Red Sea trade with Punt

Beginning in the Predynastic period, Egypt likely had contacts with the southern Red Sea region (roughly modern Ethiopia and Eritrea), later equated with an elusive and probably shifting land of ‘Punt’, via Upper Nubia and possibly Red Sea travel. For example, the Fifth Dynasty king Sahure’s mortuary temple depicts cowpeas, which originate from sub-Saharan Africa, while scenes of a Red Sea voyage returning from Punt with males, females, and children, dogs, baboons, and monkeys, and live frankincense trees have recently been discovered by the causeway of his mortuary temple. The Palermo Stone adds that Sahure’s mission to Punt obtained 80,000 measures of myrrh (‘ntyw), 23,020 measures of an unguent, 6000 pieces of electrum (d‘m), and 2900 nodules of malachite (w3d-šsmt). Investigations at a Red Sea anchorage at Mersa Gawasis and…

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Ancient History (Digital) - 1 Issue, AH 53

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