It is certain that in ancient times Suez was called the City of Heroes, for it differs in nothing as to latitude situation and bearings from what is said in Ptolomy, Table III. of Africa.  More especially as Suez is seated on the uttermost coast of the nook or bay where the sea of Mecca ends, on which the City of Heroes was situated, as Strabo writes in his XVII book thus:  “The city of Heroes, or of Cleopatra, by some called Arsinoe, is in the uttermost bounds of the Sinus Arabicus, which is towards Egypt.”.  Pliny, in the VI. book of his Natural History, seems to call the port of Suez Danao, on account of the trench or canal opened between the Nile and the Red Sea.  The latitude of Suez is 29 deg. 45’ N. being the nearest town and port of the Red Sea to the great city of Cairo, called anciently Babylon of Egypt.  From Suez to the Levant Sea or Mediterranean, at that mouth of one of the seven branches of the Nile which is called Pelusium, is about 40 leagues by land, which space is called the isthmus, or narrow neck of land between the two seas.  On this subject Strabo writes in his XVII. book, “The isthmus between Pelusium and the extreme point of the Arabian Gulf where stands the City of Heroes, is 900 stadia.”  This is the port of the Red Sea to which Cleopatra Queen of Egypt, after the victory obtained by Augustus over Antony, commanded ships to be carried by land from the Nile, that they might flee to the Indians.

Sesostris King of Egypt and Darius King of Persia undertook at different periods to dig a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, on purpose to open a navigable communication between the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean; but as neither of them completed the work, Ptolomy made a trench 100 feet broad and 30 feet deep, which being nearly finished, he discontinued lest the sea-water from the Arabian Gulf might render the water of the Nile salt and unfit for use.  Others say that, on taking the level, the architects and masters of the work found that the Sea of Arabia was three cubits higher than the land of Egypt, whence it was feared that all the country would be inundated and destroyed.  The ancient authors on this subject are Diodorus Siculus, Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Strabo, and many other cosmographers[322].

[Footnote 322:  This communication was actually opened about A.D. 685, by Amru, who conquered Egypt for Moawiah, the first Ommiyan Khalifah of Damascus.  It was called al Khalij al Amir al Momenein, or the canal of the commander of the faithful, the title of the Caliphs.  It was shut up about 140 years afterwards by Abu Jafar al Mansur.—­Astl.]