page_title: Ages in Chaos
section_title: Later works on ancient history
hierarchical_section_title: Ages in Chaos / Later works on ancient history
caption_attribution_description: English: Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt in Abu Simbel. Suomi: Ramses II:n patsas Abu Simbelissä. Italiano: Ramsete II, Abu Simbel Русский: Фараон Рамзес II. Svenska: Ramses II, Abu Simbel
context_page_description: Ages in Chaos is a book by the controversial writer Immanuel Velikovsky, first published by Doubleday in 1952, which put forward a major revision of the history of the Ancient Near East, claiming that the histories of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel are five centuries out of step. He followed this with a number of other works where he attempted to complete his reconstruction of ancient history, collectively known as the Ages in Chaos series.
  Velikovsky's work has been harshly criticised, including even by some fellow chronological revisionists.
context_section_description: A second volume was due for publication shortly after this but was postponed.  Instead it was followed in 1960 by Oedipus and Akhnaton, where he claimed that the story of the Pharaoh Akhenaten was the origin of the Greek legend of Oedipus, and that Amenophis III was Laius, and Tutankhamun was Eteocles.
  In the last two years of his life Velikovsky published a further two volumes of the series.  In Peoples of the Sea he dealt with the final period of his reconstruction, the Persian invasions of Egypt.  Manetho's 20th dynasty here becomes identified with the dynasties which ruled a newly independent Egypt in the early 4th century BCE, and Nectanebo I is a ghost double of Rameses III.  Rameses III fought invasions by the Sea Peoples, including the "Peleset", conventionally identified with the Philistines.  According to Velikovsky, the "Peleset" are actually the Persians and the other Sea Peoples are their Greek mercenaries.  The 21st dynasty then becomes a line of priest-kings who ruled in the oases simultaneously with the Persians.
  In Ramses II and His Time Velikovsky identified each of the major 19th dynasty pharaohs with a corresponding pharaoh of the 26th dynasty.  Thus, Ramses I was an alter-ego of Necho I, Seti I of Psamtik I, Ramses II of Necho II, and Merneptah of Apries.  In order to make these identifications work, Velikovsky claimed that the Hittite Empire was an invention of modern historians, and the supposedly Hittite archaeological remains in modern Turkey were actually Chaldean, i.e. Neo-Babylonian.  The Hittite kings are held to be ghost doubles of the Neo-Babylonian kings, and Rameses II's battle with the Hittites at Kadesh is identical to Necho's fight against Nebuchadrezzar II at Carchemish, Nabopolassar is Mursili II, Neriglissar is Muwatalli, Labashi-Marduk is Urhi-Teshup, and Nebuchadrezzar II is Hattusili III.
  At the time of his death he considered that completing his reconstruction of ancient history would require a further two volumes: The Assyrian Conquest and The Dark Age of Greece; these were never published in print in English, but online versions are available at the Velikovsky archive.  In the former work, Velikovsky separated the 18th and 19th dynasties, specifically arguing that over a century separated Ay and Horemheb, conventionally regarded as his successor.  Instead, he had the 22nd through 25th dynasties follow upon the earlier part of the 18th, leading down to the Assyrian invasions of the early 7th century BCE.  The "great king" who crowned Horemheb was the Assyrian king.
  The books have remained popular.  The British publisher Sidgwick & Jackson reprinted Ages in Chaos ten times between 1953 and 1977, and Paradigma reprinted it as recently as 2009.
caption: Ramses II
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