July 3, 2019 • 39 mins
One of our biggest sources of information on Punt comes from Hatshepsut, who sent a huge expedition there in the 15th century B.C.E. The expedition to Punt is also an important and illustrative part of Hatshepsut’s reign.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
Fry And it has been too long since we've had
any African history on the show. We know this. It's
(00:25):
one of those things where you look at the recent
archive and go, wow, that has been a while. I
really wanted to do an episode on the land of Poot,
which is uh spelled p u n t, So sometimes
you'll also hear people pronounce it Punt, and sometimes it's
described as a kingdom, sometimes more of a massive trading center.
But there are some really really big holes in our
knowledge of Punch that make it hard to do a
(00:47):
whole episode on it. For example, we don't know exactly
where it was. There are references to Punt in Egyptian
writing that span about two thousand years, and there's also
mentions from elsewhere in the world, but it's not totally
clear whether all of these references are referring to the
same place. But one of our biggest sources of information
(01:07):
on Punt comes from Hatch scheps It, who sent a
huge expedition there in the fifteenth century b c. E.
Expedition to Punt is also an important and illustrative part
of hatcheps its reign. So today we're going to go
to Punt by way of hatch Cheps and the civilization
that we call Ancient Egypt expanded and contracted in cycles
(01:28):
for thousands of years, with periods of prospering and flourishing
divided by periods of decline and instability. This is part
of why I have not jumped on any African history recently,
because I start delving in and then I go whoa wah,
this water is too deep, and I back up. Egyptologists
have roughly divided these prosperous eras into the Old, Middle
(01:50):
and New Kingdoms, separated by intermediary periods. These people knew
their civilization by a number of names, including the Two Lands,
the Beloved Land, and Chemmit, which is usually translated as Blackland,
often interpreted as a reference to the fertile soil that
sits along the Nile River. Hat Ships It was Pharaoh
(02:11):
near the start of the New Kingdom, which started with
the founding of the Eighteenth ruling dynasty. The Eighteenth dynasty
also included some of Egypt's most well known pharaohs, including
Amenhotep the Third Act and Too In common, these kings
did not call themselves pharaoh's though that's a Greek term
that was coined a little later and then kind of
(02:31):
retroactively applied to all of the kings of this ancient kingdom.
The Eighteenth dynasty was founded by Amosa in about fifteen
thirty nine b C, and after his death in about
fifteen fourteen b C, Amosa was succeeded by his son,
a Menhotep the First, But when a Menhotep the First
died in about fourteen nine three b C, he did
(02:53):
not have a male heir, so in that case one
of his general's Tutmosa, was next on the throne. Tutmosa
may at a woman named Amosa, and it's not entirely
clear who her parents were. One of her titles was
king's sister, but it's not totally known whether that came
from being the sister of one of the previous kings
or Tutmosa's own sister. In the society, kings had a
(03:16):
primary wife known as the Great Royal Wife, along with
other lesser wives and concubines, and for much of ancient
Egyptian history, it was typical for the king to take
his sister or half sister as his great royal wife,
and to marry his other sisters as well. The king
was the embodiment of the god Horace, and a marriage
to a sister or half sister herkened back to the
(03:37):
Egyptian creation story. In this story, the first god a tomb,
had no partner, so he created the first pair of
deities by himself. This brother sister pair then produced another
brother sister pair, and so on. In the eighteenth dynasty,
in particular, it was required for royal sisters to marry
their brother kings, and then for daughters of that pair
(03:58):
to marry the next king. And in addition to the
religious aspect that connected back to this creation story, this
also really concentrated the power and the wealth within the
royal family. So, whether Tutmosa was marrying his own sister
or the sister of one of the previous kings, his
doing this strengthened his claim to the throne, and it
(04:18):
preserved the idea of balance. When Tutmosa died, he and
Amosa had one daughter, hot Schepsu. Hat Chepsid had been
trained as a high priestess in the Temple of Ammon,
who was head of the Egyptian pantheon, as well as
patron deity of the kings in the city of Thebes
during the New Kingdom. Tutmosa and Amosa did not have
a son, but Tutmosa did have a son with one
(04:40):
of his lesser wives, and that son was Tutmosa the Second.
Tutmosa the Second followed his father on the throne in
about fourteen eighty two b c E, and he married
his half sister, hat scheps It, who was about thirteen
at the time. Because the new king was very young, inexperienced,
and chronically ill, the king's great royal wife acted as
his regent. But Tutmosa the Second did not live long
(05:02):
after becoming king. He died in about fourteen seventy nine
b c E. After he had been on the throne
for about three years. By that point, he and hat
scheps It had one daughter, Nefarura, and they did not
have any sons. However, like his father, Tutmos of the
Second did have sons by other wives, including one by
a woman named Isis. This was Tutmos of the Third,
(05:25):
who was about two years old at the time. Of
his father's death, a marriage was planned between Tutmos of
the third and his half sister Neferura, and this would
similarly strengthen his tie to the throne, although at the
time both of them were way too young to immediately
get married, so in the meantime, hat scheps It tutmos
is the third stepmother and aunt was going to act
(05:46):
as his regent because his mother Isis wasn't a royal blood.
Up until this point, the line of succession in the
eighteenth dynasty had progressed in a way that was really
pretty typical, apart from Tutmosa the first being a general
who was not of royal birth, and it was also
pretty common for a woman to act as region if
her husband died before his heir was old enough to
(06:06):
rule on his own. It was more common for a
woman to wind up in such a position of power
at the end of the dynasty, though, when the late
king had no male heir. For the first few years
after her husband's death, hot sheeps Its conduct as regent
was pretty typical for the time as well. She built
a memorial chapel to her late husband. She was publicly
dedicated to preserving his memory and looking after the welfare
(06:29):
of his sons. She took action on young Tutmos's behalf
and guided him as he grew into the divine king
on his own. She ordered the renewal and restorations of
temples to honor the young king, and she sent an
expedition to Oswan to quarry a pair of obelisks that
would be dedicated to him. Writings about her from this
(06:50):
time referred to her as Queen or with her formal
religious title as the kingdom's highest priestess, which was God's
Wife of Amen, and her depictions and carvings were pretty
typical for a woman in these positions, but by the
seventh year of her regency that had started to change.
She reported that the oracle of Amon had delivered a
(07:11):
message from the God that she should be king, becoming
co ruler with her stepson. In her account, this happened
at the Temple of Karnak during a festival when a
statue of Amon was supposed to perform an oracle or miracle.
At first, no message came, but when it finally did,
the statue moved around dramatically and delivered a message to
(07:31):
her that she was to be both her majesty and
the God's wife. She started to be depicted in artwork
with both masculine and feminine traits, and after a while
she was shown as a man with the skirt and
the decorative beard and the crown that signified her being king.
She wasn't disguising her gender, though the language that was
(07:52):
used to describe her was still feminine most of the time,
even as the artwork was depicting her as progressively more masculine.
As was really something that happened over time, with some
more masculine elements appearing long before the seventh year of
her regency, and then with her depictions continuing to become
more and more masculine as time passed, and at some
point she was formally crowned in a series of rituals
(08:15):
that took days to complete, as was typical for pharaoh.
She took a new throne name mat Kare, which translates
roughly to truth is the soul of Ray. The idea
of mat or truth in this context also connected to
justice and order, and was a trait that was established
by the gods. The role of the pharaoh was to
mediate between the gods and humanity, preserving the God's mod
(08:39):
There was also a goddess named mat who was the
personification of these traits. She also banned construction of her
mortuary temple, known as Jessera Jasu or Holy of Holies.
This was built at the dear Elbahari temple complex near
what's now lux Or. This temple was meant to guide
her into the afterlife, where as Pharaoh she would trans
(09:00):
send into a divine being, and it was to make
sure that she was well provided for there. The tomb
to actually hold her mummy was built in another location.
