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
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.