Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Tell Maskhuta, there was no need of a ship canal farther, as the Gulf of Suez in Roman times reached up to that point. Strabo says that Sesostris (Ramessu II.) first cut the canal, but Darius nearly completed it, yet desisted from fear of the Red Sea being higher than Egypt, a fable which also hindered Napoleon, owing to bad levelling by his engineers. Herodotos says (ii., 158) Necho began the canal—or rather carried it forward—and Darius completed it, so that two triremes could pass in it, from the Nile at Bubastis to the Red Sea. The canal was also continued northward to Pelusium according to Diodoros, so that a from the Pelusiac mouth to the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea is a canal cut ” ; after Necho and Darius, “ the last attempt was made by Ptolemy the Second, who cut a sluice across the isthmus in a more convenient place, which he opened when he had a mind to sail down that way, and then presently shut up again . . . the river is called Ptolemy . . . where it falls into the sea, there is a city built called Arsinoe,” that is, north of Suez. The monuments of Darius are known on the south of the canal line, near Tell Maskhuta, at the terminus Arsinoe, and at two intermediate points. The evidence seems to be that there was some kind of waterway to the Red Sea from the time of the XIXth dynasty, probably by a Nile canal
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