Land of Punt(EAST)

RICH IN GOLD. Ebony ivory exotic animals. Richest nation in area. 

Land of Punt The Land of Punt (Egyptian: pwnt; alternate Egyptological readings Pwene(t)[2], pronunciation /pu:nt/) was an ancient kingdom. A trading partner of Egypt, it was known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it.[3] It is possible that it corresponds to Opone on the Horn of Africa, as later known by the ancient Greeks,[4][5][6] while some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put or Havilah.[7][8]

At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), the "Land of the God".[9] The exact location of Punt is still debated by historians. Most scholars today believe Punt was situated to the southeast of Egypt, most likely in the coastal region of modern Djibouti, Somalia, northeast Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Red Sea littoral of Sudan.[10] It is also possible that the territory covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia.[11][12] Puntland, the Somali administrative region situated at the extremity of the Horn of Africa, is named in reference to the Land of Punt.[13] Some scholars have argued that Punt is the early Pandyan island of Tamraparni, present day Sri Lanka.

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.[14]
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.[15] 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.[16][17]
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.[18][19] 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.[20]

A tree in front of Hatshepsut's temple, claimed to have been brought from Punt by Hatshepsut's Expedition, which is depicted on the Temple walls A report of that five-ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.[21] 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.[22] In reality, Nehsi's expedition was a simple trading mission to a land, Punt, which was by this time a well-established trading post.[22] 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.[21][22] 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."[22] According to the temple reliefs, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati.[23] 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 Amen, the Lord of the Thrones of the Two Land: '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 [i.e., fresh] incense, and all the good things of the land.'[24]

