Bridging the Oceans: The History of the World's Most Important Canals

Though the Suez Canal is a modern creation, as it turned out, the concept of linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean was not by any means new. In fact, the idea was as old as trade across the isthmus itself. Work on the Canal of the Pharaohs, or Necho's Canal, as it is more commonly known, began during Egypt's Nineteenth Dynasty, under the reign either of Sethi I, or his son, the great Ramesses II. The project sought to link the two oceans through an artificial canal of modest length lin...