The Other Suez Canal

The Canal of the Pharaohs

Nile Delta, from space. 

Area outlined in red is the probable location of the Canal of the Pharaohs    

The Suez Canal is not the first waterway to link the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

The present day Suez Canal is only the latest of its kind. As long ago as the 19^th Century B.C, Pharaoh Senusret II built a canal that connected the river Nile to the Red Sea! This so called Canal of the Pharaohs survived in one form or another for over 2500 years! In fact, a modern irrigation canal retraces the ancient route to this day.

As the river Nile approaches the Mediterranean, it branches into a massive delta with multiple distributaries. Pliny the Elder writes that at the time of Senusret, the Nile had seven distinct distributaries, the easternmost of which was called the Pelusiac. In 1850 BC, Senusret built a canal that linked the Pelusiac with the Bitter Lakes – a body of salt water in the Isthmus of Suez. At the time, the Bitter Lakes were directly connected to the Red Sea (the land has since risen and they no longer are). Since there were no bulldozers or gigantic dump trucks available, the Canal of the Pharaohs was built by hand, using bronze shovels and armies of slaves. For this was an era of slave power, and none were more skilled in its uses than the Egyptians. The engineers who built the pyramids understood how to direct their slaves to dig what was basically a very long trench. Thousands of slaves certainly died in the canal’s construction, but inflationary pressures on the slave industry were slight and there were several low cost suppliers, such as the Egyptian military and the Hittites.

The problem with building a canal in the middle of a desert is that it takes constant maintenance and repair to keep the desert from smothering the canal. As a result, the canal wasn’t always in the best working order – waxing and waning with the Pharaohs and the size of their tombs. There is some evidence however that The Canal of the Pharaohs remained in service for nearly 600 years, all the way into the reign of the great Pharaoh Ramases II, who ruled in the 13^th Century BC!

Darius the Great, the Persian master of half the known world, transformed the canal around 520 B.C. After his armies’ subjugated Egypt, it was probable he wanted to optimize the movement of his leading imports, like Egyptian wheat, as well as his leading export – Persian soldiers. The most efficient way to do either was to put them on ships and sail then back and forth from Persia. The solution – fix the old Egyptian canal that linked the Nile to the Red Sea. An Egyptian Pharaoh, Necho, had already begun construction in 600 BC, but after expending the lives of 100,000 slaves (or so Herodotus claims), had abandoned the project, although presumably not from a sense of guilt.

Darius did more than fix Necho’s canal. By now, due to geographical changes, the Red Sea and The Bitter Lakes were no longer connected. Darius rectified the situation and linked the two. You could do things like that, even in the ancient world, if you were the supreme lord and master of a good chunk of humanity. Darius’s new canal was nearly 140 km long and so wide that two triremes could ply its length side by side. A ship could cross the canal in just 4 days! Darius almost certainly expended considerable expense on the endeavor, which he could afford to, since he was flush with gold and slaves from the lands cowering at his Imperial feet. Darius was so pleased with the results (and himself) that he even left inscriptions on pink granite boasting of this accomplishment:

The Chalouf Stele - Louvre Paris.

The Chalouf Stele, relates to the construction of a canal that connected the river Nile and the Red Sea. The project,  finished by king Darius, was not the first of its kind: in fact, the rulers of the New Kingdom had already built a canal like this, and the list of places mentioned in the biblical book of Exodus as the route of the Jews leaving Egypt, resembles the general  direction of the canal. But although Darius merely restored an older water course, the project was very important, because  it facilitated trade between the Nile, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf.

"Saith King Darius: I am a Persian. Setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered this canal dug from the river called the Nile that flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. When the canal had been dug as I ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, even as I intended."

