II., who had many centuries before possessed the
timber-growing countries, and whose engineers originally cut the canal
from the Nile to the Red Sea, though the work cost 120,000 lives and
countless treasuries of money. The canal of Rameses, which, in the
course of so many centuries, has become filled up with sand, was thus
cleaned out, as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again
under the khalifs, and galleys passed from sea to sea. The Persians,
under Darius Hystaspes, also either repaired it, or, as some say,
attempted a new work of the kind; but their engineering must have been
very defective, for they were obliged to abandon their enterprise after
carrying it as far as the bitter lakes, finding that salt water would be
introduced into the Delta. The Suez mouth of the canal of Rameses was
protected by a system of hydraulic works, to meet difficulties arising
from the variable levels of the water. It was reserved for the French
engineer Lesseps in the nineteenth century to cut the direct canal from
the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, an exploit which the Pharaohs and
Ptolemies had considered to be impossible.

[Sidenote: Attempts of the Asiatics on the south Mediterranean shore.]

[Sidenote: Egypt overthrown by Cambyses.]

The Egyptian policy continued by Pharaoh Hophra, who succeeded in the
capture of Sidon, brought on hostilities with the Babylonian kings, who
were now thoroughly awakened to what was going on in Egypt--a collision
which occasioned the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the
seizure of the lower country by Nebuchadnezzar, who also took vengeance
on King Zedekiah for the assistance Jerusalem had rendered to the
Africans in their projects: that city was razed to the ground, the eyes
of the king put out, and the people carried captive to Babylon, B.C.
568. It is a striking exemplification of the manner in which national
policy will endure through changes of dynasties, that after the
overthrow of Babylon by the Medes, and the transference of power to the
Persians, the policy of controlling the Mediterranean was never for an
instant lost sight of. Attempts were continually made, by operating
alternately on the southern and northern shores, to push westward. The
subsequent history of Rome shows what would have been the consequences
of an uncontrolled possession of the Mediterranean by a great maritime
power. On the occasion of a revolt of Egypt, the Persian King Cambyses
so utterly cr