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Q12: Is there any truth in the rumour that scholars have fabricated or falsified evidence in order to disprove CoD?
https://www.centuries.co.uk/faq.htm#q12

[snip] The worst case, evidently one of sheer fabrication, appeared in a review of CoD by James Mellaart (1991/2), a famous archaeologist and, until recently, a lecturer at University College London. While he made some favourable comments, he claimed to have access to an unpublished cuneiform text which gives a list of synchronisms between Lydia (a kingdom in western Turkey in classical times) and Assyria, running back 21 generations from the 7th century BC through to the Late Bronze Age. According to Mellaart it confirmed the conventional chronology and made “short shrift” of our model. Apparently some scholars were taken in and rejoiced at our defeat. Alan Millard of Liverpool University, a noted expert on Near Eastern languages, praised Mellaart’s review as “appropriately negative” (1994, 27).

Quite incredibly, Mellaart has never produced any evidence that such a unique text exists, outside his imagination. Despite his best efforts, Professor David Lewis, an eminent epigraphist at Oxford, could find no trace of such a tablet. Other scholars, such as cuneiform expert Professor David Hawkins of the School of Oriental and African Studies, are confident that the text is simply not real. With evident embarassment, the editor of the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, which had carried Mellaart’s review, published a note, alongside letters from ourselves (James & Kokkinos 1992/3) and Lewis, stating that Mellaart’s “alleged documents... should not be cited as valid source material.” (Gibson 1992/3, 82). And there this extraordinary episode ended. Mellaart does not appear to have mentioned his tablet since. [/snip]

https://www.centuries.co.uk/reply4.htm

Letter, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 12 (1992/3), p. 80.

Dear Sir,

Regarding James Mellaart’s review of Centuries of Darkness in BAIAS 11 (1991-2), while it contains several constructive comments, we note that the key evidence which he adduces against our case comes from two unpublished texts: an Arzawan document referred to as the ‘Beyköy Text’, and a letter of Assurbanipal to ‘Ardu, king of Arzawa’. The information claimed to be recorded in them we find little short of fantastic. For example, that Assurbanipal should have written a letter to the king of Lydia (=Arzawa!), listing the latter’s 21 ancestors with regnal years and detailed synchronisms with Assyria, seems far-fetched, to say the least.

Your reviewer states that translations of these texts, by A. Goetze and E. I. Gordon respectively, are “in press”, but fails to specify where. Since Goetze and Gordon died in the early 1970s, both these documents must have awaited publication for a remarkably long time. Further, we find it extraordinary that no cuneiform expert we have consulted has heard of such discoveries. It is with regret that we have to point out that crucial evidence of this kind must always be accessible by some means before it is used as a basis for passing judgement on someone’s work. We hope that no ramifications will arise from Mellaart’s “vital material for chronology” - such uncorroborated citations merely muddy the waters of scholarship.

PETER JAMES AND NIKOS KOKKINOS