The Canal of the Pharaohs continued it’s off and on existence over the next millennium. It had a major resurgence under the Ptolemys, but by Cleopatra’s reign, found itself once again blocked in places by its old enemy – sand. Then, in the 2^nd Century BC, The Roman Emperor Trajan reopened the waterway and modestly named it after himself. “Trajan’s River” remained a fixture on the maritime scene for some time to come. Even Trajan’s successor Hadrian chipped in to maintain the canal’s health, although unlike his predecessor, chose not to rename the canal, being content, one would assume, with Hadrian’s Wall. And so the canal continued operations in some form or the other all the way through to Arab rule of Egypt in the 8^th century A.D.

Then, in 770 A.D, the Abassid Caliph Abu Jafar abruptly closed the Canal. His enemies and rebels were using it to ship men and supplies from Egypt to Arabia, which he naturally did not appreciate. It is not known as to how he closed the canal. Maybe he made using the canal punishable by death. Or strung a giant chain across it’s mouth, like the one the Byzantines used to stretch across the Bosphorus.  Its more likely that he simply had the canal filled in at crucial points. Whatever he did, it was permanent. For amazingly, the Canal of the Pharaohs was never reopened after this closure. After three thousand years of survival, it now languished for good, possibly because people had finally gotten tired of digging the same trench over and over again. Or perhaps no one had the money and or the slaves to do the work. The canal slowly disappeared into the desert and by 1489, when Vasco Da Gama ‘discovered’ India, it had mostly disappeared from memory as well.

It would be another 1000 years before a canal would once again link the Red and Mediterranean seas.

Original Article by: Umesh Madan

The Sycamore tree

The Sycamore tree and Figs in Biblical Symbolism 

(GEMEZE in Arabic)

Mature Sycamore tree

The fig tree is one of the oldest known fruit trees.  Illustrations of fig trees are found on monuments and tombs of ancient Egypt. The Sycamore Fig grew in abundance along the Nile, the region from which Abraham's ancestors came. Zohary and Hopf, authors of Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Oxford University Press), assert that Egypt was "the principal area of sycamore fig development." They note" that the fruit and the timber, and  sometimes even the twigs, are richly represented in the tombs of the Egyptian Early, Middle and Late Kingdoms. In numerous cases the parched sycons bear characteristic gashing marks indicating that this art, which induces ripening, was practiced in Egypt in ancient times."

Some facts about the Sycamore Fig- taken from Wikipedia

•               Sycamore fig or fig-mulberry (leaves resemble those of mulberry).

•               Cultivated since early times.

•               Native to Africa south of Sahel and North of Tropic Capricorn.

•               Grows naturally in Lebanon, naturalized in Egypt and Israel.

•               Grows up to 60 ft tall and 18 ft wide, heart shaped leaves.

•               Fruit is a large edible fig, 2-3 cm in diameter, ripening from buff-green to yellow to orange, borne in thick clusters, like all figs, contains a latex.

•               The Sycamore fig (GEMEZE) in modern Egypt is mostly used as food for domestic animals.

•               Near Orient- tree of great importance and extensive use, producing delightful shade.

•               Ancient Egypt, called it: Tree of Life, fruit and timber of Sycamore were found in Egyptian tombs.

•               Sycamore pollination requires the presence of symbiotic wasp, but this wasp is now extinct in Egypt (was this the result of God’s destroying the trees?).

•               Egyptian caskets of mummies were made from Sycamore wood.

In ancient Egyptian iconography the Sycamore stands on the threshold of life and death, veiling the threshold by its abundant low-hanging foliage.  Pharaohs called the Sycamore Fig Nehet.

With one striking exception, the fig tree symbolizes life, prosperity, peace and righteousness throughout the Bible. Micah 4:4 reads: “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and no one shall make them afraid.”

Sycamore Figs

Jesus alludes to this image of the righteous man enjoying God's peace under his own fig tree when he said to Nathaniel, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"  Nathaniel said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

The fruit-bearing tree is also an allusion to the crucifixion and to the third-day resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the third day, God said, “Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit.” The third day signals the exercise of divine power, or in more mystical terms, the arousal of God. In this, trees and pillars have similar symbolism. Both rise from the earth and stretch upward toward heaven. Jesus who was lifted up on the tree is the sign of God's power to draw all to Himself.

