Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

The administration of Joseph occurred during the reign of the last king of the race of the Hyksos, B.C. 1687

The reign of Mephres, or Moeris, B.C. 1538

The exodus occurred in the year B.C. 1492

The Egyptians enjoyed a long period of prosperity after they had driven out the Israelites. Their national history, during a period of four hundred years, is recorded on their monuments; and, though not very intelligible in its details, it affords irrefragable proof that their country was always in a flourishing condition, and possessed a considerable commerce with other nations. The Egyptians, however, had as great an aversion to foreign traders as to shepherds; and it was long before they undertook any work for improving their commercial communications. At length, however, the canal, which had been carried as far as the longitudinal valley between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, began to excite their attention as affording a cheap means of transport for that portion of the produce of the country which was purchased by the inhabitants of Arabia and of the shores of the Red Sea. We have the testimony of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, that the project of forming a canal to unite the Nile with the Red Sea was entertained by Sesostris.19 Aristotle says, "that Egypt, the most ancient seat of mankind, was formed by the river Nile, as appears from the examination of the country bordering on the Red Sea. One of the ancient kings attempted to form a navigable communication between the river and the sea; but Sesostris, finding that the waters of the Red Sea were higher than those of the Nile, both he and Darius, after him, desisted from the attempt, lest the lower part of the delta should be inundated with salt water." It is extremely difficult to ascertain what king is meant by Sesostris, since that name seems to have been given by the Greeks to more that one of the distinguished monarchs of the country. Aristotle, however, clearly refers in his account to the king he calls Sesostris, and to an earlier monarch. The one may have been Sethosis, who reigned about B.C. 1291, and the other, Sesonchis of Bubastes, the Shishac of Scripture, in the year B.C. 976. These sovereigns may have converted the canal of irrigation into a regular commercial route; and the last may have commenced the greater work of connecting it with the bitter lakes. The fear of inundating the Delta with salt water, by cutting through the northern shore of the Red Sea, and allowing a communication with the bitter lakes to remain always open, has been shown by the French engineers, whose report is printed in the great work on Egypt, to be no idle fear.20

Several circumstances combine to show that the completion of the canal, and the importance of opening a direct navigable communication between the Nile and the Red Sea, must have occupied more particularly the attention of Sesonchis than of the preceding kings. He was a native of Bubastes; and the seat of his power was in the Delta. The importance of this navigation for enriching his fellow-citizens, and placing the whole trade of the Delta, to the eastward, under his control, was evident; but the great wealth which might be gained from sharing in the trade on the Red Sea, was also forced on his attention, by the immense riches which Solomon had been able to accumulate on acquiring a share in this trade, which had been previously in the hands of the Phoenicians. Solomon had extended the trade he carried on in the Red Sea, by means of the ports on the gulf of Eloth, (Ailath,) far beyond its former bounds.21 Now, as the grain and provisions, required for supplying the fleets in the Red Sea, and the greater part of the commercial population on its coasts, must have been drawn from Egypt by the port of Suez, and as Egypt must have afforded one of the most valuable markets for the produce of Arabia and India, it is not surprising that Sesonchis made great endeavours to obtain a share in a branch of commerce from which he had seen Solomon derive such wealth. From some reason, he abandoned the project of completing the canal to Suez; but, in order to secure a portion of Solomon's riches, he invaded Judea, and plundered Jerusalem.22 "So Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all: and he carried away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made." That this Shishak, or Sesonchis of Bubastes, was the Sesostris alluded to by Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, though it cannot perhaps be positively proved, can nevertheless hardly admit of a doubt.

