Heritage Key (Owen Jarus)
Heritage Key reported recently that mummified baboons in the British Museum could reveal the location of the land of Punt – a place to which pharaohs organized trading expeditions. To the Egyptians, Punt was a place of fragrances, giraffes, electrum and other exotic goods. It was sometimes referred to as Ta-netjer – ‘God’s land’ – a huge compliment given that the Ancient Egyptians tended to view outside cultures with disdain.Although Egyptians record voyaging to it until the end of the New Kingdom, 3,000 years ago, scholars do not know where Punt was. Ancient texts offer only vague allusions to its location and no ‘Puntite’ civilization has yet been discovered. Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen and even Mozambique have all been offered as possible locations.
Thanks to some cutting edge science, the search for Punt appears to be coming to an end. New research, to be presented at an Egyptology conference today, provides proof that it was located in Eritrea/East Ethiopia.
See the above page for the full story.
Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes