Lost Worlds · Proposed location: southern Red Sea coast

The Land of Punt

Egypt traded with a fabled land it called 'God's Land' for over a thousand years — then lost the map. Mummified baboons may finally have found it.

Mainstream: Egyptian trade with Punt attested c. 2500–1000 BC (Old Kingdom to New Kingdom)Alternative: A real place in Egyptian records whose location has been argued over for two centuries and is only now narrowing15.00°, 39.50°

Lost Worlds Knowledge

At a glance

The Land of Punt — Photo: Ismoon · CC BY-SA 4.0

Punt was a land the ancient Egyptians reached by sea and prized as a source of incense, gold, ebony, exotic animals and myrrh trees. They called it Ta-netjer, 'God's Land', and mounted trading expeditions to it across more than a millennium — yet they never left a plain statement of where it was. As Egyptian civilisation faded, Punt slipped from a known trading partner into a half-legendary place, its whereabouts a genuine geographical mystery. Unlike Atlantis, Punt is not disputed as real: the argument is purely about which stretch of coast the Egyptians were sailing to. Recent isotope and DNA work on the animals the Egyptians brought back has begun to pin it down.

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The mainstream view

What archaeology says

Egyptologists have no doubt Punt existed, because the Egyptians documented their dealings with it in detail. The richest source is the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri (c. 1470 BC), whose reliefs depict a full seaborne expedition to Punt: Egyptian ships loaded with myrrh trees in baskets, heaps of incense, gold, ebony and leopard skins, the Puntite ruler Parahu and his notably large-bodied wife Ati, and villages of domed reed houses raised on stilts among palms. Earlier and later texts, from the Old Kingdom Palermo Stone to New Kingdom tomb scenes, confirm Punt as a recurring, real trade destination reached down the Red Sea.

The long-standing scholarly consensus places Punt on the African coast of the southern Red Sea and the Horn of Africa — roughly modern Eritrea, eastern Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia — on the basis of the tropical products, the domed houses, and animals such as giraffes and rhinoceroses shown in the reliefs. That view has been sharpened by science. From 2010, a team including Nathaniel Dominy, Gillian Moritz and Salima Ikram analysed oxygen and strontium isotopes in mummified baboons the Egyptians imported (baboons appear repeatedly in the Punt reliefs), finding the closest match in the Eritrea-Ethiopia-Somalia region rather than Arabia. A 2020 follow-up refined the result toward Eritrea and eastern Ethiopia, and a 2023 ancient-DNA study led by Gisela Kopp tied a mummified hamadryas baboon genetically to populations around coastal Eritrea, proposing that Punt and the later classical port of Adulis were essentially the same place seen at different times.

Key evidence cited

Hatshepsut's Deir el-Bahri reliefs showing a seaborne expedition, myrrh trees, the ruler Parahu and Queen Ati
Old-to-New-Kingdom texts (Palermo Stone onward) recording Punt as a recurring real trade destination
Tropical products and fauna — myrrh, ebony, giraffes, baboons — indicating an African tropical source
2010 and 2020 baboon isotope studies (Dominy, Moritz, Ikram) pointing to Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia
2023 ancient-DNA study (Kopp) genetically tying an imported baboon to coastal Eritrea, near later Adulis

The alternative view

What the skeptics propose

The genuine debate over Punt is not fringe pseudo-history but a real, respectable disagreement among specialists about geography — and a case study in how a location can be firmly recorded yet still lost. For much of the twentieth century some scholars argued for a Punt on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, or straddling both shores, pointing to trade goods such as certain incenses that also grow in southern Arabia and to the ambiguity of Egyptian sailing directions. Others proposed locations as far inland as the Sudanese Nile.

Even the baboon studies leave room for argument. Critics note that an animal's isotopic or genetic origin tells you where the creature was captured, not necessarily where the Egyptians' trading partners lived or where the port of exchange stood — animals and goods could be moved along coasts and up rivers before ever meeting an Egyptian ship. The Puntites depicted at Deir el-Bahri may represent a trading network or a coastal culture spanning a wider zone than any single modern country. And because 'Punt' was an Egyptian label applied over a thousand years, the place it named may have shifted over time, so that no one pin on a map is fully correct.

What has largely collapsed, on current evidence, is the stronger Arabia-only hypothesis: the convergence of the reliefs' tropical fauna and flora with isotope and DNA data points firmly to the African Horn. But the exact stretch of coast, and whether Punt was one kingdom, a region or a trade sphere, remain open and legitimately contested.

Key evidence cited

A long-standing minority case for a Punt on the Arabian side, based on shared incense species and vague sailing texts
Animal isotopes reveal where a baboon was captured, not necessarily where the trading partners or port lay
Goods and animals could travel along coasts and rivers before reaching Egyptian ships, blurring the source
The label 'Punt' spanned over a millennium and may have referred to a shifting region rather than one fixed city
The Puntites shown at Deir el-Bahri may represent a trade network spanning a wider zone than any modern nation

Genuinely open questions

Was Punt a single kingdom, a coastal culture, or a broad trading region — and did its meaning shift over a thousand years?
Has any Puntite settlement or port been physically located, or are all identifications still inferred from Egyptian sources?
Do the baboon origins mark the trading partners' homeland, or merely one node in a longer supply chain?

Worth knowing

The clue that may finally have located Punt was not a map or an inscription but a mummified monkey: hamadryas baboons imported to Egypt as sacred animals carry, in their bones, hair and DNA, an isotopic and genetic 'postcode' of the African coast they came from.