In my Empire of Thebes (2006) I have dealt in some detail with both these objections, and have shown them to be without foundation. In my recently-published internet article, “Was Hatshepsut the Queen of Sheba or merely the Queen of Theba?” I have further elaborated on the question of Punt’s flora and fauna, and have shown that these latter unequivocally identify Punt with Israel, where the Jordan Valley has a tropical climate, and which, to this day, is home to a wide variety of peculiarly Africa plants and creatures. There I demonstrated in detail how both frankincense and myrrh, the prime object of Hatshepsut’s expedition to Punt, were anciently grown in the Jordan Valley, and indeed the region was famous for these products. The myrrh of the area is first mentioned in the Book of Genesis, where the Ishmaelites who take Joseph into Egypt are described as coming from Gilead (the eastern shore of the Jordan Valley) laden with “balm of Gilead and myrrh.” (Genesis, Chapter 37). In the present paper I propose to treat in some detail with the second of Lorton’s main points, the Karnak Lists.
The victory lists of Thutmose III in the temple of Amon at Karnak give names to the lands and cities conquered by the warrior pharaoh in his first year. The subjugated regions are not enumerated haphazardly, but follow a definite sequence. In fact, they are named according to their geographical location. Thus, one of the lists, on the northwest facade of the seventh pylon, begins (following Lorton’s translation):
“Summary of the foreign countries of Upper Retenu, which his majesty had shut up in the town of doomed Megiddo, and whose children his majesty had brought back as living captives to the town (…) in Karnak, in his first campaign of victory, as his father Amon, who led him to the goodly roads, had commanded.”
It would appear that Upper Retenu is the Egyptian term for the mountainous or upland regions of Palestine/Syria. Megiddo itself is in the land of Israel.
After listing the conquered states and cities of Upper Retenu, Thutmose goes on to enumerate states closer to Egypt. He ends, according to Lorton (and this is accepted by Egyptologists in general), with a quite separate and corresponding list of southern states, similarly conquered in the first year. This list begins:
“Summary of these southern foreign countries of the Nubian ’Iwntyw – people of Khenthenopher whom his majesty had slaughtered, a massacre made of them, the numbers not known, all their inhabitants brought back as living captives to Thebes to fill the workhouse of his father Amon-Re lord of the Two Lands.”
Thus there appear to be two separate lists, one comprised of regions to the north of Egypt and the other of regions to the south of Egypt. Somewhat triumphantly, Lorton announces that in all three copies of these lists Punt is clearly and unequivocally placed as the forty-eighth land of the “southern” list. The evidence of these lists, he says, is “in and of itself sufficient to demonstrate that the thesis of Chapter III of Ages in Chaos [where Velikovsky claims Hatshepsut = Queen of Sheba] cannot be correct.”
If the lists said what Lorton claims they say, then perhaps there would be some weight to his argument. But the fact is that they do not say what he claims. Before examining what the lists really say, let’s look carefully at what he says about them.
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First and foremost, he says that there are two separate lists, copied three times, of the northern and southern states conquered by Thutmose III.
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Secondly, he says that the three lists are identical, and that they all clearly and unequivocally place Punt along with the southern (Nubian) states.
Statement (a) is in fact only partly correct. There are indeed two lists, but they are not entirely separate, in that one list always and only names northern states and the other always and only names southern states. More on this in due course. Statement (b) is quite simply untrue: And with this assertion Lorton is committing an act of legerdemain on his readers. Let’s look at what he says about the lists. “The three lists,” he claims, “are identical, the only differences among them being minor orthographic variations.” He continues, “I have quoted the introductory passages at length to show that, despite some variation in wording and some loss of text, the variants are nevertheless explicit as to the fact that one of these is a list of northern countries and the other a list of southern countries.”
