First some background from “Ancient Near Eastern Chronology Revised” by Gunnar Heinsohn from 1993 published in “The Velikovskian”, Vol. I, No. 1 (references removed for readability), also partially available in “Pillars of the Past I”, p. 278:
If you read the complete article in “The Velikovsikan” be aware that Heinsohn does no longer (since 2005/2006) uphold the identity of the Old Assyrians with the Old Akkadians. The Old Assyrians now immediately follow the Old Akkadians in some places and are now part of the second prehellenistic strata group.I will elaborate on the fatal flaw of the archeologies from Egypt to the Indus Valley by focusing on the Mitanni, which are conventionally dated to the -15th/-14th century. As might be known, the Mitanni are quite a recent acquaintance to history: “The kingdom of Mitanni was completely forgotten for millennia until discoveries in the [19th] century revealed its name and existence.”
Today, however, the Mitanni provide the most important archeological synchronisms for the ancient Near East and Egypt. Mitanni strata were not only found in Mesopotamia proper, for example, at Tell Brak, Tell Munbaqa, Tell Hamadiyah, Nuzi and Chagar Bazar, but also in Syro-Phoenicia (at Alalakh). In addition, strata of the Mitanni or Late Bronze IB/ IIA period (-l5th/-l4th century) were found in numerous sites of Israel/Palestine (at Hazor, Beth-Shean, Megiddo, Gezer, Tell Batash and Shechem). And last, but not least, correspondence partners of the Mitanni are well known in Egypt's New Kingdom (Amenophis III and Akhenaton). Because of its highly peculiar pottery style (Nuzi Ware) and a wealth of written tablets listing its rulers also known from the Amarna correspondence, there is little danger that archeologists do not recognize a stratum of the Mitanni nation once they see it. Thus, no other nation of antiquity is better suited for archeological cross-references than the Mitanni.
The Mitanni got their -15th/-l4th century date via the Amarna correspondence, which was dated by the pseudo-astronomical scheme of Sothic cycles. This scheme never fared well with astronomers, but it took up to 1985 until mainstream Egyptology abandoned it as well, with no less an authority than the editor of the Lexikon der Ägyptologie taking the lead: “Work on chronology has clearly arrived at a crisis. The reason for this is in part the adoption of dogmatic [Sothic] scientific facts without testing their applicability to Egyptian material and the reliability of this material.”
After abandoning Sothic chronology in 1985, archeologists were thrown back on stratigraphy-oriented dating techniques. Most severely affected, of course, were the sites in Israel which were dated via the Sothic-dated Amarna correspondence. This correspondence not only puts Thutmose III as a forerunner of kings Amenophis III and IV but also places the Hyksos before him. The chronology of all the sites in Biblical lands mentioned above are tied to the Hyksos (or Middle Bronze II) Sothic date of the -17th/ -16th century as well as to Thutmose III's (or Late Bronze IA) -15th century. Thus, at least since 1985, because the Sothic dating is incorrect, it is known that all these sites are dated by unscholarly means.
For this reason, I first tried a dating scheme based on archeological artifacts, focusing on the Hyksos. For long, they were known for many parallels with the Old Akkadians of Mesopotamia, which were dated more than 700 years earlier. The similarity of pottery shapes between Mesopotamian Early Bronze (Old Akkadians) and Western Middle Bronze (Hyksos) was already carefully shown 20 years ago. Kaplan's findings were confirmed by S. Ayoub and by D. L. Stein. The identity of Hyksos and Old Akkadian cylinder seals was shown more than 50 years ago. It became clear that the Old Akkadian motifs were combined with the iconography of the newly acquired province of Egypt. The similarity of Hyksos and Old Akkadian seals was confirmed 15 years ago by Dominique Collon. She showed that the bull-men seals in Alalakh's Hyksos stratum VII, which immediately precedes the Mitanni strata, look Old Akkadian, whereas the seal in stratum XI, labeled Old Akkadian by Leonard Woolley, in actual fact belongs to the Early Dynastic period if not the Uruk period (-3100 onwards) as does the architecture of the same stratum. The identity of Hyksos' vaulted burials (in Tell el-Daba) with Early Old Akkadian (or Late Early Dynastic IIIB) burials in the Diyala was shown nearly ten years ago. The similarity between Western Middle Bronze or Hyksos triple gates and Mesopotamian Early Bronze triple gates was shown 15 years ago. The identity of Hyksos or Middle Bronze scimitars in the West and Old Akkadian or Early Bronze scimitars in Mesopotamia is at least known for more than a quarter of a century. The identity of Hyksos Akkadian with Old Akkadian Akkadian was shown 30 years ago. This finding was further confirmed when it was understood that the Old Hittites of the -16th century (conventionally), contemporaries of the Hyksos whatever their absolute dates, also used Old Akkadian dates (of -2400) and not Old Babylonian ones (-2000 to -1700) as was expected.
