{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "coptic-pilgrim",
 "type": "tradition",
 "names": {
  "name": "The pilgrim's cross",
  "local": "Copt",
  "local_lang": "Coptic",
  "aliases": [
   "Jerusalem tattoo",
   "Razzouk"
  ],
  "said": "A cross on the wrist, given to pilgrims for seven centuries"
 },
 "region": [
  "west-asia",
  "north-africa"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "family": "poke",
  "status": "living"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": 1300,
  "to": 2026,
  "label": "A single family has been tattooing pilgrims for about 700 years"
 },
 "practice": {
  "method": "mixed",
  "ink": "soot-water",
  "placement": [
   "hands",
   "arms",
   "chest"
  ],
  "marked": "both",
  "marks": "kin",
  "status": "living",
  "countries": [
   "IL",
   "PS",
   "EG",
   "ET"
  ],
  "first_record": 1300,
  "note": "Carved wooden stamps print the design; the marks go on by hand and, since the 1950s, by machine."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Jerusalem and Egypt: a cross on the inside of the wrist, marking a pilgrimage — and a family that has been doing it for around seven hundred years.",
  "story": "The Razzouk family carries the trade from Egypt to Jerusalem and still holds the carved olive-wood blocks that print the designs onto the skin before the needle follows. Coptic Christians in Egypt wear the wrist cross as an everyday identification, not only as a souvenir of a journey.\n\n*Inference —* the wooden design blocks are the same idea as the Borneo stamp and the Burmese sample book: a hand tradition that needs a repertoire invents a way to store it outside a person's memory."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "เยรูซาเลมและอียิปต์ ไม้กางเขนบนข้อมือด้านใน เครื่องหมายของการจาริก และครอบครัวหนึ่งทำมาราวเจ็ดร้อยปี"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "sicanje",
   "as": "Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean.",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "iban-borneo",
   "as": "The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood.",
   "rel": "tradition"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Razzouk Tattoo",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzouk_Tattoo"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo",
  "s:wp-copts"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "medium",
 "tags": [
  "protective"
 ],
 "geo": {
  "lat": 31.78,
  "lon": 35.22,
  "precision": "region",
  "source": "s:commons"
 },
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "sicanje",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Sicanje",
   "as": "The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site."
  },
  {
   "from": "design-block",
   "type": "tool",
   "name": "The design block",
   "as": "The block, still in use."
  },
  {
   "from": "pilgrim-cross",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The pilgrim's cross",
   "as": "The tradition it belongs to."
  }
 ]
}