e waters of the Red Sea, along which the wind blows hard
from the north for nine months in the year, was found so dangerous by
the little vessels from the south of Arabia, that they always chose the
most southerly port in which they could meet the Egyptian buyers. The
merchants with their bales of goods found a journey on camels through
the desert, where the path is marked only by the skeletons of the
animals that have died upon the route, less costly than a coasting
voyage. Hence, when Philadelphus had made the whole of Upper Egypt to
the cataracts at Aswan (Syene) as quiet and safe as the Delta, he made a
new port on the rocky coast of the Red Sea, nearly two hundred miles to
the south of Cosseir, and named it Berenice after his mother. He also
built four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans might
find water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their
twelve days' journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to this
new port. He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port of
Cosseir, or AEnnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera after
his younger sister. The trade which thus passed down the Nile from
Syene, from Berenice, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty at the
custom-house station of Phylake a little below Lycopolis on the west
bank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was encamped; and this
station gradually grew into a town.

[Illustration: 112.jpg ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE]

Philadelphus also built a city on the sands at the head of the Red Sea,
near where Suez now stands, and named it Arsinoe, after his sister; and
he again opened the canal which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which
ships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea. This canal
began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis,
and was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius. From
thence Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near
the town of Arsinoe, and moreover cleared it from the sands which
soon overwhelmed it and choked it up whenever it was neglected by the
government. But his undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding the
waters of the canal several feet lower than the level of the Red Sea;
and that, if finished, it would become a salt-water canal, which could
neither water the fields nor give drink to the cities in the valley. He
also built a second city of the name of Berenice, called the Berenice
Ep