1898-99.| THE OLDEST WRITTEN RECORDS OF THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS. 263 
printed in the Transactions of April, 1892, pp. 261-283, the names of the 
allied Raba and Yoba Kita will be found as set forth on monuments 
dating from the end of the fifth century A.D. onwards. They were the 
Libyans of the ancient Greek writers, and a remnant of them are the 
Lapps or Lappi-gunda of Northern Europe. Brugsch says: “To the 
west (of the Nile) dwelt the groups of tribes which bore the general 
name of Ribu or Libu, the ancestors of those Lybians, who, inhabiting 
the northern coast of Africa, extended their abodes eastward as far as 
the Canopic branch of the Nile. From the evidence of the monuments 
they belonged to a light-coloured race with blue eyes and blonde or red 
hair. It is a noteworthy phenomenon that, as early as the Fourth 
Dynasty, members of this race wandered into Egypt to display their 
dexterity as dancers, combatants and gymnasts in the public games.” 
Now the Fourth Dynasty is that of Khufu, whom Brugsch places in 
3733 B.C., while George Smith places the Babylonian Hammu-Rabi in 
1500 B.C. But Hammu-Rabi is Beth-Rapha, son of Eshton of Mehir of 
Chelub of the Emim (1 Chronicles, iv. 12) from whom, the Rephaim 
derived their name. The peculiar complexion of this Hittite stock arose 
from its intermarriage with the Zimrite, Sumerian, or Cymric Celtic 
stock. George Smith’s date is much under the mark, but not so much 
as Brugsch’s is over it, for the Rephaim were smitten by Chedorlaomer 
about 1913 B.C. The inscription seems to indicate that the Raba Kita 
cavalry were in Egypt before the end of the eighteenth century B.C., 
and that they probably quartered in the city of Abydos where the 
Hadads reigned. 
The temptation is great to continue the translation of these inscrip- 
tions, of which there are over three thousand in the Ordnance Survey of 
the Sinaitic peninsula, but for present practical purposes the seventeen 
already given may suffice. We have in them a type of phonetic writing 
in conventional characters, in existence, no doubt, before the time of 
Abraham, since some of the inscriptions are contemporary records of the 
son of Ammon, and Khufu of the Great Pyramid, and one contains the 
equally contemporary story of the death of Achudzath, who had talked 
with Isaac at Gerar. They prove, at the same time, the great antiquity 
of letters, and the historicity of the Old Testament records, while they 
cut down the extravagant chronological schemes of writers on Egyptian 
and Babylonian history, who toss about centuries as things of little 
account. Did time and space permit, it could be proved from the 
inscriptions given, and many others that, from the time of the founding 
of Zoan down to that of the second Rameses and beyond it, there were 
several kingdoms in Egypt, and that although one Pharaoh at times like 
