The canal from the Nile near Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, which had been first made by Necho, had been either finished or a second time made by Philadelphus; and in this reign that great undertaking was again renewed.  But the stream of the Nile was deserting the Bubastite branch, which was less navigable than formerly; and the engineers now changed the greater part of the canal’s bed.  They thought it wiser to bring water from a higher part of the Nile, so that the current in the canal might run into the Red Sea instead of out, and its waters might still be fresh and useful to agriculture.  It now began at Babylon opposite Memphis and entered the Red Sea at a town which, taking its name from the locks, was called Clysmon, about ten miles to the south of Arsinoe.  This latter town was no longer a port, having been separated from the sea by the continual advance of the sands.  We have no knowledge of how long the care of the imperial prefects kept this new canal open and in use.  It was perhaps one of the first of the Roman works that went to decay; and, when we find the Christian pilgrims sailing along it seven centuries later, on their way from England to the holy sepulchre, it had been again opened by the Muhammedan conquerors of Egypt.

[Illustration:  089.jpg ANTONINIAN TEMPLE NEAR SINAI]

Writings which some now regard as literary forgeries appeared in Alexandria about this time.  They prophesied the re-establishment of the Jews at Jerusalem, and, as the wished-for time drew near, all the eastern provinces of the Roman empire were disturbed by rebellious risings of the Jews.  Moved by the religious enthusiasm which gave birth to the writings, the Jews of Egypt in the eighteenth year of this reign (116 A.D.) were again roused into a quarrel with their Greek fellow-citizens; and in the next year, the last of the reign, they rose against their Roman governors in open rebellion, and they were not put down till the prefect Lupus had brought his forces against them.  After this the Jews of Cyrene marched through the desert into Egypt, under the command of Lucuas, to help their brethren; and the rebellion took the regular form of a civil war, with all its usual horrors.  The emperor sent against the Jews an army followed by a fleet, which, after numerous skirmishes and battles, routed them with great slaughter, and drove numbers of them back into the desert, whence they harassed the village as robbers.  By these unsuccessful appeals to force, the Jews lost all right to those privileges of citizenship which they always claimed, and which had been granted by the emperors, though usually refused by the Alexandrians.  The despair and disappointment of the Jews seem in many cases to have turned their minds to the Christian view of the Old Testament prophecies; henceforth, says Eusebius, the Jews embraced the Christian religion more readily and in greater numbers.