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The Fabled Land Of Punt

Baboon skull may be from Punt. Might also be ancient ruler of Cromer.

Ancient Egyptian legends tell of a magical faraway land where intrepid travelers could obtain wondrous products including gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The Land of Punt—or “God’s land” as the Egyptians occasionally dubbed it—served as the setting for what has been described as the oldest known fantasy story.

Archaeologists are convinced Punt really existed, and now they may have their hands on the first known Puntite treasure: a 3300-year-old baboon skull that may have come from the fabled land.

The Egyptians first began to travel to Punt about 4500 years ago and continued to do so for more than 1000 years, according to their hieroglyphic written records. But although those records and artworks list the products the Egyptians brought back from Punt—resins, metals, hardwoods, and exotic animals—archaeologists have found little hard evidence of these goods.

That may change with the baboon skull. Nathaniel Dominy, a primatologist at Dartmouth College, and colleagues discovered it archived away at the British Museum. The remains belong to a hamadryas baboon discovered by 19th century archaeologists in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. The Egyptians revered hamadryas baboons as the embodiment of Thoth, a god of wisdom, and also connected the primates with Amun-Ra, the great Sun god. But the primates are not native to Egypt. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...oon-skull-may-tell-mysterious-ancient-kingdom
 
For some reason, I'm thinking of one of the dirty secrets of colonialism here, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe which left lots of relics behind; a stone city rediscovered in the jungle, which white colonial rulers ignored as it went opposite to the received wisdom that Black Africans were primitives with no history. Okay, the Egyptians would have had to drop off in Mozambique and go a long way inland to find it: but how far did Zimbabwe extend in those days, and how long ago?
 
The Land of Punt ... was an ancient kingdom. A trading partner of Ancient 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. It is possible that it corresponds to Opone in Somalia, as later known by the ancient Greeks, while some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put or Havilah.

At times Punt is referred to as Ta netjer ... , the "Land of the God".The exact location of Punt is debated by historians. Various locations have been offered, southeast of Egypt, a Red Sea coastal region: Somalia, northeast Ethiopia, Eritrea, and north-east Sudan. It is also possible that it covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt
 
This excerpt from an article about ancient Egyptian humor illustrates the prominence of Punt and its association with Hatshepsut.

Humor was not limited to the mundane. A drawing on the wall of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri shows an obese "queen of Punt" in front of a tiny donkey. The inscription for the sketch reads, "The donkey that had to carry the queen." The drawing gained popularity and was copied, cartoon-style, many times from the original.

The land of Punt, which historians believe might have been the area that is now Libya or Ethiopia, held near-mythical status for Egyptians in the ancient world. Animal skins and other exotic goods came from Punt via trade routes. Historians also think that Bes, the ancient Egyptian god of humor, infants, home life, song, and dance, originated in Punt.

While the Egyptians built no temples to honor Bes, shrines for the chubby, bearded dwarf with uncombed hair were placed in many homes. The ancient Egyptians believed that anytime a baby smiled or laughed for no reason, Bes was in the room making faces.
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Excerpted From:

Funny Punt & Other Ancient Egyptian Hilarity
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/funny-punt-other-ancient-egyptian-hilarity.15697/
 
Cavynaut said:
Punt was supposedly down Somalia/ Horn of Africa way.
ocean.tamu.edu/Quarterdeck/QD3.1 ... epsut.html
See later post for the MIA webpage's content.
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Here's the MIA text ...

The strong association of Punt with Hatshepsut derives from the ocean expedition she launched which visited Punt.

Queen Hatshepsut's expedition to the Land of Punt: The first oceanographic cruise?
by Sayed Z. El-Sayed

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!

The ancient Egyptians with their penchant for accurate information, and for making precise observations of the environment, had amassed a store of knowledge of the geography, hydrography and meteorology which enabled them to undertake seafaring ventures. In order to navigate to Punt, they must have known the navigational peculiarities of the Red Sea, in which northerly winds bring rough weather from the end of June to December while mild southerlies prevail the rest of the year.

We do not know whether or not Hatshepsut sent other expeditions to the Land of Punt, but later Egyptian monarchs reached the south of Africa and beyond. Herodotus informs us that Necho II, King of Egypt (ca. 600 B.C.) sent Phoenician sailors down to the Red Sea and along the coast of Africa. In the third year they returned through the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar), and reached Egypt via the Mediterranean Sea.

According to William A. Herdmann, author of The Founders of Oceanography and Their Work (1923), it is doubtful whether the circumnavigation of Africa was repeated until Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope from the west two thousand years later, in the 15th century.
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SALVAGED FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010081...rterdeck/QD3.1/Elsayed/elsayedhatshepsut.html
 
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This NOVA webpage provides a basic overview of the issues and debates surrounding Punt's location.
WHERE IS PUNT?
BY PETER TYSON

... Hatshepsut, along with all other ancient Egyptians, has left us a puzzle that we just can't seem to solve with any certainty. It's the mystery surrounding the location of Punt ("Poont"). Also known as God's Land, Punt was a faraway realm rich in incense, ebony, and gold with which the Egyptians traded for over a thousand years.

