Note 376 — Chapter XXIV · CONQUEST OF EGYPT. A.H. XX. A.D. 641.

The ancient canal appears to have followed very closely the line of the Fresh-water Canal of the present day. We are not favoured with many particulars; but there is no doubt that during Omar’s reign vessels did make the voyage from Cairo to the coast of Arabia, establishing thus a regular traffic between the two countries; and therefore the work must have been very quickly finished by the forced labour of the teeming population.

The reader who is curious about the previous attempts to unite the Nile with the Red Sea will find the subject discussed by Weil (vol. i. pp. 120–122). The attempt was made so far back as the time of Pharaoh Nechos, and subsequently by Darius, who is said to have made communication practicable from Bubastis, on the eastern or Tanitic estuary of the Nile, to the head of the Red Sea. A second canal was opened, under the Ptolemies at Phacusa (Tel Fakhûs), nearer to the Mediterranean. This (taking apparently the line of the Salahiya canal) must have presented greater difficulties in maintaining communication through the system of lagoons leading to the Red Sea, and so it was too shallow to be of much use, excepting in high flood. One of these lines (the former most probably) was eventually deepened by Trajan, and remained navigable to the end at least of the third century of our era. It was this canal, no doubt, which was now cleared out and deepened by Amru. Reference is made by Weil to the following authorities: Bähr’s Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 158; Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. xxvii. p. 215.