Earliest Suez Canal

When is the earliest that a canal can be made across the Sinai Peninsula that connects the Mediterranean and Red Sea? Ancient people were capable of great feats of engineering such as the aqueducts and the Great Canal linking the Yellow and Yangtze rivers so this project should be in good company.
 
Well, we know that Darius I built such a canal about 500BC, wide enough for two triremes to pass. But there are traces of earlier similar constructions dating back 12000 years before that.
 
Well, we know that Darius I built such a canal about 500BC, wide enough for two triremes to pass. But there are traces of earlier similar constructions dating back 12000 years before that.

12000 years?
I'm not saying it was Atlanteans but it was Atlanteans...:p

Seriously there may have been efforts to build a canal as early as 1800 BPE. Darius I may not have finished it -- ancient writers give differing accounts. The Ptolemies did have a canal in operation and it operated for several centuries. It silted up but was reopened briefly by the Arabs after the ERE lost Egypt.
 
12000 years?
I'm not saying it was Atlanteans but it was Atlanteans...:p

Seriously there may have been efforts to build a canal as early as 1800 BPE. Darius I may not have finished it -- ancient writers give differing accounts. The Ptolemies did have a canal in operation and it operated for several centuries.

Though the Ptolemies canal wasn't in the Suez. It connected the Nile to the Red sea, didn't it?

EDIT: Aha, the Canal of the Pharoahs.

It eventually fell apart due to silt and lack of upkeep I'm pretty sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_of_the_Pharaohs
 
All of those canals were basically the same canal that was an attempt to link the Red Sea to the Nile River, which looking back was a pretty risky thing to do as the Red Sea is at a higher elevation than the Nile. I'm talking about a canal that cuts straight through the Sinai from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea just like in our OTL. When is such a thing possible, and what's likely to be the effects?

I think Egypt is probably going to have a much easier time trading with Rome, Nubia, Axum, and India and control over the peninsula will be more important than in OTL due to the lucrative trade. Transport around Egypt may get easier, especially if they complete and maintain the Canal of the Pharaohs. Will Egypt become more maritime focused?
 
All of those canals were basically the same canal that was an attempt to link the Red Sea to the Nile River, which looking back was a pretty risky thing to do as the Red Sea is at a higher elevation than the Nile. I'm talking about a canal that cuts straight through the Sinai from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea just like in our OTL. When is such a thing possible, and what's likely to be the effects?

When is such a thing worth the costs is another question.

You need enough gain to revenue from traffic through the canal to pay for its maintenance costs, as well as its construction costs, and enough more to do more than break even.

Simply when it can be dug is not an answer to when it would be desirable.
I think Egypt is probably going to have a much easier time trading with Rome, Nubia, Axum, and India and control over the peninsula will be more important than in OTL due to the lucrative trade. Transport around Egypt may get easier, especially if they complete and maintain the Canal of the Pharaohs. Will Egypt become more maritime focused?

Why would it have an easier time trading with any of those than when the Red Sea ships sail up to something on the Egyptian Red Sea coast as opposed to sailing past Egypt into the Mediterranean (or reverse this), with no need to stop in Egypt to do anything except pay fees for going through the canal?

About the only gain is that ships on the Red Sea (or Mediterranean) can move to the other without needing to be dragged overland - but that doesn't encourage going to Egypt to trade.
 
Furthermore, as the Red Sea receded over time ( it once apparently extended north as far as Lake Timsah in ancient times) the engineering challenges became more formidable. One may ask why the ancients preferred a w/e canal connecting the Red Sea with the Nile over a direct connection n. to the Med. Was it to directly benefit the commercial life of the Nile cities? Or greater perceived engineering challenges?
 
Thing is, 1000BC ships were a LOT smaller than in the nineteenth century. So a canal linking the Red Sea and the Nile was in fact a link between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, because the Nile was navigable for such small boats/ships .

They didn't need a big ship canal , so they never built one.

So the question is really, not when would a big ship canal be possible, but when would a big ship (say, 1000 tons) canal be useful.
 
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Why would it have an easier time trading with any of those than when the Red Sea ships sail up to something on the Egyptian Red Sea coast as opposed to sailing past Egypt into the Mediterranean (or reverse this), with no need to stop in Egypt to do anything except pay fees for going through the canal?

About the only gain is that ships on the Red Sea (or Mediterranean) can move to the other without needing to be dragged overland - but that doesn't encourage going to Egypt to trade.

I thought the Egyptians would benefit the most from the canal. It seems that it'd be very inconvenient to have to drag boats overland to the Nile every time you wanted to get from the Red Sea to the Nile or the Mediterranean. With the canal, it seems like things would be easier to defend the coast of Egypt from an attack. You can simply have the navy sail through the canal instead of dragging the boats from one location to another. It also seems that if people had to drag boats around, it would hamper how many ships could be transported and used for trade.

The canal might also help stimulate the economic growth of the west Egyptian coast. If Egypt is feeling expansion minded but doesn't want to upset the Seleucids, the conquest and occupation of places like Nubia and Axum (places Egypt tried to control before) could be much easier with greater mobility of the navy. Now the Egyptians can more easily attack from the Nile and the coast. The coasts of the territories could be more easily held and reinforced by Egyptian forces.

Granted, I'm not very knowledgeable about the geopolitics of the Classical world or the concerns of pharaohs so I could be completely wrong about the reasons why they might want a canal.
 
I thought the Egyptians would benefit the most from the canal. It seems that it'd be very inconvenient to have to drag boats overland to the Nile every time you wanted to get from the Red Sea to the Nile or the Mediterranean. With the canal, it seems like things would be easier to defend the coast of Egypt from an attack. You can simply have the navy sail through the canal instead of dragging the boats from one location to another. It also seems that if people had to drag boats around, it would hamper how many ships could be transported and used for trade.

The canal might also help stimulate the economic growth of the west Egyptian coast. If Egypt is feeling expansion minded but doesn't want to upset the Seleucids, the conquest and occupation of places like Nubia and Axum (places Egypt tried to control before) could be much easier with greater mobility of the navy. Now the Egyptians can more easily attack from the Nile and the coast. The coasts of the territories could be more easily held and reinforced by Egyptian forces.

Without the canal, you build ships on the Red Sea for the Red Sea and use them on the Red Sea. You only have to worry about dragging anything overland if you want to avoid building two separate fleets - but you don't have an easier time trading with Egypt if you can skip its eastern ports entirely.

For military expansion and such projects to the south, it's a lot cheaper to build ships on the Nile or the eastern coast than to build and maintain a canal across the skinny part of the Sinai peninsula.
 

dead_wolf

Banned
iirc at several points in history there was a Red Sea-to-Nile canal, and it was re-dug several times throughout history as the local geography and political situation kept changing. People tend to forget that Egyptian history stretches back at least five millennia. As JedidiahStott pointed out a Red Sea-to-Nile canal was effectively a Red Sea-to-Mediterranean route for most of that time. Why cross the Suez when you don't need to and it's more of a challenge to dig a new canal than to redig and repair an old one.
 
I could see Alexander the Great doing something like this - or at least planning to do something like this when he got the time. Maybe even under the Roman occupation.

Or to go earlier, maybe under Hatsheput? IDK if they had the engineering faculties to attempt such a thing, but she was one powerful (and driven) woman.
 
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