The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine Page A

the return cargo.Two ships are shown, their crews carrying large sacks of cargo and “fresh myrrh trees” in baskets; these were the most highly valued acquisitions, and in announcing the success of the mission to the court,Hatshepsut says that she has obeyed the command of her father (the godAmon) “to establish for him aPunt in his house, to plant the trees of God’s-Land beside his temple, in his garden.” Frankincense and myrrh were important for the performance of sacred rituals, but an enumeration of Puntite exports that runs across several scenes includes “ebony and pure ivory, with green gold … with cinnamon wood” and, echoing the serpent-prince in the story of the shipwrecked sailor, “incense, eye-cosmetic, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children” (presumably slaves) as well as throwing sticks, cattle, silver, lapis lazuli, and malachite.
    The return of Hatshepsut’s ships from Punt on the Red Sea, as shown in the pharaoh’s temple at Thebes (Deir el-Bahri), Egypt. The most important goods are the myrrh trees slung from poles carried on the shoulders of the ship’s crew. The wooden ships were powered by oars and a single square sail and steered by side steering oars. From Auguste Mariette’s
Deir-el-Bahari: documents topographiques, historiques et ethnographiques recueillis dans CE temple
(Leipzig, 1877).
    Both the exchange between the shipwrecked sailor and the serpent andthe later account of Hatshepsut’s trading mission hint at a material inequality between Egypt and the exotic lands to the east. The Prince of Punt dismisses as insignificant the sailor’s offer to bestow upon him the “specialties of Egypt,” and while the Puntites of Hatshepsut’s day are described as overawed by and subservient to the Egyptians, their produce is clearly more valuable than anything the Egyptians have to exchange. This probably posed little problem for the pharaohs, but since late antiquity, complaints about trade imbalances between east and west—the dividing line running more or less through the Red Sea and Southwest Asia—have been a recurrent theme among writers, as are politicians’ calls forsumptuary laws to restrict the import of “precious things.” Older still, as these narratives show, is the western habit oforientalizing, simultaneously investing the east with an aura of exotic mystery and portraying its inhabitants as natural subjects of western authority.
    We know little ofhow the Egyptians navigated the Red Sea, which even today is notorious for its tricky currents and innumerable reefs. Visual observation would have been essential and navigation at night seems unlikely. Northerly winds prevail year-round in the Red Sea as far south as 19°N, well south of Egypt’s modern border withSudan, but the best season for a voyage beyond that point would have been between June and September when the prevailing wind is from the north-northwest and blows at a steady eleven to sixteen knots. With favorable winds, a fast passage toEritrea might take two weeks or more, and considerably longer northbound, with deeply laden hulls straining against wind and current. Given the dryness of the environment, the ships would have to have carried ample supplies of water, beer, and wine, all of which would quickly go bad in the heat. In addition, food, cargoes, and the ships themselves had to be carried to the port of embarkation, which suggests a highly sophisticated and experienced organization. IfHenu needed three thousand men to launch one ship on the Red Sea, Hatshepsut’s expedition probably required at least five times as many.

New Kingdom Recovery and Expansion
    Unique though Hatshepsut was as a woman pharaoh, her dynamism was characteristic of the New Kingdom in general and especially the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570–1315 BCE ). Although Egypt had periodically extended its political influence east and west from the Niledelta and south ofAswan,