The navigation of the Red Sea
The Red Sea, originally named "Sinus Arabicus," was renamed to its present name probably because of the color its waters periodically take on due to the proliferation of the micro-algae "Trichodesmium erythraeum".
Cradle of great myths, it was the mute witness to the first fabulous sea voyages of the past of which we have record and which the ancient Egyptians undertook having had the need, from the earliest times, to import various goods including incense to be burned on altars during frequent religious ceremonies and myrrh oil used to perfume mummies.
The so-called "Palermo Stone" lists numerous merchandise brought in by Pharaoh Saure II between 2956 and 2946 B.C. from the fabled Punt.
The location of Punt has never been precisely indicated and is referred to by many as present-day Somalia, while more probably it may be assumed that by this designation were identified from time to time the various countries, beyond the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, with which at various periods Egypt had occasion to interweave trade relations.
The price of goods, transported by numerous caravans that traveled the long route, was burdened with high costs and to avoid such onerous intermediaries, the ruler Mentuhotep III (2010-1998 B.C.) planned to reach Punt from the Red Sea coast.
Henu, one of his ministers in charge of organizing the expedition, engraved its detailed account on the rock, describing the departure from the Nile, the crossing of the narrow gorge between the desert mountains called Uadi Hammamat and then reaching the coast carrying the materials needed for building ships:
"My lord commanded me to send a ship to Punt to obtain myrrh. I left the Nile with a retinue of 3,000 men. Daily I gave each of them a wineskin, two flasks of water, 20 loaves... I dug 12 wells to reach the Red Sea where I built the ship and launched it."
Shortly afterwards, around the 20th century, Pharaoh Senusret shortened the time of the route by opening a navigable canal, through Wadi Tumilat, to connect one of the eastern arms of the Nile delta to the Red Sea.
However, even the opening of the canal failed to make travel between Egypt and Punt easier because to the strenuous navigation in a sea that presented few places of refuge in case of trouble was added the danger of attack by bands of pirates.
A shipwrecked man of the time, a combination of Sinhbad and Robinson Crosuè, tells us the first long story of a shipwreck that is known:
"I set out for the king's mines in a ship 55 meters long and 18 ½ wide with a crew of 120 men the best in Egypt."
The departure therefore took place from some port in the Red Sea since the mines were almost certainly those of Sinai and the ship's measurements, though probably exaggerated, suggest not a small coastal vessel but a cargo ship of considerable tonnage for the time.
"While we were still at sea the storm came up"
he continues,
"and we sailed driven by the winds: the ship sank and only I survived. I was tossed by the billows to an island where I spent three days in solitude sheltering in the shade. I then set out in search of food and found figs and grapes leeks and cucumbers and also some fish and poultry; I had my fill and had some left over and after a few attempts I managed to light a fire to make a votive offering to the gods."
Later civil war divided the country, which was ruled by local princes or invaders, none of whom were able to cultivate a project as big as the Red Sea Fleet and the Senusret Canal, now abandoned, gradually silted up and incense continued to be imported again by caravans.
But around 1567 B.C. a new dynasty arose, the 18th, which, reuniting the country, ushered in Egypt's most splendid era and whose fifth ruler was Hatscepsut. In order to fulfill the wish of the god Amun who, appearing to her in a dream, had manifested his desire to see realized in the then capital Thebes "a pleasant place similar to Punt," the queen obeying him whom she proudly believed to be her father, gave orders to build a temple, now known by the name of Deir-el-Bari, adorned with numerous terraces on which to cultivate the incense trees typical of that country; to procure them, this first great queen of history organized a trading expedition to Punt across the Red Sea, reactivating those maritime links that had been disrupted for decades.
On one of the walls of this temple-tomb are exquisitely carved the bas-relief effigy of the queen and numerous episodes of this journey.
Egypt's life took place mainly on the Nile and in a picturesque manner comparable to Mark Twain's Mississipi: as riverboat designers the Egyptians were unsurpassed but in designing ships that had to face the sea they were limited to building boats only of greater than normal tonnage.
