Mehemet Ali constructed this canal, which is about fifty miles long and one hundred feet broad.  It is believed that twelve thousand labourers perished during its construction.  Between the Rosetta and the Damietta branches of the Nile there are other canals, such as the Manuf, which connects the two branches of the river at a point not far from the Delta.  East of the Damietta branch are other canals, occupying the ancient river-beds of the Tanitic and Pelusiac branches of the Nile.  One of these is called the canal of the El-Muiz, from the first Fatimite caliph who ruled in Egypt, and who ordered it to be constructed.  Another is named the canal of Abul-Munegga, from the name of the Jew who executed this work under the caliph El-’Amir, in order to bring water into the province of Sharkiyah.  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,