A Tamil trader who travelled to Egypt around 2,000 years ago carved his name inside the rock-cut tombs of Egyptian pharaohs in the Valley of Kings, and the markings have now been identified by Swiss scholar Ingo Strauch. The Tamil Brahmi inscriptions, found in eight places across five of the six tombs dated to 1600 BCE, offer fresh proof that ancient trade between India and the West was not one-sided but involved long journeys and extended stays.
The name, “Cikai Korran,” remained unnoticed for centuries until Strauch and Charlotte Schmid from École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or the French School of Asian Studies, deciphered it and presented their findings at a Tamil epigraphy conference in Chennai on Wednesday.
“We knew that traders from Tamil Nadu visited Egypt through other inscriptions found in the ancient port cities. But this shows that they did not only come with ships and return, but they also stayed here for a longer period of time. They took time even to visit sites that are far away,” Ingo Strauch from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland told TOI.
Charlotte helped him decode the inscriptions and noticed an interesting detail. “The name ‘Korran’ is linked with king or leader. The name was also written in one place as ‘Cikai Korran - vara kanta’, which means he came and saw. It seems to imitate the formula of Greek inscriptions found at the Valley of Kings. It shows that this person might have read the Greek inscriptions and was inspired by them,” Charlotte told TOI.
In one tomb, the phrase “Kopan varata kantan” appears, meaning “Kopan came and saw.” Another tomb carries the name Catan, a common south Indian name seen in several early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. Some of these names were also found during excavations at Berenike, a Red Sea port.
Traders from across India
Strauch and Schmid uncovered 30 inscriptions at the Valley of Kings. Out of these, 20 are in Tamil. The remaining inscriptions belong to Sanskrit, Prakrit and Gandhari-Kharoshi. This mix points to traders not only from Tamil regions but also from north-western and western India, including Gujarat and Maharashtra, visiting Egypt during the Roman period.
One Sanskrit text mentions that an envoy of a Kshaharata king “came here.” The Kshaharata dynasty ruled parts of western India in the 1st century CE, making the inscription historically significant.
“There are more than 2,000 graffiti marks and inscriptions in the Greek language found at the tombs in the Valley of Kings. They came from all parts of the Mediterranean world. But none of them came as far as Indian traders,” Charlotte said.
Earlier scholar Jules Baillet had recorded these Tamil Brahmi inscriptions as graffiti from the Asiatic region, but their meaning was not fully understood at the time.
“Through the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny, we know that the Romans came to India for trade. But it was not clear whether it was one-way or two-way trade. This new evidence gives proof of two-way trade that happened during the Roman period,” senior epigraphist Y Subbarayalu told TOI.
Archaeologist V Selvakumar of the Department of Maritime History and Maritime Archaeology at Tamil University, Thanjavur, explained the geography behind the movement. The Nile river valley and the Red Sea served as a connecting point between Rome and ancient India. “So, the Tamil mercantile community might have visited there for sight-seeing. The traders were also exploring the area,” he said.
Professor K Rajan, academic and research adviser to the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, said, “It is important evidence as it brought to light that Tamil traders went to the interior parts of ancient Egypt during the Roman period.”
The scratches on stone, once dismissed as random graffiti, now read like a travel diary from two millennia ago — a quiet sign that Tamil merchants were not just traders on ships, but curious travellers who walked deep into the land of the pharaohs and left their mark on history.
(Source: TOI)
The name, “Cikai Korran,” remained unnoticed for centuries until Strauch and Charlotte Schmid from École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or the French School of Asian Studies, deciphered it and presented their findings at a Tamil epigraphy conference in Chennai on Wednesday.
Name on the walls of history
The Tamil Brahmi inscription reads “Cikai Korran.” Cikai means tuft or crown, while Korran, read as Kotran, means leader. The repeated appearance of the name inside the ancient tombs suggests that the visitor did more than just pass through Egypt’s ports.“We knew that traders from Tamil Nadu visited Egypt through other inscriptions found in the ancient port cities. But this shows that they did not only come with ships and return, but they also stayed here for a longer period of time. They took time even to visit sites that are far away,” Ingo Strauch from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland told TOI.
Charlotte helped him decode the inscriptions and noticed an interesting detail. “The name ‘Korran’ is linked with king or leader. The name was also written in one place as ‘Cikai Korran - vara kanta’, which means he came and saw. It seems to imitate the formula of Greek inscriptions found at the Valley of Kings. It shows that this person might have read the Greek inscriptions and was inspired by them,” Charlotte told TOI.
In one tomb, the phrase “Kopan varata kantan” appears, meaning “Kopan came and saw.” Another tomb carries the name Catan, a common south Indian name seen in several early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. Some of these names were also found during excavations at Berenike, a Red Sea port.
Traders from across India
Strauch and Schmid uncovered 30 inscriptions at the Valley of Kings. Out of these, 20 are in Tamil. The remaining inscriptions belong to Sanskrit, Prakrit and Gandhari-Kharoshi. This mix points to traders not only from Tamil regions but also from north-western and western India, including Gujarat and Maharashtra, visiting Egypt during the Roman period.One Sanskrit text mentions that an envoy of a Kshaharata king “came here.” The Kshaharata dynasty ruled parts of western India in the 1st century CE, making the inscription historically significant.
“There are more than 2,000 graffiti marks and inscriptions in the Greek language found at the tombs in the Valley of Kings. They came from all parts of the Mediterranean world. But none of them came as far as Indian traders,” Charlotte said.
Earlier scholar Jules Baillet had recorded these Tamil Brahmi inscriptions as graffiti from the Asiatic region, but their meaning was not fully understood at the time.
Proof of two-way trade
Historians have long known from the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny that Romans travelled to India for trade. But whether Indian traders made the reverse journey remained unclear.“Through the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny, we know that the Romans came to India for trade. But it was not clear whether it was one-way or two-way trade. This new evidence gives proof of two-way trade that happened during the Roman period,” senior epigraphist Y Subbarayalu told TOI.
Archaeologist V Selvakumar of the Department of Maritime History and Maritime Archaeology at Tamil University, Thanjavur, explained the geography behind the movement. The Nile river valley and the Red Sea served as a connecting point between Rome and ancient India. “So, the Tamil mercantile community might have visited there for sight-seeing. The traders were also exploring the area,” he said.
Professor K Rajan, academic and research adviser to the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, said, “It is important evidence as it brought to light that Tamil traders went to the interior parts of ancient Egypt during the Roman period.”
The scratches on stone, once dismissed as random graffiti, now read like a travel diary from two millennia ago — a quiet sign that Tamil merchants were not just traders on ships, but curious travellers who walked deep into the land of the pharaohs and left their mark on history.
(Source: TOI)