Hatshepsut’s expedition reestablished contact with Punt that lasted several
centuries to the reign of Ramses III. Trade remained a royal monopoly
managed through organized expeditions using a port on the Red Sea, but no
permanent Egyptian post was established at Punt. Visiting Egyptians would
stay there for several months, occasionally penetrating into the interior to
seek goods. In return, Puntite boats, looking more like rafts, sometimes
reached the coast of Egypt to trade or bring royal visitors. With all of this
activity over such a long period on a fairly continuous basis, it may be rea-
sonable to assume that at one time or another the Egyptians ventured farther
on through the Bab el-Mandeb, the straits separating the tip of Arabia from
Africa, and out into the Gulf of Aden to Cape Guardafui at the tip of the
East African Horn. Beyond lay India and Southeast Asia in one direction and
the coast of East Africa in another. But the Egyptians were not the most
adventurous of ancient peoples, and no evidence of this exists.
Although trade to the south with the lands of Yam and Punt brought
exotic materials to Egypt, in terms of quantity and overall value this never
matched Egypt’s trade to the north with the cities of the Levant. The coastal
rim of what is today Lebanon was marked by little bays, inlets, headlands,
and islets. Shipping lanes led south to Egypt and northwest to Cypress and
the Aegean Sea. Inland, running parallel to the coast, stood a range of
mountains once covered with forests of cedar, cypress, pine, and juniper.
Passages ran through these mountains linking the coast to a caravan thor-
oughfare connecting to the Euphrates Valley. Beyond lay Mesopotamia to
the south, Anatolia and Armenia to the north, and Iran and Afghanistan to
the east. The little strip of coastal plain was well positioned to become the
hub of intermeshing trade networks.
Historians refer to the people who lived along the Levantine coast and in
much of its interior down to the second millenniumBCEas“Canaanites,”
which appears to be what they called themselves. In thefirst millennium the
Greeks designated those Canaanites who lived in the coastal cities of
Lebanon by the term“Phoenicians,”and historians have dutifully followed
suit. The Canaanite–Phoenicians did not form a unified nation, preferring to
live in small commercialized states that competedfiercely with each other in
trade but, unlike the Sumerians and Greeks, generally not in war. Beginning
in the fourth millennium BCE, the greatest of these cities was Byblos
(Jubayl), which originally was the center of a silver trade between Egypt and
Anatolia. This withered in the third millennium (at about the same time the
lapis trade was interrupted), but Byblos continued to enjoy a special rela-
tionship with Egypt through the second millennium.
Other cities of note that would eventually surpass Byblos in thefirst mil-
lennium included Sidon (“the Fishery”; modern Sayda) and Tyre (“the
Rock”; modern Sur) to the south. Ninety miles to the north lay Ugarit (Ras
Shamra) with a cosmopolitan population that blended Canaanites with other
trading peoples. Ugarit had the advantage of being closer to Anatolia and
46 Land of gold