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διώρυξε. Necho's naval projects were part of his scheme of resistance to the new power of Babylon, which had risen on the ruins of Assyria. The cities of Phoenicia were always hostile to the great Eastern empires, and it was obvious that the naval force of Egypt would be doubly effective in supporting them, if the Red Sea fleet could join that of the Mediterranean. We may compare the increase in the power of Germany due to the Kiel canal. The Nile canal was first made by Sethos I (nineteenth dynasty, 1326-1300 B. C.; cf. Petrie, iii. 13); it was represented in one of the scenes in the hall at Karnak. It had, however, silted up by Necho's time. The work of Darius is confirmed by inscriptions (Hogarth, A. and A. p. 184) found between the Bitter Lakes and the Red Sea; Darius says, ‘I ordered to dig this canal from the Nile which flows in Egypt to the sea which begins with Persia. This canal was dug’ (Weissbach and Bang, 1893; Die Alt-Pers. Keilinsch. p. 39; Meyer, iii. 60 adopts this view); the inscription was formerly translated in the opposite sense, to mean that Darius gave up his work (so Prá[sbreve]ek, ii. 111). The canal was again rendered navigable under the Ptolemies, and with some variation of direction by Trajan (but this is uncertain); it finally was closed in the eighth century A. D. The remains of the canal at Belbês show that it was some 50 yards wide and 16 to 17 feet deep; cf. vii. 24 (the Mount Athos canal) for the breadth—‘two triremes abreast’.
ἦκται. It was from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes; here it turned almost at a right angle, following thenceforward pretty much the line of the Suez Canal. The part of it running west and east was on the line of the ‘Fresh Water Canal’ (dug 1858-63); it was made along the natural depression, the Wadi Tûmilât, through which Lord Wolseley advanced in the Tel el Kebir campaign of 1882. Patumus is the Pithom of Exod. i. 11, about ten miles west of Ismailia, the Egyptian Pi-tûmû (i. e. place of the god Tûmû), and has been excavated by Naville (E. E. F., 1903, 4th ed.). For ‘Arabian’ cf. 8. 1 (‘the Arabian Mountain’), for the geography generally 8. 3 n. κατύπερθε in both cases = ‘south of’. The subject to ὀρώρυκται is ‘the canal’, and τὰ πρὸς Ἀ. ἔχοντα is an accusative of respect, with τοῦ πεδίου τοῦ Ἀ. depending on it as a partitive genitive. Some, however, make τὰ πρὸς Ἀραβίην ἔχοντα subject.
μακρή is almost equivalent to a participle = ‘extending’.
ἀπαρτί. H. repeats this ‘exact’ figure (which = about 115 miles) in iv. 41, but it is too great; the narrowest part of the isthmus is only seventy miles ‘from sea to sea’. Strabo (803) gives ‘1,000 stades’ from Pelusium to the Red Sea; this road measure may be the cause of H.'s mistake. But Posidonius made it even greater, putting the breadth at ‘less than 1,500 stades’.
The figure ‘120,000’ is doubtless exaggerated; Mehemet Ali lost only 10,000 in making the Mahmûdieh Canal (from the Nile to Alexandria). Strabo (804) says the canal was stopped by Necho's death.
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