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The Tables of Abydos and of Memphis: Robus

THE ROBUS, (p. 126.) We are not unaware that Dr. Brugsch, and with him many other Egyptian scholars, make this people out to have been a tribe in the north of Africa. For them, Robus meant Libus or Libyans. But notwithstanding the scientific authority of these learned men, we do not think that Libyan shepherds ever wore the double garment and the long tunic which the mural paintings attribute to the Robus, along with their clear complexion, their blue eyes and light beard. Neither do we admit that any kind of a confederation of no- APPENDIX. madic tribes to the westward of the Nile ever was important enough to have abandoned from 12,000 to 13,000 corpses to the Egyptian soldiers on one field of battle to be mutilated. as the inscriptions at Medinet-Abou pretend in reference to the Robus.

For all these reasons, it remains quite evident to us, as it was for Champollion and for Wilkinson, that it will not do to rank the Robus among the Eastern peoples, and that they occupied in Asia a country very remote from Egypt, and enjoyed a climate much more temperate than that of the borders of the Nile. IX.