After Hyksos and Old Akkadians shared scripts, scimitars, triple gates, pottery shapes, vaulted burials, temple plans, etc., it became unavoidable to postulate their stratigraphic contemporaneity. To establish the identity of stratigraphical horizons for Old Akkadians ... and Hyksos, we have to return to the chronologically all-important Mitanni: The -17th/-16th century strata of the Hyksos in Egypt (Tell el-Daba), Israel (Megiddo) and Syro-Phoenicia (Alalakh) sit directly underneath the strata of the Mitanni (or New Kingdom) period of the -15th/-14th century. These Hyksos strata are labeled Middle Bronze. In conventional Mesopotamian archeology, of course, there are no Hyksos strata. But Mesopotamia, like Egypt, Israel and Syro-Phoenicia, has -15th/-14th century strata for the Mitanni Late Bronze I period (in Brak, Chagar Bazar, Hamadiyah, Munbaqa, Nuzi and Rimah). This Late Bronze I period, of course, is the same as the Sothic-dated New Kingdom period whose rulers corresponded with Mitanni rulers. Immediately preceding these Mitanni strata, archeologists found Old Akkadian strata of the -24th century onwards, or – as in Rimah – they found Old Assyrian strata (-1950 to -1750). These strata are labeled Early Bronze or (in Rimah) Early Middle Bronze. The excavators believe that all these sites suffered a settlement gap of 700 to 800 years or (in Rimah) of some 250 years until the Mitanni resettled the ruins.
I say believe because, up to 1988, no archaeologist ever put the hiatus [settlement gap] to the test. None of the excavation reports listed any hard evidence for a hiatus of 750 or 250 years. No dramatic discontinuity of pottery styles, [the shape of] tools ..., or building ground plans was reported. The same silence covered the fact that aeolic (windblown) layers usually required for a gap of so many centuries were missing. All the archaeologists did was ... apply knowledge of textbook chronology: A tablet [in the ground] inscribed in Old Akkadian automatically brought the stratum in which it was found into the -24th century. Since these strata were found underneath Mitanni strata, whose Sothic Amarna textbook date was the -15th century, none of the archaeologists failed to mention the settlement gap between the Akkadian and the immediately following Mitanni stratum. Thus they proved that they had attended their history classes. From an archaeological viewpoint, however, they had proven nothing.
In 1988 the first test of Heinsohn's theory happened at Tell Munbaqa in Syria (Pillars of the Past I, p. 284-285):
Here is the translated letter in question (Pillars of the Past I, p. 284-285):Heinsohn reported on these findings at the Sixth International Congress of Egyptology in 1993:
“When, in February 1988, the author [Heinsohn] first published ... his stratigraphy-based equation of Hyksos and Old Akkadians, the German archaeologist Wilfried Pape excavating at Tell Munbaqa/Syria was the first to take up the challenge [that claim there was no 750-year settlement gap there].... W. Pape devoted the first special sounding to this ‘gap’ but could not confirm the hiatus between ca. 2250 and ca. 1475 [B.C.]. On the contrary, he found clearcut architectural continuity. This observation was written to the author [Heinsohn] on November 22, 1988. In 1989, three special soundings were brought down to test Munbaqa’s Akkad-Mitanni gap. A geologist specializing in sediments and aeolic layers [U. Rösner] confirmed the work of the archaeologist. There is no hiatus between the Old-Akkadian and Mitanni/Hurrian strata at Munbaqa … Moreover, Old-Akkadian cylinder seals remained in use for business contracts in the Mitanni/Hurrian stratum ..., another indication of the uninterrupted continuity between both periods, i.e. for the very
absence of a hiatus of some 750 years.”
Details on Rösner's work are provided by Ginenthal on pages 279-282 in Pillars of the Past I:Translation of letter to Prof. Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn, University of
Bremen, from Wilfried Pape, Architect, Berlin, dated November 22, 1988:
Dear Mr. Heinsohn,
With reference to your book Die Sumerer gab es nicht (The Sumerians Never Existed) I would like to inform you of the following. I am an architect and have been working for nearly fifteen years in a “semi"-professional capacity in the field of archeology. I have been to Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, and have been working in Syria for the last five years. I consider myself a reasonable judge both of archaeologists and their motives, and of stratigraphic materials. In the last five years I have been able to acquire rather precise stratigraphic knowledge of Tell Munbaqa on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. For two years I have made deliberate efforts to find evidence against your theses. According to official chronology, there should be about 700 years between the Early Bronze and Late Bronze strata that were found on our Tell. Based on my investigations and observations I have come to the conclusion that it is IMPOSSIBLE for a gap in occupation of +/- 700 years to have existed on Munbaqa. It is not the purpose of my letter to go into detail but just to give you an indication that may contribute to the debate on chronology which I consider to be useful. Unfortunately the archaeologists involved in this particular excavation have only limited ability for carrying on such a discussion. You probably know the reasons better than I do. They have not expressed any interest in reading your book, they prefer to maintain a hiatus of 700 years on Munbaqa, even without sufficient arguments in favor.
