How early can you feasibly dig a Canal at the site of TTL's Suez Canal?
Assumptions:
I don't care about the politics of it, presume that a technologically oriented, affluent culture has total control of a relatively prosperous and very stable Egypt and Levant and hence politics are irrelelevant. For our purposes it doesn't matter whether it's a even better British Empire, or a revived Byzantine Empire, or the Alien Space Bat Collective.
Technological progress is more or less identical to TTL's.
The economics ARE interesting -- I presume that the Suez Canal is primarily going to be of interest to a Meditteranean or Atlantic-oriented power who has strategic interests in the Indian Ocean and probably colonies, the economic benefits would be significant, but the strategic implications are more so. Am I understanding the situation correctly?