Customer Reviews

Synchronized Chronology: Rethinking Middle East Antiquity

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I sometimes worry that stupid titles for my reviews will be off-putting. But not so worried that I don't make 'em. This is my second try with this review, perhaps Amazon will publish it.

Like "Solving the Exodus Mystery" by Ted Stewart [097186800X], Henry could benefit from proofreading. I found some of his choices to be a little confusing at first -- such as BCC for "B.C., Conventional" and BCS "B.C., Synchronized" -- and his footnotes are too terse. There is no index.

That said, generally his writing style is readable and clear. The organization of the book is excellent, linear, and not repetitive.

In brief, the Synchronized Chronology is a one-volume synopsis of Immanuel Velikovsky's "Ages In Chaos" series. That was published in three volumes (plus two unpublished works) over 26 years -- "Ages In Chaos", "Ramses II and His Time", and "Peoples of the Sea" -- all five based on his "Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History" published in 1945. Henry has produced a useful introduction and summary of the entire corpus, and doesn't try to hide this. On p 220 he even refers to it as "the Synchronized Chronology offered by Velikovsky." Henry is respectful of David Rohl's and Peter James' alternate chronologies, each of which emerged from the failure of the Glasgow Chronology, which began as an attempt to revise V's reconstruction. But Henry ultimately rejects Rohl and James.

I noticed some phrases and quotes direct from Velikovsky, such as "extravagant of labor" in reference to the clay Hittite strata at Gordion (p 186; found as a quote in "Ramses II and His Time", p 155) as well as a reference to MacQueen -- "Lydian 'seems to be Hittite'" -- with a footnote that can be sorted out using the book's bibliography. Apparently Henry attributes it to MacQueen's "Babylon" which appears to be incorrect (perhaps nonexistent). In this case, Henry gives the correct page number for MacQueen's first edition (59, in the note on 163) but the incorrect title (or perhaps one omitted title) in the bibliography.

In "Ramses II and His Time" Velikovsky cites this very same point from MacQueen's "The Hittites and Their Contemporaries in Asia Minor", p 59. This citation applies to the first edition. The allegedly expanded edition of MacQueen normally available to me has doesn't say this (p 59 being about something else), and refers elsewhere to "Arzawan" as MacQueen attempts to distance himself from the controversy about Hittite references to the Homeric Greeks, and possibly from Velikovsky's citation.

Henry's extensive use of Velikovsky is not plagiaristic or unscholarly. In this book, Henry introduced me to the idea (from "Cambridge Ancient History") that the Amazons were actually Hittites, whereas Velikovsky suspected they were Cimmerians. The identification of the Amazons isn't pertinent to the overall work in any case. It appears that Henry became convinced of V's accuracy by checking his footnotes.

Henry makes the point that "a characteristic pottery decoration" found in the former territory of the Philistines "looks so much like East Greek 'bird bowls'... They are colonial Greek and have nothing to do with the true Philistines of the 11th century." As he doesn't seem to be aware of the unpublished volumes of "Ages In Chaos" (which are available electronically), this would be an example of his thorough understanding of the framework, rather than some kind of reflux of what went before.

Henry follows Velikovsky in rejecting the Sothic Cycle. In his "Summary" chapter he explains its modern origin and notes that there's no evidence it was ever used in ancient Egypt. Henry doesn't use any archaeoastronomy anywhere in this book (that I noticed), which is different than Rohl, who makes questionable use of a supposed eclipse record from Ugarit, and Stewart who follows Rohl on that. The recent discovery that the Earth's rate of rotation has changed was made possible by an eclipse record from Babylon, and means that any ancient observations need to be used cautiously, or not at all.

He mentions in passing (p 242) an internet message he'd received regarding supposed incompatibility of the Kassite chronology with the Synchronized Chronology. I've seen plenty of unsubstantiated (indeed, unsubstantiatable) claims of that kind over the years, in print and on the web. Henry wisely saw through whatever the objection was, and showed his integrity by mentioning it. Earlier (p 156) he points out the fallacious foundation of Ken Kitchen's alleged dating for Shoshenq I. Kitchen's criticisms of alternate chronologies (y'know, those which don't agree with his) are quite energetic. Peter James' defenses against Kitchen's assaults are often entertaining. For a time, David Rohl had a sort of rude reference to Kitchen on the title headers of his website (which went down a while back). Even as he disagrees, Henry treats all three with respect. Throughout the book he deals with the ideas, not personalities.

This book makes an excellent introduction to Velikovsky's "Ages In Chaos" series (including the two unpublished volumes), and makes a good companion to Robert Compton's "Guide to Velikovsky". Readers of Rohl's "Test of Time" a.k.a. "Pharaohs and Kings" or Peter James et al's "Centuries of Darkness" should enjoy this book.

This work presents a grand new vision of Egyptian and Mediterranean ancient history. The author's restructuring of the Manetho king list (as well as disregarding an number of assumptions, like using the Sothic Era as a bench mark) allows native and foreign pharaohs to take their archeologically substantiated places in history. I was taken at how easily the histories of all the local nations fall together in this work. The Assyrian material was a little difficult to digest for an amateur enthusiast like myself, however the rest of the work is powerful. I highly recommend this book to anyone who studies or enjoys ancient history.

Roger Henry confirms David Rohl's contention that the conventional Egyptian Chronology is in error. He extends Rohl's area of study to the entire middle east, and especially Greece. In the past scholars have attempted to conform their work to conventional Egyptian chronology which has required a 500 year "dark age" over the entire middle east. Eliminating this "dark age" permits middle east history to flow smoothly without obvious "disconects". For instance the evolution of alphabetic writing is now smooth and flowing. Henry does not agree with Rohl on all details, but future scholars can resolve these discrepancies.

An interesting read and challenge to the views held by orthodox ancient history scholars. The author has identified several dubious claims made by early egyptologists which made their way uncontested into the backbone of the traditionally accepted bronze and iron age chronologies of the Middle East, Anatolia & Egypt. The alternative reconstruction offered by the author, while not thoroughly convincing, should at least inspire scholars to carry on further research and seriously explore the implications of this work.
The book tells a good solid story, but it needs an index and more substance.