Thus far we have only been able to draw a few inferences relating to the canal, from historical facts connected with the subject; but from this period we become furnished with materials for a consecutive history. Herodotus is the earliest author who affords direct testimony of the completion of the canal, and its employment for carrying on a navigable communication between the Nile and the Red Sea. His description requires to be cited in his own words, in order to testify the sagacity of his enquiries and the accuracy of his information. "Psammetichus had a son, whose name was Nekos. This prince first commenced that canal leading to the Red Sea, which Darius, king of Persia, afterwards continued. The length of the canal is equal to a four days' voyage, and it is wide enough to admit two triremes abreast. The water enters it from the Nile, a little above the city of Bubastes. It terminated in the Red Sea, not far from Patumos, an Arabian town. In the prosecution of this work, under Nekos, no less than 120,000 Egyptians perished. He at length desisted from his undertaking, being admonished by an oracle, that all his labour would turn to the advantage of a barbarian." As soon as Nekos discontinued his labours with respect to the canal, he turned all his thoughts to military enterprise. He built vessels of war, both on the Mediterranean and in that part of the Arabian gulf which is near the Red Sea.23

This statement of Herodotus is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus, another Greek historian, who had visited Egypt, and, like Herodotus, paid great attention to its history and antiquities. The words of Diodorus are—"A canal has been dug from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to the gulf of Arabia and the Red Sea. It was commenced by Nekos, son of Psammetichus, and afterwards continued by Darius, king of the Persians, who made some progress with the work, but abandoned it when he learned that, if the isthmus was dug through, all Egypt would be inundated, as the level of the Red Sea is higher than that of the soil of Egypt. At last Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus) completed the undertaking; having adapted an ingenious contrivance to the ingress of the canal, which was opened when a vessel was about to enter, and afterwards closed. Experience proved the utility of this invention. The waters which flow in this canal are called the river of Ptolemy, the king who executed this great work. The town of Arsinöe is constructed at its mouth."24

It must be recollected that Diodorus wrote about four hundred years after Herodotus; and his information concerning the earlier events, from want of precision, appears to be deficient in accuracy. These two passages make it evident that Nekos had commenced some great improvements on the canal of Sesostris; and it appears to have been his intention to have made use of it in order to secure a naval superiority in the Red Sea. It is plain, too, from the statement of Herodotus, that Darius had completed the canal, in so far as that was possible, without the invention of locks, for forming an immediate communication with the Red Sea. And from the account of Diodorus, it seems that he viewed the canal of Darius, which for ages had served for a commercial route, as incomplete; because the actual junction of the waters of the canal and the Red Sea had not taken place until Ptolemy Philadelphus, by applying the invention of locks, had enabled vessels to quit the canal in order to navigate the sea.

Strabo, who was also well acquainted with Egypt, from personal residence, mentions the locks constructed by Ptolemy. After saying that even Darius had left the junction of the canal with the Red Sea incomplete, from the danger of inundating the country, he adds—"During the government of the Ptolemies, the isthmus was cut through, and a closed passage (a euripus) formed, so that a ship, whenever it was required, could enter the outer sea or pass into the canal."25

Though the canal constructed by Darius had been in general use for commercial purposes, and was regarded by Herodotus, when he visited Egypt, as a work in every way complete, still there can be no doubt that its importance would be greatly increased by the locks connecting it with the Red Sea. The augmentation in the trade, and the improvement in the class of vessels which navigated the canal, induced Ptolemy to make the changes in the whole course, from which it received the name of the river of Ptolemy. A very great addition was thus made to the prosperity of Egypt, as the canal would remain navigable for four months annually, from the end of August to the end of December. During this season of the year, the people of the Delta had little to attend to but the exportation of their surplus produce, and clearing their granaries for a new harvest, by selling all that portion of their grain which was neither required for seed nor for the maintenance of their families.

