Rome: The Lure of the Orient

Eastern trade has a long history. Exotic goods were brought through the Red Sea over a thousand years before the Roman conquest of Egypt. Hieroglyphic texts reveal how in the third millennium bc the pharaohs brought incenses from lands on the edge of the Red Sea to burn on their altars and use in mummification. Later pharaohs established harbours on the Egyptian Red Sea coast and Queen Hatshepsut, who came to power in 1479 bc, sent a seaborne expedition to a distant and mysterious land called ‘Punt’. Her funerary temple near the Valley of the Kings has wall paintings depicting her royal missions to frankincense groves in what may be modern Somalia.