Hatcheps It's mortuary temple was a massive three tier temple
made from sandstone, full of statuary, including statues of hot
scheps It as the god o Cyrus. The structure itself
(09:21):
still stands today. Relief carvings on the temple walls documented
hot scheps It's biography and her rule as king. This
included a new story documenting her birth that the god
Amen had disguised himself as Tutmosa the First and impregnated
hot scheps It's mother. Both her throne name and her
new origin story reinforced the idea that she had a
(09:42):
legitimate claim to be king and that she was connected
directly to the god Amen, who had authorized her to
do it. Although she was technically co ruler with Tetmos
of the Third, for the rest of his life she
acted as the soul monarch. She also changed his throne
name from one that meant the man inifestation of Ray
is enduring to one that meant the manifestation of the
(10:04):
soul of Ray is enduring, kind of adding a degree
of separation between him and being a direct manifestation of
the God. And it's not entirely clear what motivated her
to do this. When archaeologists first unearthed her tomb in
the nineteenth century, they concluded this she was power hungry
and conniving and had stolen the throne from her stepson
(10:25):
for her own selfish reasons. And we're going to talk
about why they came to that conclusion in just a
bit were Recent scholars have pretty much dismissed that idea,
though while simple ambition might have been involved, it's also
possible that there was some kind of threat to Tutmost
of the third, and that hat scheps It was protecting
him by becoming the king herself. It might have been
(10:46):
just that he had been king under a regency for
about seven years, and he still wasn't old enough to
father an air. It would probably be another seven or
so years before he could actually roll the kingdom on
his own. That was a lot of time to get
through in a world where early deaths were really common,
and it's also possible that her doing this wasn't actually
(11:08):
her idea, that it was something that advisers or the
priesthood thought was necessary for some reason. Regardless, she could
not have done this without significant support among the ruling class.
She had carefully cultivated relationships and alliances for years as
regent before taking on the role of king. What she
did was unprecedented, but the elite in thebes allowed her
(11:29):
to do it, and the fact that they did suggest
that she was admired and respected as a leader before
she took the throne. It's clear that, regardless of what
the motivations were, she was incredibly savvy to do this,
and she also proved herself to be a capable ruler,
which we will talk about after a sponsor break. We
(11:55):
boked before the break about how before hatch Ups it
became king. The line of Six had unfolded in the
eighteenth dynasty in a pretty typical way, but hatcheps It's
ascension to the throne wasn't typical at all. There were
other women who had held positions of power in Egyptian history,
but for one to take the throne in this way
(12:15):
was really unprecedented. So in addition to her throne name
and the revised story of her birth, she got to
work immediately taking steps to try to reinforce the idea
that she was a legitimate ruler. She commissioned hundreds of
statues and other artwork depicting her as king, along with
statues and structures honoring the god Amen. She expanded the
(12:36):
priesthood and constructed temples all over Thebes and beyond, including
a bark chapel that French archaeologist named the Chapel Rouge
after unearthing the blocks used to build it in the
nineteen twenties. The chapel's original location is unknown. It was
dismantled after hat Sheps's death, and its blocks were used
for a pylon in Karnak. She employed craftspeople associated with
(12:59):
some of the king those most prominent families to do
all of this, building up her base of support at
cheps It launched two military expeditions into Nubia, one of
which she reportedly led herself. She also sent expeditions to
mind gold in Nubia and in the Eastern Desert. She
strengthened trading relationships with other parts of Africa and with
(13:20):
the Levant, possibly as far west as what's now Afghanistan.
Shortly after taking the throne, she also dispatched a massive
trading expedition to punt which will be talking about in
more detail in a bit. And throughout all of this
she gave favors to prominent men whose support she needed
to stay in power, but she also made appointments to
political newcomers which gave her support that did not come
(13:42):
with as many strings attached. In the fifteenth year of
her rule had scheps that sent another expedition to ask
one to quarry a second set of obelisks, with this
pair being inscribed to her. A year later, she held
a jubilee festival known as Said, something that was typically
done in the thirtieth year of a king rule to
rejuvenate his power. It's possible that she chose this earlier
(14:04):
date because it was about thirty years since her father
had died, at which point she had become her husband's queen,
so in a way that marked the beginning of her
time on the throne. At some point she had her
father's mummy moved to a tomb near her mortuary temple,
again reinforcing her connection to the dynastic line. She also
increasingly focused on her right to rule as coming from
(14:27):
being her father's daughter, rather than her having been married
to Tutmos of the Second. During her time on the throne,
hatcheps It's most powerful adviser was a man named Senenmut.
We don't know all that much about him as a person.
He started out as the overseer of the large hall
at the Palace and thebes, starting at the very beginning
of tutmost of the Second's reign. He soon took on
(14:48):
an increasing number of political appointments and became tutor to
hatcheps It's daughter. By the time hatcheps It took the throne,
he had become incredibly powerful and a very important figure.
He also met le am, asked ninety three different official titles,
and became chief architect of hatcheps It's mortuary temple. He
oversaw treasuries and crafts people all over the kingdom, There's
(15:12):
been some speculation that the two of them were linked romantically.
Some of it stems from the fact that he was
very close to hut Sheeps's daughter, leading people to wonder
whether he was actually her father. He also built his
burial temple near hot cheps It's mortuary temple. Also, Sentiment
was a powerful man in the court of a woman,
which is frequently caused for suspicion. Although it's likely that
(15:35):
hat cheps had had other relationships after her husband's death,
she would have had to have been really careful about
one involving Sentiment. Sentiment disappears from the historical record and
the nineteenth year of hatcheps It's rule, although he might
have survived after her death. She died in her early forties,
after having ruled his king for about fifteen years and
(15:56):
as most of the thirds regent for about seven years
before that. This makes her the longest reigning female monarch
in ancient Egyptian history, and possibly the first to rule
as a king rather than a regent or other interim ruler.
As we noted earlier, there were other women who served
as regents or who grew into having a lot of
power as queens and There's some debate about whether any
(16:18):
of these earlier women became kings in their own right.
After Hatchep's death, Tut most of the Third became the
sole ruler. It's clear from his time as king that
had Sheepsad had prepared him to be a skilled leader
from both a military and a political perspective. He had
begun marrying and fathering children by his late teens, and
by the time he was twenty he was commander of
(16:40):
the military. After hat Shepsa's death, he conquered much of
what is now Syria, as well as parts of Sudan
and Iraq. The first of these expeditions took place almost
immediately after he became the sole monarch. It seems as
though had sheeps It had started making preparations for it
before her death. Like had sheeps It had done, tutmost
of the Third also undertook huge building projects, constructing temples
(17:04):
and having obelisks quarried in Oswan. He also completed monuments
to her that were already under way when she died,
But then about twenty years into his reign that most
of the Third started construction of a new temple, which
was next to hat scheps It's mortuary temple, and at
about this time people started removing all references to hatcheps
(17:24):
It as king from temples and other buildings all over
the kingdom. Statues depicting her as king were smashed, relief
carvings were defaced. Her name was chiseled out of the
reliefs at Jasu and replaced with the names of Tutmos
of the First, the Second, and the third. Her mortuary
temple was reconsecrated, and her obelisks at Karnak were walled in.
(17:46):
Her name was also removed from the official lists of kings.
It is generally concluded that Tetmos of the Third ordered
this purge, but it's not clear how much he was
encouraged to do so by the priesthood or his advisers.
She was entirely obliterated from the record, though This destruction
went on for the rest of tutmost of the Third's life,
(18:06):
which was for about another decade, but there were so
many statues and other depictions of hatchep Suit that some
of them were still intact by the time he died.
With so much of her record destroyed, hot cheps It
soon fell into complete obscurity. The people who remembered and
supported her eventually died, and without her name in the
list of kings, she seems to have been forgotten within
(18:28):
a few generations. When her mortuary temple was unearthed in
the nineteenth century, no one knew how to read hieroglyphics yet,
so all of the smash statues and other defacements were
interpreted as simple vandalism or the work of grave robbers. Then,
in the eighteen twenties, John franzwash Employon built on earlier
work by Thomas Young to decipher the hieroglyphic text on
(18:51):
the Rosetta stone, and then that paved the way for
modern people to be able to read hieroglyphics. Champollion personally
visited hatcheps It's temple and was deeply confused by what
he found there. In addition to all these replaced names,
there were pictures of two kings standing side by side
that was incredibly unusual. There was also writing that just
(19:11):
didn't make sense, that had feminine word forms when they
expected masculine ones. Eventually, archaeologists pieced together what had happened
that hut Sheep said had been Tutmos of the Thirds region,
but had taken the throne herself, but they erroneously concluded
that Tutmosa had immediately removed hut sheps It's name from
the record as soon as she died. They imagined that
(19:34):
Tutmosa was angry at having had his kingship stolen from
him for more than a decade, and that his removal
of his stepmother's name was evidence of both his outrage
and her character. Based on this assumption, they concluded that
hat cheps It was a stereotypical evil stepmother right out
of a Disney movie, wicked and conniving and only interested
(19:56):
in her own power. But today we know that about
twenty years passed between hut sheeps It's death and the
defacement of her tomb and all the other destruction, and
the interpretation of what led to that defacement is much different.
