How early can you feasibly dig a Canal at the site of TTL's Suez Canal?
The question is how rearly was a Suez Canal dug as there were several in the past
History of Suez Canal
Main article:
Canal of the Pharaohs
Ancient west-east canals have facilitated travel from the
Nile to the
Red Sea.
[8][9][10] One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of either
Senusret II[11] or
Ramesses II.
[8][9][10] Another canal probably incorporating a portion of the first
[8][9] was constructed under the reign of
Necho II and completed by
Darius.
[8][9][10]
[edit] 2nd millennium BC
The legendary
Sesostris (likely either
Pharaoh Senusret II or
Senusret III of the
Twelfth dynasty of Egypt[11][12]) is suggested to have perhaps started work on an ancient canal joining the
River Nile with the
Red Sea (1897 BC–1839 BC). (It is said that in
ancient times the
Red Sea reached northward to the
Bitter Lakes[8][9] and
Lake Timsah.
[13][14])
In his
Meteorology,
Aristotle wrote:
One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable;
Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and
Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should mix with the river water and spoil it.
[15]
Strabo also wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and
Pliny the Elder wrote:
165. Next comes the
Tyro tribe and, on the Red Sea, the harbour of the
Daneoi, from which Sesostris, king of Egypt, intended to carry a ship-canal to where the Nile flows into what is known as the Delta; this is a distance of over 60 miles. Later the Persian king Darius had the same idea, and yet again
Ptolemy II, who made a trench 100 feet wide, 30 feet deep and about 35 miles long, as far as the
Bitter Lakes.
[16]
French
cartographers discovered the remnants of an ancient north-south canal running past the east side of
Lake Timsah and ending near the north end of the
Great Bitter Lake in the second half of the 19th century.
[17] (This ancient, second, canal may have followed a course along the shoreline of the
Red Sea when the Red Sea once extended north to Lake Timsah.
[14][17]) In the 20th century the northward extension of this ancient canal was discovered, extending from Lake Timsah to the
Ballah Lakes,
[18] which was subsequently dated to the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt by extrapolating the dates of ancient sites erected along its course.
[18] However it remains unknown whether or not this is the same as
Sesostris' ancient canal and whether it was used as a waterway or as a defence against the east.
The reliefs of the
Punt expedition under
Hatshepsut 1470 BC depict seagoing vessels carrying the expeditionary force returning from Punt. This has given rise to the suggestion that, at the time, a navigable link existed between the Red Sea and the Nile.
[19][20] Evidence seems to indicate its existence by the 13th century BC during the time of
Ramesses II.
[8][21][22][23]
[edit] Canals dug by Necho, Darius I and Ptolemy
Remnants of an ancient west-east canal, running through the
ancient Egyptian cities of
Bubastis,
Pi-Ramesses, and
Pithom were discovered by
Napoleon Bonaparte and his cadre of engineers and cartographers in 1799.
[9][24][25][26][27]
According to the
Histories of the
Greek historian
Herodotus,
[28] about 600 BC,
Necho II undertook to dig a west-east canal through the Wadi Tumilat between
Bubastis and
Heroopolis,
[9] and perhaps continued it to the
Heroopolite Gulf and the
Red Sea.
[8] Regardless, Necho is reported as having never completed his project.
[8][9]
Herodotus was told that 120,000 men perished in this undertaking, but this figure is doubtlessly exaggerated.
[29] According to
Pliny the Elder,
Necho's extension to the canal was approximately 57
English miles,
[9] equal to the total distance between
Bubastis and the
Great Bitter Lake, allowing for winding through
valleys that it had to pass through.
[9] The length that
Herodotus tells us, of over 1000
stadia (i.e., over 114 miles), must be understood to include the entire distance between the
Nile and the
Red Sea[9] at that time.
With Necho's death, work was discontinued.
Herodotus tells us that the reason the project was abandoned was because of a warning received from an
oracle that others would benefit by its successful completion.
[9][30] In fact, Necho's war with
Nebuchadrezzar II most probably prevented the canal to be continued.
Necho's project was finally completed by
Darius I of Persia, who conquered
Egypt. We are told that by
Darius's time a natural
[9] waterway passage which had existed
[8] between the
Heroopolite Gulf and the
Red Sea[31] in the vicinity of the
Egyptian town of Shaluf
[9] (alt.