Tree's Association with Hathor-Meri

The fig tree is associated with the "Seed of God" (Gen. 3:15) in ancient Horite symbolism. The sycamore-fig was Hathor’s tree. Hathor conceived Horus by the overshadowing of the Sun. That is why she is shown with the Y-shaped solar cradle on her head.  Horus was the son of the Creator Ra. The oldest sycamore tree in Egypt is in Matarria and is known as Virgin Mary Tree.

Sycamore the Hator tree

Hathor’s tree was regarded as a ‘tree of life.’ The drink made from the fruit was said to make one wise. This is the tradition behind Genesis 3:6:  "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining knowledge, she took some and ate it."

The fruit taken by Eve might have been a fig from the Sycamore Fig tree (Ficus sycomorus) that grew in abundance along rivers in the region of Eden. This tradition is represented in paintings by the fig leaves covering Adam and Eve's private parts (Gen. 3:7).  G. E. Post (1902), a botanist specializing in the fauna of Syria and Palestine, believes that the leaves used by the first couple were from the common fig. It ranged from the Atlantic coast of Nigeria to the Indian Ocean and was cultivated along the Nile, the Read Sea and in Tyr and Sidon.

In Palestine and North Africa some fig trees bear a first crop in June. These are usually so ripe that they are easily shaken from the trees. Likely, this is behind the warning of Nahum 3:12, “All thy strongholds shall be like fig trees with the first-ripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater.”

Sycamore bearing Figs

The edible fig was called tena in Aramaic and tin in Arabic. The Hebrew word teena signifies the fig tree near which another is planted, as the fig and the caprifig (wild fig). It also refers to the union of male and female such as results from caprification. 

Caprification is a technique in which flowering branches of the wild fig are hung in the orchards of cultivated fig trees. This allows wasps to carry pollen from the flowers of the caprifig to those of the edible varieties to pollinate the cultivated trees.

In Deuteronomy 8: 8, Yahweh brings the Israelites into a land of olive oil, honey, wheat, barley, vines, pomegranates and fig trees. The importance of figs may be judged from the account of Abigail, who went out to meet David with an offering of two hundred fig cakes.

The Failure to Produce Fruit

In its natural habitat, the Sycamore Fig bears large yellow or red fruit year round, peaking from July to December. Jesus “cursed” the fig tree that failed to produce fruit. All fruit bearing trees were created to produce fruit, but this particular tree failed to do what it was created to do.

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. (Mark 11: 12-14)

Jesus uses this to instruct His disciples that they were created to bear fruit and failure to do so would mean sharing the destiny of a dead tree. What does not produce fruit is eventually cut down and thrown into the fire.

Original text by: Alice C. Linsley

Bread in ancient Egypt

Bread, the Staff of Life

Barley, emmer and pre-eminently wheat were used.

The emmer (an old kind of Eurasian wheat with bearded ears and spikelets that each contain two grains) was taken from a silo in which it had been stored after threshing and winnowing. The spikelets were moistened and pounded by men in mortars in order to separate the chaff from the grain. The bran was removed and probably used as animal feed.

Grinding

The grinding was mostly women's work and took hours of hard labour kneeling down every day, often causing disability. Only the amount of meal used each day was prepared. They fought tedium by singing chants such as "May the gods give my master strength and health" (or that is what their master, who left the record of these words, would have liked them to sing.)

   

Until the Middle Kingdom mills were placed on the floor, later they were raised onto workbenches, rendering the milling process somewhat less tiresome. The mill was a simple trough with two compartments. The grain was poured into the top compartment and by rubbing and crushing it with a grindstone, moved into the lower partition. Since the Roman Period rotary mills have been known.

After sieving, the larger particles were poured back into the top for further grinding. The sieves made from rushes and the like, were not very efficient and allowed grains of sand and little flakes of stone to remain in the flour, especially when soft mill stones were used.