That's largely thanks to the work of egyptologist Charles Nimbs
in nineteen sixty six, who was the first person to
pinpoint the date of the defacement as being the forty
(20:19):
second year of tutmost of the second's reign. According to
some researchers, it was even later than that, so it's
more likely that the ruling class became interested in preserving
the idea that the dynastic line had continued without any
kind of interruption through Tutmosis the first, second, and the third.
It's also possible that there was some concern about Tutmos
(20:39):
of the third successor, a Menhotep the second. Tutmosa did
eventually marry had chips It's daughter, Nepherrura, and he had
a son either with her or with another royal wife,
but both of them died, so his successor was a
Menhotep the second, whose mother had no royal lineage and
no connection back to hut sheeps It. It seems that
Tetmos of the third was concerned enough about the line
(21:01):
of succession that he had a Menhotep crowned while he
was still living, with the two of them acting as
co monarchs. So this removal of hatch ups That from
the record might have been connected to all this uncertainty.
And it's also possible that the purge wouldn't have been
considered necessary if hot chups It's daughter had survived and
she had become the mother to the next king rather
(21:24):
than the king's wife. Coming from this totally disconnected lineage,
the idea of a female king is also an affront
to the concept of Matt that we talked about earlier.
The king was supposed to be an intermediary with the
gods and a living embodiment of Horace, keeping everything in balance,
so having a woman in this role was basically the
(21:44):
opposite of this idea of ordered justice. The fact that
a woman had a relatively peaceful and prosperous reign in
spite of this affront to Matt may have raised unwelcome
questions about that divine order and the rule of other kings.
Hatch Ups that's mummy wasn't placed in the tomb where
she intended it to be, or if it was, it
was later moved, but a mummy from a tomb that
(22:07):
was found in the Valley of the Kings in nineteen
o two might be hers. That team was fully excavated
starting in nineteen twenty. During the excavation, archaeologists found the
mummies of two women, one of which was on the floor.
One of these was later identified as hut cheps It's
wet nurse. The other one, the one that had been
on the floor, was positioned in a way that was
(22:28):
often used for royal women. A CT scan found that
it was missing a tooth. Meanwhile, a box marked with
hut cheps It's cartouche had been unearthed as well in
a cache of Royal mummies. A scan of that box
revealed that it contained a tooth, and this tooth appears
to be a match for the mummies missing one. So
(22:48):
it's likely that this was hut cheps It's mummy, although
that is still not proven. Yeah, there is discussion of
using DNA to try to confirm everything back when these
initial analyses happened. I don't know what the results of
that were. I could not find reference to it anywhere,
but it's also incredibly difficult to get good DNA out
(23:10):
of mummified samples that are this old anyway. This finally
brings us to the voyage to Punch that I wanted
to focus on from the beginning, and we will get
to that after a sponsor break. The first reference to
(23:32):
Punt in ancient Egyptian writing is from the Palermo Stone,
which dates back to about b C. That was more
than a thousand years before had ships it became king.
According to the Palermo Stone, King Sahara sent an expedition
to Punt, which returned with eighty thousand measures of a
substance that's generally written as N T y W, sometimes
(23:54):
proceeded by an apostrophe. Some sources translate this word as frankincense,
and other is translated as mr. Both of these are
made from aromatic tree resins and are used to make
perfumes and incense, as well as spices and medicine. This
expedition also brought back wood in the form of rods
or staves, which were probably used to make spears and
(24:16):
other weapons, because the Egyptian Kingdom's territory at that time
didn't include trees that yielded wood that was good for
that purpose. There are periodic references to Punt, also known
as God's Land in Egyptian writing. After that, all of
the documented expeditions were associated with kings who were known
for exceptional leadership and good fortune. There are also fictional references,
(24:38):
including the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. This story dates
back to the Middle Kingdom, and in it, a sailor
washes up on an island in the Red Sea and
meets the Lord of Punt. The Lord of Punt is
a serpent who gives him all kinds of gifts including
mir i paint, baboons, and elephant tusks. Egyptian documents described
two different routes to punt. One of them is along
(25:01):
the Red Sea and one is along the Nile. Both
of them involved sometime on the Nile as well as
travel over land. For the Red Sea route, ships were
probably built on the Nile and then they sailed to Coptos.
From there they were disassembled and then carried along a
dry riverbed called the Wadi Hammamat, and that went all
(25:22):
the way to the Red Sea, which was a hundred
and twenty miles or a hundred and nine kilometers away.
Then on the return trip, the goods probably would have
been loaded onto pack animals to be carried back across
the Wadi Hammamat, and then they would have been loaded
into different ships on the Nile, rather than deconstructing the
ships and carrying them again. It was an involved process.
(25:44):
You would only want to go to this place if
it took that much effort. If you were going to
get some really good trade goods out of it, you
really had to want to do it. To travel along
the Nile, ships would have used rowers and sails to
travel south against the current and then followed the current back,
but it's not clear exactly where the overland portion was
(26:04):
headed after getting off of the ships. Whether an expedition
traveled along the Red Sea or stuck mostly to the
Nile might have been a matter of practicality, with the
Egyptians traveling farther down the Nile when they had friendly
relationships with the kingdoms and empires in that area, but
then crossing over the land and traveling down the Red
Sea when they didn't. Or it could have been that
(26:26):
Punt was very large and stretched all the way from
the Red Sea to the Nile, and the Egyptians visited
different parts of it at different times. Like we mentioned
at the top of the show, had ships. It is
expedition to Punt was one of the most notable acts
in her time as king, and a lot of what
we know about Punt comes from her documentation of those expeditions.
According to the account in the relief carvings in hut
(26:48):
chips It's Mortuary Temple, this voyage restored trade with Punt
after an interruption of more than two hundred years. She
had several probable reasons for wanting to embark on this expedition,
and one was simply access to luxury goods and aromatic resins.
The residents in particular were really important for religious purposes.
This might have been a reward for her supporters when
(27:10):
she ascended to the throne, like they helped her get
on the throne, and in return she was going to
give them access to all of this good trade. It
was probably also a way to keep the army busy.
Although it does appear that hot steps that led a
couple of small military campaigns into Nubia, it wasn't generally
considered appropriate for a woman to personally lead an army
into battle. On top of that, there was just a
(27:33):
lot more risk for her than there would be for
a man in her position. It would have been just
catastrophic for an unprecedented female king to lead a military
campaign that then failed. So hat ships that needed some
other way to reinforce the idea that she was competent
and accomplished and capable as king, and she needed something
(27:53):
to do to keep the soldiers occupied, like having them
go all the way to poot And as was the
case with her ascension to the throne, hut chups It's
relief carving show that this was divinely ordered, saying that
the oracle had delivered a command that quote the highways
to the mr terraces should be opened. This is a
slightly different framing from how other pharaohs documented their expeditions
(28:16):
to Punt, which more focused on Amun or Amandrae causing
Punt to send their goods or causing the way to
Punt to be opened. The by reliefs and hot ships.
It's temple depict large sailed ships crewed with thirty rowers,
each carrying goods from Egypt, including fruit, meat, bread, beer,
and wine. They sail across the water, and based on
(28:38):
the aquatic life that shown in the carvings, that water
is probably meant to be the Red Sea. Once they
arrive in Punt. There are carvings of the region's trees,
which might be the trees used to produce ebbony, frankincense,
or myrrh. There are also some fig trees. There are
also depictions of huts with domed roofs on stilts, which
might have been houses or granaries. Him there. The relief
(29:01):
show all kinds of goods being loaded back onto the ships,
including herbs, wood, resins, gold, incense, and animal skins. There
are also lots of live animals, including baboons, monkeys, cattle,
and hounds. Enslaved people and their children are loaded into
the ships as well, and cross sections of the loaded
(29:21):
ships show them just packed to the gills with goods.
