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“We can not approach history,” says M. de Lesseps, “without touching on Suez.” Its records, fragmentary and uncertain, are hid in the mists of five thousand centuries. The stream of its history, now lost, now re-appearing, is joined in its course by the tributary traditions of nearly all the Indo-Germanic and Semitic nations. The tramp of armies and the desolation of conquest has alternated with periods of intense activity in the arts, sciences, literature, and commerce. The Egyptian name, once a synonym of the profoundest learning, is now only known to us by an architecture which is still invested with a unique and imposing grandeur.

The value of a canal to afford transportation for the products of the East occupied the attention of the Pharaohs at an early date. Since the time of Rameses II, it has been repeatedly reconstructed and repaired. This Pharaoh, who lived about the period of the Mosaic exodus (1400 B. C.), was probably the Sesostris of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny.

If the Sesostris of the 12th dynasty was the constructor of the canal, its date would be carried back 2730 B. C. Its construction has also been attributed to other Egyptian rulers, but with more certainty to Nechao, B. C. 625.