ah. This last canal is connected with the
remains of the one which in ancient times joined the Nile with the Red
Sea. After falling into neglect it has again in part been restored and
much increased in length as the Sweet Water Canal.

Further mention may also be made of the great canal called the
Bahr-Yusef, or River Joseph, which is important enough to be classed as
a ramification of the Nile itself. As has been mentioned, this water way
runs parallel with the Nile on the west side below Cairo for about 350
miles to Farshut, and is the most important irrigation canal in Egypt.
It is a series of canals rather than one canal. Tradition states that
this canal was repaired by the celebrated Saladin. Another tradition,
relating that the canal existed in the time of the Pharaohs, has
recently been proved to be correct.

Egypt possesses not only the greatest natural water way in the world,
but also the greatest artificial water way--the Suez Canal. Before the
opening of this canal there were in the past other canals which afforded
communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. These ancient
canals differed in one respect from the Suez Canal, since they were all
fed by the fresh waters of the Nile. One of these still remains in use,
and is called the Fresh Water Canal. According to Aristotle, Strabo, and
Pliny, Sesostris was the first to conceive and carry out the idea of a
water connection between the two seas, by means of the Pelusiac branch
of the Nile from Avaris to Bubastis, and by rendering navigable the
irrigation canal which already existed between Bubastis and Heroopolis.
It is believed by some that the fragment bearing the oval of Ramses II.
found near the course of the present canal affords confirmation of this
assertion.

The first authentic account of the carrying out of the conception of
an inter-sea water way is to be found in the time of Pharaoh Necho II.,
about the year 610 B.C. Herodotus records of Necho that he was "the
first to attempt the construction of the canal to the Red Sea." This
canal tapped the Nile at Bubastis, near Zagazig, and followed closely
the line of modern Wady Canal to Heroopolis, the site of which lies in
the neighbourhood of Toussun and Serapeum, between the Bitter Lakes and
Lake Tinseh. At that date the Red Sea reached much farther inland than
it does now, and was called in the upper portion the Heroopolite Gulf.
The expanse of brackish water, now known as the Bitter Lakes