Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland http://journals.cambridge.org/JRA Additional services for Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Art. XX.—Visit to the Bitter Lakes, Isthmus of Suez, by the bed of the ancient Canal of Nechos, the “Khalij al Kadim” S0035869X00142923_inline1 of the Arabs, in June, 1842 Captain Newbold Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland / Volume 8 / Issue 15 / January 1846, pp 355 - 360 DOI: 10.1017/S0035869X00142923, Published online: 14 March 2011 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/ abstract_S0035869X00142923 How to cite this article: Captain Newbold (1846). Art. XX.—Visit to the Bitter Lakes, Isthmus of Suez, by the bed of the ancient Canal of Nechos, the “Khalij al Kadim” of the Arabs, in June, 1842. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland, 8, pp 355-360 doi:10.1017/ S0035869X00142923 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/JRA, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 19 Apr 2015 355 ART. XX.—Visit to the Bitter Lakes, Isthmus of Suez, by the bed of the ancient Canal of Nechos, the "Khalij al Kadim" *jjJ£M -g>Xe. of the Arabs, in June, 1842. By CAPTAIN NEWBOLD, F.B..S. {Read June 21, 1845.] IT will hardly be necessary to premise that the Red Sea and Medi- terranean are separated by a strip of desert about seventy-five miles across. The ancient kings of Egypt, struck with the vast importance of uniting the navigation of the two seas, at an early period attempted this great work. Nechos II., the Necho of Scripture, and son of Psammeticus, after defeating the Assyrians, and slaying Josiah king of Judah, B.C. 610, commenced a canal that was to unite the Red Sea with the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile, which communicated with the Mediterranean, almost directly north from the present Suez, near the ancient city of Pelusium. Some give it a much greater anti- quity, attributing it to the great Sesostris, or Rhameses III., the founder, among other vast works, of the Giant Hall of Columns of the Palace at Carnac, and under whose reign Egypt arrived at her zenith of power and prosperity. This canal is supposed by Herodotus to have joined the Nile near the old Bubastis, to have been filled by the water of the river, and to have been completed, or rather continued, by Darius Hystaspes. Diodorus Siculus states it to have been finished by Ptolemy II. Herodotus tells us that the first works, which cost 120,000 men their lives, were arrested in their progress by the oracle which Nechos consulted, and which declared that the canal would open Egypt to foreign invasion. Its width was calculated by Strabo at one hundred and fifty feet, and by Pliny at one hundred feet. He- rodotus informs us, it was broad enough to admit two triremes to move abreast, and that it required four days for a vessel to pass through it. Strabo says, it was provided with water-gates (locks?) and broad enough to admit ships of the largest class. Pliny calculates its depth at thirty feet. Why and when it was abandoned are uncertain. Aristotle and Pliny state that it was not opened at all in consequence of its bed being supposed to be higher than the surface of the Delta of the Nile, which it was feared would therefore have been inundated by a volume of sea water from the Red Sea at Suez. The latter of these writers 356 VISIT TO THE BITTER LAKES, affirms that the canal never approached the Red Sea nearer than the Bitter Lakes, and was only thirty-four miles long: but the sites of Serapeum, Heropolis, and Phagroriopolis which rose in the desert on its banks, and have been attributed to the benefit resulting from its construction, indicate a much greater extent and importance. The Roman Emperor Trajan not only renewed it, but added a branch known by the name of Amnis Trajanus, which passing between Heliopolis and Babylon, joined the Nile near Memphis. It seems again to have fallen into disuse after Egypt passed into the hands of the Arabs, but was re-opened by Amrou, Viceroy of Egypt, by order of the Caliph Omar, in order to the better supply of the Hedjaz with wheat, &c, during a famine that then prevailed in the Mohammedan Holy Land. About one hundred and thirty-four years afterwards it appears to have been stopped by the Caliph Mansur, with the view of cutting off the supply of provisions sent to some insurgents at Medina. This canal deviated from the course of