[INDOLOGY] Spectacular finds

[Jonathan Silk]

Dear All,

I would like to bring to your attention what I believe to be the first
scientific publication of the results of recent research in Egypt. (Wait,
don't stop reading!).

Along with Egyptologists, our colleague Ingo Strauch has researched a find
so remarkable that had it not been scienfitically excavated I think
everyone --myself first of all--would have been certain it is fake.

See now

Steven E. Sidebotham, Rodney Ast, Marianne Bergmann, Shailendra Bhandare,
Joanna K Rądkowska, Ingo Strauch, Szymon Popławski, Mariana Castro

Indians in Roman Berenike

Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 140, 2025, § 1–126
https://doi.org/10.34780/n31wrw90

the abstract:

This paper discusses six Indian, for the most part locally produced
artifacts excavated at Berenike, a Ptolemaic-Roman (third century B.C. –
sixth century A.D.) Red Sea port in Egypt. The objects include a terracotta
soldier, three stone Buddha statuettes, a stone stele with representations
of Vrishni heroes, and a dedicatory stone inscription in Sanskrit and Greek
from the sixth regnal year of the Roman emperor Philip the Arab (A.D. 248).
These artifacts were recovered in 2001 and between 2018 and 2022.
Excavations at Berenike began in 1994 and have documented thousands of
artifacts and ecofacts that attest the port’s impressive commercial and
cultural connections. Berenike was a critical link joining the wider
Mediterranean basin with the north- western Indian Ocean. The provenance of
recovered items ranges as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and
northwestern Africa to as far east as the island of Java. Ongoing
excavations have recorded numerous items from South Asia, especially from
India. Those discussed here tie Berenike to India and present a highly
unusual, in some cas- es unique insight into the Roman world’s connections
with the Indian subcontinent.

It is good to know that in these sometimes dark times we can now and then
be amazed by surprising and glorious bursts of light.

Jonathan

-- 
Prof. dr. J.A. Silk
Professor in the study of Buddhism
Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
Herta Mohr building 2.142
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden
The Netherlands

Guest Professor, PI of ERC-Project BEST
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Department für Asienstudien, Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München
Deutschland

website: www.OpenPhilology.eu
copies of my publications may be found at
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20251202/96d6f3b8/attachment.htm>