Temples in Egypt

Sir Flinders Petrie of the British school of Egyptian Archaeology discovered at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, some statues of Indian saints in deep meditation.

Such discoveries prove the existence of an Indian colony in ancient Egypt about 500 B.C. One of the statues represents an Indian yogi sitting crossed legs in deep meditation, the well known Jain posture.

Arya Masafir, Lekh Ram in his book Kulyat-i-Arya Musafir confirms that he saw images comparable to those in Girinar Hills on a certain hill in Egypt. This clearly means that there were statues and idols of Jain tirthankars installed in temples in Egypt as long as about 2500 years ago or more.

As such we can be sure that there were Jain temples in Egypt which either have been totally destroyed by the anti religion movements or they still are buried somewhere and wait for some miracle to happen before surfacing.

The religious dogmas of the Egyptians were also mostly like those of the Jains. They had no belief in the creator of universe, and further like the Jains they professed and preached plurality of Gods, whom they described as infinitely perfect and happy.

They accepted the existence of an immortal soul and extended it even to the lower animal world. They observed the rules of abstinence, and never took flesh and vegetables like radish, garlic etc. in their diet.

The feeling of Ahimsa was so manifest in them that they did not even wear shoes other than those made of the plant papyrus. They also made nude images of their God Horus.

An important point to note here is that the tract of land down the Egypt was called ‘Rakastan’ by the ancient Greeks.

The word Rakastan which means the abode of Raksasas. These Raksasas are described as Vidyadharas or scientists, in the Jain Puranas. In the present time this tract of land is comprised of sudan, Abyssinia,and Ethopia. As such more temples and history seem still to be buried in these places which is yet to surface.