Although Nile River craft are well-known, the ability of ancient Egyptian mariners to ply hundreds of miles of open seas in cargo craft was not so fully documented.

Then the team led by Bard and an Italian archaeologist, Rodolfo Fattovich, started uncovering maritime storerooms in 2004, putting hard timber and rugged rigging to the notion of pharaonic deepwater prowess.

In the most recent discovery, on Dec. 29, they located the eighth in a series of lost chambers at Wadi Gawasis after shovelling through cubic meters of rock rubble and wind-blown sand.

The reconnaissance of the room and its relics will take time and caution. The chamber’s most likely contents include ship parts, jugs, trenchers, and workaday linens, as well as hieroglyphic records.

The remote desert site at the sea’s edge was established solely to satisfy the cravings of Egypt’s rulers for the luxury goods of faraway Punt: ebony, ivory, obsidian, frankincense, precious metals, slaves, and strange beasts, such as dog-faced baboons and giraffes.

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 Dynasty of Egypt, the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt and the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. In the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt, 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 travelled 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.

Queen Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from ca. 1503 to 1480 B.C. In contrast to the warlike temper of her dynasty, she devoted herself to administration and the encouragement of commerce. In the summer of 1493 B.C., she sent a fleet of five ships with thirty rowers each from Kosseir, on the Red Sea, to the Land of Punt, near present-day Somalia. It was primarily a trading expedition, for Punt, or God's Land, produced myrrh, frankincense, and fragrant ointments that the Egyptians used for religious purposes and cosmetics.

We do not know when the ships returned to Kosseir, but Hatshepsut herself informed us in lengthy inscriptions on the walls of her beautiful terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri, near Luxor in the Valley of the Kings, that "the ships were laden with the costly products of the Land of Punt and with its many valuable woods, with very much sweet-smelling resin and frankincense, with quantities of ebony and ivory . . ."

The queens' artists immortalized this homecoming in murals on the walls of the temple, which depict not only potted myrrh saplings and sacks of frankincense, but also fish and other fauna and flora collected during the expedition. The drawings on these walls are so accurate that the famed ichthyologist, the late Carl Hubbs of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told me that he was "able to identify the fish to the species level" from the drawings!

"...loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country of Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God's-Land, heaps of myrrh resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold of Emu, with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds of incense, eye-cosmetics, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children. Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning"

When he goes down with thee into the vessel, appoint excellent people, who shall be beside him on each side of the vessel; take care lest he fall into the water. When he sleeps at night appoint excellent people, who shall sleep beside him in his tent, inspect ten times a night. My majesty desires to see this dwarf more than the gifts of Sinai and of Punt. If thou arrivest at court this dwarf being with thee alive, prosperous and healthy, my majesty will do for thee a greater thing than that which was done for the treasurer of the god Burded in the time of Isesi, according to the heart's desire of my majesty to see the dwarf.

The ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt as their ancestral homeland. In his book “The Making of Egypt” (1939), W. M. Flinders Petrie stated that the Land of Punt was “sacred to the Egyptians as the source of their race.” E.A. Wallis Budge stated that “Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt…”

"Origins in Elam and Punt. The distinctive character of the 1st dynasty, which separates it from all that went before, is the conquest and union of the whole land of Egypt. It became thus subject to the falcon-bearing tribe of Horus, which was the natural enemy of the Aunu, the Set-bearing tribe. This falcon tribe had certainly originated in Elam, as indicated by the hero and lions on the "Araq knife handle". They went down the Persian Gulf and settled in the "horn of Africa." There they named the "Land of Punt," sacred to later Egyptians as the source of the race. The Pun people founded the island fortress of Hafun, which commands the whole of that coast, and hence came the Punic or Phoenic peoples of classical history. Those who went up the Red Sea formed the dynastic invaders of Egypt, entering by the Qocier-Koptos road. Others went on to Syria and founded Tyre, Sidon and Aradus--W.M. Flinders Petrie

The Expedition to Punt In the 15th century B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a king, launched a fabled expedition to a far-away land known as Punt, later recording the journey in a stone bas-relief. Here, use a detailed line drawing of the bas-relief to follow the Punt expedition from start to finish.—Peter Tyson

www.pbs.org...

Originally posted by Deny Arrogance
This was just featured on the latest episode of Nova. It was funny to watch academics play ancient sailors. The Egyptian boat builders they hired thought so to.

www.pbs.org...

The Expedition to Punt In the 15th century B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a king, launched a fabled expedition to a far-away land known as Punt, later recording the journey in a stone bas-relief. Here, use a detailed line drawing of the bas-relief to follow the Punt expedition from start to finish.—Peter Tyson

www.pbs.org...

When I hold my love close, and her arms steal around me, I'm like a man translated to Punt ... when the world suddenly bursts into flower.

Originally posted by Indigo_Child
Good thread. I did in fact very recently discuss Punt in my thread, "India: Ancient Superpower" www.abovetopsecret.com...

There is a good discussion in that thread of the location of Punt.

Punt was most likely in the Indian subcontinent, probably in the South of India. The reason for this can be asserted based on historical records of South Indians which remember the expeditions of Queen Hatshepshut, Greek records that record the migrations of the Egytians from India and and the description of fauna of Punt, which matches India. There is also indirect evidence of major trade activity between the Indians and the Egyptians. Thus "Punt" was most probably the Egyptian name for India.

My personal theory is the Egyptians was one of the first colonies setup by a group of migrants from India and hence we see similarities in Indian and early Egyptian religion.


[edit on 14-1-2010 by Indigo_Child]

Originally posted by stumason
Sorry, got to ask a glaringly obvious question, but is this Land of Punt not the same as Puntland? Or this a modern attempt by the locals to instill some historical glory to their quasi-nation, much like the FYR Macedonia?

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by kiwifoot

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What a nice thread! Informative and interesting. I've long wanted a history section where threads like this can have a chance to shine. It shows that we don't always need to be adding aliens and mystery advanced races to every human achievement in the past. For many members, the temptation to attribute great mystery to Punt would be like a junkie in a chemist shop...or a fat kid at KFC. Irresistible!

The location of Punt has fascinated a section of archaeologists for decades. It's considered to be in North Africa for many reasons. The main reason is that Egypt's boats weren't built for open seas. They were river vessels and the journeys to Punt involved towing barges. Egyptian boats were unique in design, constructed jigsaw-like with odd-shaped planks being lashed together with leather thongs. We've nothing like them anywhere else before or since.

The land of Punt is thought, therefore to be somewhere along the Nile or accessible through a tributary. It was on or near a mountain and was famously dry. Around 600BC, it was recorded that Punt had had rainfall! It was very unusual and caused a flood in the Nile.

Cool thread

If I had a gun to my head and had to choose, I'd still be inclined to say somewhere on the African continent, with extensive treading links to India, Arabia and the heart of Africa.

Originally posted by kiwifoot
reply to post by spacecowgirl

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Some very good claims for Punt being on the Indian subcontinent for sure!

I do still wonder about the seagoing worthiness of Egyptian boats.

But then again, if Thor Hyadal can do it in a raft!

Thanks for the quotes and for contributing to this thread!

Kiwifoot