Among ancient Egypt’s most prized imports were resins and other aromatics obtained mainly from or through Nubia and Punt, an area that included the African and Arabian shores of the southern Red Sea. Egyptian texts emphasized the association between these places and the imports of aromatics, indicating that the use of incense and other types of aromatics was likely a foreign introduction to ancient Egypt. This paper surveys the Egyptian terminology for specific and general forms of incense and proposed modern identifications. It presents the evidence for Egyptian contact with Punt in the context of the incense trade and shows the importance of African aromatics within several spheres of Egyptian culture from the late Predynastic to Ptolemaic times. Egyptian religious practices embraced incense as a signifier of the divine, and Nubian gods in the Egyptian pantheon were intimately associated with incense. Apart from religion, aromatics played important roles in the political realm, and both the aromatics trade and processing were a state enterprise. We explore the political, economic, and commercial networks that shaped the importation of aromatics in ancient Egypt and the implications for understanding cultural appropriation and intercultural entanglement between Egypt and its southern neighbors.

中文翻译：

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非洲熏香贸易及其对法老埃及的影响

古埃及最珍贵的进口产品是树脂和其他芳烃，主要来自或通过努比亚和蓬特获得，该地区包括红海南部的非洲和阿拉伯海岸。埃及文献强调了这些地方与芳香剂进口之间的联系，表明使用香和其他类型的芳香剂很可能是古埃及的外来传入。本文调查了埃及香的特定和一般形式的术语，并提出了现代标识。它提供了埃及在香火贸易背景下与庞特接触的证据，并展示了非洲芳香在从前王朝晚期到托勒密时代的埃及文化的几个领域中的重要性。埃及的宗教习俗将香视为神圣的象征，埃及万神殿中的努比亚神与香密切相关。除宗教外，芳烃在政治领域也发挥着重要作用，芳烃贸易和加工都是国有企业。我们探索了影响古埃及芳香剂进口的政治、经济和商业网络，以及对理解埃及与其南部邻国之间的文化挪用和跨文化纠缠的影响。