30
The Historical Background
Strab~oes not mention the "Ramses" canal and starts the whole history of the
waterway with Necho.
According to Strabo, the voyage through the Isthmus took four days and the
canal was broad enough to admit two triremes abreast-i.e. about 30-40 m broad
[according to the dimensions of a Greek trireme given by Casson (1959)J. But the
triremes had only about 1.5 to 2 m draught, thus the canal could have been very
shallow.
About three centuries later, Ptolemeus 11 Philadelphus rebuilt the canal and
added a more direct, northern branch-similar to the modern Suez Canal-which
led from Lake Timsah due north through Lake Ballah. By 24 B.C. this canal had
also fallen into disuse. There are indications that Trajan rebuilt some sort of a
canal, since through the Roman world his name became attached to the canal.
Sneh et al. (1975) discovered an ancient canal, unmentioned in historical texts,
which ran from Qantara to the town of Pelusium on the Mediterranean shore.
These authors consider that the 2-3 m deep and 20 m broad canal pre-existed the
Pelusiac delta branch which became active only in the 5th Century B.C. This
canal might have been part of a trans-isthmian waterway, although Sneh et al.
(1975) consider it more as a sort of strategical water barrier mentioned in the
Bible as "Pi-Hirot" or "Shur".
The last canal builder was the conquering Arab general Amru Ibn al Ass, who
reopened the Wadi Tumilat connection for use in 640 A.D. The story goes that in
the second half of the 8th Century Al Mansur ordered the canal to be mIed for
political reasons.
The last written record of navigation through the old canal comes from the
Irish Abbott Fidelis (7th Century) who reports: "in naves in Nilo flumine, usque
ad introitum maris Rubri navigaverunt" (Letronne, 1841).
When Napoleon's engineers made the first measurements on the Isthmus in
1798, they found the remnants of old canallocks 3 m above the present sea level.
The engineering efforts of two millenia were thus concurrent with considerable
sea-Ievel changes or tectonic uplifts.
1.5 The Problem ofthe Pre-Lessepsian Migrants
Through the Isthmus of Suez
From all that has been said in the previous chapters, it becomes clear that the
suspicion of a faunal interchange between the two seas, prior to 1869 which was
the year of the opening of the Suez Canal, is justified. The suspicion could have
been avoided ifwe had had complete floral and faunal records for the two seas by
1869. But even now, more than a century later, the records are still incomplete!
True, there is no indication of a pre-Lessepsian faunal interchange in the
paleontological mollusc material, but this concerns only one animal group out of
many. The micropaleontological material belongs to planktonic organisms which
cannot give reliable paleo-distributional information in our case: circumtropical
planktonic species could always use the "western way" (W. Steinitz, 1929) i.e. the
Straits of Gibraltar, in order to resettle the Mediterranean.
The Historical Background
Strab~oes not mention the "Ramses" canal and starts the whole history of the
waterway with Necho.
According to Strabo, the voyage through the Isthmus took four days and the
canal was broad enough to admit two triremes abreast-i.e. about 30-40 m broad
[according to the dimensions of a Greek trireme given by Casson (1959)J. But the
triremes had only about 1.5 to 2 m draught, thus the canal could have been very
shallow.
About three centuries later, Ptolemeus 11 Philadelphus rebuilt the canal and
added a more direct, northern branch-similar to the modern Suez Canal-which
led from Lake Timsah due north through Lake Ballah. By 24 B.C. this canal had
also fallen into disuse. There are indications that Trajan rebuilt some sort of a
canal, since through the Roman world his name became attached to the canal.
Sneh et al. (1975) discovered an ancient canal, unmentioned in historical texts,
which ran from Qantara to the town of Pelusium on the Mediterranean shore.
These authors consider that the 2-3 m deep and 20 m broad canal pre-existed the
Pelusiac delta branch which became active only in the 5th Century B.C. This
canal might have been part of a trans-isthmian waterway, although Sneh et al.
(1975) consider it more as a sort of strategical water barrier mentioned in the
Bible as "Pi-Hirot" or "Shur".
The last canal builder was the conquering Arab general Amru Ibn al Ass, who
reopened the Wadi Tumilat connection for use in 640 A.D. The story goes that in
the second half of the 8th Century Al Mansur ordered the canal to be mIed for
political reasons.
The last written record of navigation through the old canal comes from the
Irish Abbott Fidelis (7th Century) who reports: "in naves in Nilo flumine, usque
ad introitum maris Rubri navigaverunt" (Letronne, 1841).
When Napoleon's engineers made the first measurements on the Isthmus in
1798, they found the remnants of old canallocks 3 m above the present sea level.
The engineering efforts of two millenia were thus concurrent with considerable
sea-Ievel changes or tectonic uplifts.
1.5 The Problem ofthe Pre-Lessepsian Migrants
Through the Isthmus of Suez
From all that has been said in the previous chapters, it becomes clear that the
suspicion of a faunal interchange between the two seas, prior to 1869 which was
the year of the opening of the Suez Canal, is justified. The suspicion could have
been avoided ifwe had had complete floral and faunal records for the two seas by
1869. But even now, more than a century later, the records are still incomplete!
True, there is no indication of a pre-Lessepsian faunal interchange in the
paleontological mollusc material, but this concerns only one animal group out of
many. The micropaleontological material belongs to planktonic organisms which
cannot give reliable paleo-distributional information in our case: circumtropical
planktonic species could always use the "western way" (W. Steinitz, 1929) i.e. the
Straits of Gibraltar, in order to resettle the Mediterranean.