The keel, the backbone of every boat, was built, in all times and localities, with the ribbed framework curved upward and outward and to which the planking was fastened to give strength and rigidity to the ship. The Egyptians, on the other hand, merely reinforced the hull of their river constructions by increasing the number of relatively weak ribs and adding some crossbeams fixed from side to side on which the deck was fixed, very precarious innovations for vessels that had to face the open sea and not the placid waters of the river.
As in predynastic boats, their sterns described an elegant curve before spreading out like a papyrus flower. The country most renowned for timber from tall trees was the Libano and particularly the city-state of Biblo, called "Keben" by the Egyptians, so the ships of the pharaohs that went there to procure it were called "sepet Kebenit."
So five "Kebenit", as later came all deep-sea vessels, long and ornate vessels of probable Phoenician construction, without a keel, with a single mast set in the middle, reinforced by a long cable stretched from bow to stern, with twelve sailors and a ward of soldiers aboard each, commanded by the chief treasurer Nehesi, set sail heading adventurously for Punt, only to return to base after a few months, laden with the various commodities valuable at the time and with the coveted incense trees ready to be transplanted on the temple terraces.
The chronicle of this voyage, almost as in a ship's log, was depicted in the bas-reliefs, the only ones known of this kind, carved on its walls, which show in ample detail the fleet anchored in the port of Punt, the royal messenger offering the royal gifts, the whole royal family coming to pay tribute to the guests, the embarkation of the various goods and other events of various kinds. Despite their limitations, those ships, almost implausible to us today, performed their task admirably.
One of the many inscriptions reads:
"Voyage by sea and happy departure for the East. Happy arrival of the soldiers of the Lord of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) in the country of Punt... a powerful country of which the Egyptians had knowledge only by hearsay. Nothing equal had ever happened in this country under other rulers."
Attestation this acceptable only in part and dictated perhaps by the sovereign's desire to further magnify the remarkable feat since she could not boast, as her predecessors did, of great expeditions of a military nature. Her undoubted merit was that of reopening a route that the Egyptians had long abandoned and that in her time was recalled, like a legend, only in ports.
Around 900 B.C. Pharaoh Sheok allowed King Solomon's ships to cross the Red Sea, starting from the base of Ezion Gebir in the Gulf of Aqaba in order to purchase the valuable materials he needed to beautify the temple in Jerusalem.
During the reign of Neko II (609-594 B.C.E.) the Phoenicians set out from the shores of this sea to begin the circumnavigation of Africa, and once again the pressing need was felt to open a route between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to avoid this long circumnavigation. This pharaoh therefore ordered a colossal work for the time, the construction of a navigable canal that, starting from the easternmost branch of the Nile's delta near Es-Zakarik, was to head towards Lake Timsam and then flow into the Red Sea after crossing the Amarian Lakes. "The Pharaohs Canal" as it was later named was not completed apparently because of an inauspicious prophecy dreamed by the ruler and thus remained open but impassable.
The project was taken up by Darius I (522-486 B.C.) king of Persia, who completed the work by making the first historical connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and a cuneiform stele found at the mouth of the canal testifies to the event.
The canal then underwent partial modifications in the following centuries mainly at the point of its outlet to the Nile during the reign of Ptolemy II in the 3rd century BC.
Later Cleopatra, following the Battle of Actium, attempted to transfer her fleet to the Red Sea but it was not possible for her as the canal was no longer navigable and obstructed in several places.
Emperor Trajan, in the year 106 A.D. made it navigable once again so it took the new name of "Amnis Traianus." This is the description made of it by Herodotus:
"it takes four days of navigation to travel it and it is so wide that two triremes can navigate it in the opposite direction. The water is brought in from the Nile, a little to the north of Bubasti, near the Arabian city of Patumo. The outlet is in the Erythraean Sea. The excavation begins from that part of the Egyptian plain which is turned toward Arabia and is bounded to the south by the mountains opposite Memphis, where the stone caves are located. The canal follows for a stretch the slopes of the mountain then proceeds from east to west, then, amid deep gorges it heads toward the south, where the Noto blows, toward the Arabian Gulf."
