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.