This way of preparing the flour caused severe abrasion of the teeth above all of those who depended upon bread as their main source of nourishment.  But it affected all classes: Amenhotep III for instance suffered badly from his teeth.

kneading bread

The dough was made of flour, water and leaven - either some sour dough left over from the previous day or some leaven from the last brewing of beer - and was left to rise in warm moulds and then baked in closed ovens. During the New Kingdom ovens big enough to bake several loaves simultaneously came into use. These ovens often had ceramic steps on the inside and their outside was covered with clay. Round imprints made with jar openings prevented cracks forming in this outer layer.

Sesame seeds, honey, fruit such as dates, butter, eggs, oil and herbs were often added to the dough to flavour the bread. In the first millennium BCE yeast came into use, replacing the sourdough. Over forty varieties of bread and cake were made in the New Kingdom.

The following satirical description of baking dates from the New Kingdom - by this time ovens were generally accessed through an opening at the top:

The baker kneads incessantly and puts the loaves in the fire. His head is in the middle of the fireplace. His son holds him by his legs. Should they slip out of his hands, the father would fall into the fire.

According to this description the dough may have been formed into flat round disks which were stuck to the hot inner surface of the oven (in the manner pitta bread is still baked in Arabic countries) or tall, thin bread moulds standing upright in the fire were still used, as they had been during the Middle Kingdom.

Hand formed bread was baked on a clay disk covered by a lid. Later, a vaulted copper or iron sheet was used. The bread dough was baked on its convex part, while, turned upside down, the concave part served as a sort of kettle for cooking liquid foods.

When no oven was available, the Egyptians baked wafer thin bread on the hot sand, as desert dwellers have done since time immemorial (The bread is called “Shamsy” or Solar) and is still used in upper Egypt until today.

The making of Solar bread

Bread was often used as a synonym for food and hospitality. The New Kingdom scribe “Anny” exhorted his readers Do not eat bread while another stands by without extending your hand to him. The rich, hoping that good deeds would count in their favour in the afterlife often mentioned their generosity.  Sheshi, Harkhu and many others made such claims, using formulaic language which inspires little faith in the trustworthiness of their protestations:

I gave bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked.

Original text by: André Dollinger 

Scrolls Reveal Hangover Cure

Egyptian Scrolls Reveal Hangover Cure.

A 1900-year-old text medical papyrus suggests that wearing a leathery-leafed plant will cure a night of drinking. Why the ancient Egyptians may be the best doctors we have.

If a night of revelry has awoken you to a morning of agony, you’re in luck.

According to a medical papyrus from ancient Egypt, the leaves of the Alexandrian shrub chamaedaphne are the answer. If you’ve never heard of them you aren’t alone. The directions, from a recently translated 1,900-year-old-text, instruct sufferers to string the leaves into a garland to wear around their neck.

Used by the Egyptians for general headaches, the treatment could prove a successful remedy for whiskey-induced discomfort. The finding is just one potential new cure discovered in the largest collection of medical papyri now sitting at the Egypt Exploration Society at Oxford University’s Sackler Library.

Under translation until now, this current volume was among 500,000 others discovered in Oxyrhynchus—a city in Upper Egypt—in 1915. The papryi made its way to the Egypt Exploration Society and Oxford University’s Sackler Library after Arthur Hunt, a papyrologist, and Bernard Grenfell, an Egyptologist, assisted with the exaction of Oxyrhynchus Papyri with other archeologists.

The documents found at Oxyrhynchus, ranging from literary works to medical ideas, were written in Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The recently translated texts reflect the influence of Greek medical expertise.

1900 year old Papryi from Egypt

Translation of such a tremendous amount of papyri is no small task. Researchers have been working on translations for a possibly headache-inducing 100 years. Volume 80 is fresh off the press with 30 newly translated medical papyri including treatments for ailments such as hemorrhoids, ulcers, tooth complications, and even eye surgery.

