On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 219 



ter along, and to confine it effectually within their bounds, 

 as with Necho's canal, would effect Ptolemy's purpose much 

 better. So that the 20 M.P. of canal between Scense and 

 Thoura, already referred to as part of the Ixii. M.P. consti- 

 tuting, in Pliny's time, the length of the canal, and " the dis- 

 tance ^rom the Nile to the sea," were only a restoration of 

 part of the Etham branch, sacrificed by Necho upwards of 

 three centuries before ; and these 20 M.P. to Thoum or Pa- 

 tumos, + four, beyond that city, between it and the point of 

 junction with Necho's canal, besides the excavations between 

 the gulf-basin and Arsinoe, make up 35 of the 37i assigned 

 by Pliny as the total length of Ptolemy's canal operations. 

 The residue of 2^ we shall find hereafter. 



So perfect an agreement between nature and history can- 

 not be purely accidental. We may feel warranted in assum- 

 ing that, when Pliny wrote this account, the great gulf-basin 

 was only nominally the sea ; but that the real open sea, whose 

 level coincided with the ocean, stopped at Arsinoe; that the 

 " bitter springs," where Ptolemy ultimately suspended his 

 operations, were some springs in that neighbourhood — (since 

 all the wells about Suez and Ajrud have that disagreeable 

 quality) ; — and that the same reason deterred Ptolemy from 

 cutting through the second barrier so lately interposed be- 

 tween the open sea and the former gulf, which had deterred 

 Necho and his predecessors from cutting through \hB first. 

 For it was a smaller inconvenience to go by land across a low 

 sand bank that naturally and effectively kept out the sea, 

 than to run the risk of an irruption, by attempting to make 

 artificial dykes upon the tender sandy soil, too recently de- 

 serted by the sea to yield a safe foundation for such works 

 as the terminal locks of a canal like this.* 



* Aristotle (Meteor, lib. i. c. xiv.) is the first authority who seems to contra- 

 dict Herodotus, by speaking of the canal as not finished up to the sea, whereby 

 he may have misled the succeeding Greek writers. For although Darius finished 

 it, the subsequent removal of the head of the gulf would leave it as if it had 

 not been finislied. Thus the limit of this event is between the times of Darius 

 and of .Mexander. 



Diodorus and Strabo, who wrote long after tho reign of rtolomy, add to this 

 BtHtcmeiit of .Vristotlo the works they attribute to Ptokniy, adducing, as the 