Egyptian soldiers from Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Punt as depicted from her temple at Deir el-Bahri 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."[16][25] Hatshepsut's 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III and Amenhotep III also continued the Egyptian tradition of trading with Punt.[26] The trade with Punt continued into the start of the 20th dynasty before terminating prior to the end of Egypt's New Kingdom.[26] Papyrus Harris I, a contemporary Egyptian document that 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.[27]
After the end of the New Kingdom period, Punt became "an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends."[28] 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." [29]
Ta netjer
This relief depicts incense and myrrh trees obtained by Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt At times, the ancient Egyptians called Punt Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), meaning "God's Land".[30] 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 (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 that "Pan, or Punt, was a district at the south end of the Red Sea, which probably embraced both the African and Arabian shores."[31] Moreover, E. A. Wallis Budge stated that "Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt...".[32] However, 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.[33]
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 steatopygia[34] or elephantiasis.[35] However, she is now clinically recognized as having likely had the Queen of Punt syndrome, a suite of conditions that include familial obesity, Launois Bensaude lipomatosis, Dercum disease, neurofibromatosis, congenital lipodystrophy, achondroplasia, X-linked hypophosphatemia, and Proteus syndrome.[35]
Main proposed location
Supposed location around the Red Sea and major travel routes by land and sea Horn of Africa The majority opinion places Punt in Northeastern Africa, based on the fact that the products of Punt (as depicted in the Hatshepsut illustrations) were abundantly found in the Horn of Africa but were less common or sometimes absent in Arabia. These products included gold and aromatic resins such as myrrh, frankincense, and ebony; the wild animals depicted in Punt included giraffes, baboons, hippotamuses, and leopards. Says Richard Pankhurst: "[Punt] has been identified with territory on both the Arabian and the Horn of Africa coasts. Consideration of the articles that the Egyptians obtained from Punt, notably gold and ivory, suggests, however, that these were primarily of African origin. ... This leads us to suppose that the term Punt probably applied more to African than Arabian territory."[3][22][36][37]
Location of the Land of Punt for most scholars Location of the Land of Punt for most scholars In 2010, a genetic study was conducted on the mummified remains of baboons that were brought back from Punt by the ancient Egyptians. Led by a research team from the Egyptian Museum and the University of California, Santa Cruz, the scientists used oxygen isotope analysis to examine hairs from two baboon mummies that had been preserved in the British Museum. One of the baboons had distorted isotopic data, so the other's oxygen isotope values were compared to those of modern-day baboon specimens from regions of interest. The researchers at first found that the mummies most closely matched modern specimens seen in Eritrea and Ethiopia as opposed to those in neighboring Somalia, with the Ethiopian specimens "basically due west from Eritrea". The team did not have the opportunity to compare the mummies with baboons in Yemen. The scientists believed that such an analysis would yield similar results since, according to them, regional isotopic maps suggest that baboons in Yemen would closely resemble those in Somalia. Professor Dominy, one of the lead researchers, concluded from this that "we think Punt is a sort of circumscribed region that includes eastern Ethiopia and all of Eritrea."[38] In 2015, the scientists conducted a follow-up study to confirm their initial findings, and concluded that "our results reveal a high likelihood match with eastern Somalia and the Eritrea-Ethiopia corridor, suggesting that this region was the source of Papio hamadryas exported to Ancient Egypt."[39] In June 2018, Polish archaeologists who have been conducting research in The Temple of Hatshepsut since 1961 discovered the only depiction of a secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) known from ancient Egypt in the Bas-reliefs from the Portico of Punt that depicted the great Pharaonic expedition to the Land of Punt. The secretary bird lives only in the African open grasslands and savannah, it is listed among the birds found in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia, the bird is not found in Arabia.[40]
Punt, in ancient Egyptian and Greek geography, the southern coast of the Red Sea and adjacent coasts of the Gulf of Aden, corresponding to modern coastal Ethiopia and Djibouti.
To the ancients, Punt was a place of legend and fable, illustrated by Herodotus’ account (in Book II of his History, 5th century BC) of the exploits of an Egyptian pharaoh, one Sesostris, who took a fleet of ships and made conquests along the shores of the Erythraean Sea (the Red Sea and adjacent waters) and then traversed “the whole continent of Asia.”
Historically verified is an expedition made during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Pepi II Neferkare about 2200 BC to the land of Punt, as are voyages undertaken during the 11th dynasty (2081–1938 BC). Queen Hatshepsut (reigned c. 1472–1458 BC) made a voyage to Punt and had the details of the journey recorded on the walls of her temple at Dayr al-Bahrī. Voyages to the “Divine Land” eventually became routine. The so-called Ethiopian dynasty—the 25th—which came from the south to rule Egypt in 716–656 BC, has sometimes been used in an attempt to prove an even closer connection between Egypt and Ethiopia, but these invaders came in fact from Nubia (Cush).
