Esarhaddon in Yemen, Punt, and the Horn of Africa

In 676 bc , the Assyrian king Esarhaddon led an army across 1320 km of brutal desert to conquer a “forgotten” land called Bāzu. This study follows his route across the Arabian Desert to discover Bāzu in South Arabia (Yemen). Esarhaddon's ten recorded conquests in Bāzu support this identification. With one exception, they correspond to the principal polities of ancient South Arabia, whereas the final toponym belongs instead to the Horn of Africa, on the far side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This vital crossing point between continents then provides the enigmatic starting point of the Sargon Geography, “the bridge of Baza [Bāzu] at the border of the road to the Land of Meluḫḫa [Kush].” This account of a back road into Kush (circumventing their extensive northern defenses) may have motivated Esarhaddon's difficult Bāzu campaign, which was undertaken only two years before the first of his three known attempts to invade from the north. His final conquest before crossing the strait was the power controlling the South Arabian coast, Pudaʾ or Pudan, Ptolemy's Pudn. This kingdom's location, on Wadi Zabid near the coast, coincides precisely with archaeological remains of what appears to have been the wealthiest trading power on the Red Sea coast. This, it will be argued, was the mysterious land to which the Egyptians sent much-celebrated maritime expeditions for sacred myrrh, the Land of Punt.