Once the goods arrived safely at Karnak Temple and thieves,
the Egyptians and the Puntite dignitaries who are returned with
them are shown presenting hapshets that with the goods that
they had brought. This includes live resentries in baskets meant
for transplanting and hatch ups that did transplant them around
(29:42):
her mortuary temple and the carvings hatch ups that also
consecrates the best of all these goods to the god Amen.
The people of punt appear in these depictions as well.
They have dark reddish skin with long hair and goatee
like beards. The only ones whose names are mentioned are
King Parah, who and his queen at the queen is
(30:02):
depicted as being very strikingly large, something that has led
to a lot of commentary about her body, and a
lot of it has started with the assumption that there
was a pathological explanation for her body shape and size,
but it may have just been how she was built
or a mark of status and wealth in her culture.
By the way, if you look her up, be prepared
to read some really gross and insulting things about her body.
(30:24):
In almost every single article, including articles that are brand new,
almost no one had nothing ugly to say about what
the Queen of Punt looked like. These reliefs are very detailed,
so it's likely that hat scheps that sent artists with
the expedition and ordered them to make very careful observations
for the sake of these reliefs when they returned. And
(30:47):
the reliefs are definitely our biggest single source of information
about Punt, but there is still so much that we
don't know. For one thing, we really don't know how
the people of Punt referred to themselves. Punt is what
is in Egyptian writing, but it's also echoed than things
that came later, like Herodotus is History, which was written
in the fifth century BC, and we also don't know
(31:08):
exactly where it was. That's something people have been trying
to figure out for more than a hundred and fifty years.
At first researchers focused on the Arabian Peninsula, but as
archaeologists unearthed more and more descriptions of Punt being to
the south rather than to the east of the Egyptian Kingdom,
and more references of the goods being traded, they started
focusing more on the stretch of the continent between Egyptian
(31:30):
territory and the Horn of Africa. Many of the goods
described as coming from Punt were native to this part
of the African continent, but there's still a lot of
room for speculation. This is especially true since the ancient
Egyptians were certainly not Punt's only trading partner, so the
goods that were available in Punt probably came from other
parts of the world as well, both on the continent
(31:52):
of Africa and elsewhere. Also, the domed huts and the
stilt houses that are shown in the reliefs are more
soci created with central and western Africa then with the
parts of the continent that we're most likely to be
accessed via the Red Sea, and which archaeologists and other
researchers have mostly focused on in this search. Most, but
not all, researchers have concluded that Punt was probably located
(32:16):
somewhere along the Red Sea, but exactly where is still
a mystery. Researchers have certainly put forth a lot of ideas,
a lot of them simultaneously contradictory and well supported. Most
placed punch somewhere in what's now Eritrea, Ethiopia, or Somalia.
In an article in the Journal of the American Research
(32:36):
Center in Egypt, Stanley Blanda explores descriptions of Punt as
on the twin shores of the sea, and he interprets
the accounts description of where the expedition pitched their tents
as on both sides of the Red Sea. Based on that,
he concludes that Punt lay along the balt Al Mandab
straight with modern Djibouti on one side and Yemen on
(32:56):
the other in both Eastern Africa and the Western Arabian Peninsula.
And researchers even tried to use oxygen isotope analysis to
try to confirm Punt's location by studying the mummy of
a baboon that had presumably been brought back from Punt.
That research suggested that this baboon was from what's now
(33:17):
Eritrea or eastern Ethiopia, and so they concluded that Punt
might have covered all of that general area. A major
archaeological discovery could clear all this up, but right now,
the biggest archaeological fines related to Punt are from the
Egyptian harbor of Merca. Goasis known at the time as
Saw would show evidence of trade with Punch regardless, though
(33:39):
Punt seems to have existed as an important and thriving
trading partner from roughly b c E to about six
hundred b C. The last Egyptian expedition that we know
about took place under Ramsey's the Third in the twelfth
century BC. AH elusive Punt, Yeah, I'm very that you. Also,
(34:00):
if you go poking around on the internet, you will
also find some more far fetched and less well supported
ideas about it being in many far flung places that
are not in the immediate vicinity of Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula, which aren't really supported so much by what
we know in terms of what's documented about Egyptian relationships
(34:23):
with Punt and about what we know about Egyptians seafaring capabilities,
which weren't amazing. They could get up and down the
Nile pretty well, but they really tended to stick very
closely along the shore of the Red Sea. They were
not nearly as good as like getting out into the water.
Away from that safety of land. They were focusing more
(34:44):
on architecture and that is fine. Yeah. We should also
know that in the modern era, there is a place
called Puntland which is part of Somalia, and we know
that that was named after the land of punt but
it's not clear that that was the same physical location. Um,
do you have a little bit of listener mail for us?
I do have listener mail for us. This listener mail
(35:06):
comes from Christopher. Christopher says, Hello, ladies. I am a
longtime avid listener to your podcast, having listened off and
on for years. I recently started a new job with
a longer commute in your podcasts have been a huge blessing.
I recently listened to your podcast on Chester A Arthur
and you discussed in passing a church in Boston that
had a large collection of Tiffany stained glass. I'm an
(35:27):
amateur stained glass maker and I specialized in the Tiffany
foil style. I was in Boston for work during the
recent eclipse, and one of the stops I made in
my free time was to a church that had a
large collection of stained glass. Since I gather you may
be familiar with it, I am not sure if this
will interest you, but I took high resolution pictures of
the windows because of how impressive they were, especially when
compared to my own skill. I'm not sure how familiar
(35:50):
either of you is with stained glass in general, but
when you're working on a window, typically, at least in
my experience, all of the different pieces of glass are
approximately the same thickness. This is not the case in
the windows of this church. Although you cannot tell from
the pictures I took, I was able to get up
close to the windows themselves, and there's a huge amount
of variability in the thickness of the different pieces, which
(36:11):
makes the finished product all the more impressive. I would
like to second the motion to do an episode on Tiffany,
either the person himself for the style of stained glass,
or if I am dreaming, an episode on the history
of stained glass itself. I'm attaching a link to the
album I made at the pictures of the windows in
case you're interested in seeing them for some reason, you
want to take them or post them, do feel free
(36:31):
to do so. I am attaching a picture of a
window I made myself to give some perspective on the
comparative differences between a master of the craft and a
dilettante like myself. Again, thank you so much for what
you do. I tell everyone who will listen about your podcast.
I'm also about to head on a vacation to Martha's vineyard,
implant on sending you guys something, so watch for another
(36:51):
message or postcard from me. Thank you and have a
great day, Christopher. Thank you Christopher for this email. These
pictures are great. The make sure that Christopher set of
his own His own uh stained glass work is of
a Zelda theme stained stained glass piece, which I was
(37:12):
absolutely delighted by. Uh. And I'm glad that that we
got this email because when we talked about that on
the podcast, I was sort of talking off the top
of my head and I didn't have written down with
the name of the church was, or where it was
or anything like that. And this email gives me a
chance to fill people in who may be interested. This
is Arlington Street Church. It is at the corner of
(37:34):
Boylston Street and Arlington in Boston. It's right across the
street from the corner um like one of the corners
of the Boston Public Garden, it is a Unitarian Universalist church.
And the history of this particular church actually also connects
to our recent Packard Versus Packard episode, because when you
look at the chronology of like the church's history and
(37:57):
what congregations were worshiping at this site, it follows that
whole progression of having like the very old school uh
Lutheran Calvinism, and then gradually breaking away from that, becoming dissatisfied,
and then ultimately becoming a Unitarian church, which is the
church that's there now. Um So, if you google Arlington
(38:18):
Street Church, Boston, you will find information about the church
and when it is available to go and look at
the windows. There are pictures of the windows there as well.
So thank you so much, Christopher. If you would like
to write to us about this or anither podcast or
a history podcasts of how Stuff Works dot com and
then we're all over social media at ms in history.
That is where you will find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
(38:40):
and Instagram, and you can come to our website which
is at miss in history dot com and find show
notes for all the episodes that Holly and I have
done together in a searchable archive of every episode ever.
