m out of it the sun rose anew every
morning. Amon, in his omniscience, took upon himself to describe it and
give an exact account of its position. "The 'Ladders of Incense' is a
secret province of Tonutir, it is in truth a place of delight. I created
it, and I thereto lead Thy Majesty, together with Mut, Hathor, Uirit,
the Lady of Puanit, Uirit-hikau, the magician and regent of the gods,
that the aromatic gum may be gathered at will, that the vessels may be
laden joyfully with living incense trees and with all the products of
this earth." Hatshopsitu chose out five well-built galleys, and
manned them with picked crews. She caused them to be laden with such
merchandise as would be most attractive to the barbarians, and placing
the vessels under the command of a royal envoy, she sent them forth on
the Bed Sea in quest of the incense.

We are not acquainted with the name of the port from which the fleet set
sail, nor do we know the number of weeks it took to reach the land of
Puanit, neither is there any record of the incidents which befell it
by the way. It sailed past the places frequented by the mariners of
the XIIth dynasty--Suakin, Massowah, and the islands of the Ked Sea;
it touched at the country of the Ilim which lay to the west of the Bab
el-Mandeb, went safely through the Straits, and landed at last in the
Land of Perfumes on the Somali coast.* There, between the bay of Zeilah
and Bas Hafun, stretched the Barbaric region, frequented in later times
by the merchants of Myos Hormos and of Berenice.

* That part of Puanit where the Egyptians landed was at
first located in Arabia by Brugsch, then transferred to
Somali-land by Mariette, whose opinion was accepted by most
Egyptologists. Dumichen, basing his hypothesis on a passage
where Puanit is mentioned as "being on both sides of the
sea," desired to apply the name to the Arabian as well as to
the African coast, to Yemen and Hadhramaut as well as to
Somali-land; this suggestion was adopted by Lieblein, and
subsequently by Ed. Meyer, who believed that its inhabitants
were the ancestors of the Sabseans. Since then Krall has
endeavoured to shorten the distance between this country and
Egypt, and he places the Puanit of Hatshopsitu between
Suakin and Massowah. This was, indeed, the part of the
country known under the XIIth dynasty at the time when it
was believed that the Nile emptied itself the