The ide?. of the great scheme which has thus benefited
the trade of the world at the expense of Egypt is as old
as the Pharaohs. According to Strabo, water communi-
cation between the two seas was first opened by Sethi, a
king of the nineteenth dynasty {circ. b.o. 1400), who cut
a canal fifty-seven mUes long from Bubastis, near the
modem Zagazig, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, to
Heroopolis, at the head of the Bitter Lakes, which then
formed the northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez. Her-
odotus, on the other hand, post-dates the attempt by
nearly eight centuries, and credits it to Necho II., whose
channel followed the same Une, which is also nearly that
of the modem fresh-water canal. Fears, however, that
the higher level of the Eed Sea would result in a general
inundation, led to the abandonment of this work after —
if the historian does not exaggerate — 120,000 men had
perished ra its construction. A century later, Darius,
the son of Hystaspes, completed what Necho had begun,
and added a further link of ten mUes, by clearing a navi-
gable passage through the low sandy isthmus which had
in the interval formed between the Heroopolite Gulf and
the Red Sea. Traces of this latter section are still dis-
tinguishable in the neighbourhood of Shaloof, near the
southern end of the Bitter Lakes, and the fresh-water
canal follows its course for some distance between that
point and Suez. But the communication thus established
involved the transhipment of cargo at Heroopolis, and to
remedy this inconvenience Ptolemy PhUadelphus (b.o



ANOIENT UHANNEL8. ■ 257

286) joined the Nile canal with the Heroopolite Gulf by
means of a lock and sluices, and where the short canal
from the latter entered the Red Sea, founded Aidsnoe,
near the site of the modem Suez. History is silent as to
the fortunes of the channel during the next two centu-
ries ; but the failure of Cleopatra's ships to escape through
it into the Eed Sea (b.o. 31), shows that it had then again
become unnavigable, and it is doubtful whether Trajan or
Adrian (a.d. 98-138) was the next who endeavoured to
restore the line of communication. 