It is with good reason that Lorton emphasises the importance of the introductory passages. For it is there that we are told of the lists’ contents. But the “minor variation” in wording of the introductions, which Lorton presumably hopes the reader will not question too much, is in fact a major variation in wording. Lorton remember bases his argument on the assertion that there are two entirely separate lists, one of the northern regions, the other of the southern, and that these lists are copied identically three times. But let’s look at what the introduction to the register on the southwest facade of the seventh pylon says: “Summary of these southern and northern foreign countries whom his majesty had slaughtered.” Lorton’s comment gives the game away: “For reasons of space in this particular case, the last part of the northern list had to be placed with the southern list.” This, I would suggest, hardly constitutes a “minor orthographic variation”. The fact that “in this case” the last part of the northern list “had to be placed with the southern list” in fact invalidates his entire argument. Evidently there are not two separate lists, but one continuous list, beginning with Thutmose III’s most northerly conquests and ending with his most southerly.
In order to properly understand these registers, the reader should consider the following. The vast majority of the territories and cities conquered by Thutmose III were in Asia, in the region of Syria/Palestine. Therefore we must suppose that these would take up much more space in his inscriptions than the cities of Nubia. Therefore, quite probably in all three copies of the lists, we must expect that “for reasons of space” the “northern” list will overflow into the “southern”. That this is so is, as we have seen, explicitly stated on one occasion. On another copy of the “southern” list the introduction, as Lorton himself admits, is lost. Which leaves only a single list to which Lorton can point to in support of his thesis.
The reader himself will by now, I am sure, be less certain of accepting anything Lorton has to say. His statement that three copies of the Thutmose III lists clearly place Punt to the south of Egypt is exposed as being simply untrue.
I would, at this stage, ask the reader to consider the following: In Velikovsky’s theory Punt is identified as Palestine: in other words the southernmost of Thutmose III’s Asiatic conquests. Now, if as we say, these lists are in fact simply one long list, in a geographical north to south sequence, we must assume that in all of the copies Punt/Palestine will be placed right next to the cities of Nubia, which come next geographically to his southernmost Asiatic conquests: And this of course is exactly what we do find. On the other hand, there is a distinct possibility that the word ‘Punt’, which would appear to come at the end of the list of northern territories, is a wide geographical designation, intended to inform the reader to the effect that all the territories listed prior were in the region of Punt.
How then do we explain the one copy of the register where Punt is indeed apparently placed in the south? One of the things Lorton himself stresses is that in all three copies of the lists Punt is placed as the forty-eighth region of the second or so-called “southern” list. But if Punt occupies an identical position in all three copies, this must mean that all three copies are in fact, just as we surmised, an identical list of “southern and northern” regions. That one of these inscriptions is introduced as simply a list of southern regions can, I would suggest, be explained in the following way: The scribes and craftsmen had indeed originally intended to produce two separate lists, one of Thutmose’s northern conquests and another of his southern. When it came to actually entering the names onto the prepared registers, it was found that there were far more northern names and these had to continue into the southern list. Having made the mistake once, the scribes corrected the error by describing the other two copies as a list of southern and northern states.
Lorton’s definitive evidence against Velikovsky thus evaporates.
Before finishing, I would like to put an open question to David Lorton as well as to John Bimson and other supporters of the southern Punt theory. Considering the fact that Punt appears in a list of territories which Thutmose III claims to have conquered in his first year, this would compel Egyptologists to place it somewhere in Nubia. But of course it cannot have been located there, because the Hatshepsut reliefs clearly show, and refer to, a sea voyage. Thus Punt has to be, as the only other alternative, placed somewhere near the southern end of the Red Sea, say in Eritrea or Somalia (the latter two regions being in fact the favoured location for Punt). But such a location causes immense problems, because Thutmose III states that Punt (along with the other areas mentioned) was a conquered territory. The list, after all, is introduced with the words, “Summary of these foreign countries of the Nubian people of Khenthenopher whom his majesty had slaughtered, a massacre made of them”. No one in his right mind of course would suggest that Thutmose III or any other pharaoh conquered Eritrea or Somalia; but this is the unavoidable and inevitable consequence of placing Punt to the south of Egypt. (Nor was there in Eritrea or Somalia, in the time of Hatshepsut or Thutmose III, any civilisation or culture of the type portrayed at Deir el Bahri that the Egyptians could have traded with, far less conquered).
It is a pity scholars do not always think out the consequences of their statements before making them.