The Ptolemies                       89

route the most popular trade-route with the East.
The anarchy reigning in Syria, and the growth of
the hostile empire of Parthia, diverted the com¬
merce from the more northerly routes. These
were rendered still more unsafe by the irruption
of the Skythian tribes from beyond the Oxus into
Baktria. Another circumstance which tended to
make Alexandria the metropolis of the Eastern
Mediterranean, and which had effectually crippled
her only possible rival, was the sack by Alexander
of the great city of Tyre.

The ancient port of Naukratis had been com¬
paratively neglected in favour of Tyre by the
Oriental traders, owing to the long and perilous
desert-journey between the Nile and the Red Sea.
For the greater part of the year it was so intensely
hot that the caravans had to move at night,
guiding themselves across the trackless sands by
means of stars, and carrying their own water-
supply, like mariners, says Strabo^. Early
attempts to remedy this by means of a canal
between the two waterways had been made from
time to time. The first attempt of this kind
was due to a Sesostris of the twentieth century
B.C. Pharaoh Necho and Darius the Great^,
and finally Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.),
revived the idea. The latter built a large port
at Arsinoe, the modern Suez, for the purpose.
Owing, however, to the dangerous nature of the
navigation of the Heroopolite Gulf, with its shoals
1 Geog. xvii. I. 45.                   2 Herod, ii. 158.