And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts
and the I heart Radio app and wherever else you
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(39:02):
a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
Fry And it has been too long since we've had
any African history on the show. We know this. It's
(00:25):
one of those things where you look at the recent
archive and go, wow, that has been a while. I
really wanted to do an episode on the land of Poot,
which is uh spelled p u n t, So sometimes
you'll also hear people pronounce it Punt, and sometimes it's
described as a kingdom, sometimes more of a massive trading center.
But there are some really really big holes in our
knowledge of Punch that make it hard to do a
(00:47):
whole episode on it. For example, we don't know exactly
where it was. There are references to Punt in Egyptian
writing that span about two thousand years, and there's also
mentions from elsewhere in the world, but it's not totally
clear whether all of these references are referring to the
same place. But one of our biggest sources of information
(01:07):
on Punt comes from Hatch scheps It, who sent a
huge expedition there in the fifteenth century b c. E.
Expedition to Punt is also an important and illustrative part
of hatcheps its reign. So today we're going to go
to Punt by way of hatch Cheps and the civilization
that we call Ancient Egypt expanded and contracted in cycles
(01:28):
for thousands of years, with periods of prospering and flourishing
divided by periods of decline and instability. This is part
of why I have not jumped on any African history recently,
because I start delving in and then I go whoa wah,
this water is too deep, and I back up. Egyptologists
have roughly divided these prosperous eras into the Old, Middle
(01:50):
and New Kingdoms, separated by intermediary periods. These people knew
their civilization by a number of names, including the Two Lands,
the Beloved Land, and Chemmit, which is usually translated as Blackland,
often interpreted as a reference to the fertile soil that
sits along the Nile River. Hat Ships It was Pharaoh
(02:11):
near the start of the New Kingdom, which started with
the founding of the Eighteenth ruling dynasty. The Eighteenth dynasty
also included some of Egypt's most well known pharaohs, including
Amenhotep the Third Act and Too In common, these kings
did not call themselves pharaoh's though that's a Greek term
that was coined a little later and then kind of
(02:31):
retroactively applied to all of the kings of this ancient kingdom.
The Eighteenth dynasty was founded by Amosa in about fifteen
thirty nine b C, and after his death in about
fifteen fourteen b C, Amosa was succeeded by his son,
a Menhotep the First, But when a Menhotep the First
died in about fourteen nine three b C, he did
(02:53):
not have a male heir, so in that case one
of his general's Tutmosa, was next on the throne. Tutmosa
may at a woman named Amosa, and it's not entirely
clear who her parents were. One of her titles was
king's sister, but it's not totally known whether that came
from being the sister of one of the previous kings
or Tutmosa's own sister. In the society, kings had a
(03:16):
primary wife known as the Great Royal Wife, along with
other lesser wives and concubines, and for much of ancient
Egyptian history, it was typical for the king to take
his sister or half sister as his great royal wife,
and to marry his other sisters as well. The king
was the embodiment of the god Horace, and a marriage
to a sister or half sister herkened back to the
(03:37):
Egyptian creation story. In this story, the first god a tomb,
had no partner, so he created the first pair of
deities by himself. This brother sister pair then produced another
brother sister pair, and so on. In the eighteenth dynasty,
in particular, it was required for royal sisters to marry
their brother kings, and then for daughters of that pair
(03:58):
to marry the next king. And in addition to the
religious aspect that connected back to this creation story, this
also really concentrated the power and the wealth within the
royal family. So, whether Tutmosa was marrying his own sister
or the sister of one of the previous kings, his
doing this strengthened his claim to the throne, and it
(04:18):
preserved the idea of balance. When Tutmosa died, he and
Amosa had one daughter, hot Schepsu. Hat Chepsid had been
trained as a high priestess in the Temple of Ammon,
who was head of the Egyptian pantheon, as well as
patron deity of the kings in the city of Thebes
during the New Kingdom. Tutmosa and Amosa did not have
a son, but Tutmosa did have a son with one
(04:40):
of his lesser wives, and that son was Tutmosa the Second.
Tutmosa the Second followed his father on the throne in
about fourteen eighty two b c E, and he married
his half sister, hat scheps It, who was about thirteen
at the time. Because the new king was very young, inexperienced,
and chronically ill, the king's great royal wife acted as
his regent. But Tutmosa the Second did not live long
(05:02):
after becoming king. He died in about fourteen seventy nine
b c E. After he had been on the throne
for about three years. By that point, he and hat
scheps It had one daughter, Nefarura, and they did not
have any sons. However, like his father, Tutmos of the
Second did have sons by other wives, including one by
a woman named Isis. This was Tutmos of the Third,
(05:25):
who was about two years old at the time. Of
his father's death, a marriage was planned between Tutmos of
the third and his half sister Neferura, and this would
similarly strengthen his tie to the throne, although at the
time both of them were way too young to immediately
get married, so in the meantime, hat scheps It tutmos
is the third stepmother and aunt was going to act
(05:46):
as his regent because his mother Isis wasn't a royal blood.
Up until this point, the line of succession in the
eighteenth dynasty had progressed in a way that was really
pretty typical, apart from Tutmosa the first being a general
who was not of royal birth, and it was also
pretty common for a woman to act as region if
her husband died before his heir was old enough to
(06:06):
rule on his own. It was more common for a
woman to wind up in such a position of power
at the end of the dynasty, though, when the late
king had no male heir. For the first few years
after her husband's death, hot sheeps Its conduct as regent
was pretty typical for the time as well. She built
a memorial chapel to her late husband. She was publicly
dedicated to preserving his memory and looking after the welfare
(06:29):
of his sons. She took action on young Tutmos's behalf
and guided him as he grew into the divine king
on his own. She ordered the renewal and restorations of
temples to honor the young king, and she sent an
expedition to Oswan to quarry a pair of obelisks that
would be dedicated to him. Writings about her from this
(06:50):
time referred to her as Queen or with her formal
religious title as the kingdom's highest priestess, which was God's
Wife of Amen, and her depictions and carvings were pretty
typical for a woman in these positions, but by the
seventh year of her regency that had started to change.
She reported that the oracle of Amon had delivered a
(07:11):
message from the God that she should be king, becoming
co ruler with her stepson. In her account, this happened
at the Temple of Karnak during a festival when a
statue of Amon was supposed to perform an oracle or miracle.
At first, no message came, but when it finally did,
the statue moved around dramatically and delivered a message to
(07:31):
her that she was to be both her majesty and
the God's wife. She started to be depicted in artwork
with both masculine and feminine traits, and after a while
she was shown as a man with the skirt and
the decorative beard and the crown that signified her being king.
She wasn't disguising her gender, though the language that was
(07:52):
used to describe her was still feminine most of the time,
even as the artwork was depicting her as progressively more masculine.
As was really something that happened over time, with some
more masculine elements appearing long before the seventh year of
her regency, and then with her depictions continuing to become
more and more masculine as time passed, and at some
point she was formally crowned in a series of rituals
(08:15):
that took days to complete, as was typical for pharaoh.
She took a new throne name mat Kare, which translates
roughly to truth is the soul of Ray. The idea
of mat or truth in this context also connected to
justice and order, and was a trait that was established
by the gods. The role of the pharaoh was to
mediate between the gods and humanity, preserving the God's mod
(08:39):
There was also a goddess named mat who was the
personification of these traits. She also banned construction of her
mortuary temple, known as Jessera Jasu or Holy of Holies.
This was built at the dear Elbahari temple complex near
what's now lux Or. This temple was meant to guide
her into the afterlife, where as Pharaoh she would trans
(09:00):
send into a divine being, and it was to make
sure that she was well provided for there. The tomb
to actually hold her mummy was built in another location.
