Ismailia Canal

The Ismailia Canal or Freshwater Canal, constructed in 1858-63 to supply the villages on the Suez Canal with drinking water and enlarged in 1876, is to a large extent a modern replacement of an ancient canal dating from the Middle Kingdom which ran east from the Nile, watered the Biblical land of Goshen with its various branches and flowed into the Bitter Lakes, making them sweet (as Strabo tells us) and connecting them with the Red Sea.

The Biblical Land of Goshen lay to the south of the Ismailia Canal, roughly in the triangular area between El-Zagazig, Bilbeis and Abu Hammad. It is first mentioned in Genesis 45: 10, when Pharaoh says to Joseph: "And thou shalt dwell in the Land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and