It has been supposed very generally, but on no adequate authority, that Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed this canal, with a view of making it the route of the Indian trade; but this was by no means the case. Even Robertson, in his historical disquisition concerning ancient India, falls into this error, to which he adds the greater mistake of declaring, "that the work was never finished."26 On the other hand, he points out with accuracy the real direction which Ptolemy gave to the trade with India, by Berenice and Coptos, and the great works he constructed for the convenience of transporting goods from the Nile across the desert to the Red Sea; and it may be remarked, that the Indian trade always kept this route, or one similar, until the discovery of that by the Cape of Good Hope—the great route of the merchants being either by Coptos and Berenice, or by Coptos and Myos Hormos, or, at a later period, by the Vicus Apollinis to Philotera. Ptolemy was perfectly aware of all the difficulties of the navigation of the northern part of the Red Sea, during the summer months, against the north wind. The great object of the canal was, the export of produce from the Delta, for which there was a great demand in the countries on the northern shores of the Red Sea. But there can be no doubt that ships would often sail from Arsinöe to India, disposing of their Egyptian cargo on the way, and returning with their Indian goods to Berenice, and sometimes to Arsinöe. Lucian, indeed, mentions, that "a young man, having sailed up the Nile to Clysina, and finding a ship ready to depart for India, was induced to embark."27

The fact that the ancients found the navigation of the Nile more commodious and cheaper than that of the Red Sea, even though it entailed on them the burden of transporting their merchandise from Coptos by caravan, for six or seven days, to Berenice or Myos Hormos, should not be lost sight of in examining the objects for which the ancient canal to Arsinöe was constructed. The immense extent of the Indian trade, by Berenice and Myos Hormos, is attested by many passages in the Greek and Roman classics.28

The opinion which prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill, requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge, and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers, or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt, and erecting it in the Place de Concorde, caused our neighbours to overlook the fact, that there are several larger obelisks still existing at Rome, which were brought from Egypt, and there is one at Constantinople. The largest obelisk at Rome was brought there from Alexandria in the tine of Constantius, when the arts and sciences are generally supposed to have been in a declining state.29

That the Romans found little difficulty in transporting the largest obelisks and columns by sea, is not wonderful, when we attend to the great size of some of the vessels which were constructed in ancient times. Our ignorance of the manner in which forty banks of oars were disposed in vessels larger than our three-deckers, in such a way as to enable them to make long voyages, does not authorize us to doubt the fact, with such proofs as exist. Our ideas of ancient navies are generally derived from our recollections of the battle of Salamis, as described by Herodotus, and of the engagements between the Romans and Carthaginians, in Polybius. This, however, was the infancy of the navel art, though the Romans had made great advances beyond the Athenians. Polybius, in noticing the improvement, observes that they never made use of vessels like the small triremes of the Greek states, but constructed only quinqueremes for war; and that of these they lost seven hundred in the first Punic war, while the Carthaginians lost five hundred.30

It may not, however, be superfluous to mention the measurement of some of the largest ships constructed by the ancients. A very large ship was built for Hiero, king of Syracuse, under the direction of Archimedes. We ought, therefore, to pause before we decide, that any deficiency in scientific skill rendered it a useless and unwieldy hulk. That it was not calculated to keep the sea when an English frigate would be sailing under close-reefed topsails, there can be no doubt; but we must know the intentions with which the ancients constructed their enormous ships, before we decide on their insufficiency. The ship constructed by Archimedes had twenty banks of oars, and was built as a man-of-war. It was sent from Syracuse to Egypt, as a present to Ptolemy Philopater, and was laid up in the docks of Alexandria.

But the largest vessel on record was a ship constructed for Ptolemy Philopater, which had forty banks of oars. This vessel was rather a royal yacht, built to gratify the vanity of the court, than a ship intended for any useful purpose. It was 424 feet in length, and 58 broad. The height of the forecastle from the water was 60 feet. The longest oars were 58 feet, and their handles were loaded with lead to facilitate their motion. The equipage consisted of 4400 men, of whom 4000 were rowers. A ship constructed for the voyages of the court on the Nile, was 330 feet long, and 45 feet wide.31

These passages are sufficient to show the immense size of ancient ships, and to prove that their system of naval architecture could not have been directed to contend against contrary winds, but was calculated to transport the largest burdens.

