V) Ancient Punt as a State
More Traces for Early Civilization
The meaning of the term ‘state’ is generally relative, depending on the time and interpretation. At the time of Punt, any sizeable, organized community or entity in form of chiefdom, kingdom, or the like, can qualify to be assumed or understood as a state. Punt was definitely that kind of community. However, we neither know its governmental system, nor its geographical border. But I think there are useful clues about the basics of those questions. Punt was not a city-state, but a country. By our reckoning, its coast was at least from Jabuuti to Xaafuun, the entire coast of Aromatic Land. This could allow it to have brought a vast interior land under its control. The would-be location of some of its exports such as myrrh trees, ebony wood, Panthers, gold, also hint that it had an access to relatively remote interior areas.
It appears, for example, that the Somalis were collecting the gold from their mainland for thousands of years but overtime it was depleted at there. They eventually went farther as they were providing it in the medieval times from Damut and Hadiya regions, now in the West and SW of Ethiopia respectively, and from Sufala, (Mozambique). Since the gold was the number two item in the Punto-Egyptian trade, and even within later countries, the Puntite traders must had been providing it from far-off places.
The northern Somali unique culture of cairn building and rock painting also suggests that its land was not less than the primary region of the culture, from the eastern coast to Harar uplands. We have already addressed in ‘section 1’ that the inhabitants of Somalia from the late Old Stone Age onwards had a head start in turning, not only to what is termed food production, but also to recording the main type of their lifestyle and ethnical appearance in paintings.
Read more: The Ancient Kingdom of Punt VI
Said M-Shidad Hussein
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