2,000 years ago, a Tamil trader left his name across 5 ancient tombs in Egypt’s Valley of Kings; Here’s what inscriptions reveal

Around 2,000 years ago, a Tamil trader travelled deep into ancient Egypt and left his name at several rock-cut tombs in the Valley of Kings. The Tamil Brahmi inscription, recently identified by Swiss scholar Ingo Strauch, is offering fresh evidence of Tamil merchants travelling beyond Egypt’s ports and pointing to two-way trade between ancient India and the West, reported TOI.

The inscription, which appears in eight places across five of the six tombs examined, records the name “Cikai Korran”. Cikai refers to a tuft or crown, while Korran, also read as Kotran, means leader. The tombs themselves date to around 1600 BCE, while the inscriptions are believed to have been made much later, during the Roman period.

Strauch, along with Charlotte Schmid from École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or the French School of Asian Studies, deciphered the inscriptions and presented their findings at a 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.

Tamil trader’s name found in ancient Egyptian tombs

One of the inscriptions reads “Cikai Korran - vara kanta”, which means “he came and saw”. According to Schmid, the wording appears to imitate the formula used in Greek inscriptions found in the Valley of Kings.

“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 in Tomb 1 reads “Kopan varata kantan”, meaning “Kopan came and saw”. Tomb 8 also contains the name Catan, a common South Indian name that appears in several early Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions.

Some of these names have also been found during excavations at Berenike, an ancient Red Sea port.

20 of 30 inscriptions are in Tamil

Strauch and Schmid identified 30 inscriptions in the Valley of Kings, of which 20 are in Tamil. The remaining inscriptions are in languages including Sanskrit, Prakrit and Gandhari-Kharoshi, suggesting that traders from north-western and western India, including present-day Gujarat and Maharashtra, also travelled through the region during the Roman period.

One Sanskrit inscription mentions that an envoy of a Kshaharata king “came here”. The Kshaharata dynasty ruled parts of western India during the 1st century CE.

“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.

Evidence of two-way India-West trade

Earlier records by scholar Jules Baillet had mentioned the Tamil Brahmi inscriptions as graffiti from the Asiatic region. However, the newly deciphered inscriptions provide additional evidence of Indian traders travelling to the interior of Egypt.

“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, said the Nile river valley and the Red Sea formed a connection 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 the discovery is significant because it shows that Tamil traders travelled beyond Egypt’s ports and reached the interior parts of the country during the Roman period.

“It is important evidence as it brought to light that Tamil traders went to the interior parts of ancient Egypt during the Roman period.”