The Great Ancient Egypt India Connection

(incorporating Indian influence in other Middle Eastern countries and East Africa). 

 

Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), Barrister, author and government official in French India said: ‘No one could contest the purely Hindu origin of Egypt’

William Jones (1746-1794) a scholar of ancient India said:’Of the cursory observations of the Hindus, which it would require volumes to expand and illustrate, this is the result: that they have an immortal affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Phonecians, Greeks, Tuscans, to the Scythians or Goths and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese and Peruvians.’ (The Phonecians were seafaring people from parts of what is now modern Lebanon, Syria and northern Israel. The Scythians or Goths were originally from southern Siberia. They flourished between 900BCand 200BC. During this time they extended their influence all over Central Asia from China to the Black Sea.) 

Saryu Doshi in her book ‘India and Egypt: Influences and Interactions’, gives a comprehensive account of the Indian origin of Egyptian civilisation. The Skanda Purana called Egypt Sancha-Dvipa. (Puranas are ancient Indian histories) 

According to Dio Chrysostom (100 AD) and Clement (200AD), Indian scholars were a common sight in Alexandra. 

The name Egypt comes from the shortened term Ajap which refers to the Sanskrit name Ajapati. Aja was the grandfather of Lord Rama.  

Dr. Gordon Childe (1892-1957), Australian archaeologist said: ‘In the third millennium BC India was already in a position to contribute to the building up of the cultural traditions that constitute Egypt’s spiritual heritage as she notoriously has done since the time of Alexander the Great.’  

Paul Williams (1950-2018) a Canadian writer said: ‘It is believed that people from South India went to Egypt and laid the foundation of its civilization there. Vedic era was the lost civilisation whose legacy the Egyptians and Indian inherited. There are too many similarities between Hieroglyphic texts (the formal writing systems in Egypt) and the Vedic ones.’  

Johann Peter Adolf Erman(1854-1937), professor of Egyptology, Berlin University said: ‘Egyptian legends make it clear that people from a place called Punt, believed to be India laid the foundation stone of their civilisation’. Punt could be the shortened version of Pundit.’    

Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900), German born British Philologist and Orientalist: ‘The legends of Egyptians (and also that of Greeks and Assyrian) is wholly founded on Vedic traditions.’ (Assyrians were people living in parts of modern Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria.) 

Hein Karl Brugsch (1827-1894), the greatest Egyptologist in 19th Century quotes Egyptologist Bengsch Bey: ‘We have a right to more than suspect that India, eight thousand years ago, sent a colony of emigrants who carried their arts and high civilisation into what is now Egypt’.    

Edward Pocoke (1604-1691), English orientalist: ‘At the mouth of the Indus dwell a seafaring people, active, ingenious and enterprising as when, ages subsequent to this great movement—these people found the kingdom of Egypt, these are the same people that centuries subsequently to this colonisation, spread the blessings of civilisation over Hellas and her islands.’ Greeks were known as Hella or Hellenic before they came under the Christian empire of Byzantine.

Arnold Hermann Ludwig (1760-1842) a German Historian and Egyptologist: ‘It is perfectly agreeable to Hindu manners that colonies from India i.e. Banian families should have passed over Africa and carried with them their industry and perhaps also their religious worship.’

Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), French barrister and author: ‘ Manu the Hindu lawmaker, Egyptians called Manes. Manu, Manes, Monos, Moses these four overshadow the entire world’.

Herodotus (the ‘Father of History’), Plato, Salon, Pythagoras and Philostratus all believed that the religion of Egypt proceeded from India. It is testified by Neibhur, Valentia, Champollan and Weddington that the temples of upper Egypt are of greater antiquity than those of the lower Egypt – that consequently the religion of Egypt according to the testimony of those monuments came from India.   

