The Land of Punt (Egyptian: pwnt; alternate Egyptological readings Pwene(t)Ian Shaw & Paul Nicholson, The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, British Museum Press, London. 1995, p. 231. ) was an ancient kingdom known from Ancient Egyptian trade records. It produced and exported gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals.Shaw & Nicholson, p. 231. Recent evidence locates it in northwestern Eritrea. It is possible that it includes or corresponds to Opone, as later known by the ancient Greeks, while some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put or Havilah.
At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), in Egyptian textual records.Breasted, John Henry (1906–1907), Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, collected, edited, and translated, with Commentary, p. 433, vol. 1 The exact location of Punt is debated by historians. Various locations have been offered, southeast of Egypt, a coastal region south of it along the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, in present day north-east Sudan, Eritrea, northeast Ethiopia, Djibouti and northern Somalia, including Somaliland.
A majority of historical scholars now situate the location of Punt in African lands south-east of Egypt or in East Africa."The majority view, however, is that, although the ancient Egyptians exaggerated its qualities, Punt did exist and was probably somewhere in East Africa"."Mariette himself proposed to situate it on the African continent south-east of Egypt (1876,60-66). While this is now the most universally accepted view, other scholars argue that the land of Punt was now located in the Red Sea, i.e. in the Arabian Peninsula." The assumed location has generally been applied to territories covering Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea."While discussing Egyptian artistic representations of the people of Punt, Bard says the 'Puntites' facial features look more Egyptian than "black" '. Since Punt is generally believed to be in the area of Somalia, Bard's vision of authentic 'blackness' seems related to her view of 'sub-Saharan blacks'""Whereas many scholars have thought that Punt referred to the regions of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, recent rethinking by several scholars now put Punt on the coast of East Africa, around Zanzibar Island"."While there has been a number of revisionist arguments on the location of Punt, scholarly Egyptology has more or less reached a broad consensus as to its location. This was based initially on the arguments of Kitchen in his seminal article 'Punt and how to get there', in which he demonstrated a general location in Eastern Sudan and Eritrea on the Red Sea, a view he repeated in several subsequent locations. Later research has more or less expounded upon this general view, confirming the assessment that Punt lay somewhere on the African coasts of Sudan or Eritrea and was accessed by the Red Sea".
It is also possible that it covered both the Horn of Africa and the area across the sea, in Southern Arabia.Dimitri Meeks – Chapter 4 – "Locating Punt" from the book Mysterious Lands", by David B. O'Connor and Stephen Quirke.Where Is Punt? Nova. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/egypt-punt/ The autonomous state of Puntland, the modern day Somali administrative region at the tip of the Horn of Africa, is named in honor of this ancient kingdom.
Egyptian expeditions to Punt
The earliest recorded ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC), returning with cargoes of antyue and Puntites. However, gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt as early as the time of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty., vol. 1.
Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Eighteenth dynasties of Egypt. In the Twelfth Dynasty, trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor.
In the reign of Mentuhotep III (11th dynasty, ca. 2000 BC), an officer named Hannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he personally traveled on these expeditions., vol. 1. Trading missions of the 12th dynasty pharaohs Senusret I, Amenemhat II and Amenemhat IV had also successfully navigated their way to and from the mysterious land of Punt.Joyce Tyldesley, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, Penguin Books, 1996 hardback, p.145El-Sayed Mahfouz: Amenemhat IV at Wadi Gawasis, Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale A. (BIFAO) 2010, vol. 110, [165–173, 485, 491 [11 p.], , see also
In the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Hatshepsut built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and points south as far as Punt to bring mortuary goods to Karnak in exchange for Nubian gold. Hatshepsut personally made the most famous ancient Egyptian expedition that sailed to Punt. Her artists revealing much about the royals, inhabitants, habitation and variety of trees on the island, revealing it as the "Land of the Gods, a region far to the east in the direction of the sunrise, blessed with products for religious purposes", where traders returned with gold, ivory, ebony, incense, aromatic resins, animal skins, live animals, eye-makeup cosmetics, fragrant woods, and cinnamon. During the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC, ships regularly crossed the Red Sea in order to obtain bitumen, copper, carved amulets, naptha and other goods transported overland and down the Dead Sea to Elat at the head of the gulf of Aqaba where they were joined with frankincense and myrrh coming north both by sea and overland along trade routes through the mountains running north along the east coast of the Red Sea.Dr. Muhammed Abdul Nayeem, (1990). Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula. Hyderabad. ISBN.
