Author: Ted Holden The argument against Velikovsky derived from the Babylonian Venus table

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Author: Ted Holden
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The argument against Velikovsky derived from the Babylonian Venus
tablets is part of the so-called "Merrit FAQ" (Worlds in Confusion...).
It turns out it is again Sagan and the rest, along with t.o regulars who
parrot them, who are confused.


If Sagan is correct and our system is billions of years old,
and Venus has been in its present place for billions of years, then
ancient astronomical charts and observations MUST show Venus in its
present orbit.  Indeed, scientists claim that they DO;  they used
some of this evidence at the AAAS meeting in 1974 which produced
"Scientists Confront Velikovsky", claiming that the well-known
"Venus Tablets" of the Babylonian king Ammizaduga showed Venus
entirely in its present orbit in the middle of the second
millennium BC i.e. during the period when, according to Velikovsky,
it would have perforce been unstable.

     But then, a number of real scholars began to take a harder
look at the Venus Tablets.  The following is from an article by
Lynn E. Rose from the Winter 73 issue (#III) of the Pensee Journal,
the old Student Academic Freedom Forum.  This is a long article
which I could not quote in its entirety.  The article treated
mostly with the manner in which the tablets involved have been
translated in the past.

The key paragraph of the article read as follows:


     "Unfortunately, nearly all treatments of groups one and three
     on K. 160, and of the genuinely observational material on the
     other Venus tablets that supplement K. 160, have been based on
     what I call the "astronomer's dogma".  The "astronomer's
     dogma" is the uniformatarian attitude that the solar system
     has for untold years been just as it is now, and that Venus
     and Earth in particular have always been on the same orbits
     they are on now, except for certain very minor perturbations
     that are for most purposes entirely negligible.  This means
     that we can look at the present motions of Earth and Venus and
     then judge on that basis how accurate the ancient observations
     were.  If the ancient observations do not conform to what
     would be expected from the present state of affairs, then the
     ancient records were defective, and were either fictions or
     errors, but could not have been accurate observations of what
     was going on in the sky; accordingly, it is up to us to
     rewrite those ancient records so that they WILL conform to
     what we see in the sky today."

     Rose notes the nature of Venus as it appears to us first as
evening star, disappears for a few days of inferior conjunction,
reappears as morning star West of the sun for some months and then
disappears during superior conjunction.  He notes that one of the
Babylonian tablet fragments (K. 160 from the library of
Ashurbanipal, now in the British Museum) appears to be a record of
these comings and goings:


  "Let me give some typical passages from the tablet:

 
     "In the month of Sivan, on the twenty fifth day, Ninsianna
     [that is, Venus] disappeared in the east; she remained absent
     from the sky for two months, six days; in the month Ulul on
     the 24'th day, Ninsianna appeared in the West - the heart of
     the land is happy. In the month Nisan on the 27'th day,
     Ninsianna disappeared in the West; she remained absent from
     the sky for seven days; in the month Ayar on the third day,
     Ninsianna appeared in the east - hostilities occur in the
     land, the harvest of the land is successful.


     "The first invisibility mentioned in these lines involves a
     disappearance in the east, an invisibility of two months, six
     days, and a reappearance in the west.  This seems to be a
     superior conjunction. The second invisibility involves a
     disappearance in the west, an invisibility of seven days, and
     a reappearance in the east.  This seems to be an inferior
     conjunction.  Most of the data in groups one and three on the 
     tablet are of this form.  But the lengths and spacings of
     these invisibilities have a certain irregularity about them,
     and they do not conform to the manner in which Venus moves at
     present.

     "The data given in the second group on the tablet do have
     regularity - even too much regularity to be believable, - but
     they do not conform to the present state of affairs
     either.....


     These kinds of things are well-known to scholars who have
actually studied the tablets.  Rose mentions numerous translators,
Boseanquet & Sayce, Schiaperelli, Langdon and Fotheringham...  He
notes [as an example], that:

     "The next major study of the Venus tablets was by Langdon and 
     Fotheringham in 1928.  Their book is important for the student
     of the tablets in that they bring together a great deal of
     material that is not available in any one other place; 
     unfortunately, however, their book is dominated and severely
     handicapped by the astronomer's dogma, and they find it
     necessary to scoff at much of what the tablets say was
     actually seen, simply because such things are not seen today."


He cites also the case of Van der Waerden:

     "Further attempts to deal with the tablets along
     uniformitarian lines were made by Ungnad in 1940 and van der
     Waerden in 1946.  Van der Waerden plays the uniformitarian
     game much better than some of his predecessors, but the main
     reason I want to mention him here is that he is the clearest
     example I have found of an unfortunate way of talking and
     thinking that is characteristic of uniformitarians.  He says
     at one point, after either rejecting or radically rewriting
     about three out of four of the recorded observations, that: 
     "All I have done is to remove inner contradictions from the
     text."


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     Charles Ginenthal (Sagan and Velikovsky) has a great deal to
say about the Ammizaduga tablets, pp 281 - 284, quoting Livio C.
Stecchini's "The Velikovsky Affair":

     "The Venus tablets of Ammizaduga is the most striking document
     of early Babylonian astronomy.  These tablets, of which we
     possess several copies of different origin, report the dates
     of the helical rising and setting of the planet Venus during
     a period of 21 years...

     "Since the first effort at explanation of Archibald Henry
     Sayce in 1874, these figures have challenged the wit of a
     score of experts of astronomy and cuneiform philology. 
     (Father Franz Xavier) Kugler (1862 - 1929), a recognized major
     authority on Babylonian and biblical astronomy, chronology and
     mythology, opposed the contention of those who claim that
     these documents must be dismissed as nonsense."  [because they
     do not conform to present orbital patterns for Venus]


     Indian and Central American records also show Venus moving on
an orbit other than its present one.  Ginenthal cites Evan
Hadingham ("Early Man and the Cosmos):

     "The Venus pages [of the Dresden Codex] bear little
     resemblance to a modern astronomical table."

     Ginenthal goes on to say:

     "Since Hadingham, like the astronomers who dealt with the
     Babylonian tables cannot conceive nor accept this evidence
     that Venus' orbit was different in the past, an analysis is
     created to dispose of this information.  This is so in spite
     of Hadingham's asserting the following regarding Mayan
     astronomy:

     'The precision of the observations documented in the few
     surviving hieroglyphic books is astonishing.  For instance,
     one book contains a scheme for the correction of Venus
     observations [present variety as opposed to the distant past] 
     which ensures an accuracy of approximately two hours in five 
     hundred years...  How were they able to score such phenomenal 
     success in their observations?'"

     Again, Ginenthal:

     "Astronomers, in attempting to deal with this evidence
     respecting Venus, either ignore the data or invent systems to 
     explain it away so that it will conform to their
     uniformitarian view.  By employing a sledge hammer, they smash
     the tablets of Ammizaduga to bits and then reassemble the
     fragments to prove that Venus' orbit has never changed. 
     Although Velikovsky does not explain the precise cause for the
     circularization of Venus' orbit except to invoke
     electromagnetic forces, the plain evidence of the ancient
     astronomers shows that Venus' orbit was different, and
     therefore, more elliptical than its present, almost circular
     orbit and thus, there must exist a force that circularized it.


This is a bona-fide example of circular reasoning.  The
tablets are changed in translation to conform with what everybody
KNOWS to be reality i.e. uniformitarianism.  Then these same
mis-translated tablets are used by the typical yuppie "scientist"
to refute Velikovsky.