Chalouf[32] or
Shaloof[14]), located just south of the
Great Bitter Lake,
[9][14] had become so blocked
[8] with
silt[9] that
Darius needed to clear it out so as to allow
navigation[9] once again. According to Herodotus,
Darius's canal was wide enough that two
triremes could pass each other with oars extended, and required four days to traverse. Darius commemorated his achievement with a number of
granite stelae that he set up on the Nile bank, including one near Kabret, and a further one a few miles north of
Suez. The
Darius Inscriptions read:
“
Saith King Darius: I am a Persian. Setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this canal dug from the river called the Nile that flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. When the canal had been dug as I ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, even as I intended.[33]”
The canal left the Nile at
Bubastis. An inscription on a pillar at
Pithom records that in 270 or 269 BC it was again reopened, by
Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
[34] In
Arsinoe,
[9] Ptolemy constructed a
navigable lock, with
sluices, at the
Heroopolite Gulf of the
Red Sea[31] which allowed the passage of vessels but prevented salt water from the
Red Sea from mingling with the fresh water in the canal.
[9]
[edit] Receding Red Sea and the dwindling Nile
The
Red Sea is believed by some historians to have gradually receded over the centuries, its coastline slowly moving farther and farther southward away from
Lake Timsah[13][14] and the
Great Bitter Lake[8][9] to its present coastline today. Coupled with persistent accumulations of
Nile silt, maintenance and repair of
Ptolemy's canal became increasingly cumbersome over each passing century.
Two hundred years after the construction of
Ptolemy's canal,
Cleopatra seems to have had no west-east waterway passage,
[8][9] because the
Pelusiac branch of the
Nile River, which had fed
Ptolemy's west-east canal, had by that time dwindled, being choked with
silt.
[8][9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Suez1856.jpg
Topographic map, northern
Gulf of Suez, route to
Cairo, 1856.
[edit] Old Cairo to the Red Sea
By the 8th century, a navigable canal existed between
Old Cairo and the
Red Sea,
[8][9] but accounts vary as to who ordered its construction—either
Trajan or
'Amr ibn al-'As, or
Omar the Great.
[8][9][9] This canal reportedly linked to the
River Nile at
Old Cairo[9] and ended near modern
Suez.
[8][35] A geography treatise by Dicuil reports a conversation with an English monk, Fidelis, who had sailed on the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the first half of the 8th century
[36]
The
Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur is said to have ordered this canal closed in 767 to prevent supplies from reaching
Arabian detractors.
[8][9]
[edit] Repair by Tāriqu l-Ḥākim
Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is claimed to have repaired the
Old Cairo to
Red Sea passageway,
[8][9] but only briefly, circa 1000 AD,
[8][9] as it soon "became choked with sand."
[9] However, we are told that parts of this canal still continued to fill in during the
Nile's annual inundations.
[8][9]
[edit] Napoleon discovers an ancient canal
Napoleon Bonaparte's interest in finding the remnants of an ancient waterway passage
[37] culminated in a cadre of
archaeologists,
scientists,
cartographers and
engineers scouring the area beginning in the latter months of 1798.
[38] Their findings, recorded in the
Description de l'Égypte, include detailed maps that depict the discovery of an ancient canal extending northward from the
Red Sea and then westward toward the
Nile.
[37][39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Suez_Canal_Ismailia2.jpg
The Suez Canal at
Ismailia, c. 1860. The Ismailia segment was completed in November 1862.
Napoleon had contemplated the construction of another, modern, north-south canal to join the
Mediterranean and
Red Sea. But his project was abandoned after the preliminary survey erroneously concluded that the Red Sea was 10 metres (33 ft) higher than the Mediterranean, making a locks-based canal too expensive and very long to construct. The Napoleonic survey commission's error came from fragmented readings mostly done during wartime, which resulted in imprecise calculations.
[40]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Suez_Canal_drawing_1881.jpg
1881 drawing of the Suez Canal.
Though by this time unnavigable,
[9] the ancient route from
Bubastis to the
Red Sea still channeled water in spots as late as 1861
[9] and as far east as
Kassassin