page_title: Land of Punt
section_title: Location
hierarchical_section_title: Land of Punt / Location
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the supposed location of Punt and trade routes from Egypt to Punt via rivers, wadis, and by sea. Mennefer is Memphis, Waset is Thebes, Irem and Nemyw are lands that supposedly border on Punt
context_page_description: Puntland' is a province of Somalia
  Land of Punt is a name for a geographic place, mentioned in Ancient Egyptian texts. At times it is also called Pwenet or Pwene.
  Ancient Egypt traded with this place since at least 6.000 BC. 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".
  It is not known where exactly this place was. 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 bunch of ancient writings which locate Punt in the Arabian Peninsula. It is also possible that the territory covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia. Puntland, the Somali administrative region at the edge of the Horn of Africa, may be named in reference to the Land of Punt.
context_section_description: The products of Punt (as they are shown in Hatshepsut's temple) are easily found in the Horn of Africa. They are less common or absent in Arabia. For this reason, most scholars think that Punt was in Northeast Africa. These products included gold and aromatic resins such as myrrh, frankincense, and ebony; the wild animals depicted in Punt included giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, and leopards. According to 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."
  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, 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." In 2015, the scientists conducted a followup 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."
caption: Supposed location around the Red Sea and major travel routes by land and sea
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