Canal of the Pharaohs

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Approximate location of Canal of the Pharaohs

The Canal of the Pharaohs, also called the Ancient Suez Canal or Necho's Canal, is the forerunner of the

canal locks.[6][7][8][9]

Egyptian and Persian works

At least as far back as Aristotle there have been suggestions that perhaps as early as the

12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878–1839 BC), called Sesostris by the Greeks, may have started a canal joining the River Nile with the Red Sea. In his Meteorology
, Aristotle wrote:

One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable; Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it.[10]

Strabo also wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, as did Pliny the Elder (see quote further down).[11]

However, the canal was probably first cut or at least begun by Necho II (r. 610–595 BC), in the late 7th century BC, and it was either re-dug or possibly completed by Darius the Great (r. 550–486 BC). Classical sources disagree as to when it was finally completed.[citation needed]

cartographers discovered the remnants of the north–south section of Darius Canal past the east side of Lake Timsah and ending near the north end of the Great Bitter Lake.[15]

Pliny the Elder wrote:

165. Next comes the Tyro tribe and, on the Red Sea, the harbour of the Daneoi, from which Sesostris, king of Egypt, intended to carry a ship-canal to where the Nile flows into what is known as the Delta; this is a distance of over 60 miles. Later the Persian king Darius had the same idea, and yet again Ptolemy II, who made a trench 100 feet wide, 30 feet deep and about 35 miles long, as far as the Bitter Lakes.[11]

Although Herodotus (2.158) tells us Darius I continued work on the canal, Aristotle (Aristot. met. I 14 P 352b.), Strabo (Strab. XVII 1, 25 C 804. 805.), and Pliny the Elder (Plin. n. h. VI 165f.) all say that he failed to complete it,[16] while Diodorus Siculus does not mention a completion of the canal by Necho II.[17]

Greek, Roman and Islamic works

After the death of

water lock.[18]

Ptolemy II is credited by some for being the first to solve the problem of keeping the Nile free of salt water when his engineers invented the lock around 274/273 BC.[19]

Remains of a large circular tower in the Babylon Fortress (present-day Old Cairo), built by Diocletian in the 3rd century AD to defend the Roman canal's entrance on the Nile

The canal was reconstructed by

Claudius Ptolemy refers to the canal as the "River of Trajan".[25] Diocletian's fortress enveloped the Nile entrance of the canal and protected it on either side. The canal passed between two massive round towers and then through the middle of the fortress.[26] In later centuries, this entry was blocked with new wall constructed between the towers.[27]

The canal was difficult to maintain and by the time of the

'Amr ibn al-'As, the commander of the Muslim army in Egypt.[14] The new canal dug by Amr was excavated further north, joining the Nile close to what is now the Sayyida Zaynab neighbourhood of Cairo.[28] Its connection to the Red Sea remained open until 767, when it was closed to stop supplies reaching Mecca and Medina, which were in rebellion.[14] The canal's remaining section near the Nile, known as the Khalij, continued to serve a local function as part of Cairo's water infrastructure up until the late 1890s, when it was completely filled in and converted into what is now Port Said Street.[29]

Aftermath

Thereafter, the land routes to

Caucasian Mountains transhipping on the Caspian Sea and then to India
.

Following the discovery of a direct sea route to India through the Cape of Good Hope by Portugal, the Venetians and Mamluks negotiated with each other to fund the construction of a new canal in order to weaken Portuguese trade. However, the

Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim I and its subsequent annexation ended any hopes for Venice to maintain their trade dominance in the Mediterranean.[30]

Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from 1565 to 1579, also considered constructing a new canal to reduce Portuguese dominance in the Indian Ocean and connect the divided Ottoman navy in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, but it was deemed too expensive to construct and was cancelled.[31]

During the

Napoleon Bonaparte learnt about the canal in 1799 when his surveyor, Jacques-Marie Le Père
, discovered the remains of the canal. Napoleon considered rebuilding the canal but ultimately cancelled it.

After over a millennium since its closure in 767, the Suez Canal re-established a direct sea route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea in 1869.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Canal of the Pharaohs.

Notes

  1. ^ Shahbazi, A. Shapur (15 December 1994). "DARIUS iii. Darius I the Great". Encyclopedia Iranica. New York. Retrieved 18 May 2011.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ISBN 978-1-57506-120-7
    .
  3. ^ Lendering, Jona. "Darius' Suez Inscriptions". Livius.org. Archived from the original on 26 December 2016. Retrieved 18 May 2011.
  4. ^ Munn-Rankin, J.M. (2011). "Darius I". London: Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 May 2011.
  5. ^ Schörner 2000, p. 31, 40, fn. 33
  6. ^ Rappoport 1904, pp. 250-253
  7. ^ Moore 1950, pp. 99–101
  8. ^ Froriep 1986, p. 46
  9. ^ Schörner 2000, pp. 33–35
  10. ^ "Meteorology (1.15)". Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2009.
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0-14-044413-1 p.70 [1]
  12. ISBN 0-543-99326-4
    , p. 366
  13. ISBN 0-631-21195-0
    , p.186
  14. ^ a b c d Redmount, Carol A. "The Wadi Tumilat and the «Canal of the Pharaohs»"Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Apr. 1995), pp. 127–135
  15. ^ Carte hydrographique de l'Basse Egypte et d'une partie de l'Isthme de Suez (1855, 1882). Volume 87, page 803. Paris. See [2].
  16. ^ Schörner 2000, p. 40, fn. 33
  17. ^ Schörner 2000, p. 31
  18. ^ Schörner 2000, p. 34
  19. ISBN 978-0-567-02592-0
    p.236
  20. ^ a b Raymond 2000, pp. 2, 15–16.
  21. ^ a b Sheehan 2010, pp. 35–38.
  22. ^ Gabra et al. 2013, p. 21.
  23. ^ Sheehan 2010, pp. 38–39.
  24. ^ Sheehan 2010, p. 39.
  25. ^ Sheehan 2010, p. 38.
  26. ^ Sheehan 2010, pp. 58–59.
  27. ^ Sheehan 2010, pp. 52, 63–64.
  28. ^ Raymond 2000, p. 16.
  29. ISBN 978-0-691-65660-1
    .
  30. ^ Starthern, P. (2013) "The Venetians" p. 175
  31. ^ Rossi, N.; Rosand, David (2013). "Italian Renaissance Depictions of the Ottoman Sultan: Nuances in the Function of Early Modern Italian Portraiture". ProQuest.

References

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