Hatcheps It's mortuary temple was a massive three tier temple
made from sandstone, full of statuary, including statues of hot
scheps It as the god o Cyrus. The structure itself
(09:21):
still stands today. Relief carvings on the temple walls documented
hot scheps It's biography and her rule as king. This
included a new story documenting her birth that the god
Amen had disguised himself as Tutmosa the First and impregnated
hot scheps It's mother. Both her throne name and her
new origin story reinforced the idea that she had a
(09:42):
legitimate claim to be king and that she was connected
directly to the god Amen, who had authorized her to
do it. Although she was technically co ruler with Tetmos
of the Third, for the rest of his life she
acted as the soul monarch. She also changed his throne
name from one that meant the man inifestation of Ray
is enduring to one that meant the manifestation of the
(10:04):
soul of Ray is enduring, kind of adding a degree
of separation between him and being a direct manifestation of
the God. And it's not entirely clear what motivated her
to do this. When archaeologists first unearthed her tomb in
the nineteenth century, they concluded this she was power hungry
and conniving and had stolen the throne from her stepson
(10:25):
for her own selfish reasons. And we're going to talk
about why they came to that conclusion in just a
bit were Recent scholars have pretty much dismissed that idea,
though while simple ambition might have been involved, it's also
possible that there was some kind of threat to Tutmost
of the third, and that hat scheps It was protecting
him by becoming the king herself. It might have been
(10:46):
just that he had been king under a regency for
about seven years, and he still wasn't old enough to
father an air. It would probably be another seven or
so years before he could actually roll the kingdom on
his own. That was a lot of time to get
through in a world where early deaths were really common,
and it's also possible that her doing this wasn't actually
(11:08):
her idea, that it was something that advisers or the
priesthood thought was necessary for some reason. Regardless, she could
not have done this without significant support among the ruling class.
She had carefully cultivated relationships and alliances for years as
regent before taking on the role of king. What she
did was unprecedented, but the elite in thebes allowed her
(11:29):
to do it, and the fact that they did suggest
that she was admired and respected as a leader before
she took the throne. It's clear that, regardless of what
the motivations were, she was incredibly savvy to do this,
and she also proved herself to be a capable ruler,
which we will talk about after a sponsor break. We
(11:55):
boked before the break about how before hatch Ups it
became king. The line of Six had unfolded in the
eighteenth dynasty in a pretty typical way, but hatcheps It's
ascension to the throne wasn't typical at all. There were
other women who had held positions of power in Egyptian history,
but for one to take the throne in this way
(12:15):
was really unprecedented. So in addition to her throne name
and the revised story of her birth, she got to
work immediately taking steps to try to reinforce the idea
that she was a legitimate ruler. She commissioned hundreds of
statues and other artwork depicting her as king, along with
statues and structures honoring the god Amen. She expanded the
(12:36):
priesthood and constructed temples all over Thebes and beyond, including
a bark chapel that French archaeologist named the Chapel Rouge
after unearthing the blocks used to build it in the
nineteen twenties. The chapel's original location is unknown. It was
dismantled after hat Sheps's death, and its blocks were used
for a pylon in Karnak. She employed craftspeople associated with
(12:59):
some of the king those most prominent families to do
all of this, building up her base of support at
cheps It launched two military expeditions into Nubia, one of
which she reportedly led herself. She also sent expeditions to
mind gold in Nubia and in the Eastern Desert. She
strengthened trading relationships with other parts of Africa and with
(13:20):
the Levant, possibly as far west as what's now Afghanistan.
Shortly after taking the throne, she also dispatched a massive
trading expedition to punt which will be talking about in
more detail in a bit. And throughout all of this
she gave favors to prominent men whose support she needed
to stay in power, but she also made appointments to
political newcomers which gave her support that did not come
(13:42):
with as many strings attached. In the fifteenth year of
her rule had scheps that sent another expedition to ask
one to quarry a second set of obelisks, with this
pair being inscribed to her. A year later, she held
a jubilee festival known as Said, something that was typically
done in the thirtieth year of a king rule to
rejuvenate his power. It's possible that she chose this earlier
(14:04):
date because it was about thirty years since her father
had died, at which point she had become her husband's queen,
so in a way that marked the beginning of her
time on the throne. At some point she had her
father's mummy moved to a tomb near her mortuary temple,
again reinforcing her connection to the dynastic line. She also
increasingly focused on her right to rule as coming from
(14:27):
being her father's daughter, rather than her having been married
to Tutmos of the Second. During her time on the throne,
hatcheps It's most powerful adviser was a man named Senenmut.
We don't know all that much about him as a person.
He started out as the overseer of the large hall
at the Palace and thebes, starting at the very beginning
of tutmost of the Second's reign. He soon took on
(14:48):
an increasing number of political appointments and became tutor to
hatcheps It's daughter. By the time hatcheps It took the throne,
he had become incredibly powerful and a very important figure.
He also met le am, asked ninety three different official titles,
and became chief architect of hatcheps It's mortuary temple. He
oversaw treasuries and crafts people all over the kingdom, There's
(15:12):
been some speculation that the two of them were linked romantically.
Some of it stems from the fact that he was
very close to hut Sheeps's daughter, leading people to wonder
whether he was actually her father. He also built his
burial temple near hot cheps It's mortuary temple. Also, Sentiment
was a powerful man in the court of a woman,
which is frequently caused for suspicion. Although it's likely that
(15:35):
hat cheps had had other relationships after her husband's death,
she would have had to have been really careful about
one involving Sentiment. Sentiment disappears from the historical record and
the nineteenth year of hatcheps It's rule, although he might
have survived after her death. She died in her early forties,
after having ruled his king for about fifteen years and
(15:56):
as most of the thirds regent for about seven years
before that. This makes her the longest reigning female monarch
in ancient Egyptian history, and possibly the first to rule
as a king rather than a regent or other interim ruler.
As we noted earlier, there were other women who served
as regents or who grew into having a lot of
power as queens and There's some debate about whether any
(16:18):
of these earlier women became kings in their own right.
After Hatchep's death, Tut most of the Third became the
sole ruler. It's clear from his time as king that
had Sheepsad had prepared him to be a skilled leader
from both a military and a political perspective. He had
begun marrying and fathering children by his late teens, and
by the time he was twenty he was commander of
(16:40):
the military. After hat Shepsa's death, he conquered much of
what is now Syria, as well as parts of Sudan
and Iraq. The first of these expeditions took place almost
immediately after he became the sole monarch. It seems as
though had sheeps It had started making preparations for it
before her death. Like had sheeps It had done, tutmost
of the Third also undertook huge building projects, constructing temples
(17:04):
and having obelisks quarried in Oswan. He also completed monuments
to her that were already under way when she died,
But then about twenty years into his reign that most
of the Third started construction of a new temple, which
was next to hat scheps It's mortuary temple, and at
about this time people started removing all references to hatcheps
(17:24):
It as king from temples and other buildings all over
the kingdom. Statues depicting her as king were smashed, relief
carvings were defaced. Her name was chiseled out of the
reliefs at Jasu and replaced with the names of Tutmos
of the First, the Second, and the third. Her mortuary
temple was reconsecrated, and her obelisks at Karnak were walled in.
(17:46):
Her name was also removed from the official lists of kings.
It is generally concluded that Tetmos of the Third ordered
this purge, but it's not clear how much he was
encouraged to do so by the priesthood or his advisers.
She was entirely obliterated from the record, though This destruction
went on for the rest of tutmost of the Third's life,
(18:06):
which was for about another decade, but there were so
many statues and other depictions of hatchep Suit that some
of them were still intact by the time he died.
With so much of her record destroyed, hot cheps It
soon fell into complete obscurity. The people who remembered and
supported her eventually died, and without her name in the
list of kings, she seems to have been forgotten within
(18:28):
a few generations. When her mortuary temple was unearthed in
the nineteenth century, no one knew how to read hieroglyphics yet,
so all of the smash statues and other defacements were
interpreted as simple vandalism or the work of grave robbers. Then,
in the eighteen twenties, John franzwash Employon built on earlier
work by Thomas Young to decipher the hieroglyphic text on
(18:51):
the Rosetta stone, and then that paved the way for
modern people to be able to read hieroglyphics. Champollion personally
visited hatcheps It's temple and was deeply confused by what
he found there. In addition to all these replaced names,
there were pictures of two kings standing side by side
that was incredibly unusual. There was also writing that just
(19:11):
didn't make sense, that had feminine word forms when they
expected masculine ones. Eventually, archaeologists pieced together what had happened
that hut Sheep said had been Tutmos of the Thirds region,
but had taken the throne herself, but they erroneously concluded
that Tutmosa had immediately removed hut sheps It's name from
the record as soon as she died. They imagined that
(19:34):
Tutmosa was angry at having had his kingship stolen from
him for more than a decade, and that his removal
of his stepmother's name was evidence of both his outrage
and her character. Based on this assumption, they concluded that
hat cheps It was a stereotypical evil stepmother right out
of a Disney movie, wicked and conniving and only interested
(19:56):
in her own power. But today we know that about
twenty years passed between hut sheeps It's death and the
defacement of her tomb and all the other destruction, and
the interpretation of what led to that defacement is much different.