The Egyptians left us mountains of evidence for Punt, none more so than Hatshepsut, whose 3,500-year-old temple at Deir el-Bahri near Thebes contains a veritable book in stone describing Punt. Hatshepsut and other pharaohs sent huge expeditions to Punt—flotillas of robust, seagoing ships with thousands of men. But neither Hatshepsut nor anyone else from ancient times left us any map, any directions or distances, or anything else that definitively pinpoints Punt's location.

So elusive is the answer that, since the mid-19th century, a procession of scholars have, like erudite dart-throwers, stippled the map of the Red Sea area with their often strongly argued proposals for where Punt lay. (Refer to map at right throughout this article.) Syria. Sinai. Southern Arabia. Eastern Sudan. Northern Ethiopia. Somalia. Kenya. Each was Punt, insists this or that Egyptologist. New papers continue to appear regularly that try to put this question to bed once and for all. So far, all have failed.

As one scholar who has ventured into this labyrinth, Dmitri Meeks, has phrased it, "Punt 'exists' as if in a void ... the exact whereabouts of which remain more or less unknown."

Why? How can an entire realm or region go missing, as it were? With a steady stream of references across nearly 2,000 years of ancient Egyptian history and highly focused scholarship for 150 years, how can we not know? Where is Punt?
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FULL STORY: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pharaoh/punt.html
 
AgProv said:
For some reason, I'm thinking of one of the dirty secrets of colonialism here, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe which left lots of relics behind ... Okay, the Egyptians would have had to drop off in Mozambique and go a long way inland to find it: but how far did Zimbabwe extend in those days, and how long ago?
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The Kingdom of Zimbabwe and the Great Zimbabwe site arose at least two millennia later than the earliest mentions of Punt among ancient Egyptians. The area around Great Zimbabwe isn't known (archaeologically) to have hosted any substantial settlements any earlier than the 4th century CE. Great Zimbabwe itself isn't believed to have been built any earlier than circa 1000 - 1200 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Zimbabwe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe
 
Newly published chemical trace research on mummified baboons from ancient Egypt indicates the animals (presumably sourced from Punt) were sourced from somewhere in or around the Horn of Africa.
Mummified baboons shine new light on the lost land of Punt

Ancient Punt was a major trading partner of Egyptians for at least 1,100 years. It was an important source of luxury goods, including incense, gold, leopard skins, and living baboons. Located somewhere in the southern Red Sea region in either Africa or Arabia, scholars have debated its geographic location for more than 150 years. A new study tracing the geographic origins of Egyptian mummified baboons finds that they were sourced from an area that includes the modern-day countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Dijbouti, Somalia, and Yemen, providing new insight into Punt's location. Published in eLife, the results also demonstrate the tremendous nautical range of early Egyptian seafarers. A Dartmouth-led team of researchers including primatologists, Egyptologists, geographers, and geochemists, worked together to analyze the isotope composition of baboons discovered in ancient Egyptian temples and tombs, and modern baboons from across eastern Africa and southern Arabia.

"Long-distance seafaring between Egypt and Punt, two sovereign entities, was a major milestone in human history because it drove the evolution of maritime technology. Trade in exotic luxury goods, including baboons, was the engine behind early nautical innovations," explains lead author Nathaniel J. Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. ...

The study focused on mummified baboons from the New Kingdom period (1550-1069 B.C.) available in the British Museum and specimens from the Ptolemaic period (305-30 B.C.) available in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. In addition, the authors examined tissues from 155 baboons from 77 locations across eastern Africa and southern Arabia, encompassing every hypothesized location for Punt. The team measured oxygen and strontium isotope compositions and used a method called isotopic mapping to estimate the geographic origins of specimens recovered from the New Kingdom and Ptolemaic sites in Egypt. ...

The findings demonstrate that the two mummified P. hamadryas baboons from the New Kingdom period, EA6738 and EA6736, were born outside of Egypt. They had most likely come from a location in Eritrea, Ethiopia or Somalia, which narrows down the location of Punt. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/dc-mbs121420.php
 
EnolaGaia said:
Newly published chemical trace research on mummified baboons from ancient Egypt indicates the animals (presumably sourced from Punt) were sourced from somewhere in or around the Horn of Africa.


FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/dc-mbs121420.php
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New findings regarding the Puntian Primates puzzle.

New research on the mysterious remains of mummified baboons, found far from their natural habitat over a hundred years ago in Egypt, has shed light on the sacred significance of the primates in the ancient Arabian Peninsula.

