Eritrea was part of the Kingdom of Punt. The Kingdom of Punt was a kingdom in East Africa, in the Red Sea region, which is believed to have stretched from Eastern Sudan up to Eritrea and to Northern Somalia. Historical maps show that Eritrea was not only part of the kingdom but also its center.¹
From 2500 to 1000 BC, Eritrea was part of the Kingdom of Punt. Many historians even agree that the Kingdom of Punt was located in Eritrea. A very famous YouTube channel, The Infographics Show—with around fifty million followers—released a video in 2020 titled “How Did an Entire Ancient Country Disappear From History?” It explored Punt’s disappearance from the historical record and covered the leading theories on where it stood, including Kenneth Kitchen’s linguistic argument placing it in Eritrea.²
Scientific evidence backs this up. In 2020, a Dartmouth College study led by Nathaniel Dominy analyzed stable oxygen and strontium isotopes in mummified baboons brought back to Egypt from Punt. The results traced their origins to the southern Red Sea region—Eritrea, Djibouti, and parts of Somalia and Yemen. Dominy himself concluded that Punt likely sat on the coasts of Eritrea and Somaliland.³
Then in 2023, a University of Konstanz team led by Gisela Kopp went further with mitochondrial DNA analysis on a later baboon mummy. It matched modern hamadryas baboon populations in coastal Eritrea—the area around Adulis. Their published hypothesis: Punt and Adulis were the same place, just different names used at different times, separated by roughly a thousand years.⁴
Adulis lies on the Gulf of Zula in Eritrea, about forty kilometers south of Massawa. Some scholars link it to “Wddt,” a locality listed in Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty records around 1450 BCE as part of Punt. The traded goods and ecosystem fit too—the flora and fauna of the Eritrean highlands and coastal lowlands, and the maritime trade routes between Egypt and the port of Adulis, which later became the main gateway of the Kingdom of Aksum, handling ivory, gold, myrrh, and slaves for Rome, India, and beyond.⁵
No archaeological site has been definitively identified as Punt yet, and the location remains debated. But between the isotope data, the DNA evidence, the trade-route logic, and the historical maps, Eritrea stands at the center of the strongest case.⁶
Footnotes**
¹ General historical reconstructions and maps of Punt commonly place it in the northern Horn of Africa along the southern Red Sea coast, encompassing areas of modern Eritrea and adjacent regions. See standard Egyptological summaries (e.g., Kitchen’s body of work). Overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_P…
² The Infographics Show, “How Did an Entire Ancient Country Disappear From History?” YouTube video, published 16 July 2020. The video reviews the mystery of Punt and leading location theories, including those associated with Kenneth Kitchen.
Link: youtube.com/watch?v=x_EFCu…
³ Dominy, N. J., Ikram, S., Moritz, G. L., Wheatley, P. V., Christensen, J. N., Chipman, J. W., & Koch, P. L. (2020). “Mummified baboons reveal the far reach of early Egyptian mariners.” eLife, 9, e60860. The study’s isotope analysis of New Kingdom baboon mummies points to the southern Red Sea region; Dominy concluded that Punt “likely sat on the coasts of Eritrea and Somaliland.”
Link: elifesciences.org/articles/60860
DOI: doi.org/10.7554/eLife.…
⁴ Kopp, G. H., et al. (including Dominy, N. J.). (2023). “Adulis and the transshipment of baboons during classical antiquity.” eLife, 12, e87513. Mitochondrial DNA from a Late Period baboon mummy matched modern populations in coastal Eritrea (Adulis area); the authors hypothesize continuity between Punt and Adulis.
Link: elifesciences.org/articles/87513
DOI: doi.org/10.7554/eLife.…