That's largely thanks to the work of egyptologist Charles Nimbs
in nineteen sixty six, who was the first person to
pinpoint the date of the defacement as being the forty
(20:19):
second year of tutmost of the second's reign. According to
some researchers, it was even later than that, so it's
more likely that the ruling class became interested in preserving
the idea that the dynastic line had continued without any
kind of interruption through Tutmosis the first, second, and the third.
It's also possible that there was some concern about Tutmos
(20:39):
of the third successor, a Menhotep the second. Tutmosa did
eventually marry had chips It's daughter, Nepherrura, and he had
a son either with her or with another royal wife,
but both of them died, so his successor was a
Menhotep the second, whose mother had no royal lineage and
no connection back to hut sheeps It. It seems that
Tetmos of the third was concerned enough about the line
(21:01):
of succession that he had a Menhotep crowned while he
was still living, with the two of them acting as
co monarchs. So this removal of hatch ups That from
the record might have been connected to all this uncertainty.
And it's also possible that the purge wouldn't have been
considered necessary if hot chups It's daughter had survived and
she had become the mother to the next king rather
(21:24):
than the king's wife. Coming from this totally disconnected lineage,
the idea of a female king is also an affront
to the concept of Matt that we talked about earlier.
The king was supposed to be an intermediary with the
gods and a living embodiment of Horace, keeping everything in balance,
so having a woman in this role was basically the
(21:44):
opposite of this idea of ordered justice. The fact that
a woman had a relatively peaceful and prosperous reign in
spite of this affront to Matt may have raised unwelcome
questions about that divine order and the rule of other kings.
Hatch Ups that's mummy wasn't placed in the tomb where
she intended it to be, or if it was, it
was later moved, but a mummy from a tomb that
(22:07):
was found in the Valley of the Kings in nineteen
o two might be hers. That team was fully excavated
starting in nineteen twenty. During the excavation, archaeologists found the
mummies of two women, one of which was on the floor.
One of these was later identified as hut cheps It's
wet nurse. The other one, the one that had been
on the floor, was positioned in a way that was
(22:28):
often used for royal women. A CT scan found that
it was missing a tooth. Meanwhile, a box marked with
hut cheps It's cartouche had been unearthed as well in
a cache of Royal mummies. A scan of that box
revealed that it contained a tooth, and this tooth appears
to be a match for the mummies missing one. So
(22:48):
it's likely that this was hut cheps It's mummy, although
that is still not proven. Yeah, there is discussion of
using DNA to try to confirm everything back when these
initial analyses happened. I don't know what the results of
that were. I could not find reference to it anywhere,
but it's also incredibly difficult to get good DNA out
(23:10):
of mummified samples that are this old anyway. This finally
brings us to the voyage to Punch that I wanted
to focus on from the beginning, and we will get
to that after a sponsor break. The first reference to
(23:32):
Punt in ancient Egyptian writing is from the Palermo Stone,
which dates back to about b C. That was more
than a thousand years before had ships it became king.
According to the Palermo Stone, King Sahara sent an expedition
to Punt, which returned with eighty thousand measures of a
substance that's generally written as N T y W, sometimes
(23:54):
proceeded by an apostrophe. Some sources translate this word as frankincense,
and other is translated as mr. Both of these are
made from aromatic tree resins and are used to make
perfumes and incense, as well as spices and medicine. This
expedition also brought back wood in the form of rods
or staves, which were probably used to make spears and
(24:16):
other weapons, because the Egyptian Kingdom's territory at that time
didn't include trees that yielded wood that was good for
that purpose. There are periodic references to Punt, also known
as God's Land in Egyptian writing. After that, all of
the documented expeditions were associated with kings who were known
for exceptional leadership and good fortune. There are also fictional references,
(24:38):
including the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. This story dates
back to the Middle Kingdom, and in it, a sailor
washes up on an island in the Red Sea and
meets the Lord of Punt. The Lord of Punt is
a serpent who gives him all kinds of gifts including
mir i paint, baboons, and elephant tusks. Egyptian documents described
two different routes to punt. One of them is along
(25:01):
the Red Sea and one is along the Nile. Both
of them involved sometime on the Nile as well as
travel over land. For the Red Sea route, ships were
probably built on the Nile and then they sailed to Coptos.
From there they were disassembled and then carried along a
dry riverbed called the Wadi Hammamat, and that went all
(25:22):
the way to the Red Sea, which was a hundred
and twenty miles or a hundred and nine kilometers away.
Then on the return trip, the goods probably would have
been loaded onto pack animals to be carried back across
the Wadi Hammamat, and then they would have been loaded
into different ships on the Nile, rather than deconstructing the
ships and carrying them again. It was an involved process.
(25:44):
You would only want to go to this place if
it took that much effort. If you were going to
get some really good trade goods out of it, you
really had to want to do it. To travel along
the Nile, ships would have used rowers and sails to
travel south against the current and then followed the current back,
but it's not clear exactly where the overland portion was
(26:04):
headed after getting off of the ships. Whether an expedition
traveled along the Red Sea or stuck mostly to the
Nile might have been a matter of practicality, with the
Egyptians traveling farther down the Nile when they had friendly
relationships with the kingdoms and empires in that area, but
then crossing over the land and traveling down the Red
Sea when they didn't. Or it could have been that
(26:26):
Punt was very large and stretched all the way from
the Red Sea to the Nile, and the Egyptians visited
different parts of it at different times. Like we mentioned
at the top of the show, had ships. It is
expedition to Punt was one of the most notable acts
in her time as king, and a lot of what
we know about Punt comes from her documentation of those expeditions.
According to the account in the relief carvings in hut
(26:48):
chips It's Mortuary Temple, this voyage restored trade with Punt
after an interruption of more than two hundred years. She
had several probable reasons for wanting to embark on this expedition,
and one was simply access to luxury goods and aromatic resins.
The residents in particular were really important for religious purposes.
This might have been a reward for her supporters when
(27:10):
she ascended to the throne, like they helped her get
on the throne, and in return she was going to
give them access to all of this good trade. It
was probably also a way to keep the army busy.
Although it does appear that hot steps that led a
couple of small military campaigns into Nubia, it wasn't generally
considered appropriate for a woman to personally lead an army
into battle. On top of that, there was just a
(27:33):
lot more risk for her than there would be for
a man in her position. It would have been just
catastrophic for an unprecedented female king to lead a military
campaign that then failed. So hat ships that needed some
other way to reinforce the idea that she was competent
and accomplished and capable as king, and she needed something
(27:53):
to do to keep the soldiers occupied, like having them
go all the way to poot And as was the
case with her ascension to the throne, hut chups It's
relief carving show that this was divinely ordered, saying that
the oracle had delivered a command that quote the highways
to the mr terraces should be opened. This is a
slightly different framing from how other pharaohs documented their expeditions
(28:16):
to Punt, which more focused on Amun or Amandrae causing
Punt to send their goods or causing the way to
Punt to be opened. The by reliefs and hot ships.
It's temple depict large sailed ships crewed with thirty rowers,
each carrying goods from Egypt, including fruit, meat, bread, beer,
and wine. They sail across the water, and based on
(28:38):
the aquatic life that shown in the carvings, that water
is probably meant to be the Red Sea. Once they
arrive in Punt. There are carvings of the region's trees,
which might be the trees used to produce ebbony, frankincense,
or myrrh. There are also some fig trees. There are
also depictions of huts with domed roofs on stilts, which
might have been houses or granaries. Him there. The relief
(29:01):
show all kinds of goods being loaded back onto the ships,
including herbs, wood, resins, gold, incense, and animal skins. There
are also lots of live animals, including baboons, monkeys, cattle,
and hounds. Enslaved people and their children are loaded into
the ships as well, and cross sections of the loaded
(29:21):
ships show them just packed to the gills with goods.
