Tamil Brahmi inscriptions found in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings shed light on ancient trade links

A path-breaking finding has shed new light on trade links between ancient Tamilagam, other parts of India and the Roman Empire. Two researchers have identified close to 30 inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi, Prakrit and Sanskrit at tombs in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. These inscriptions are said to belong to the period between the 1st and 3rd Centuries C.E.

These inscriptions were identified during a study carried out in 2024 and 2025 by Charlotte Schmid, Professor at the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) in Paris and Ingo Strauch, Professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The team documented them across six tombs in the Theban Necropolis. They followed the footsteps of French scholar Jules Baillet, who surveyed the Valley of the Kings in 1926 and published more than 2,000 Greek graffiti marks.

Presenting their findings in a paper titled ‘From the Valley of the Kings to India: Indian Inscriptions in Egypt’ at the ongoing International Conference on Tamil Epigraphy, the scholars said the individuals who made these inscriptions came from the north-western, western and southern regions of the Indian subcontinent, with those from the latter forming the majority.

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Visitors had left brief inscriptions and graffiti by carving their names on the walls of corridors and rooms, marking their presence in the tombs, the researchers said, adding that these sets of inscriptions appear inside the tombs alongside larger bodies of graffiti in other languages, primarily Greek. Within such settings, the Indian visitors seem to have followed an existing practice of leaving their names inside the tombs, they said.

The name Cikai Koṟraṉ appears repeatedly. It was inscribed eight times across five tombs. The name was found near entrances and high on interior walls among other graffiti marks. In one tomb, it appears at a height of about four metres at the entrance, Mr. Strauch said.

“The name Cikai Koṟṟaṉ is revealing, as its first element may be connected to the Sanskrit śikhā, meaning tuft or crown. While this is not a common personal name, the second element, koṟṟaṉ, is more distinctly Tamil. It carries strong warlike associations, as it derives from a root, koṟṟam, meaning victory and slaying. This root is echoed in the Chera warrior goddess Koṟṟavai and the term koṟṟavaṉ, meaning king,” Ms. Schmid said.

The name koṟṟaṉ also came up in other finds in Egypt. It appears in Koṟṟapumāṉ, written on a sherd discovered at Berenike, a Red Sea port city, in 1995. The name also occurs in the Sangam corpus, where the Chera king Piṭtāṅkoṟṟaṉ, praised in the Purananooru, is sometimes directly addressed as koṟṟaṉ, the scholars pointed out, adding that these parallel attestations in inscriptions from Pugalur, the ancient Chera capital, dated back to the 2nd or 3rd century C.E.

Two other individuals also left their names in Tamil Brahmi in these tombs. One inscription reads Kopāṉ varata kantan (Kopāṉ came and saw). The name Kopāṉ has also been found at Ammankovilpatti in Tamil Nadu. Other Tamil names identified include Cātaṉ and Kiraṉ. “When I first identified these inscriptions, I could not believe it. Because so many people have visited these tombs over the years and nobody has identified anything Indian. I asked Charlotte whether I was mistaken,” Mr. Strauch said.

K. Rajan, academic and research adviser, Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, said the findings are significant as they shed light on the trade links between ancient Tamilagam from the Malabar Coast and the Roman Empire. He said that earlier work in Egypt had focused on the Red Sea port city of Berenike, where excavations were conducted for several years and attention has now moved to the Nile river valley.