‘Cikai Korran came here and saw’: Visitors from India graffitied dozens of Egyptian tombs 2,000 years ago

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‘Cikai Korran came here and saw’: Visitors from India graffitied dozens of Egyptian tombs 2,000 years ago

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About 2,000 years ago, a visitor to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt graffitied its name – Cikai Korran – eight times in Old Tamil, an Indian language. This prolific tagger joined several others in leaving dozens of inscriptions in ancient Indian languages on Egyptian tombs, researchers reported at a recent academic conference.

The new discoveries add to growing evidence for the presence of South Asian peoples in ancient Egypt.

Around 30 inscriptions written in three Indian languages were found in six different tombs in the Valley of the Kings, where Egyptian pharaohs and powerful nobles were buried for centuries. Half of the inscriptions were written in Old Tamil, and Cikai Korran is responsible for many of them, the researchers wrote in an article published in a book titled “Tamil Epigraphy: A four-day international conference 11-14 February 2026, Proceedings Volume 1” (Government of Tamil Nadu, 2026). The researchers presented their findings at a conference in February in Chennai, India.

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Although early Egyptologists noticed these inscriptions and, in some cases, recorded them, they did not know what language they were in and were unable to translate them, researchers say.

In a new investigation, researchers dated the Indian inscriptions to between the first and third centuries A.D., when Egypt was a province of Roman Empire and the Valley of the Kings “was a tourist destination, like today”, Ingo Strauchprofessor in the Department of Slavic and South Asian Studies at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, who helped identify many of the texts, said at the conference presentation he gave at the conference.

Visitors to the Valley of the Kings wrote or inscribed texts on the tomb walls, often writing their names and sometimes more information about who they were. Visitors from India were no exception.

One of the Sanskrit texts was written by a man named Indranandin, who claimed to be a “messenger of King Kshaharata”. In an email to Live Science, Strauch noted that the Kshaharata dynasty ruled part of India during the first century AD and that it was unclear which Kshaharata king the messenger served. Since Egypt was ruled by the Roman Empire, Indranandin may have crossed the Valley of the Kings on his way to Rome.

“It is possible that Indranandin arrived by boat in Bérénice [on the east coast of Egypt]perhaps with other Indians, and from there continued inland to the Valley of the Kings,” Strauch said. “It is not known, however, whether he then went to Rome.”

One prolific graffiti artist was a man named Cikai Korran, who wrote eight inscriptions in five different tombs. The Tamil inscriptions translate to “Cikai Korran came here and saw,” the researchers wrote in the conference proceedings.

A close-up image of a golden colored wall with slight curved letters carved into it.

Another inscription left by Cikai Korran. The inscriptions he left behind are written in old Tamil. (Image credit: Timothée Sassolas)

Charlotte Schmida researcher from the French School of the Far East who also identified many of the texts, said in a lecture at the conference that Korran tended to write his inscriptions high. In the tomb of Ramses IX (who reigned 1126 to 1108 BC), Korran wrote his inscription 5 to 6 meters above the tomb entrance. Schmid said it was unclear how he got so high.

In a tomb that belonged to two New Kingdom pharaohs named Tausert and Setnakhte, scholars discovered that Korran also left his signature at the entrance to the tomb. This is the only graffiti found on this tomb, which suggests that during the time Korran was in Egypt, the interior of the tomb was closed. He nevertheless managed to find the entrance and leave his inscription there.

It is not clear who Korran was. The language in which he wrote suggests that he was from South India, but anything else cannot be known with certainty. Schmid noted that Korran could have been a leader, a mercenary, or a merchant, among other possibilities.

It is also unclear why Korran wrote his name so frequently and tried to write it as high as he did. “It’s weird, to be frank,” Schmid said during the conference presentation.

Researchers respond

These “new discoveries from Strauch and Schmid, alongside ancient and more recent finds from the Roman ports of Myos Hormos and Berenice on the Red Sea, are exactly the kind of evidence for the visit of Tamil and West Indian merchants that we hope to find – but have never been able to document on this scale before.” Kasper Grønlund Evers, an independent researcher who has studied ancient long-distance trade but was not involved in the current research, told Live Science in an email.

These newly discovered texts “prove not only the mere presence of Indians in Egypt, but also their active interest in the cultivation of the land.” Alexandra von Lievenprofessor of Egyptology at the University of Münster who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. Further research could lead to the discovery of more Indian language inscriptions at other sites in Egypt, such as temples, von Lieven said.