the old one, and opened on the Nile at Old Cairo, whence I traced its course about eight or nine miles into the desert, to the north-east of the Birhet el Hajji, Lake of the Pilgrim, to Mecca. Since the time of the Caliphs, the canal has never teen re-opened; it was left for the genius of Napoleon to promulgate the idea of reviving and perfecting the great work of Sesostris and Nechos: but momentous events sealed Egypt to the comprehensive schemes for her improvement meditated by this master mind. It remains for Mohammed Ali, who has already immortalised himself by uniting the port of Alexandia with the navigation of the Nile, in the construction of the Mahmoudieh Canal, to put into execution the pro- ject of Napoleon, an undertaking which, if successful, will rank high among the triumphs of human skill and labour over the obstacles of nature, and be a far more glorious monument to posterity, than those useless piles of limestone, the Pyramids. The port at the head of the Red Sea in the time of Ptolemy Phila- delphus was called Arsinoe, from his sister and wife, and subse- quently Cleopatris; and, by the Arabs, Kolzum. The ruins of the latter town, which is supposed to have occupied the site of Arsinoe, are entered immediately after quitting the north-west gate of the modern town of Suez, and consist of a number of sandy mounds, occupying a space about as large as the present town, with scattered fragments of pottery, tiles, glass, and earthenware, often containing bitumen, as occurs among most of the ruins on the banks of the Nile. After passing these mounds, and crossing some salt pans on the north-west extremity of the Gulf of Suez, close to the sea coast, which is here flat and sandy, the Arab guides pointed out to my fellow-traveller, BY THE KHALU AL KADIM. 357 Captain Blogg, and myself, the embouchure of what they) called the Khalij al Kadim ^jjoili *z\\.*,, which we hastened to see. It is marked by low banks of sand, the highest part of which did not exceed six feet in height, and ceased altogether about fifty paces from high water mark. I was unable to find any traces of banks below the water of the Ked Sea, here very shallow. The banks abounded with sea shells, and masses of crystallized gypsum; the breadth of the bed between them was sixty-four paces. Diverging slightly from the sea shore we traced them in a northerly direction, varying from four to six feet in height, often interrupted and indis- tinct, to the camel track of the great caravan from Cairo to Mecca, where they pass round the head of the Red Sea. The surface of the country, from the commencement of the canal to this, was flat, little raised above the surface of the sea, and covered with sand and gravel. The bed of the canal was formed of the same sand; firm, and in some places moist enough to admit of the growth of a few salsolas, &c, the verdure of which, contrasted with the parched aspect of this dreary waste, over which the hot khamsin was blowing, was by no means unrefreshing. A thermometer on the sand of the desert exposed to the rays of the sun, sky clear, 141°'5. Here was observed a heap of stones which an old Arab hajji who accompanied us said, had been piled up as a land-mark by the pil- grims to Mecca to guide them to the spot where they were to round the head of the sacred gulf. These piles are called aldmdt CJLO&E, standards or marks, by the Bedouins; near it lay the skeletons of several camels, bleached by the sun,—" ships of this desert," wrecked in this sea of sand. The hadji informed me, that during the winter {jUlbard i»x!!J) the waters of the Red Sea rise suddenly and are impelled over this wide extent of now dry sand by the violence of the south-east winds. Suez bore hence S.10W., on its right the moun- tains of Ataka or Deliverance, through whose defiles the Israelites were pursued to the shores of the Red Sea; and on our left or to the eastward, the wilderness of El Tih, in which spring the wells of Moses, which I had visited only two years ago. Beyond this, the embankments of the canal are more distinct and continuous; and, at about the distance of twelve miles northerly from Suez, were as perfect as if piled up a week ago, twenty feet high, formed of gravel and gypseous marl, and upwards of seventy paces apart. They become again gradually indistinct on reaching the southern extremity of the Bitter Lakes: a few low rocks of limestone break the monotony of the gently undulating desert.