What associations do you call the word "Egypt"? Surely you immediately thought about the pyramids in Giza, camels, pharaohs, mummies and hot sand. Do you know that in the north-eastern part of Egypt is Port Said, near which the Suez Canal begins? Planning to visit Egypt, where there is such a well-known resort, like Sharm el-Sheikh, and no less popular Hurghada, one must always see this curious attraction.
The Suez Canal, whose photo should be on the album of every self-respecting tourist who has visited Egypt, stretches straight as an arrow, with a blue ribbon, starting from Port Said and ending with the Suez Bay, which is located between the coast of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula. In other words, this channel is a direct route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and serves as the generally accepted boundary between Africa and Asia. Its length is 168 km (taking into account the approach channels to its main channel), the width sometimes reaches 169 meters, and the depth allows ships with drafts over 16 meters to pass freely between its banks without worrying about a possible shallow.
Curiously, the idea to dig a navigable channel from the banks of the Nile to the Red Sea came to mind even to the ancient Egyptians over 32 thousand years ago, even when the pharaohs of Seti I and Ramses II ruled. Some of the remaining old channel was useful for bringing fresh water to the site of construction - it is a question of the freshwater artery of Ismailia.
Around 500 BC. Darius, the then king of Persia, once again conquered the Red and Mediterranean seas after the conquest of Egypt. There are reasons to believe that the Suez Canal of that time allowed two boats to sail next to each other.
Then came the turn of the Europeans. At the end of the XV century. The idea of a new channel haunted many merchants, particularly Venetian merchants. The reason for this is the benefits of trade with India. Indian spices brought a lot of profit, however, at that time there were only two ways to deliver them to Europe. The first, the sea route, assumed a long journey to bypass the southern part of the African continent, and the second, land way, consisted in transporting goods along the sands from the shore of the Red Sea to the coast of the Mediterranean. Both ways were extremely inconvenient. For several centuries they gathered with strength and finally decided to act.
It is not known that more, eloquence, diplomat's talent or entrepreneurial grasp, helped the Frenchman F. Lesseps convince the Egyptian government to give a "green light" to the new grandiose project. The project implementation took more than ten years. Moreover, the Egyptians waved their shovels and shovels in overwhelming majority - the government recruited sixty thousand people a month for construction work. The European countries financed these works and, of course, most of the income from the channel was received by them too.
For navigation, the Suez Canal was opened in November 1869. At this solemn event in Port Said arrived 48 ships with 6 thousand passengers. Several years passed, Egypt started economic problems, and Britain and France decided to take this opportunity: they bought out 15% of Egypt's income from using the channel. The Egyptians' profit from ships passing through the Suez Canal was reduced to zero. Such an outrage, of course, could not last long. In 1956, the government of Egypt returned the channel to state ownership, which greatly angered the French and the British. Still, such a tasty morsel has disappeared! They did not want to come to terms with this decision and started military aggression against the Egyptians, including Israel for loyalty.
This international conflict lasted from the autumn of 1965 to March 1967. Thanks to the determination of its citizens and the support of the USSR, Egypt was still able to protect its interests and after carrying out work on further improvement, starting in 1981, the Suez Canal again began to work on it Began to pass ships, the draft of which reached 16 meters.