The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet, or Pwene by the ancient Egyptians, was a trading partner known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins,African blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals. Information about Punt has been found in ancient Egyptian records of trade missions to this region.
The earliest recorded Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC) although gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt in the time of king Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt.
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 (around 1950 BC), an officer named Hannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he personally traveled on these expeditions. Trading missions of the 12th dynasty pharaohs Senusret I and Amenemhat II had also successfully navigated their way to and from the mysterious land of Punt.
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. 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.
A report of that 5 ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. 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. 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. This well illustrated expedition of Hatshepsut occurred in Year 9 of the female pharaoh’s reign with the blessing of the god Amun:
Said by Amun, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands: ‘Come, come in peace my daughter, the graceful, who art in my heart, King Maatkare [ie. Hatshepsut]…I will give thee Punt, the whole of it…I will lead your soldiers by land and by water, on mysterious shores, which join the harbours of incense…They will take incense as much as they like. They will load their ships to the satisfaction of their hearts with trees of green [ie. fresh] incense, and all the good things of the land.’
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 outweighted the risks.” Hatshepsut’s 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III and Amenhotep III also continued the Egyptian tradition of trading with Punt. 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 which detailed 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:
They arrived safely at the desert-country of Coptos: they moored in peace, carrying the goods they had brought. They [the goods] were loaded, in travelling overland, upon asses and upon men, being reloaded into vessels at the harbour of Coptos. They [the goods and the Puntites] were sent forward downstream, arriving in festivity, bringing tribute into the royal presence.
After the end of the New Kingdom period, Punt became “an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends.”
At times, the ancient Egyptians called Punt Ta netjer, meaning “God’s Land”. 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. The term 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. Older literature (and current non-mainstream 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 E. A. Wallis Budge stated that “Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt…”.
The exact location of Punt is still debated by historians. Most scholars today believe Punt was located to the south-east of Egypt, most likely on the littoral of what is today northern Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Sudan. However, some scholars point instead to a range of ancient inscriptions which locate Punt in the Arabian Peninsula. It is also possible that the territory covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia.
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