Land of Punt For the region in Somalia, see Puntland. Queen Ati, wife of King Perahu of Punt, depicted on Pharaoh Hatshepsuts temple at Deir el-Bahri.The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet, or Pwene by the ancient Egyptians, was an old 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. Some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put. At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer, the land of the god. The exact location of Punt is still debated by historians. Most scholars today believe Punt was located to the southeast of Egypt, most likely in the coastal region of what is today Somalia,Djibouti, Eritrea, Northeast Ethiopia 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. Egyptian expeditions to Punt Egyptian soldiers from Hatshepsuts expedition to the Land of Punt as depicted from her temple at Deir el-Bahri.This relief depicts incense and myrrh trees obtained by Hatshepsuts expedition to PuntA tree in front of Hatshepsuts temple, claimed to have been brought from Punt by Hatshepsuts Expedition which is depicted on the Temple wallsThe earliest recorded Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized byPharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty(25th century BC). However, gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt as early as the time of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty. 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 namedHannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he personally traveled on these expeditions.[8] 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. In the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt,Hatshepsut built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between the head of theGulf of Aqaba and points south as far as Punt to bring mortuary goods toKarnak 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 five-ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsuts 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, Nehsis expedition was a simple trading mission to a land, Punt, which was by this time a well-established trading post. Moreover, Nehsis 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 pharaohs 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 [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. Hatshepsuts 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III andAmenhotep 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 Egypts 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 expeditions 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. Ta netjer At times, the ancient Egyptians called Punt Ta netjer, meaning Gods 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. Older literature (and current non-mainstream literature) maintained that the label Gods 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 Petriebelieved 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 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. Location Supposed location around the Red Sea and major travel routes by land and seaThe majority opinion places Punt in Eastern 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, and ebony; the wild animals depicted in Punt include giraffes,baboons, hippopotami, 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 which 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.” Some scholars disagree with this view and point to a range of ancient inscriptions which locate Punt in Arabia. Dimitri Meeks has written that “Texts locating Punt beyond doubt to the south are in the minority, but they are the only ones cited in the current consensus about the location of the country. Punt, we are told by the Egyptians, is situated – in relation to the Nile Valley – both to the north, in contact with the countries of the Near East of the Mediterranean area, and also to the east or south-east, while its furthest borders are far away to the south. Only the Arabian Peninsula satisfies all these indications.”[6]In 2010, a genetic study was conducted on the mummified remains of baboonsthat were brought back from Punt by the ancient Egyptians. Led by a research team from the Egyptian Museum and the University of California, the scientists used oxygenisotope 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 others oxygen isotope values were compared to those ot Eritrea.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 18:03:33 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015