8o : The Atlantic 



about which we have no details. We can only draw inference from 

 what we know about primitive navigation in other times and places. 



Though the history of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, of 

 Mesopotamia and Persian territory is very ancient indeed, there is 

 no reason for assuming that it was in this region that the ship was 

 invented and navigation first arose. In fact, we shall have to extend 

 our Mediterranean horizon to see what developments may have been 

 taking place elsewhere in early times. Rather than taking an arbi- 

 trary jump in time and space, we will do this by following some of 

 the early Mediterranean voyagers. 



It is a curious circumstance of history that one of the longest sail- 

 ing voyages in the Atlantic carried out by early Mediterranean navi- 

 gators was also one of the first ones, and that the vessel entered the 

 Atlantic by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope from the Indian 

 Ocean. The record of this trip is preserved by the author Herodo- 

 tus. Herodotus visited Egypt about 150 years after the trip was sup- 

 posed to have taken place and obtained the following account of the 

 voyage : 



Libya shows that it has sea all around except the part that borders 

 on Asia — Necho, a king of Egypt, being the first within our knowl- 

 edge to show this fact; for when he stopped digging the canal which 

 stretches from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf he sent forth Phoenician 

 men in ships, ordering them to sail back between the Pillars of Her- 

 acles until they came to the Northern [Mediterranean] Sea and thus 

 to Egypt. The Phoenicians therefore setting forth from the Red Sea 

 sailed in the Southern Sea [Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean] and 

 whenever autumn came, they each time put ashore and sowed the 

 land wherever they might be in Libya as they voyaged, and awaited 

 the reaping time; having then reaped the corn they set sail, so that 

 after the passing of two years they doubled the Pillars of Heracles in 

 the third year and came to Egypt. And they told things believable 

 perhaps for others, but unbeHevable for me, namely that in sailing 

 round Libya they had the sun on the right hand. Thus was Libya 

 known for the first time. 



Necho ruled in Egypt about 600 b.c. and was responsible for initi- 

 ating the building of a canal between Bubastis, on the Nile, and the 

 Red Sea. Necho did not invent the idea of creating a continuous 

 waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The first 

 canal had been completed by Seti I and Rameses II between 1300 and 

 1350 B.C. This is over 3,000 years before the Suez Canal was opened 