We must now notice the passages which have been supposed to controvert the account we have given of the completion of the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. The first is a passage of Pliny the Elder, which asserts that Ptolemy Philadelphus only carried the canal to the bitter lakes. "Ex quo navigabilem alveum perducere in Nilum, qua parte ad Delta dictum decurrit, sexagies et bis centena mill. passuum intervallo, (quod inter flumen et Rubrum mare interest,) primus omnium Sesostris Aegypti rex cogitavit: mox Darius Persarum: deinde Ptolemaeus sequens: qui et duxit fossam latitudine pedum centum, altitudine XL, in longitudinem XXXVII mill. D passuum usque ad Fontes amaros." It is needless to remind the reader that Diodorus and Strabo, who lived before Pliny, and had both resided long in Egypt, had seen the canal finished, and described the lock by which it communicated with the Red Sea. It appears, indeed, that the passage, as it stands, has arisen from some inadvertence of Pliny, or perhaps from some blunder of his copyists; for he contradicts his statement, that the canal of Ptolemy terminated at the bitter lakes, in a subsequent passage, in which he mentions that Philadelphus constructed the branch which reached Arsinöe, and was called the river of Ptolemy.—"Eae viae omnes Arsinöen ducunt, conditam sororis nomine in sinu Charandra, a Ptolemaeo Philadelpho, qui primus Troglodyticen excussit, et amnem qui Arsinöen praefluit, Ptolemaeum appellavit."32

The other passage is contained in Plutarch's life of Antony; and to a casual reader, who forgets that the canal could only have been navigable during the season of the inundation, in consequence of the high level of the waters of the Red Sea, a difficulty in explaining the passage will immediately occur, and an inference will be drawn against the existence of the canal at the time. Monsieur Letronne, with his usual critical sagacity, has, however, pointed out the combination of facts which render the anecdote in Plutarch a confirmation of the ordinary employment of the canal, rather than an argument against its existence at the time.33 Cleopatra, when alarmed at the result of the war between Antony and Augustus, had sent her son Caesario, the reputed child of Julius Cesar, with a considerable amount of treasure, through Ethiopia into India.34 "When Antony returned to Alexandria after the battle of Actium, he found Cleopatra engaged in a very stupendous and bold enterprise. She was endeavouring to transport her fleet over the isthmus between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, which, in the narrowest part, is three hundred stades, and by this means, with her fleet in the Arabian gulf, and with her treasures, to escape from slavery and war."35 Letronne has pointed out, that the battle of Actium having been fought on the 2nd of September, B.C. 31, it is evident from the subsequent events, that Antony could not have rejoined Cleopatra in Egypt before the month of February, or perhaps even later, in the ensuing year. Now, this period coincides with that at which the low state of the waters of the Nile must have rendered the canal useless for the passage of Cleopatra's fleet. Her extreme terror would not allow her to wait until the rise of the Nile again rendered the canal navigable, and she resolved on transporting her fleet to the Red Sea by land. It must be observed, however, that the project could hardly have occurred to Cleopatra as feasible, unless she had been well aware that vessels often passed from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea. The project was abandoned, as the Arabs of Petra burned the first ships that Cleopatra attempted to transport; and Antony soon persuaded her that his affairs were by no means so desperate as she supposed.

The canal was of far too great importance to the prosperity of Egypt, and the revenues of the country were too immediately connected with its existence, as one of the highways for exporting the produce of the Delta, for the Romans to neglect its conservation. It is true that the Romans never paid much attention to commerce, which they despised; and during the long period they governed their immense empire in comparative tranquillity, they did less to improve and extend its relations than any other people of antiquity. But they were always peculiarly attentive to preserve every undertaking which was connected with the agricultural industry and land revenue of their provinces. Unless, therefore, their attention had been directed to the canal of Suez, either as an important military line of communication, or as an instrument for displaying the pride and power of the empire, it would have undergone no improvement under the Roman emperors.

