Herodotus describes an ancient canal that connected the Nile River to the Suez Gulf. This aqua-passage was originally devised by the Pharaoh Necho II (610595 BC), but the Persians and the Ptolemais took credit for completing the project and upgrading the canal. The original canal was thirty feet wide which was large enough to allow two trireme war-galleys to travel abreast from the Nile inland towards the Suez Gulf.102
Herodotus claims that the Red Sea canal was completed by the Persian King Darius (522-486 BC), but the waterway silted-up and Ptolemy Philadephus (283-246 BC) had to recut large sections of the passage. The enlarged canal was 100 feet wide and 30 feet deep, but Pliny claims that the improvement work was halted before the expanded channel reached the coast.103 In Roman times the Nile canal entered the Red Sea near the port of Arsine, but the passage was heavily silted. This explains why Aelius Gallus had his military fleet built on the shores of the Red Sea, rather than transported from the Mediterranean through the canal. Despite the existence of the canal, throughout most of the first century AD it was easier for businessmen to have their return cargoes transported through the Eastern Desert and Coptos.
Conditions changed when the Nile-Suez canal was restored during the reign of the Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117).104 The repaired route allowed passengers to sail directly from Alexandria to the main Red Sea harbours where they could board ocean-going vessels heading for India. Transport by barge canal was about one-sixth cheaper than overland haulage and many travellers used this route to bypass the hardships of the desert.105
The best time for travel along the Nile-Suez canal was between September and January when the waters of the Nile were swollen with rainfall from sources in inner Africa. The canal began at the Egyptian city of Babylon (just south of modern Cairo), a prime centre for the production of grain, wines and textiles. These products were popular Roman exports to foreign countries and the canal probably encouraged the shipment of bulk staple goods from the Empire.106
One incident in the second century AD indicates how much the Red Sea canal simplified Roman trade ventures to India. Lucian describes how a student in Alexandria took time away from his studies to visit India without informing his personal slaves, or his parents in Galatia (Asia Minor). The young man took a ship along the Nile to the port of Arsine at the head of the Suez Gulf where he was persuaded to book a sea-passage to India. Lucian explains, ‘he cruised up the Nile as far as Clysma (Arsine) and as a vessel was just putting out to sea, he was induced to join others in a voyage to India’. When he failed to return from the Nile sailing, his servants in Alexandria concluded ‘that the young man either had lost his life during his cruise upon the Nile, or had been captured by brigands, who were numerous at the time’. A famous medium named Alexander the Paphlagonian convinced the bereaved family that their son had been murdered by his servants, who were condemned on this testimony and torn apart by wild beasts in the Roman arena. A few months later the young man returned, ‘telling of his travels’ and proving the medium to be a fraud.107 Lucian says that Alexander escaped justice, but in spite of his own predictions that he would live to be a hundred and fifty and die from a lightning strike, he contracted gangrene soon afterwards. Despite the best medical attention he died a slow and miserable death.108
World History
