Foreign contacts of ancient Egypt

In Nabta Playa by the end of the 6th millennium BC, prehistoric Egyptians had imported goats and sheep from Southwest Asia.

[1] Foreign artifacts dating to the 5th millennium BC in the Badarian culture of Egypt indicate contact with distant Syria and Uruk.

[2] Predynastic Egyptians in the Naqada I period traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean to the east.

[4] Charcoal samples found in the tombs of Nekhen, which were dated to the Naqada I and II periods, have been identified as cedar from Lebanon.

[6] Egyptian artifacts dating to this era have been found in Canaan[7] and other regions of the Near East, including Tell Brak[8] and Uruk and Susa[9] in Mesopotamia.

Lapis lazuli trade, in the form of beads, from its only known prehistoric source – Badakshan, in northeastern Afghanistan – reached ancient Gerzeh.

[19] Evidence of Old Kingdom trade (external map here) extends southward to Nubia (in modern Sudan and Ethiopia) and Punt (probably modern Ethiopia/Eritrea or the Eritreo-Sudanese borderlands, possibly Somalia), eastward to the Near East (Byblos and Ebla, Syria), northward to the Aegean and the Greek islands, and westward (limited evidence) with Libya.

Although, limited trade between the regions seems to have continued, culminating in the world's earliest known peace treaty, between Ramesses II and the Hittites.