 

Significant similarities between Egyptian and Hindu culture:

1. The Egyptians had four castes just like the four Hindu Jatis.   
2. Egyptian kings like Hindu kings had two names – one given at birth and one given on their coronation.
3. According to Egyptian scholar El Mansouri both in India and Egypt the worship of the cow, sun, snake and river are common. Egyptian goddess Hathor was a cow goddess and considered very sacred. Just as Hindus worship river Ganges, Egyptians used to worship river Nile. Hapi was god of river Nile. The word Nile is of Sanskrit origin from the word Nil which means blue.
4. The lotus flower is associated with goddess Lakshmi. It also had huge significance in Egypt. 
5. The soul is often seen as a bird in ancient Egyptian literature. In the Upanishads the soul and the super soul are compared with birds. One bird is eating (which is the soul) and the other watching is the super soul. The super soul notes the actions of the soul or atma.
6. The Hindu swastika can also be found on Egyptian drawings.
7. Just like Egyptian Pharaohs were preserved, in the Srimad Bhagvatam there is a story of King Nimi whose body was preserved. The great sages and saints asked the demigods to revive king Nimi. The demigods had the power to revive a dead body,
8. Breaking vessels.  Hindus used to break all mud pots and have a bath as well as a change of clothes after a funeral. This is to remove all negative energies. The Egyptians did the same. The Egyptian book of the Dead and Garuda Purana are similar and are recited at the time of death.
9. The Sphinx and the Purusha Mriga. The Sphinx has the head of a human and the body of a lion. Sometimes it also has wings of a bird. The same, ‘Purusha Mruga’ was a renowned devotee of Lord Shiva. It can be seen on the wall of Hindu temples as well as lamps in Tamil Nadu.
10. Many Egyptian kings or pharaohs had the name Rameses. An emperor of Memphis in northern Egypt is shown with a Vaishnava tilak or mark on the forehead. This indicates that they were descendants of Lord Rama.

 

The Pyramids Connection 

K. Sennaya Swamy Muthukrishnan is an Indian Egyptologist best known for discovering that the base triangles of the Egyptian pyramids of Giza are equal in angular measurements to those of the Sri Yantra. He believes that the Pyramids are not tombs but giant instruments to harness cosmic energy for practical purposes. (Sri Yantra is a 10,000 year old mystical geometrical figure). 

According to a book called ‘Hinduism in the Space Age’ by E. Vedavyas: Sri Yantra Sutra’s 3 dimensional geometric pattern contains the elusive theory of everything (TOE). The golden ratio from the mystic Vaastu geometry of Sri Yantra of Indian Vedic times 10,000 years ago was 51 des , 49 minutes, 38.25 seconds. They are the angle measurements of both the Egyptian pyramids and the Sri Yantra. Vaastu is an Indian system of scientific architecture taking into account earth, water, fire, wind to balance cosmic energies. DES, meaning Data Encryption Standard Algorithm, is a block cipher-meaning it operates on plaintext blocks of a given size (64-bits) and returns ciphertext blocks of the same size. 

 

Indian influence in other parts of the Middle East. 

According to Edward Pocoke (1604-1691), English orientalist:‘The word Persia is from the Sanskrit word Parsuram the legendary fighter. The people of Persia were from Bharat (India). The principal stream that pours waters into the Persian Gulf is known as Eu-Bharat-Es (Eupharates)’. 

The Persians later changed their faith to Zoroastrianism. Interestingly Zorostarians have a collection of 21 Hymns called Yasht. Yasht number 15 is called Ram Yasht. It offers prayers to Lord Rama. 

By a strange coincidence the same Zoroastrians or Parsis left Persia and took refuge in India due to religious persecution in around the 10th Century.

Indian fables, legends and literature also made their way to the West and into the Middle East as early as the 6th Century BCE. The Buddhist Jatakas, Vedic Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha were translated in Persian under the name of Jutinamah. These stories found their way to Europe. The story of Two Jackals, Karakatak and Damanaka were translated into Persian, Syriac, Latin, Hebrew and Spanish. All these fables were woven into the very fabric of European literature.

Jataka tales are stories of Lord Buddha’s previous incarnations. Up to 50% of all nursery rhymes and ballads are from Jataka Tales. The Hitopadesh (meaning good advice stories) were written in the12th century by Narayana. Panchatantra are 5 treatises attributed to Vishnu Sharma dated 300 BCE. They are a collection of animal fables which teach children good moral values and wise conduct of life. These stories have circulated worldwide and are considered most famous. There are 200 versions of the Panchatantra in more than 50 languages of the world. 

