Известно, что одна из Миссий Ашоки была отправлена в Африку в Египет. Вот любопытная статья на эту тему
he Therapeutae were an ancient order of mystical ascetics who lived in many parts of the ancient world but were found especially near Alexandria, the capital city of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Some scholars have suggested that the Therapeutae may have been influenced by (or decendents of) Emperor Ashoka's Buddhist missionaries from ancient India. Indeed, the similarities between the Therapeutae and Buddhist monasticism are striking. The ancient city of Alexandria in Egypt had Buddhist missionary activity around 250 B.C.E. as (the Edicts of Ashoka), have been pointed out.[10] The Therapeutae could have been the descendants of Ashoka's emissaries to the West, and could have influenced the early formation of Christianity.[11] Egypt had intense trade and cultural contacts with India during the period, as described in the first century C.E. Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
An early wheel-like circular ichthys symbol, created by combining the Greek letters ΙΧΘΥΣ, Ephesus.
The similarities between the monastic practices of the Therapeutae and Buddhist monastic practices have led to suggestions that the Therapeutae were in fact Buddhist monks who had reached Alexandria, descendants of Ashoka's emissaries to the West, and who influenced the early formation of Christianity.[12] According to the linguist Zacharias P. Thundy the name "Therapeutae" is simply an Hellenisation of the Pali term for the traditional Buddhist faith, "Theravada" (the "elders" of Buddhism).[13]
Others have pointed out a possible Buddhist-Christian link in the life of Jesus himself. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus spent his early childhood in Egypt which was at the end of the Silk Road. Elmar R. Gruber, a psychologist, and Holger Kersten, a specialist in religious history argue that Buddhism had a substantial influence on the life and teachings of Jesus.[14] Gruber and Kersten claim that Jesus was brought up by the Therapeutae, teachers of the Buddhist Theravada school then living in the Bible lands. As a result of its role in trade with the East, Egypt was prosperous and enriched with religious diversity. Their work follows in the footsteps of the Oxford New Testament scholar' Barnett Hillman Streeter, who established as early as the 1930s that the, moral teaching of the Buddha has four remarkable resemblances to the Sermon on the Mount."
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Therapeutae