The first person who thought of connecting the White and Red Seas indirectly through the Nile and its branches was Pharaoh Senwosret III of the Twelfth Dynasty, with the aim of consolidating trade and facilitating transportation between the East and the West. Ships coming from the Mediterranean were travelling down the Nile to Zagazig and then to the Red Sea through the bitter lakes that were connected to it at that time. Traces of this canal can still be found today in Geneva near Suez