A 2005 expedition to Mersa/Wadi Gawasis, Egypt by archaeologist Kathryn Bard found remains of Egyptian seagoing vessels and hieroglyphic texts on stelae about royal expeditions to Punt, including cedar planks from Queen Hatshepsut's expedition in the 15th century BCE, demonstrating that Mersa/Wadi Gawasis was the port in Egypt from which trade to Punt some 1200 km south on the Red Sea was carried out.
A report of that five-ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, p.149 Throughout the temple texts, Hatshepsut "maintains the fiction that her envoy" Chancellor Nehsi, who is mentioned as the head of the expedition, had travelled to Punt "in order to extract tribute from the natives" who admit their allegiance to the Egyptian pharaoh.Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, p.147 In reality, Nehsi's expedition was a simple trading mission to a land, Punt, which was by this time a well-established trading post. Moreover, Nehsi's visit to Punt was not inordinately brave since he was "accompanied by at least five shiploads of [Egyptian] marines" and greeted warmly by the chief of Punt and his immediate family. The Puntites "traded not only in their own produce of incense, ebony and short-horned cattle, but [also] in goods from other African states including gold, ivory and animal skins." According to the temple reliefs, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati., vol. 1. This well illustrated expedition of Hatshepsut occurred in Year 9 of the female pharaoh's reign with the blessing of the god Amun:
While the Egyptians "were not particularly well versed in the hazards of sea travel, and the long voyage to Punt must have seemed something akin to a journey to the moon for present-day explorers... the rewards of [obtaining frankincense, ebony and myrrh] clearly outweighed the risks."Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, p.148 An extensive account of the expedition, based on the tableaux, was provided by Amelia Edwards in 1891.
According to Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, "The scene of an expedition to Punt from Queen Hatshepsuis mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri shows Puntites with red skin and facial features similar to Egyptians, long or bobbed hair, goatee beards, and kilts".
Hatshepsut's 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III and Amenhotep III, also continued the Egyptian tradition of trading with Punt.Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, pp.145–146 The trade with Punt continued into the start of the 20th dynasty before terminating prior to the end of Egypt's New Kingdom. Papyrus Harris I, a contemporary Egyptian document that details events that occurred in the reign of the early 20th dynasty king Ramesses III, includes an explicit description of an Egyptian expedition's return from Punt:
After the end of the New Kingdom period, Punt became "an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends."Tyldesley, Hatchepsut, p.146 However, Egyptians continued to compose love songs about Punt, "When I hold my love close, and her arms steal around me, I'm like a man translated to Punt, or like someone out in the reedflats, when the world suddenly bursts into flower."
Ta netjer and connections with Ancient Egypt At times, the ancient Egyptians called Punt Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), meaning "God's Land"., vol. II. This referred to the fact that it was among the regions of the Sun God, that is, the regions located in the direction of the sunrise, to the East of Egypt. These eastern regions' resources included products used in temples, notably incense. Older literature maintained that the label "God's Land", when interpreted as "Holy Land" or "Land of the gods/ancestors", meant that the ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt as their ancestral homeland. W. M. Flinders Petrie believed that the Dynastic Race came from or through Punt and that "Pan, or Punt, was a district at the south end of the Red Sea, which probably embraced both the African and Arabian shores."'A history of Egypt' Vol. I, p. 13 Moreover The Making of Egypt (1939) states that the Land of Punt was "sacred to the Egyptians as the source of their race." Moreover, E. A. Wallis Budge stated that "Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt...".Short History of the Egyptian People, by E. A. Wallis Budge. Budge stated that "Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt..." James Breasted in 1906 argued that the term Ta netjer was not only applied to Punt, located southeast of Egypt, but also to regions of Asia east and northeast of Egypt, such as Lebanon, which was the source of wood for temples., vol. II.
On the murals of the Hatshepsut temple at Deir el-Bahri, the King and Queen of Punt are depicted along with their retinue. Due to her unusual appearance, the Queen was sometimes hypothesized to have had advanced steatopygiaD.W. Phillipson. 2005. African archaeology, page 81 of 389 pages or elephantiasis.
According to Senegalese Egyptologist, Aboubacry Moussa Lam, the Egyptians considered the Land of Punt as being their ancestral homeland.
British archaeologist, Jacke Phillips, argued that the term "Ta Netjer" (God's Land) was applied to regions south and west of Egypt, which included not only Punt but other regions entitled "Irem" and "Am(am)", with the latter regions accessible through Punt and Nubia. Phillips further argued that Irem was most likely the same location accessed by Harkhuf through his expeditions into inner Africa during the Old Kingdom period.