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Velikovsky is generally regarded as a crackpot, I think.

And Reagan is "generally regarded" as a moron. So what?

When Albert Einstein died the book by his bed was Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision. He was rereading it. This is the book that talks about the comet that became the planet Venus, so it would seem that you are suggesting that Einstein would spend his time with "scientific nonsense," and then return to it.

If you take a look at the correspondence between Einstein and Velikovsky I think you will find (I haven't looked at it in a long time.) that Einstein initially rejected Worlds in Collision and suggested to Velikovsky that he should have published Ages in Chaos first.

Ages in Chaos is where Velikovsky suggests that the Hittites never existed.

Will Durant was not an expert on this period of history either.

I'm sure you have great credentials, but I wonder why you resort to an ad hominem here. Do you have reason to object to the sentence I quoted from Durant's history. If so, bring it forward. If not, maybe you would be wiser to lurk when these matters are being discussed.

ML/NJ

I did not intend my comment that Will Durant was not an expert on this area to be an attack, but it's just that no one can be an expert on everything and when it comes to a topic like the ancient Hittites Durant was relying on information he had garnered from others.

The ancient Near East is a difficult field of history because of the complicated writing systems (cuneiform, hieroglyphics, etc.) and the many different languages involved (several languages besides what we call Hittite were being spoken and written in the area of the Hittite Empire alone). I once heard an Israeli scholar who was a specialist in the ancient Near East say that he didn't think there was anyone who had learned all of the ancient languages of the area which are preserved in writing. I would prefer to rely on those scholars who can read the Hittite texts.

The fall of the Hittite Empire is usually put about 1200 B.C., about the same time as the attacks on Egypt by the so-called Sea Peoples and the destruction of the "Palace of Nestor" in Pylos, Greece.

One of the older standard books on the Hittites is by O. R. Gurney, The Hittites (Pelican paperback); there is a newer book by Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford University Press). The Blue Guide to Turkey: The Aegean and Anatolian Coasts has a historical section with 10 or 12 pages devoted to the Hittites.