Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/57

 EGYPT AND THE EASTERN TRADE 21 chus, however (671-617 B.C.), Carian and Ionian set- tlements at the mouth of the Nile had opened out the Mediterranean to the Indo-Egyptian trade a trade which that monarch further secured by Syrian and Phoe- nician wars, if we may judge from Herodotus. Alex- ander the Great perceived the capabilities of the Nile delta as the natural entrepot for the East and West. Alexandria, which he ordered to be built on the neck of land between Lake Mareotis and the Mediterranean, grew into the emporium of the Eastern traffic for the Greek and Roman world, eclipsed the ancient glories of Tyre, and, on its modern site, again became one of the strategic positions of the globe as the half-way house of Indo-European commerce. From the founding of Alexandria (332 B. c.) its Asiatic trade grew with the improvements in the sea- passage. At a very early period the Arab navigators tried to avoid the northerly winds which sweep down the Egyptian coast, by unlading their cargoes near the modern Kosair, and transporting them overland to Thebes, the capital of the Nile Valley the fame of whose twenty thousand war-chariots and hundred gates had reached the ears of Homer. Ptolemy Philadelphus did much during his long reign (285 - 247 B. c.) to con- centrate the Eastern trade at Alexandria, the new cap- ital of Lower Egypt. He reopened the ancient cutting from Bubastis to the Bitter Lakes, and was only stayed from completing his canal to the Gulf of Suez by fears lest the Red Sea would flow in and submerge the delta. To escape the difficult navigation of the Suez Gulf,