An Indian merchant’s graffiti discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The eight Tamil inscriptions say “Cikai Korran”, the merchant’s name, and are found in five different tombs. Dated 1st-3rd century AD [1200×1200]
An Indian merchant’s graffiti discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. The eight Tamil inscriptions say “Cikai Korran”, the merchant’s name, and are found in five different tombs. Dated 1st-3rd century AD [1200×1200]
Around 2,000 years ago, a Tamil trader who visited the rock-cut tombs of Egyptian pharaohs scratched his name in eight places in five of the six tombs in the Valley of Kings in Egypt, which are dated to 1600 BCE. However, his name was not known to anyone until it was found recently by Swiss scholar Ingo Strauch.
The Tamil Brahmi inscription of the name “Cikai Korran” (Cikai means tuft or crown, while Korran, read as Kotran, means leader) and a few other names give fresh evidence of bilateral trade between the West and India; and of travel by Tamil merchants on the ancient trade route.
Strauch, along with Charlotte Schmid from École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or the French School of Asian Studies, deciphered the inscriptions and presented a paper at the Tamil epigraphy conference held 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 decipher the Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. “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.
Another inscription at Tomb 1 also read “Kopan varata kantan”, meaning “Kopan came and saw”, and Tomb 8 has Catan, a common south Indian name found in several early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. Some of these names were also found in excavations at Berenike, a Red Sea port.
Of 30 inscriptions uncovered at the Valley of Kings by Strauch and Schmid, 20 are in Tamil. The rest are from other Indian languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Gandhari-Kharoshi, indicating traders from north-western India and western India, including Gujarat and Maharashtra, also frequented these parts during the Roman period.
One of the Sanskrit texts stated that an envoy of a Kshaharata king “came here,” which is significant as the Kshaharata dynasty ruled in western India in the 1st century CE.
OdinsLightning on
That many inscriptions infer so many more. I would surmise its a company name.
Kancho_Ninja on
And everyone complains when I “deface” tombs — see! I could be famous one day!
4 Comments
[Times of India article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/researchers-find-2000-year-old-tamil-brahmi-inscriptions-on-the-tombs-of-egyptian-kings/articleshow/128222349.cms).
Around 2,000 years ago, a Tamil trader who visited the rock-cut tombs of Egyptian pharaohs scratched his name in eight places in five of the six tombs in the Valley of Kings in Egypt, which are dated to 1600 BCE. However, his name was not known to anyone until it was found recently by Swiss scholar Ingo Strauch.
The Tamil Brahmi inscription of the name “Cikai Korran” (Cikai means tuft or crown, while Korran, read as Kotran, means leader) and a few other names give fresh evidence of bilateral trade between the West and India; and of travel by Tamil merchants on the ancient trade route.
Strauch, along with Charlotte Schmid from École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or the French School of Asian Studies, deciphered the inscriptions and presented a paper at the Tamil epigraphy conference held 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 decipher the Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. “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.
Another inscription at Tomb 1 also read “Kopan varata kantan”, meaning “Kopan came and saw”, and Tomb 8 has Catan, a common south Indian name found in several early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions. Some of these names were also found in excavations at Berenike, a Red Sea port.
Of 30 inscriptions uncovered at the Valley of Kings by Strauch and Schmid, 20 are in Tamil. The rest are from other Indian languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Gandhari-Kharoshi, indicating traders from north-western India and western India, including Gujarat and Maharashtra, also frequented these parts during the Roman period.
One of the Sanskrit texts stated that an envoy of a Kshaharata king “came here,” which is significant as the Kshaharata dynasty ruled in western India in the 1st century CE.
That many inscriptions infer so many more. I would surmise its a company name.
And everyone complains when I “deface” tombs — see! I could be famous one day!
Cheeky bugger.