The designation “Ethiopian” was first used by ancient Greek writers to describe any African with more or less dark skin. Their concept of the land whence these dark-skinned inhabitants derived sometimes comprised the whole African continent and sometimes only what is now Ethiopia. Only after Alexander the Great and the ascension of the Ptolemies to the throne of ancient Egypt late in the 4th century BC were the trade routes to Punt opened to the Greeks. Thereafter, manuals of navigation were compiled and depots were constructed along the coast, where ivory, skins, ostrich feathers, and even live elephants could be housed. A stela inscribed with hieroglyphs, put up in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigned 285–246 BC) and found at Pithon, refers to Ptolemy’s founding the city of Ptolemais Theron on the Erythraean coast. Eratosthenes later recorded a reference to what may have been Ethiopia’s Lake Tana (known to the Greeks as Psebo, or Koloë) and to its island, Dak. Agatharchides, a Greek historian and geographer of the 2nd century BC, observed the habits of cave dwellers in Punt; and AThe Land of Punt is described in ancient Egyptian texts as "the land of the gods" and a region rich in resources. In the decades after Jean-Francois Champollion first deciphered Egyptian heiroglyphics in 1822 CE, and western scholars began reading Egyptian texts, questions arose as to where Punt was located and what it is called in the modern world. Punt is almost certainly modern-day Puntland State of Somalia based on the evidence of the ancient Egyptian inscriptions. According to historian Ahmed Abdi, the ancient city of Opone in Somalia is identical to the city of Pouen referenced as part of Punt by ancient inscriptions. The Egyptians called Punt Pwenet or Pwene which translates as Pouen known to the Greeks as Opone. It well established that Opone traded with Egypt over many centuries.
The country is best known for Queen Hatshepsut’s famous expedition in 1493 BCE in the 18th Dynasty of Egypt. This exchange between Egypt and Punt brought back living trees to Egypt, marking the first known successful attempt at transplanting foreign fauna. This voyage to Punt is only the most famous, however, and evidence suggests that the Egyptians were trading with the Land of Punt as early as the reign of the pharaoh Khufu in the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613-2498 BCE) and probably earlier.
Egypt grew as a nation as trade increased beginning in the latter part of the Predynastic Period (c. 6000-3150 BCE). By the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-2613 BCE) trade was firmly established with regions in Mesopotamia and Phoenicia. By the time of the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2498-2345 BCE) Egypt was flourishing through trade with these areas and especially the Phoenician city of Byblos and the countries of Nubia and Punt. Punt was not only a significant partner in trade, however; it was also a source of cultural and religious influence and a land which the Egyptians viewed as their place of origin and blessed by the gods.
LOCATION OF THE LAND OF PUNT The exact location of the Land of Punt is still disputed by historians, scholars, archaeologists, and others in the present day. Through the years it has been cited as part of Arabia, present-day Somalia or the Puntland State of Somalia at the Horn of Africa, the Sudan, Eritrea, or some other internal region of east Africa. The debate continues as to where Punt was located with scholars and historians on every side offering plausible supports for their claims. The two best possibilities are Eretria and Somalia with Eretria so far gaining the most widespread acceptance.
It would seem, however, from the reliefs telling of the expedition carved on Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir al-Bahri, that Punt was likely located in present day Puntland State of Somalia. According to historian Abdisalam Mahamoud, the ancient Somali name for their region was "Bunn", a name referenced in texts regarding trade with Egypt as "Pwenet" or "Pwene", and the region is known as "Bunni" in the present day. The culture of Puntland State of Somalia bears a number of striking resemblances to that of ancient Egypt including language, ceremonial dress, and the arts.
Hatshepsut's inscriptions claim that her divine mother, Hathor, was from Punt and other inscriptions indicate that Egyptians in the 18th Dynasty considered Punt the origin of their culture. The scholar John A. Wilson writes how Hatshepsut was very proud of the expedition she launched to Punt and he makes clear that it was "the land of incense to the south, perhaps chiefly in the Somaliland area, but also Arabia Felix" (176). Wilson seems to favor an interpretation of Somalia as Punt when he points out the "unusual prominence" of this expedition. Punt could not have been in Arabia because the Egyptians traded regularly with that region which was not "to the south" and could not have been Nubia because the Egyptians knew that land well also and it would not have been represented as "mysterious". Further, trade was conducted by sea travel which rules both of those out. It is possible it was located above Somalia in Eritrea, however, and this region is the best contender for Punt after Somalia.
Those who favor an interpretation of Somalia as Punt point to the descriptions of Hatsehpsut's and other's expeditions. The Egyptians traveled there by boat down the Nile, through the Wadi Tumilat in the eastern Delta and on to the Red Sea. There is evidence that the Egyptian crews would disassemble their boats, carry them overland to the Red Sea, and then hug the shores as they made their way to Punt. While this description does favor an interpretation of Eritrea, the other evidence weighs heavily in favor of Somalia. The Egyptians would have hugged the coast all the way to the Horn of Africa, present day Puntland State of Somalia. Wilson cites the reliefs at Hatshepsut's temple as evidence of how amazed the Puntites were at the Egyptian's arrival as they were, seemingly, at the edge of the world. Wilson writes: rtemidorus, a Greek geographer of about 100 BC, described the coast’s configuration, naming various ports, and the desert region of Danakil, where he indicated the existence of certain lakes—possibly Assal (in present-day Djibouti) and Awsa (in Ethiopia). Beyond lay an incense-producing region, and beyond that was what can perhaps be identified as the district of Harer and the Valley of Awash (both now in Ethiopia). But no one really knew the interior of the country, where, except for great rivers such as the Astaboras (Tekeze) and lakes such as Psebo, there was only speculation. Punt





god  Bes (Bisu, Aha) was an ancient Egyptian dwarf god. He was a complex being who was both a deity and a demonic fighter. He was a god of war, yet he was also a patron of childbirth and the home, and was associated with sexuality, humour, music and dancing.

Alternative Names

Gods lands