Buddha statue found in Egypt’s Berenice

A Polish-American archaeological mission uncovered a statue of Buddha in Berenice, an ancient Red Sea port city.

The statue, which dates from the Roman Era (30 BC-641 AD), was found during excavation work at the city’s ancient temple.

“The mission, who have been working on the site since 1994 under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), have unearthed evidence of trade links between Egypt and India during the Roman Era,” SCA Secretary General Mostafa Waziry said.

“Egypt was centrally located on the trade route that linked the Roman Empire to many regions of the ancient world, including India,” he said.

During the Roman era, many ports, of which the most prominent was Berenice on the Red Sea coast handled goods from India such as pepper, semi-precious stones, textiles and ivory, which were offloaded and taken by camels across the desert to the Nile. Other ships transported the cargoes to Alexandria and from there to the rest of the Roman Empire.

Mariusz Gwiazda, head of the mission from the Polish side, said the stone for the statue may have been quarried from the area south of Istanbul or carved locally in Berenice, and dedicated to the temple by one or more wealthy merchants from India.

“The 71-cm statue shows the Buddha standing and holding some clothing in his left hand. There is a halo around his head with the rays of the sun depicted on it, which indicates his radiant mind. There is also a lotus flower next to him,” Gwiadza added.

Steven Sidebotham, head of the mission from the American side, said they had found an inscription in Sanskrit, dating back to Roman Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus, aka Philip the Arab (244-249 AD). Sanskit is a classical language of the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European languages.

“It seems that this inscription is not of the same date as the statue, which is probably much older, as the other inscriptions in the same temple were in Greek, dating back to the early first century AD,” Sidebotham said.

He added that they found two coins from the 2nd century AD from the Indian Satavahana dynasty (mid-1st century BC to early 3rd century AD).