Tamil Brahmi Script Found in Egypt

Tamil Brahmi Script Found in Egypt

QUSEIR-AL-QADIM, EGYPT, February 20, 2008: A broken storage jar with inscriptions in an ancient form of Tamil script, dated to the first century BCE., has been excavated in Egypt.

Dr. Roberta Tomber, a pottery specialist at the British Museum, London, identified the fragmentary vessel as a storage jar made in India. Iravatham Mahadevan, a specialist in Tamil epigraphy, has confirmed that the inscription on the jar is in Tamil written in the Tamil Brahmi script of about the first century.

The Tamil Brahmi script, unlike standard Asokan Brahmi, distinguished between pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel marker.
Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi from the same era. Additionally, a pottery inscription was found in 1995 at Berenike, a Roman settlement of the Red Sea coast of Egypt. These discoveries support literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam poets about trade between India and Rome, via the Red Sea ports, in the early centuries CE.