It happened, however, that when Trajan became anxious to display his magnificence in adorning Rome with new buildings, that the fashion of the times rendered the granite and the porphyry in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea indispensable. To obtain the immense columns, and the enormous porphyry vases, which were then admired, with sufficient celerity and in sufficient quantity, it became necessary to render the canal navigable for a longer period of time every year. In order to effect this, Trajan constructed a new canal from the vicinity of Babylon, and connected it with the ancient canal through the valley of Seba Biar.36 This new work is called the river of Trajan by Ptolemy the geographer; and as it gave an additional elevation of thirteen feet to the stream which fed the canal, it may have supplied the means of keeping the navigation open for about six months yearly.37

The quarries of granite and porphyry which supplied the Romans in the time of Trajan, were discovered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr Burton, in the years 1821-22, at Djebel-Fattereh and Djebel-Dokhan; and Monsieur Letronne has pointed out the connexion of these quarries with the improvements made by Trajan in the canal.38 Many large works of porphyry exist, which must have been worked in the quarries of Djebel-Dokhan. We need only enumerate the great porphyry vase in the Vatican, which exceeds fourteen feet in diameter—that of the museum at Naples, which is cut out of a block nearly as large—the tombs of St Helen in the Vatican, and of Benedict XIII. in St John Lateran—and the blocks of the porphyry column at Constantinople. It is evident that the masses could never be conveyed from Djebel-Dokhan to the Nile by land; but no great difficulty would be found in transporting them to Myos Hormos on the Red Sea, and embarking them there for Arsinöe; from whence their conveyance to Alexandria, by the canal and the Nile, was easy. It is well known that the quarries of porphyry in Egypt could not have grown into importance until after the reign of Claudius, as Vitrasius Pollio sent the first porphyry statues which had been seen at Rome as a present to that emperor.39 The chief, if not the only quarries of red porphyry known to the ancients were in the Thebaid, at Djebel-Dokhan.

At the granite quarries of Djebel Fattereh, Sir Gardner Wilkinson found many columns in various stages of completion, some ready to be removed; and of these there were several of the enormous size of fifty-five feet long, and nearly eight feet in circumference. These quarries are at least thirty miles distant from the Red Sea; but, as the ground affords a continual descent, and some traces of the road exist, there cannot be a doubt that these immense columns were destined to be carried to Philotera, and there shipped for Arsinöe, and that, like the porphyry vases, they were to find their way to Rome, by the canal, the Nile, and the port of Alexandria. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has shown that these granite quarries were abandoned not long after the reign of Hadrian; and an inscription, quoted by Letronne, proves that the granite quarries at Syene were first worked about the years A.D. 205-209. The great facilities afforded by the Nile for transporting the largest columns from Syene to Alexandria, appears to have caused the immediate abandonment of the quarries of Djebel Fattereh; as the expense of transporting the columns already finished was doubtless greater than the cost of working and conveying new ones from Syene to Alexandria.

The canal of Trajan continued to be kept open, after the building mania, to which it owed its origin, had ceased. It had extended the sphere of the export trade of the Delta; and it continued to serve as the means of transporting the blocks of porphyry—for which there was a constant demand at Rome and Constantinople, and, indeed, in almost every city of wealth in the Roman empire. Eusebius, in his ecclesiastical history, mentions that the porphyry quarries of the Thebaid were worked during the time of the great persecution, in the reign of Dioclesian. He says, "that one hundred martyrs were selected from the innumerable crowd of Christians condemned to labour in the Thebaid, in the place called Porphyritis, from the marble which was quarried at the spot."40

In the reign of Justinian, we find these quarries still worked on a considerable scale, as they are alluded to more than once by Paul the Silentiary, in his description of the Church of St Sophia at Constantinople. He affords evidence that the porphyry still continued to be transported by the Nile to Alexandria; and though his words contain no express mention of the canal, it is evident that the workmen of Justinian would always prefer the easier road by Myos Hormos and Arsinöe, to the almost impracticable task of conveying the blocks across the desert.41 In the reign of Justin I., the trade of the Red Sea was of great importance, and must have created an immense demand for the agricultural produce of Egypt. The King of Ethiopia, resolving to attack Dunaan, the Jewish king of the Homerites in Arabia, collected, during the winter, a fleet of seven hundred Indian vessels, and six hundred trading ships, belonging to the Roman and Persian merchants who visited his kingdom.42