it as “as a good land, called Yaa,” with “more wine than wa-
ter.” Along with describing the area’s bounty, he wrote that
the area’s ruler made him chief of a tribe. Sinuhe spent many
years with the ruler of Upper Retjenu and adopted the ap-
pearance, dress, and way of life of a local ruler. However, all
failed to bring him happiness. Eventually, at the end of this
tale, Sinuhe realizes that death is approaching, and he returns
to Egypt at the king’s explicit request. He is forgiven and es-
sentially reborn as a true Egyptian aft er being purifi ed, al-
most ritually, of all the marks of foreignness acquired during
his years in Palestine.
From the New Kingdom the most splendid narration
about foreign lands described a voyage to the land of Punt. It
is considered to be an ethnographic record, even though the
land of Punt was fi rst noted in the Old Kingdom. Th e voyage
was documented in reliefs on the walls of Queen Hatshep-
sut’s (r. 1473–1458 b.c.e.) mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri
in pictures with a few captions explaining the place and the
characters. Th e Egyptian artist carefully portrayed the Pun-
tites, with red skin and facial features similar to Egyptians,
long or bobbed hair, goatees, and kilts. Th ese same reliefs
show the Puntites as a settled people, with houses on stilts.
Th e meticulously recorded fl ora and fauna suggest that the
land was located in Eritrea or coastal Sudan, though scholars
continue to debate this.
From the same period the Egyptian scribes who accom-
panied Th utmose III (1479–1425 b.c.e.) during his military
campaigns into West Asia depicted them in the two cham-
bers to the rear of his festival temple at Karnak. Egyptologists
refer to these chambers as the “Botanical Garden” because
of their depiction of 275 diff erent types of plants, which are
shown complete with their root systems. Adorning these
walls appear to be genuine botanical specimens, thus mak-
ing the chambers the world’s oldest herbal garden. Also il-
lustrated are at least 52 animals, including 38 birds, a few of
which are unique to Egypt, including the darter, the diver,
and the great spotted cuckoo. Also prominently represented
in the Botanical Garden are several head of cattle of the two-
tailed and three-horned variety. Such oddities may be simple
fl ights of creativity or, perhaps, farmyard oddities.
Th e Greek historian Herodotus mentioned an expedition
sent by the pharaoh Necho II (r. ca. 610–595 b.c.e.), with the
aim of sailing around Africa. Th is maritime expedition was
apparently conducted by Phoenician sailors, presumably using
their ships and not Egyptian ones. Although the circumnavi-
gation of Africa was an important event, it remains obscure
whether or not this voyage was completed; some scholars be-
lieve the expedition probably had more to do with the king’s
naval policy rather than with a quest for knowledge.
THE MIDDLE EAST
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
As is oft en the case for ancient exploration, archaeologists and
historians know that exploration took place, but the names of
the explorers are rarely known, and the details of what they
did and when are hazy. For the ancient Near East, exploring
commenced the moment human beings left Africa and began
spreading throughout the world. Th ey may have been looking
for food, fl eeing a drought, or just wanting to see what was
beyond the horizon.
Probably searching for food, nomads seem to have passed
through Mesopotamia constantly before people settled down
into farming communities. From about 3500 b.c.e., when Su-
merian city-states fl ourished, to about 625 b.c.e., when the
Neo-Babylonian dynasty arose, Mesopotamians worshipped
their cities as holy places, and they loved their cities. Th is
practice may have tended to pull people toward their homes
and to discourage exploration, yet some did explore. Th eir
reasons for exploration were spiritual, commercial, political,
and military. Th ey also explored to achieve personal glory
and to satisfy the common human desire to discover what is
over the next hill.
One of the folk beliefs that persisted in the Near East was
that a land where people lived forever lay to the far east. One
of the world’s fi rst great literary works, the Epic of Gilgamesh,
tells of a true historical fi gure, Gilgamesh, who ruled the city
of Uruk in about 2700 b.c.e. It tells about how Gilgamesh left
his home to seek answers to fundamental aspects of human
existence, especially why human beings are mortal. Th e story
tells of his making a physical journey across strange lands to
fi nd the answers, and it probably refl ects the idea of making
spiritual pilgrimages that would have involved exploration.
Perhaps contact with the Harappan civilization (2600–1500
b.c.e.) in the Indus River valley was fi rst made by pilgrims
seeking the land of immortality.
On the other hand, explorers may fi rst have sought out
the Harappans because of Harappan trade goods that were
fi nding their way into the Near East through intermediaries,
especially Arabian traders. People seeking out direct contact
with such cultures as the Harappans to the east may have been
motivated by a desire to skip the middlemen and thereby im-
port goods less expensively. Indeed, the potential for fi nding
new trading partners would have combined adventure with
profi t. Th ose who ventured into strange lands would have
brought back with them tales of unusual peoples. It may have
been such tales that inspired Sargon I (r. ca. 2334–2279 b.c.e.),
founder of the Akkadian Empire, to conquer lands along trade
routes. One could argue that he was just trying to monopolize
trade, but he took an excursion into Anatolia during which
he looted but did not absorb new territory into his empire,
and the purpose of the excursion was probably primarily to
explore—to fi nd out whether there was anything worth con-
quering. Much later in history, from 336 to 326 b.c.e., Alexan-
der the Great conquered his way across the Near East partly so
that he could see the edge of the world, which supposedly lay
to the east, beyond India. Like Sargon I’s venture into Anato-
lia, Alexander’s conquest was a form of military exploration.
Another form of exploration occurred when people
wanted to escape bad economic times or to fi nd work. En-438 exploration: The Middle East