Innovation No. 73 of 77 in the book
International Trade Mission
Hatshepsut’s fleet sailed to Punt, a Red Sea region known for incense and exotic goods
- When
- c. 1473 BCE
- Dynasty
- 18th Dynasty
- Era
- New Kingdom
Around 1473 BCE, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut sent a grand seagoing expedition to a distant land called Punt — the first well-documented long-distance trade mission.
Five ships sailed the Red Sea and came home loaded with living incense trees, ebony, gold, ivory and exotic animals. She had the whole voyage, ships and cargo and all, carved onto her temple walls.
It wasn’t conquest; it was commerce — a state expedition to trade with a faraway partner and bring the wealth home.
The first great trade voyage in the record set sail from Egypt.
Earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian records mention trade with distant places; what is new here is the telling. The whole voyage is carved in sequence on the walls of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari — the ships setting out, the arrival, Punt's houses built on stilts, its plants and animals, the exchange of gifts with its king and queen, the loading, and the fleet's return to Thebes. No other Bronze Age culture left a chronological pictorial record of an expedition like it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What came back on the ships?
Living incense trees with their root balls intact, along with ebony, gold, ivory and live animals. Transplanting trees rather than buying resin means the expedition was after a supply, not a single cargo.
Is there anything unusual in the carvings?
One remarkable detail. Ati, the queen of Punt, is drawn as the artist saw her — curved spine, heavy folds of flesh, short legs — where Egyptian art almost always rendered foreign royalty in the same idealised shape.