* Herodotus tells us that in his time the ruins of the docks
which Necho had made for the building of his triremes could
still be seen on the shore of the Red Sea as well as on that
of the Mediterranean. He seems also to say that the building
of the fleet was anterior to the first Syrian expedition.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph sent
by G. Benédite.
The trireme, which had been invented by either the Samian or Corinthian naval constructors, had as yet been little used, and possibly Herodotus is attributing an event of his own time to this earlier period when he affirms that Necho filled a dockyard with a whole fleet of these vessels; he possessed, at any rate, a considerable number of them, and along with them other vessels of various build, in which the blunt stem and curved poop of the Greeks were combined with the square-cabined barque of the Egyptians. At the same time, in order to transport the squadron from one sea to another when occasion demanded, he endeavoured to reopen the ancient canal.
He improved its course and widened it so as to permit of two triremes sailing abreast or easily clearing each other in passing. The canal started from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, not far from Patumos, and skirted the foot of the Arabian hills from west to east; it then plunged into the Wady Tumilat, and finally entered the head of the bay which now forms the Lake of Ismaïlia. The narrow channel by which this sheet of water was anciently connected with the Gulf of Suez was probably obstructed in places, and required clearing out at several points, if not along its entire extent. A later tradition states that after having lost 100,000 men in attempting this task, the king abandoned the project on the advice of an oracle, a god having been supposed to have predicted to him that he was working for the barbarians.*
* The figures, 100,000 men, are evidently exaggerated, for
in a similar undertaking, the digging of the Mahmudiyeh
canal, Mehemet-Ali lost only 10,000 men, though the work was
greater.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken from the railway
between Ismaïlia and Suez, on the eastern shore of the lake.