CHENNAI: In a discovery that reinforces the footprint of ancient Tamil civilisation across the globe, around 30 inscriptions, the majority of them in Tamil Brahmi, the early Tamil script, have been identified in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
These findings establish that people from Tamil landscape visited and lived in Roman Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD - not merely as distant trading partners, but as travellers whose names were etched into royal tombs.
“This discovery stands as a resounding reminder to the world that the Tamil people are a proud civilisation that left their imprint across global cultures, far beyond the seas. Tamil Brahmi inscriptions dating back 2,000 years have been found in the pyramid tombs of Egypt. The name of a Tamil merchant, Sikai Kotran, has been discovered eight times across five different pyramids. This underlines how deeply the Tamils were embedded in the ancient global trade network,” Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu said in a post on X.
Thennarasu said these findings serve as further evidence that even during the Roman period, the Tamils had crossed the seas to reach Egypt, practising a form of globalisation thousands of years before the term was coined. These findings reinforced our identity as a truly global Tamil community and filled us with pride.
Professors Charlotte Schmid at the French School of Asian Studies in Paris and Ingo Strauch at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, identified the inscriptions in 2024 and 2025. Both scholars presented their findings in a paper titled ‘From the Valley of Kings to India: Indian Inscriptions in Egypt’ at the international conference of Tamil Epigraphy taking place in Chennai.
The scholars found Tamil Brahmi inscriptions across six tombs in the ancient necropolis near Thebes. Significantly, the Tamil name Cikai Korran appeared eight times on five tombs, accompanied by the message - “came and saw”.
The term Korran, rooted in early Tamil warrior traditions and associated with the Chera lineage, suggests that those who travelled were not only merchants but may also have included individuals of martial or leadership background. Other Tamil names identified in the tombs include Kopan, Catan, and Kiran are also attested in early Tamil inscriptions from South India. Interestingly, Tamil inscriptions outnumber those in other Indian languages found at the site, including Prakrit and Sanskrit.
The research paper also said that a few years ago, the team in charge of excavations at the Egyptian site of Berenike discovered a Tamil inscription engraved on a reused stone in the courtyard of the principal temple of the site, the Temple of Isis, excavated in the early 1990s. The Temple of Isis was founded in the 3rd century BC and remained active until the 3rd century AD.