Egypt has always been hard to control for any outside power, right from the days of the Assyrians and the Persians, down to the days of the Ottomans. If anyone decided to make eastern trade completely seaborne and independent of the Egyptians, what route would they go? In other words, what are the alternatives to the to the Suez Canal? Apart from the Pharaonic Canal, which connected the Red Sea to the Nile, I mean. Could a channel be cut from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Mediterranean? Or much more ambitious, could a channel be dug from the Euphrates to the Orontes? If any of the two are possible, what is the earliest date when would it be technologically possible?