The Canal of the Pharaohs in Egypt ’s Tell
el-Maskhuta, located northeast of Cairo, was
already known in the 1800s but was never adequately documented until now.
Excavations started around a partially visible wall
belonging to a square fortress near Wadi Tumilat. This valley was an important turntable for
commercial and cultural exchanges with Palestine
and Syria , all the way into Mesopotamia . An enormous wall of 22 meters in length and a
height of eight meters leads to the fortress with its two twelve meters long
walls. The construction measured 200x300 meters, and as part of Tell el-Maskhuta, stays hidden
underneath the desert sands for at least one kilometer.
Excavations have revealed that the Hyksos built the settlement as far back as 1,500 BC and used it during the Ptolemaic era (3rd-1st
century BC) as the foundation for this fortress. So far, it has been
established that this was one of the Nile Delta's largest fortresses before the arrival of the Romans.
The first canal to connect the Red Sea to
the Nile and ultimately to the Mediterranean ran
past Wadi Tumilat and was built as
early as the 19th century BC! Although it was difficult to maintain
because of the ever-shifting desert sands, it was still functioning during the
reign of Ramses II in the 13th
century BC. When Darius the Great
conquered Egypt
in the 5th century BC, he was keen to optimize the canal
for his imports of wheat and the transport of his troops. The first stone for
this canal was laid around 520 BC and was retrieved in 1866 during the
construction of the modern Suez Canal . The
precious stone and inscription can be seen at the Louvre in Paris .
This is more than sideline information, as the very
existence of the canal so early in history was known to Alexander when he entered Egypt .
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