many and persistent. Correspondence between the British Museum and myself did not produce the desired results, though I was politely answered by the departments of Egyptian, of Assyro-Babylonian and of Greek antiquities. The Museum has a radiocarbon laboratory of its own, and therefore the task could be simplified; but the Museum claimed other preferential tasks. At one time I secured the help of the late Professor Robert H. Pfeiffer, Director of the Semitic Museum of Harvard University in an effort to obtain some organic relics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but to no avail. Even Albert Einstein’s plea, relayed to the Museum by his secretary upon his death, to have my work of reconstruction of ancient history tested by radiocarbon, went unheeded.
The usual argument explaining the refusal of cooperation was the assertion that the Egyptian chronology of the New Kingdom is known to such exactness that no carbon tests are needed; moreover the tests were claimed to have a margin of error far greater than the incertitude of the historians as to New Kingdom dates.
Thus wrote a member of the faculty of the University of California in Los Angeles in response to an inquiry and a plea of a reader of mine.(2) Similarly wrote an assistant curator of the British Museum:Since the chronology of ancient Egypt is quite closely fixed by the astronomical evidence from the Eleventh Dynasty onward, in part, to the nearest year, radiocarbon, with its substantial margin of error, could hardly add anything to our knowledge of the chronology of the New Kingdom. . . .
Another reader of mine wrote to the Director of the Metropolitan Museum and read in the reply he received:There has been so far as I am aware no radiocarbon dating of objects from the New Kingdom. I do not think that such a test, given the necessary measure of tolerance which must be allowed, is likely at the moment to give a chronology for the New Kingdom which is any more certain than a chronology deduced by historical methods.
It almost looked as if there were a concerted opposition to the submission of any object dating from the New Kingdom to a radiocarbon test. I have even employed the argument, for instance at my coming to see Dr. William Hayes, the late Director of the Egyptological Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Let the test be made in order to disprove me. My book Ages in Chaos was read by hundreds of thousands of readers and found many followers—why not show me wrong if this is so easy? But such arguments were not effective either.In the light of the very complete knowledge we have on this tightly dated and closely recorded period, it would serve no useful purpose to have this done. . . .
During the ten years after the publication of Libby’s Radiocarbon Dating in 1952, which was also the year Ages in Chaos tThe Love Testimony of Radiocarbon Dating Discover Naked Cheapguarantee Public Naked Forcedf s m Prancing Dating iThe Love Testimony of Radiocarbon Dating Discover Naked Cheapguarantee Public Naked Forcedn s Public Prancing Naked