Various locations have been offered, southeast of Egypt, a coastal region south of it along the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, in present day north-east Sudan, Eritrea, northeast Ethiopia, Djibouti and northern Somalia, including Somaliland.

[10][11][12] The autonomous state of Puntland, the modern day Somali administrative region at the tip of the Horn of Africa, is named in honor of this ancient kingdom.

[13] The earliest recorded ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC), returning with cargoes of antyue and Puntites.

[17][18] In the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Hatshepsut built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and points south as far as Punt to bring mortuary goods to Karnak in exchange for Nubian gold.

Her artists revealing much about the royals, inhabitants, habitation and variety of trees on the island, revealing it as the "Land of the Gods, a region far to the east in the direction of the sunrise, blessed with products for religious purposes", where traders returned with gold, ivory, ebony, incense, aromatic resins, animal skins, live animals, eye-makeup cosmetics, fragrant woods, and cinnamon.

[24] Throughout the temple texts, Hatshepsut "maintains the fiction that her envoy" Chancellor Nehsi, who is mentioned as the head of the expedition, had travelled to Punt "in order to extract tribute from the natives" who admit their allegiance to the Egyptian pharaoh.

[24][25] The Puntites "traded not only in their own produce of incense, ebony and short-horned cattle, but [also] in goods from other African states including gold, ivory and animal skins.

"[27]While the Egyptians "were not particularly well versed in the hazards of sea travel, and the long voyage to Punt must have seemed something akin to a journey to the moon for present-day explorers... the rewards of [obtaining frankincense, ebony and myrrh] clearly outweighed the risks.

[29] According to Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, "The scene of an expedition to Punt from Queen Hatshepsuis mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri shows Puntites with red skin and facial features similar to Egyptians, long or bobbed hair, goatee beards, and kilts".

"[34] At times, the ancient Egyptians called Punt Ta netjer (tꜣ nṯr), meaning "God's Land".

A strong argument has now been made for its location in either southern Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia, where the indigenous plants and animals equate most closely with those depicted in the Egyptian reliefs and paintings".

[44] According to Simon Najovits, the area comprising Somalia, Djibouti, the Red Sea coast of Eritrea and Sudan in the Horn of Africa is considered the most likely location.

[45] In 2010, researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz analyzed hair from two mummified baboons using oxygen isotope analysis and were able to work out where they originated.

[47] In December 2020, primatologists from Dartmouth College examined tissues from mummified baboons recovered from New Kingdom and Ptolemaic sites in Egypt that were believed to have come from Punt.

The strontium ration in the tooth enamel confirmed that the baboons were born in an area stretching across present day Eritrea, Ethiopia and north western Somalia.

However, such identification is now considered unconfirmed because of the unlikelihood of such an early contact between Egypt and the Indian subcontinent, together with the difficulty of correctly identifying a plant specimen dead for thousands of years.