“These texts are hugely important as they give us an insight into daily life at the time,” said Dr. Margaret Mountford, a papyrologist at the Egypt Exploration Society to The Daily Mail. “Some were copies of ancient Greek medical texts but there were some original medical texts—which look more like magical spells in some ways.”

One of the treatments involves removing the head of an ant and rubbing into a stye. Rainwater, dried roses, starch, poppy juice, white lead, gum Arabic, copper flakes, antimony oxide, washed lead dross and Celtic spikenard (a plant) apparently cure discharge from the eyes when mixed together.

Though wearing a leathery-leafed plant may or may help after a night of drinking, the discovery of these translations is an “eye-opening” look at the lives of ancient Egyptians and their doctors.

With cures ranging from wacky to brilliant, the findings represent "the largest single collection of medical papyri to be published," according to Vivian Nutton, a professor at University College London.

Spices still used as medication

The distinction is a major one considering the influence that previous Egyptian papyri have had on the medical community thus far. The “Edwin Smith Papyrus,” for example, was one of the first to be discovered in 1862, containing early roadmaps to surgical procedures. Another, the “Ebers Papyrus” brought some of the first knowledge of obstetrics and gynecology.

Whether or not the cures actually work remains to be seen. That people will be testing out a new cure to drinking as soon as possible, however, seems certain.

The Fayum paintings

The Oldest Modernist Paintings

Two thousand years before Picasso, artists in Egypt painted some of the most arresting portraits in the history of art

Between 1887 and 1889, the British archaeologist W.M. Flinders Petrie turned his attention to the Fayum, a sprawling oasis region 150 miles south of Alexandria. Excavating a vast cemetery from the first and second centuries A.D., when imperial Rome ruled Egypt, he found scores of exquisite portraits executed on wood panels by anonymous artists, each one associated with a mummified body. Petrie eventually uncovered 150.

Today, nearly 1,000 Fayum paintings exist in collections in Egypt and at the Louvre, the British and Petrie museums in London, the Metropolitan and Brooklyn museums, the Getty in California and elsewhere. (Gift of Edward S. Harkness, 1918 / Metropolitan Museum of Art; © The Trustees of The British Museum; © The Trustees of The British Museum / Art Resource, NY)

The images seem to allow us to gaze directly into the ancient world. “The Fayum portraits have an almost disturbing lifelike quality and intensity,” says Euphrosyne Doxiadis, an artist who lives in Athens and Paris and is the author of The Mysterious Fayum Portraits. “The illusion, when standing in front of them, is that of coming face to face with someone one has to answer to—someone real.”

By now, nearly 1,000 Fayum paintings exist in collections in Egypt and at the Louvre, the British and Petrie museums in London, the Metropolitan and Brooklyn museums, the Getty in California and elsewhere.

For decades, the portraits lingered in a sort of classification limbo, considered Egyptian by Greco-Roman scholars and Greco-Roman by Egyptians. But scholars increasingly appreciate the startlingly penetrating works, and are even studying them with noninvasive high-tech tools.

First century
Fayum painting

At the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen, scientists recently used luminescence digital imaging to analyze one portrait of a woman. They documented extensive use of Egyptian blue, a copper-containing synthetic pigment, around the eyes, nose and mouth, perhaps to create shading, and mixed with red elsewhere on the skin, perhaps to enhance the illusion of flesh. “The effect of realism is crucial,” says the museum’s Rikke Therkildsen.

Stephen Quirke, an Egyptologist at the Petrie museum and a contributor to the museum’s 2007 catalog Living Images, says the Fayum paintings may be equated with those of an old master—only they’re about 1,500 years older.

Doxiadis has a similar view, saying the works’ artistic merit suggests that “the greats of the Renaissance and post-Renaissance, such as Titian and Rembrandt, had great predecessors in the ancient world.”

Article from the “Smithsonianmag”