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Enjoy. Almond Joy. Mounds. See, all archaeology leads me back to candy.

Hammurabi and the Revised Chronology, Immanuel Velikovsky

King Hammurabi is the best known of the early monarchs of ancient times... belonged to the First BabyIonian Dynasty which came to an end, under circumstances shrouded in mystery, some three or four generations after Hammurabi. For the next several centuries, the land was in the domain of a people known as the Kassites. They left few examples of art and hardly any literary works -- theirs was an age comparable to and contemporaneous with that of the Hyksos in Egypt, and various surmises were made as to the identity of the two peoples. A cartouche of the Hyksos king Khyan was even found in Babylonia and another in Anatolia, a possible indication of the extent of the power and influence wielded by the Hyksos. Until a few decades ago, the reign of Hammurabi was dated to around the year 2100 before the present era...

At Platanos on Crete, a seal of the Hammurabi type was discovered in a tomb together with Middle Minoan pottery of a kind associated at other sites with objects of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, more exactly, of its earlier part. This is regarded as proof that these two dynasties were contemporaneous... however... At Mari on the central Euphrates, among other rich material, a cuneiform tablet was found which established that Hammurabi of Babylonia and King Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria were contemporaries. An oath was sworn by the life of these two kings in the tenth year of Hammurabi, The finds at Mari "proved conclusively that Hammurabi came to the throne in Babylonia after the accession of Shamshi-Adad I in Assyria"... The Khorsabad list ends in the tenth year of Assur-Nerari V, which is computed to have been -745... the first year of Shamshi-Adad is calculated to have been -1726 and his last year -1694... it reduced the time of Hammurabi from the twenty-first century to the beginning of the seventeenth century... "a puzzling chronological discrepancy", which could only be resolved by making Hammurabi later than Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty...

If Hammurabi reigned at the time allotted to him by the finds at Mari and Khorsabad -- but according to the finds at Platanos was a contemporary of the Egyptian kings of the early Twelfth Dynasty -- then that dynasty must have started at a time when, according to the accepted chronology, it had already come to its end. In conventionally-written history, by -1680 not only the Twelfth Dynasty, but also the Thirteenth, or the last of the Middle Kingdom, had expired.

Joseph and Potiphar, Immanuel Velikovsky

The story of Joseph is one of the best known in the Bible... in order to find out whether the personality of Joseph or the patron of the early stage of his career, Potiphar, is referred to in the historical documents, we have to look into those of the Middle Kingdom. The task appears simple. According to the Book of Genesis Potiphar was "an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard." In the register of the private names to the Ancient Records of Egypt by James Breasted, we find the name Ptahwer... at the service of the Pharaoh Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. According to an inscription of Ptahwer at Sarbut el-Khadem in Sinai dated in the forty-fifth year of Amenemhet III, his office was that of "master of the double cabinet, chief of the treasury."

...The inscription records the successful accomplishment of some peaceful expedition. Since there is only one Ptahwer in the historical documents, and since he lived in the time when we expect to find him, we are probably not wrong in identifying the biblical Potiphar with the historical Ptahwer. This being the conclusion concerning Potiphar, we are curious to find whether any mention of Joseph is found in historical documents, too. the fact that from the great and glorious age of the Middle Kingdom only a very few historical inscriptions are extant. Since a great famine took place in the days of Joseph, it is, of course, important to trace such a famine in the age of which we speak. In the days of Amenemhet III there occurred in Egypt a famine enduring nine long years...

Thus it seems that the Pharaoh in whose days was the seven years' famine was the successor of the Pharaoh in whose days began the rise of Joseph's career (if Yatu is Joseph). Potiphar, who lived under Amenemhet III, probably lived also under his successor. The inscription which deals with Ptahwer mentions a man whose name is transliterated by Breasted as Y-t-w. Among the monuments of Amenemhet III's reign is one of the Storekeeper... The inscription that mentions Ptahwer refers to his activity in the mines of the Sinai peninsula. In this respect it is of interest to find that the Jewish traditions connect Joseph with the area of the Sinai Peninsula saying that he kept a large quantity of treasuries near Baal Zaphon, the scene of the Passage of the Sea.