Canal of The Pharaohs - Egyptian and Persian Works

Egyptian and Persian Works

Probably first cut or at least begun by Necho II, in the late 6th century BC, Darius the Great either re-dug or completed it. Exactly when it was finally completed is not known as the classical sources disagree.

At least as far back as Aristotle there have been suggestions that perhaps as early as the 12th Dynasty, Pharaoh Senusret III (1878 BC–1839 BC), also called Sesostris, 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.

Strabo also wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and 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.

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, while Diodorus Siculus does not mention a completion of the canal by Necho II. Pliny the Elder also says that Ptolemy II, who took up the work again, also stopped because of the differences of water level. Diodorus, however, reports that it was completed by Ptolemy II after being fitted with a lock.