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[[File: SuezCanal.jpg|300px|thumbnail|left|Satelite Photo of the Suez Canal – the Bitter Lakes are the bodies of water on the lower third of the photo]]__NOTOC__
Since the end of the Neolithic Period in the Near East more than 5,000 years ago, different societies have desired to connect the various kingdoms and empires of East Asia with those in Europe and the Near East. One of the first notable attempts to bridge the two worlds was the creation of the Silk Roads, which operated from late antiquity through the Middle Ages. The Silk Roads effectively moved goods, ideas, and people between the East and the West, but the trek through central Asia was extremely long, difficult, and often dangerous. By the fifteenth century, Europeans discovered new technologies that made long distance sea travel more practical, which culminated in Portuguese Vasco da Gama’s circumnavigation of Africa in 1497-98.
In the centuries subsequent to da Gama’s voyage, both traversing the Silk Roads and circumnavigating Africa were seen as obsolete methods by which to move people and goods from east to west. The onset of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century brought forth a new scientific understanding of the world and before too long many Europeans began to see that there was a better, quicker way to travel from Europe to Asia: traveling through the Suez Isthmus in Egypt would save an immense amount of time and money. Under a joint British and French effort, construction of the modern Suez Canal began in the mid-1800s and was completed in 1869. Today, the 120 mile long canal is traversed by nearly 100 ships a day and is an extremely vital connection between the East and the West. The Suez Canal is so important that in 1956 Egypt fought against the combined forces of Israel, Great Britain, and France for its control and any future war near the canal could disrupt world trade. But the dream to connect the East and the West through a canal did not begin in 1869. Millennia before the Enlightenment, Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks all saw the possibility of connecting Asia to Europe through the construction of a canal. An examination of the ancient sources reveals that the ancient attempts to build a Red Sea canal followed a different path, but by most accounts they were successful.
===The First Attempts===
[[File: Darius.jpg|300px|thumbnail|left|Relief of Persian King Darius I from Persepolis]]
After the New Kingdom collapsed, Egypt was once more thrust into another intermediate period. When it finally emerged from the political disunity in the middle of the seventy century, the once great Egypt would see itself under the yoke of a succession of various foreign rulers – the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and finally the Romans all ruled over the Nile Valley. Despite losing her independence, pharaonic culture continued well into the Christian era and in fact many of the foreign rulers initiated ambitious building programs in Egypt. The construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean and Red seas was apparently important to many of these rulers despite their disparate backgrounds. According to Herodotus, Strabo, and the first century BC Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, Twenty Sixth Dynasty King Nekau II (reigned 610-595 BC), the son of Psamtek I (ruled 664-610 BC) (“Psammitichus” in Greek) , was the first monarch of the Late Period to revamp the idea of a canal linking the East to the West. According to Diodorus, Nekau II’s canal followed a more diagonal path, beginning near Bubastis on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile River in the north and then zigzagging south until it emptied into the Red Sea.
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“The water is supplied from the Nile, and the canal leaves the river at a point a little south of Bubastis and runs past the Arabian town of Patumus, and then on to the Arabian gulf. The first part of its course is along the Arabian side of the Egyptian plain, a little to the northward of the chain of hills by Memphis, where the stone-quarries are; it skirts the base of these hills from west to east, and then enters a narrow gorge, after which it trends in a southerly direction until it enters the Arabian gulf. The shortest distance from the Mediterranean, or Northern Sea, to the Southern Sea - or Indian Ocean- namely, from Mt Casius between Egypt and Syria to the Arabian Gulf, is just a thousand stades. This is the most direct route - by the canal, which does not keep at all a straight course, the journey is much longer.” <ref> Diodorus Siculus. <i>The Library of History.</i> Translated by C.H. Oldfather. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), Book I, 33</ref>
===Conclusion===
[[File: Louvre_Museum_PtolemyII.jpg|300px|thumbnail|rightleft|Bust of Ptolemy II in the Louvre Museum, Paris]]The desire to create a bridge – both tangibly and metaphorically – between the East and the West has existed since the dawn of human civilization. People have always wanted to trade goods and ideas with others on the furthest ends of the earth, but the prospect always presented logistical problems. The problem was rectified at various points in human history by creating overland routes known as the Silk Roads, then developing sea routes around Africa, until finally building the Suez Canal in the nineteenth century. Long before the modern Suez Canal was built, though, several successful attempts were made to connect the West with the East via a canal. The first Suez Canal was probably built by Senusret III, with his New Kingdom successors following suit, but it was during the Late Period when activity became more pronounced. In an approximately 350 year period, three different kings – Nekau I, Darius I, and Ptolemy II – from three different cultures and dynasties, dug, re-dug, and improved on the existing Suez Canal. The ancient attempts to build the first Suez Canals prove that the ability to connect the East with the West is as old as the dream itself. <div class="portal" style="width:85%;">
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===References===
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[[Category:Wikis]]
[[Category:Ancient Egyptian History]] [[Category:Religious History]] [[Category:Archeology]] [[Category:Akhenaten]]
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