Yours sincerely,
(signed) W. Pape
Ginenthal concludes (page 282):U. Rösner's geological paper on the 1989 dig at Tell Munbaqa was fully published, in English in 1995 in QUARTÄR [Band 45/46, p. 207], titled “Sedimentological Evidence to Archaeological Problems on Tall Munbaqa, Northsyria.”
What Rosner found was that “[d]ue to a relatively fast burying by broken down wall remainders the aeolian sediment character was preserved. In 1989, the year of the investigation, the excavators [archaeologists] discussed the occupation gap between the Early [Akkadian] and the Late Bronze Age [Mitanni], HOWEVER, NO SEDIMENTOLOGICAL INDICATIONS FOR A MIDDLE BRONZE OCCUPATION GAP WERE DISCOVERED.” [capitalization and bold added]
In her conclusion, she makes it quite clear that not only do the geological sediments prove that there was no settlement gap, but she claims the archaeological evidence also supports this conclusion:
Rösner makes it quite clear that further archaeological work was carried out by Machule’s team in the early l990’s that corroborates her geological sediment research. This Machule published in the same year as Rösner -1995 - in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie.“Detailed study of the sediments from Tall Munbaqa ALONG WITH EVALUATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS yielded evidence to events during the occupation as well as to chronological problems …”
“The accurate investigation of a cultural level, which should theoretically represent a Middle Bronze Age occupation gap, could not prove an aeolian component. But to be certain it would have to be expected at an actual interruption of the occupation of about 600 years. This statement is sustained by the results of the sediment analysis above the oldest Late Bronze Age road. Therefore, including the first archaeological results, it is more likely that a continuous occupation has existed. LATER ON, THESE SEDIMENTOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION'S WERE CONFIRMED BY NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS ON TELL MUNBAQA MADE DURING THE EXCAVATIONS OF THE EARLY [NINETEEN] NINETIES (see D. Machule 1995, [QUARTÄR, Band 45/46, p. 218]).” [capitalization added]
In that article we are told that New Bronze Age material lies directly on top of Old Bronze Age material. No reference to a settlement gap is ever mentioned as if Rösner’s geological evidence did not exist. Instead, we are told that a Middle Bronze Age temple was uncovered in one area of the tell. How is the Dating on this temple arrived at? It is made by pottery dating, etc. But that dating is self-referential (a circular argument). Rösner showed that there was no settlement gap between the Old Akkadians/First Babylonians and the Mitanni, proving that these two peoples ruled consecutively, one directly after the other. To interpret a temple in the strata as being of the Middle Bronze Age does not invalidate the geological evidence. It is an attempt at overcoming geological fact with historical interpretation. Since there is no settlement layer between the assumed Old Bronze Age Old Akkadians and the New Bronze Age Mitanni, as Rösner proved, there is no time intervening between the Old and New Bronze Ages. The entire concept that the historians and archaeologists are using regarding Middle and New Bronze Ages in Mesopotamia cannot be valid. If that was the case, then it would require that a 700 to 800 year gap exists, and it simply does not.
[...]
Above and beyond all this, Rösner reports: “The excavation in 'Sondage östlicher Steinbau 2' ... ‘also yielded some scattered Middle Bronze age ceramics, which on the other hand could as well be defined by some archeologists as ending (still in use) Early Bronze Age ceramic or as early (already in use) Late Bronze Age ceramic’ (D. Machule, written, translated communication).” That is, Machule admits that the identification of the Late Bronze Age ceramics which were found could not be solid proof of a Middle Bronze Age occupation because such ceramics were “(still in use) [during the] Early Bronze Age ... or ... (already in use) [during the] Late Bronze Age”.
Turning to such evidence in order to dismiss Heinsohn’s prediction that there is not a settlement gap between these peoples is not historically plausible. Machule is turning to pottery dating which was organized on the lines Petrie established. Since that dating method is fundamentally unsound in its
present form, pottery dating at Tell Munbaqa is enormously problematic.
The geological evidence proves that the so-called Mitanni ruled directly after the so-called Old Akkadians. That is the heart of the matter and is the problem for conventional chronology.
One cannot move the Mitanni back in time by 700 to 800 years without completely overturning established Mesopotamian chronology; nor can one move the Old Akkadians forward in time by the same number of years without doing the same. The facts of geological research are a death knell to conventional chronology, and those researchers committed to it are incapable of dealing with that fact.