Once the goods arrived safely at Karnak Temple and thieves,
the Egyptians and the Puntite dignitaries who are returned with
them are shown presenting hapshets that with the goods that
they had brought. This includes live resentries in baskets meant
for transplanting and hatch ups that did transplant them around
(29:42):
her mortuary temple and the carvings hatch ups that also
consecrates the best of all these goods to the god Amen.
The people of punt appear in these depictions as well.
They have dark reddish skin with long hair and goatee
like beards. The only ones whose names are mentioned are
King Parah, who and his queen at the queen is
(30:02):
depicted as being very strikingly large, something that has led
to a lot of commentary about her body, and a
lot of it has started with the assumption that there
was a pathological explanation for her body shape and size,
but it may have just been how she was built
or a mark of status and wealth in her culture.
By the way, if you look her up, be prepared
to read some really gross and insulting things about her body.
(30:24):
In almost every single article, including articles that are brand new,
almost no one had nothing ugly to say about what
the Queen of Punt looked like. These reliefs are very detailed,
so it's likely that hat scheps that sent artists with
the expedition and ordered them to make very careful observations
for the sake of these reliefs when they returned. And
(30:47):
the reliefs are definitely our biggest single source of information
about Punt, but there is still so much that we
don't know. For one thing, we really don't know how
the people of Punt referred to themselves. Punt is what
is in Egyptian writing, but it's also echoed than things
that came later, like Herodotus is History, which was written
in the fifth century BC, and we also don't know
(31:08):
exactly where it was. That's something people have been trying
to figure out for more than a hundred and fifty years.
At first researchers focused on the Arabian Peninsula, but as
archaeologists unearthed more and more descriptions of Punt being to
the south rather than to the east of the Egyptian Kingdom,
and more references of the goods being traded, they started
focusing more on the stretch of the continent between Egyptian
(31:30):
territory and the Horn of Africa. Many of the goods
described as coming from Punt were native to this part
of the African continent, but there's still a lot of
room for speculation. This is especially true since the ancient
Egyptians were certainly not Punt's only trading partner, so the
goods that were available in Punt probably came from other
parts of the world as well, both on the continent
(31:52):
of Africa and elsewhere. Also, the domed huts and the
stilt houses that are shown in the reliefs are more
soci created with central and western Africa then with the
parts of the continent that we're most likely to be
accessed via the Red Sea, and which archaeologists and other
researchers have mostly focused on in this search. Most, but
not all, researchers have concluded that Punt was probably located
(32:16):
somewhere along the Red Sea, but exactly where is still
a mystery. Researchers have certainly put forth a lot of ideas,
a lot of them simultaneously contradictory and well supported. Most
placed punch somewhere in what's now Eritrea, Ethiopia, or Somalia.
In an article in the Journal of the American Research
(32:36):
Center in Egypt, Stanley Blanda explores descriptions of Punt as
on the twin shores of the sea, and he interprets
the accounts description of where the expedition pitched their tents
as on both sides of the Red Sea. Based on that,
he concludes that Punt lay along the balt Al Mandab
straight with modern Djibouti on one side and Yemen on
(32:56):
the other in both Eastern Africa and the Western Arabian Peninsula.
And researchers even tried to use oxygen isotope analysis to
try to confirm Punt's location by studying the mummy of
a baboon that had presumably been brought back from Punt.
That research suggested that this baboon was from what's now
(33:17):
Eritrea or eastern Ethiopia, and so they concluded that Punt
might have covered all of that general area. A major
archaeological discovery could clear all this up, but right now,
the biggest archaeological fines related to Punt are from the
Egyptian harbor of Merca. Goasis known at the time as
Saw would show evidence of trade with Punch regardless, though
(33:39):
Punt seems to have existed as an important and thriving
trading partner from roughly b c E to about six
hundred b C. The last Egyptian expedition that we know
about took place under Ramsey's the Third in the twelfth
century BC. AH elusive Punt, Yeah, I'm very that you. Also,
(34:00):
if you go poking around on the internet, you will
also find some more far fetched and less well supported
ideas about it being in many far flung places that
are not in the immediate vicinity of Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula, which aren't really supported so much by what
we know in terms of what's documented about Egyptian relationships
(34:23):
with Punt and about what we know about Egyptians seafaring capabilities,
which weren't amazing. They could get up and down the
Nile pretty well, but they really tended to stick very
closely along the shore of the Red Sea. They were
not nearly as good as like getting out into the water.
Away from that safety of land. They were focusing more
(34:44):
on architecture and that is fine. Yeah. We should also
know that in the modern era, there is a place
called Puntland which is part of Somalia, and we know
that that was named after the land of punt but
it's not clear that that was the same physical location. Um,
do you have a little bit of listener mail for us?
I do have listener mail for us. This listener mail
(35:06):
comes from Christopher. Christopher says, Hello, ladies. I am a
longtime avid listener to your podcast, having listened off and
on for years. I recently started a new job with
a longer commute in your podcasts have been a huge blessing.
I recently listened to your podcast on Chester A Arthur
and you discussed in passing a church in Boston that
had a large collection of Tiffany stained glass. I'm an
(35:27):
amateur stained glass maker and I specialized in the Tiffany
foil style. I was in Boston for work during the
recent eclipse, and one of the stops I made in
my free time was to a church that had a
large collection of stained glass. Since I gather you may
be familiar with it, I am not sure if this
will interest you, but I took high resolution pictures of
the windows because of how impressive they were, especially when
compared to my own skill. I'm not sure how familiar
(35:50):
either of you is with stained glass in general, but
when you're working on a window, typically, at least in
my experience, all of the different pieces of glass are
approximately the same thickness. This is not the case in
the windows of this church. Although you cannot tell from
the pictures I took, I was able to get up
close to the windows themselves, and there's a huge amount
of variability in the thickness of the different pieces, which
(36:11):
makes the finished product all the more impressive. I would
like to second the motion to do an episode on Tiffany,
either the person himself for the style of stained glass,
or if I am dreaming, an episode on the history
of stained glass itself. I'm attaching a link to the
album I made at the pictures of the windows in
case you're interested in seeing them for some reason, you
want to take them or post them, do feel free
(36:31):
to do so. I am attaching a picture of a
window I made myself to give some perspective on the
comparative differences between a master of the craft and a
dilettante like myself. Again, thank you so much for what
you do. I tell everyone who will listen about your podcast.
I'm also about to head on a vacation to Martha's vineyard,
implant on sending you guys something, so watch for another
(36:51):
message or postcard from me. Thank you and have a
great day, Christopher. Thank you Christopher for this email. These
pictures are great. The make sure that Christopher set of
his own His own uh stained glass work is of
a Zelda theme stained stained glass piece, which I was
(37:12):
absolutely delighted by. Uh. And I'm glad that that we
got this email because when we talked about that on
the podcast, I was sort of talking off the top
of my head and I didn't have written down with
the name of the church was, or where it was
or anything like that. And this email gives me a
chance to fill people in who may be interested. This
is Arlington Street Church. It is at the corner of
(37:34):
Boylston Street and Arlington in Boston. It's right across the
street from the corner um like one of the corners
of the Boston Public Garden, it is a Unitarian Universalist church.
And the history of this particular church actually also connects
to our recent Packard Versus Packard episode, because when you
look at the chronology of like the church's history and
(37:57):
what congregations were worshiping at this site, it follows that
whole progression of having like the very old school uh
Lutheran Calvinism, and then gradually breaking away from that, becoming dissatisfied,
and then ultimately becoming a Unitarian church, which is the
church that's there now. Um So, if you google Arlington
(38:18):
Street Church, Boston, you will find information about the church
and when it is available to go and look at
the windows. There are pictures of the windows there as well.
So thank you so much, Christopher. If you would like
to write to us about this or anither podcast or
a history podcasts of how Stuff Works dot com and
then we're all over social media at ms in history.
That is where you will find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
(38:40):
and Instagram, and you can come to our website which
is at miss in history dot com and find show
notes for all the episodes that Holly and I have
done together in a searchable archive of every episode ever.
And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts
and the I heart Radio app and wherever else you
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
(39:02):
a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.