Ptolemy II's interest in the Red Sea was great, and in addition to intervening in the navigability of the channel, he founded the coastal city of Berenice, not far from present-day Ras Banas, which gave a great impetus to the use of the Red Sea as a communication route. The port of this city soon became an important trading center and was located at the end of a caravan route that connected it to the interior of Egypt and specifically to the city of Qift (or Coptos).
With the fall of the Ptolemies and the conquer of Egypt by the Romans, the Red Sea routes were further increased being the easiest and relatively safe way to reach India from where many mainly voluptuary products were imported which Pliny the Elder thus commented:
"In Arabia they call it happy. But here the sea is happier. A hundred million sesterces cost us the luxury of our women."
In the time of Emperor Augustus from the port of Myos Hormos, today's Kosseir, about 120 ships departed seasonally for India, about six times as often as during the period of Ptolemy's rule.
Ancient ports were upgraded such as that of Berenice, the main port of call for these fleets and quite safe as it was carved out of an inlet protected from the prevailing periodic winds although it lacked fresh water that was imported from Kalatat, five miles away. Departures were driven by the monsoon wind blowing from the north in early August while arrival was expected in January when the wind reversed direction in the port of Eudamion, which had gradually become an important trading center. To protect this trade from the pirate raids that infested the area, it seems that Emperor Trajan even created a special fleet stationed in the Red Sea.
Another popular destination at the time was the island of Kerkira, today's Zabargad, where mines were located and the precious "olivines" were extracted.
During Arab rule, after four centuries of neglect, Caliph Othman, probably following the suggestions of the ingenious Mu'awiya, had it made navigable again and Arab ships made use of it for about two hundred years. In the year 825 the Irish geographer Dicuilus, who lived in the court of Charlemagne, published a "Geography", and in describing Egypt he states that:
"a monk named Phaedel, who set out to visit the Holy Land, after disembarking from the Mediterranean in Egypt, proceeded by reaching the Red Sea through a channel".
In the year 842, lingering violent disputes erupted between various caliphs, Abu Giafar (842 A.D.) had it closed by obstructing it with sand and stone blocks and in a few years for the second time it almost disappeared from view.
During the crusades in 1183 the Christian general Reynaud de Chatillon had some prefabricated ships transported by camel across the Negev desert to wrest control of the northern part of this sea from the Muslims.
The existence of the ancient canal was then ignored for centuries until 1484-85 when some monks sent by the pope to Abyssinia, passing by the canal, were able to admire its sand-strewnresti and make a detailed report.
It would not be mentioned until 1671 when the famous German mathematician and philosopher Leibniz, in a report presented to the French court proposed to King Louis XIV that this waterway be restored in order to better conquer the East, and was naturally considered to be for fools. Napoleon, before leaving for his Egyptian campaign, uncovered among the shelves this study by the philosopher and once on the spot he had himself taken to where there were the still visible remains of the old canal. But his engineers were not up to the task of tackling such a cyclopean work and hindered the project fearing that the passage of water would cause disasters on the Mediterranean coast and ignoring Laplace's theory that this hypothesis was insulting because "all the oceans and seas of the world have the same level."
For centuries, the importance of the Red Sea would decline until it was reduced to a mere transit route of pilgrims to Mecca only to flourish again after tens of centuries with the opening of today's Suez Canal conceived by Negrelli and Lesseps and triumphantly inaugurated with the trumpet blasts of the triumphal march of Aida.
For the past few decades, the Red Sea has also been ploughed by an ever-increasing number of boats, crammed with divers who flock to admire the underwater wonders of this basin entirely surrounded by desert and that if, as the Bible tells us, its waters allow Moses' people to exodus from Egypt to Palestine, those fleeing men also had a chance to admire the explosion of life and colors that characterize this spectacular underwater world.