According to Walt Whitman, American poet and essayist, (1819-1892), Kalilah and Dimnah the Arabian book of fables are translated from the Panchatantra

Many Western nursery rhymes are based on the Panchatantra stories. The Panchatantras have influenced 90 to 96 human generations. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian writer and poet and Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) the greatest English poet of the middle ages, were influenced by the style and structure of the Panchatantra. Apart from yoga and vegetarianism, Panchatantra is another gift of India to the world!.

A king named Dashrath ruled over Syria and Iraq 3000 years ago. It was known as the kingdom of Mittani. They worshipped Hindu gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra and Nasatya.( The twin gods Ashwini Kumars are known as Nasatya and Dasra. They are sons of Sun god). The word Syria comes from Surya the Sun god. 

The Sumerians were probably the oldest residents of the Middle East. Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955) said. Sumerians were part of the Vedic tradition. A book called ‘The Sumerians – An Oxford Publication’ says: ‘archaeological evidence in the form of relics of the Sumerian language still exists which leaves no doubt as to the real incentive behind the origins of the Sumerian language’.

Druze people live mainly in Lebanon and Israel as well as some other countries in the Middle East. Their late leader Kamal Jumblatt (1917-1977) often glorified Krishna, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayan and other Hindu scriptures. He was a vegetarian and in his later years lived according to the Hindu Vanprastha stage. (Vanprastha stage is when one gives up all material desires and concentrates on God consciousness). He travelled to India and had a Guru. Druze people believe in reincarnation, their scriptures describe a history going back millions of years, with incarnations of Gods appearing in human form regularly just as in Hinduism. 

The persecuted Yazidi people of Iraq also have many similarities with Hinduism. The Peacock is revered in both cultures. The Yazidi perform prayers with lighted lamps just as the Hindus do Aarti. They fold hands in prayer. Yazidis marry only within their castes. They have four castes just like four Hindu Jatis. They believe in reincarnation. Circumcision is not considered obligatory for Yazidis. They wear a mark on their forehead while entering their temples similar to bindi or tilak. (Hindus have a concept of a third eye. One can activate the third eye situated between the two eye brows . A person who can activate the third eye becomes a seer who is able to foresee things) 

Fire worship is given highest priority in Yazidi worship similar to Havan in Vedic tradition. 

Yazidi temples are constructed like Hindu temples.

 

The East Africa India Connection 

John Hanning Speke (1827-1864) when planning his discovery of the source of the Nile secured his best information from a map reconstructed from the Puranas. The conventional wisdom was that Lake Tanganyika was the source of the Nile. However, a Hindu Pundit from Banaras (Varanasi) told Speke the real source was a much larger lake that lay to the North. Following his advice Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria. The Pundit had also told Speke that the real source were twin peaks known as Somagiri. Soma in Sanskrit means the Moon and Giri means Peak. Somagiri therefore are none other than the fabled mountains of the Moon in Central Africa. According to Speke it is remarkable that the Hindus have christened the source of the Nile as ‘Amara’. Amara in Sanskrit means immortal and there was a country by the name in the North East corner of the Victoria Nyanza. (Nyanza meaning a large mass of water in the Bantu language was one of the provinces of Kenya with the city of Kisumu as its capital.) This means ancient Hindus must have some communication with the northern and southern ends of the Victoria Nyanza.

Cowrie shells from Maldives Islands were found in an Iron Age settlement near Nakuru, Kenya found by Dr. Mary Leakey. Indians who traded with Egypt used cowrie shells as money. This system dated as far back as 28th BC. According to Arab geographers the term Zangistan, from which the term Zanzibar or Zang Coast is derived, covers the whole of the eastern part of Africa. Zang is the equivalent of the Sanskrit word, ‘Sankh’. Sankha Dvipa means the island of Shells.

In the early 20th century, Sylvain Levy (1863-1935), the famous Jewish French Indologist remarked:

“From Persia to the Chinese Sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to the islands of Java and Borneo, from Oceania to Socotra, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization. She has left indelible imprints on one-fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim in universal history the rank that ignorance has refused her for a long time, to hold her place among the nations, summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of Humanity’. 

 

This article follows:

The Great Celtic-India Connection 

The Great Maya-India Connection, 

The Great Greek-India Connection, 

The Great Russia-India Connection

The Great German-India Connection

The Great Japan-India Connection.