traditionThe pilgrim's cross
Copt · Coptic
A cross on the wrist, given to pilgrims for seven centuries
| Where it goes | hands, arms, chest |
|---|---|
| Notes | Carved wooden stamps print the design; the marks go on by hand and, since the 1950s, by machine. |
| Ink | Soot and water |
1,300 – 2,026 · A single family has been tattooing pilgrims for about 700 years
31.7800, 35.2200 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
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.
The long version
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.
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.
Connected to
- Sicanje Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean.
- Iban tattooing The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood.
Named here by
- Sicanje The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site.
- The design block The block, still in use.
- The pilgrim's cross The tradition it belongs to.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Razzouk Tattoo — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Razzouk Tattoo — Wikipedia (en)
- Copts — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there