In studying the curious creatures, researchers on the project also believe they have revealed new evidence that Punt and Adulis, two legendary trading regions that shaped the world's economic and geopolitical structure, may have been the same place in the coastal region in Eritrea — separated by a thousand years of history.

The mummified hamadryas baboons were found in 1905, eroding out of the valley of the monkeys — an archaeological site at Luxor's western bank of the Nile known for its depictions of baboons on tomb walls discovered nearby.

The creatures were missing their ferocious canine teeth, but, unlike other mummified baboon specimens found from the same timeframe, they were neither entombed with noblemen of the time nor found in group catacombs, raising questions for decades about how they got there — and why.

Mummified Baboon


Specimen EA 6738, held by the British Museum: Skull of a mummified baboon recovered from Thebes, Egypt and connected isotopically to Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia. (Trustees of the British Museum)

Science has finally advanced enough to answer some lingering questions about the baboons.

After testing ten different specimens and being able to extract DNA from just a single one, Gisela Kopp, a biologist from the University of Konstanz, utilized a new method of genetic analysis on DNA from the specimen to trace its origins. Kopp's discovery is the first time ancient DNA from a mummified non-human primate has successfully been analyzed to this extent.

https://www.sciencealert.com/mystery-of-mummified-baboons-found-in-egypt-may-finally-be-solved
 
ramonmercado said:
New findings regarding the Puntian Primates puzzle.

New research on the mysterious remains of mummified baboons, found far from their natural habitat over a hundred years ago in Egypt, has shed light on the sacred significance of the primates in the ancient Arabian Peninsula.

In studying the curious creatures, researchers on the project also believe they have revealed new evidence that Punt and Adulis, two legendary trading regions that shaped the world's economic and geopolitical structure, may have been the same place in the coastal region in Eritrea — separated by a thousand years of history.

The mummified hamadryas baboons were found in 1905, eroding out of the valley of the monkeys — an archaeological site at Luxor's western bank of the Nile known for its depictions of baboons on tomb walls discovered nearby.

The creatures were missing their ferocious canine teeth, but, unlike other mummified baboon specimens found from the same timeframe, they were neither entombed with noblemen of the time nor found in group catacombs, raising questions for decades about how they got there — and why.

Mummified Baboon


Specimen EA 6738, held by the British Museum: Skull of a mummified baboon recovered from Thebes, Egypt and connected isotopically to Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia. (Trustees of the British Museum)

Science has finally advanced enough to answer some lingering questions about the baboons.

After testing ten different specimens and being able to extract DNA from just a single one, Gisela Kopp, a biologist from the University of Konstanz, utilized a new method of genetic analysis on DNA from the specimen to trace its origins. Kopp's discovery is the first time ancient DNA from a mummified non-human primate has successfully been analyzed to this extent.

https://www.sciencealert.com/mystery-of-mummified-baboons-found-in-egypt-may-finally-be-solved
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More on Egypt's sacred baboons, looks as if they were paid peanuts.

Ancient baboon mummies show signs of poor diet and lack of sunlight during captivity.

Three skulls of sacred mummified baboons from Egypt.

The new analysis of the skeletons of 36 sacred baboons mummified in ancient Egypt between 3000 and 1500 years ago shows many were kept captive without sunlight. (Image credit: Bea De Cupere)

Baboons sacred to the ancient Egyptians were glorified as mummies after their death, but they suffered from poor conditions when they were alive, a new study suggests.

The researchers examined bones from dozens of mummified baboons from ancient Egypt between the ninth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D. and found evidence that many had suffered from poor diets as well as bone disorders often caused by lack of sunlight.

Of the remains of 36 baboons found at a necropolis for sacred animals at Gabbanat el-Qurud in southern Egypt, just four appeared to be in good health. "All the others showed deficiencies in the skeleton," said Wim Van Neer, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and lead author of the study, published today (Dec. 6) in the journal PLOS One.

Authors Wim Van Neer and Stéphanie Porcier examine the skeletons of mummified baboons from an animal necropolis in southern Egypt.


Authors Wim Van Neer and Stéphanie Porcier examined the skeletons of mummified baboons from an animal necropolis in southern Egypt; many of the skeletons are now in museums in Europe. (Image credit: Didier Berthet)

"The most obvious deformations are seen in the skeletons: the limbs are bent, which is typical of rickets" — a symptom of extreme vitamin D deficiency usually caused by a lack of sunlight, he told Live Science.

The study compared the bones of the baboon mummies from Gabbanat el-Qurud, near the Valley of the Kings beside modern Luxor, with those found elsewhere in ancient Egypt, in hopes of learning more about the conditions in which the animals were kept.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egypts-sacred-baboons-had-tough-lives-study-suggests
 
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