Punt dates back to the cradle of Egyptian civilization. The first known contacts between Egypt and Punt date back to almost to the cradle of Egyptian civilization. Pharaonic records reveal that as early as the First or Second Dynasties (3407 - 2888 BCE) the Egyptians were in possession of myrrh, the Eritrean borderlands.

During the Fourth Egyptian dynasty (2789 - 2767 BCE),a Punt slave is mentioned as the helping hand to the son of Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid. Pankhurst further adds that the pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty dispatched the earliest naval expedition to Punt, where supplies from Punt probably first reached Egypt overland. King Sahure (2958 - 2946 BCE) of the Fifth Dynasty, however, later dispatched a naval fleet, which returned with myrrh, gold and costly wood. King Pepy II (2738 - 2644 BCE) of the Sixth Dynasty subsequently had noted that he had a Tenq, a slave, from Punt. 

Pharaonic expeditions to Punt increased after the founding of the Egyptian Red Sea port of Wadi Gasus, north of Koseir, during the reign of King Mentuhotep IV (2242 - 2212 BCE) of the Eleventh Dynasty. Egyptian familiarity with Punt also found expression, during the Twelfth Dynasty, in a popular tale of a mariner, a kind of early Sinbad the Sailor, ship-wrecked in Punt waters.

Before the Suez Canal was built, the ancient Egyptians had already built a waterway from the Nile to the Red Sea. Ancient Egyptian contact with Punt was subsequently facilitated by the orders from King Sesostris III (2099 - 2061 BCE), almost four thousand years before the Suez Canal.