Neither historical events nor cross-cultural currents can explain the unique parallels in the myths and imagery of ancient Egypt and India.
Evidence of Indian contact with the ancient civilizations to her west, however is certain. Knobbed pottery vases came to Sumer from India and so did cotton. Assurbanipal (668-626 BC) cultivated Indian plants including the âwool-bearing treesâ of India.
According to the Skandha Purana, Egypt (Africa) was known as Sancha-Dvipa continent mentioned in Sir Willliams Jonesâ dissertation on Egypt. At Alexandria, in Egypt, Indian scholars were a common sight: they are mentioned both by Chrysostomus (100 A.D.) and by Clement (200 A.D.) Indirect contact between ancient India and Egypt through Mesopotamia is generally admitted, but evidence of a direct relationship between the two is at best fragmentary. Peter Von Bohlen (1796-1840), German Indologist, compared India with ancient Egypt. He thought there was a cultural connection between the two in ancient times. There are elements of folk art, language, and rural culture of Bengal which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts and which have not been explained satisfactorily in terms of Aryan, Mongolian, or so-called Dravidian influences. There are similarities between place names in Bengal and Egypt and recently an Egyptian scholar, El Mansouri, has pointed out that in both Egypt and India the worship of cow, sun, snake, and river are common.
Recently, more definitive evidence suggesting contact between India and Egypt has become available. A terracotta mummy from Lothal vaguely resembles an Egyptian mummy and a similar terracotta mummy is found also at Mohenjo-daro. In this context it is of interest to note that the Egyptian mummies are said to have been wrapped in Indian muslin. Characters similar to those on the Indus seals have also been found on tablets excavated from Easter Island.
Of all the Egyptian objects and motifs indicating some contact between India and Egypt during the Indus-Saraswati Valley period, the cord pattern occurring in a copper tablet in the Indus Valley and on three Egyptian seals is the most striking link between the two countries. Gordon Childe has said, «in other words, in the third millennium B.C. India was already in a position to contribute to the building up of the cultural tradition that constitutes our spiritual heritage as she notoriously has done since the time of Alexander».
In his book, Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India, Paul William Roberts, states: «Recent research and scholarship make it increasingly possible to believe that the Vedic era was the lost civilization whose legacy the Egyptians and the Indians inherited. There must have been one. There are too many similarities between hieroglyphic texts and Vedic ones, these in turn echoed in somewhat diluted form and a confused fashion by the authors of Babylonian texts and the Old Testament».
It is believed that the South Indians went to Egypt and laid the foundation of its civilization there. The Egyptians themselves had the tradition that they originally came from a land called Punt, which an historian of the West, Dr. H.R. Hall, thought referred to some part of India.
The Indus Valley civilization is, according to Sir John Marshall who was in charge of the excavations, the oldest of all civilizations unearthed (c. 4000 BC) it is older than the Sumerian and it is believed by many that the latter was a branch of the former.
