6 Black Explorers That Will Transform How You See the Ancient World

Red Sea (Public Domain)

Egyptian Head Servant Hannu Could Have Re-Opened Important Trade Routes

Hannu is said to be responsible for re-opening the trade routes from Punt, which historians believe is present-day Somalia and Ethiopia, to ancient Libya during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in the 20th century B.C., according to professor Rasha Soliman’s “Old and Middle Kingdom Theban Tombs.” Hannu was ordered to do so after Mentuhotep III commanded him to make the more than 100-mile trip from the Nile to the Red Sea, as Brandon Huebner speculated in his podcast, “Maritime History,” and those trade routes were thought to be important to Egypt during the kingdom of Mentuhotep II. Egyptologist Heinrich Karl Brugsch argues in his book “A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs” that Hannu recorded his expedition in stone. Educational author Ann Richmond Fisher argues in the book, “Explorers of the New World Time Line” that Hannu arrived back to Egypt with precious metals, wood and myrrh, a fragrant gum used in perfumes, medicine and incense.

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