Egypt–India relations

Egypt–India relations are bilateral relations between Egypt and India.

Quotes

• The situation with Egypt is different. Some of the parallels are remarkable and unique, like ‘the lotus-born one’, ‘the eye that runs off’, ‘the Cosmic Egg’ or the Yama-Osiris correspondences. ... Thus, since the Vedic people had knowledge of mathematics and astronomy which found expression in the material culture of the ISC, one is tempted to suggest that the influence for the sudden outburst of the Egyptian civilization came from Saptasindhu, especially since no other comparable culture is in evidence in the late fourth millennium. But precisely here both archaeological and textual evidence fail us in not indicating any direct contacts. We are left only with speculation that, perhaps, some Indoaryans, in obedience to the dictum in RV X, 65, 11 that they should spread the Aryan laws/usages all over the earth, went to Egypt for this purpose. However, future archaeological work may present a new picture in Egypt.
  • About Indo-Egyptian parallels in culture and religion. Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 8

Quotes from the 19th century

• The Encyclopaedia of Diderot likewise suggested, in the article on India, that the"sciences may be more ancient in India than in Egypt".
  • The Encyclopaedia of Diderot, in p. 185, Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe

• The Madras Presidency is the habitat of that Tamil race whose civilisation was the most ancient, and a branch of whom, called the Sumerians, spread a vast civilisation on the banks of the Euphrates in very ancient times; whose astrology, religious lore, morals, rites, etc., furnished the foundation for the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations; and whose mythology was the source of the Christian Bible. Another branch of these Tamils spread from the Malabar coast and gave rise to the wonderful Egyptian civilisation, and the Aryans also are indebted to this race in many respects. ... Thousands of years ago, these Egyptians starting from Punt (probably Malabar) crossed the Red Sea, and steadily extended their kingdom till they reached Egypt...
  The Egyptians entered into Egypt from a southern country called Punt, across the seas. Some say that that Punt is the modern Malabar, and that the Egyptians and Dravidians belong to the same race. Their first king was named Menes, and their ancient religion too resembles in some parts our mythological tales. The god Shibu was enveloped by the goddess Nui; later on another god Shu came and forcibly removed Nui. Nui's body became the sky, and her two hands and two legs became the four pillars of that sky. And Shibu became the earth. Osiris and Isis, the son and daughter of Nui, are the chief god and goddess in Egypt, and their son Horus is the object of universal worship. These three used to be worshipped in a group. Isis, again, is worshipped in the form of the cow.
  • Swami Vivekananda, Memoirs of European Travel) [1]

• Yet in Egyptian literature, there are certain things to be accounted for - the introduction of the Indian lotus on old temples, the lotus Gangetic. It is well known that this only grows in India. Then there are the references to the land of Punt. Although very great attempts have been made to fix that land of Punt on the Arabs, it is very uncertain. And then there are the references to the monkeys and sandalwood of southern India - only to be found there.
  • Swami Vivekananda [2]

• Thus, against the origin of the Egyptians being attributed to an ancient Indian colony, there is no graver impediment than Noah's disrespectful son -- Ham -- himself a myth. But the earliest form of Egyptian religious worship and government, theocratic and sacerdotal, and her habits and customs all bespeak an Indian origin...
  Let us examine who were the Egyptians. In our opinion -- which is but a poor authority, of course -- they were the ancient Indians, and in our first volume we have quoted passages from the historian Collouca-Batta that support such a theory.
  • Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

• It is on the strength of such circumstantial evidence -- that of reason and logic -- that we affirm that, if Egypt furnished Greece with her civilization, and the latter bequeathed hers to Rome, Egypt herself had, in those unknown ages when Menes reigned,** received her laws, her social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre-Vedic India; and that therefore, it is in that old initiation of the priests -- adepts of all the other countries -- we must seek for the key to the great mysteries of humanity.
  • Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

• For reasons that we will now adduce, we are prepared to maintain that Egypt owes her civilization, commonwealth and arts -- especially the art of building, to pre-Vedic India, and that it was a colony of the dark-skinned Aryans, or those whom Homer and Herodotus term the eastern AEthiopians, i.e., the inhabitants of Southern India, who brought to it their ready-made civilization in the ante-chronological ages, of what Bunsen calls the pre-Menite, but nevertheless epochal history.
  • Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

• Thus, according to every probability, Egypt owes her civilization, her civil institutions, and her arts, to India. But against the latter assumption we have a whole army of "authorities" arrayed, and what matters if the latter do deny the fact at present?
  • Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled