Quick questions on Hatshepsut's foreign policy and trade: HSC Ancient History

The signature foreign-policy event of Hatshepsut's reign is the trade and tribute expedition to Punt (probably modern Eritrea, Somalia, or south-western Arabia, on the Red Sea coast). The expedition is dated to around year 9 of Thutmose III's reign, the peak of Hatshepsut's pharaonic period.

Older textbook summaries reduce Hatshepsut's Nubian record to a single throwaway line, but the surviving evidence, though fragmentary, is a genuine cluster that several historians treat as proof of at least one real campaign.

Turquoise and copper mining at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula continued under Hatshepsut, sustaining an economic activity that stretched back to the Middle Kingdom.

Egypt's building projects, including Hatshepsut's own temple works, depended on a steady supply of cedar timber from the Levantine coast, most famously through the port city of Byblos (in modern Lebanon), which had supplied Egypt with cedar since the Old Kingdom. Continued trade contact along this route under Hatshepsut fits the same pattern as Punt and Sinai: an active, organised program of resource acquisition through trade and diplomatic relationships rather than conquest.

Egyptian activity in Syria-Palestine is the area where Hatshepsut's reign appears quietest by contrast with predecessors and successors. Thutmose I had reached the Euphrates. Thutmose III after 1458 BC conducted 17 campaigns into Syria-Palestine, beginning with the Battle of Megiddo. Under Hatshepsut, there is no clear evidence of major campaigns in the region.

The expedition is depicted in a long relief series on the second (middle) terrace of the Deir el-Bahri mortuary temple. The reliefs show: the divine commission by Amun-Re, the loading of ships at the Egyptian Red Sea coast, the journey south, the arrival in Punt, the meeting with the queen of Punt (named Ati), the goods given by the Puntites, the loading of the ships for the return journey, and the welcome at Thebes.

The expedition was led by the Chancellor Nehesi. Five ships, each around 25 metres long, made the journey. The Egyptian sailors are depicted in detail.

Ati is depicted in distinctive costume (a yellow skirt) and with a particular body shape (steatopygia, a posterior fat distribution). The depiction is one of the most-studied images in Egyptian art; its accuracy of physical detail (the fish in Punt waters are identifiable Red Sea species) suggests careful observation by the Egyptian artists.

The reliefs catalogue: 31 incense trees (myrrh trees) transplanted in pots and brought back for the gardens at Deir el-Bahri; gold and electrum; ebony; ivory; leopard, panther, and giraffe skins; live baboons and monkeys; exotic produce; and the people of Punt themselves as tribute.

Punt was the "divine land" (Ta-Netjer). The expedition was presented as ordered by Amun-Re himself and as bringing the produce of the gods back to Egypt. The incense trees in particular were religious offerings: incense was burned at every Egyptian temple ritual.

Near the First Cataract at Sehel island, a graffito left by the official Ti records participation in a Nubian campaign under Hatshepsut. This is treated as the clearest single piece of evidence that fighting, not just administration, took place in Nubia during her reign.

Damaged inscriptions and relief fragments from Tombos (a fortress site upstream in Nubia) and further fragmentary military scenes from Deir el-Bahri itself preserve traces of a Nubian campaign narrative, including imagery of bound Nubian captives. Their poor state of preservation is itself significant: Thutmose III's later proscription of Hatshepsut's monuments likely destroyed further material of exactly this kind, meaning the surviving military record probably understates the true scale of her activity.

Labib Habachi, examining the Sehel and related material, argued that Hatshepsut campaigned in Nubia, and that she may have travelled south with the expedition herself rather than sending it under a general's command alone. Donald Redford reaches a similar conclusion: the evidence points to genuine military engagement in Nubia during her reign, not merely inherited garrison administration.

Egyptian fortresses along the Nile in Nubia (Buhen, Mirgissa, Semna) continued to function under Hatshepsut, sustaining the administrative and military system left by Thutmose I.

Thutmose I had reached the Fourth Cataract; Thutmose III continued extensive Nubian activity after 1458 BC. Hatshepsut's Nubian campaigning was smaller in scale than either, but the Sehel, Tombos and Deir el-Bahri evidence shows it was real, not merely defensive.