Word: canals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Tourism is as valuable as wells, and 50 new hotels are now either being built or are under consideration. Egyptian officials also expect the reopened Suez Canal to eventually bring in $450 million a year in foreign exchange. Traffic through the canal has picked up steadily since it was reopened last June-though it is still below the 1967 level-and Japan recently granted a $100 million loan to widen and deepen it. "We are in a transition period and we have serious problems," says Sayed Marei, President of the Egyptian Parliament and one of Sadat's top advisers...
Successful Crossing. The fact the deal was indeed made indicated that both sides were really concerned about creating a cooperative new spirit of Sinai. Egyptian anxiousness that the accord be carried out was apparent as the country celebrated the anniversary of the successful crossing of the Suez Canal by Egyptian troops. In other years, such an observance would have been the occasion for anti-Zionist rhetoric. This year the mood was celebratory-partly because it coincided with the religious festival of 'Id el Fitr, when Moslems end their month-long Ramadan fast...
...Nile River called the Pelusiac branch (after the ancient city of Pelusium at its mouth). The nature of the other waterway baffled the geologists until they visited the area and found man-made embankments. With that, they realized that these old mounds marked the route of a remarkable ancient canal that predated the Suez Canal by as many as 4,000 years...
From its Mediterranean terminus at Pelusium, the so-called Eastern Canal probably headed south for ten miles, veered across what is now the Suez Canal near the town of Qantara, and approached Lake Timsah near Ismailia, where old canal remnants have previously been found. Though wind, sand and irrigation works have wiped out much of the canal's course, Geologists Amihai Sneh, Tuvia Weissbrod and Itamar Perath hint at an intriguing possibility: the waterway may have split in two, one branch following a great east-west depression called Wadi Tumilat to link with the Nile, the other continuing south...
...know why. Writing in American Scientist, they point out that a wide channel would have made it an effective barrier against invaders from the east, a constant threat to ancient Egypt. In addition, it would have provided essential irrigation water. Could the ancient Egyptians have built such a great canal? Yes, say the geologists. After all, hundreds of years earlier the Egyptians had already tackled another project of comparable magnitude: the construction of their first pyramids...