The Canal of the Pharaohs, the Suez Canal of antiquity

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 (3^rd-1^st 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 19^th 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 13^th century BC. When Darius the Great conquered Egypt in the 5^th 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.

[Map of Egypt by annie brocolie - Inspirée d'une carte du livreSuez & Panama de Benoît Heimermann aux édition Arthaud, CC BY-SA 2.5]