1440s 

Referring to Calvary, a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls, shows that leaving one's name, not only in Egypt, "I was here" has a long tradition among travellers, going back for centuries. During his travels in the 1440s Swiss Dominican theologian Felicis Fabri observed:

"I have seen certain vain nobles led to such folly, that when they ascended to the chapel of Mount Calvary, and prostrated themselves upon the holy rock, in which is the hole of the cross, they pretended to pray, and, placing their arms round them, secretly carved shields with the marks of the nobility, but of his folly in perpetual memory of his folly."

"I knew a certain one who always had a red stone in his purse, with which he inscribed his name in all places, on all walls."
"He did this, and inscribed his name in antiphonaries, graduals, missals, and psalteries above the empty margins, as if he were the author of the book, when, however, he did not understand a single Latin proposition, because he was a pure layman"
(Felicis Fabri, 1440)

Fabri, Felix: Fratris Felicis Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Aegypti peregrinationem, Vo. II