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Princeton, October 16th, 1958            

Dear Dr. Federn:

     I summarize in short what I said by phone on Tuesday. I am going on with my Oedipus and my Ages as I have conceived them long ago. I will not use any of your ideas as you offered me: never before I have borrowed ideas from anybody, you included, and it is thoughtful of you to make this proposition in your letter, but superfluous: I have still ideas unexploited for about a score of books. I do not accept also your interpretation of history after the period that I illuminated in vol. I of Ages; and when I heard in answer to my question that you place Ramses III in the seventh century, I know that you are on a wrong track. Neither do I go to change my Oedipus essay. Should we go on collaborating, your task would be limited as in the past to advising me on bibliographical material and calling my attention to errors or omissions. This proved to have been a very satisfactory help in the past. In telephone you have agreed to go on in this way. Your own theories revising my reconstructions or offering a different identification of the heroes of the Oedipus drama among the royal persons of the Akhnaton court, or Amenhotep III palace, you will be free to publish after my books on these subjects will see light. I hope that in this manner our work will prove itself of import for my books, since certainly they can be enriched by additional material.

I expect now to return, chapter by chapter, of the part of Oedipus manuscript that you have read. Later I will send you some more chapters.

Questions that I put before you:

  1. Where is printed the paper about Hatschepsut’s inscription in which the name Solomon could be read?
  2. Where is printed Tutenkhamen’s hymn referring to the dark halls and why this can signify blindness (philologically)?
  3. What does it mean a fight of Amenhotep II or III or IV against the cult of the Sphinx?
  4. Was the Spinx the image of Hathor, or also of some other deity, like Isis?
  5. What was the ground to place Haremhab as a successor to Aye (by the historians)? Are they mentioned together in any inscription? I believe that nowhere they are mentioned together, nor did Haremhab refer to himself as to a successor of Aye.
  6. I understand that the time of the Trojan War falls in the time of the Libyan (and Ethiopian) dynasty. Homer refers to some Egyptian kings. Does any of these names suggest the names of the Libyan pharaohs?
  7. I like to collect all possible references to the catastrophes in the eighth and seventh centuries in Egyptian material, whether an inscription or in the archaeological (earthquake, fire) evidence, or later references, if only of legendary character.
  8. Finally I would like to know what you call “official record” of the drawing of a pharaoh in the sea. The story as told in the text of the naos from el-Arish should be found, so it seems to me, also in a text of an annalist or some other reference of historical or legendary character.

At the end I would like to stress that I am happy for you that you know now the pangs of giving birth to an idea or making a discovery with great horizons opening before you. How much truth will be found in your ideas the future will show and possibly yourself will revise the new thoughts as other thoughts will come to you. But I think of the years 1940-1 when actually all the ideas of which three volumes appeared and many more have not yet been printed or written down in full, have been born in a feverish succession, with every morning a new thought coming to mind, and every visit to the library bringing substantiation and calling me to a new adventure.

I enclose here a check; the little extra amount is to cover the mailing expenses, or the fare to the library.

With kind regards and warm greetings
from both of us,                                 

Im. Velikovsky


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