At the time, he thought of directly connecting the two seas, but the Caliph Omar Ibn El-Khattab stopped him from executing this due to his belief that water from the Red Sea would flood all of Egypt. In 641 A.D., Amr Ibn El-A’as reopened the Canal for navigation and named it the Amir El-Mo’menin Canal. The Byzantines (circa 400 A.D.) neglected the Canal completely until it became unnavigable due to sand deposition. It started in Cairo at the bay mouth, and ended in El-Abbasa where it connects to the old Nile branch in Zagazig. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan (circa 98 A.D.), there was a need for the Canal for trade purposes so he re-dug it. In 285 B.C., Ptolemy II managed to overcome all the challenges that faced his predecessors as he restored navigation to the entire Canal after successfully digging the part between the Red Sea and the Bitter Lakes to replace the small unnavigable canals. He reconnected the Bitter Lakes and the Nile, but, like his predecessor, failed to connect them to the Red Sea except via small canals not suitable for navigation except during the flood season of the Nile. In 510 B.C., Darius I gave a lot of attention to the Canal. Necho II (also known as Nekós) did everything in his power to re-dig the Canal, but only managed to connect the Bitter Lakes to the Nile failing to connect them to the Red Sea. In 610 B.C., the Canal was left for sand deposition and a dam formed, thus, isolating the Bitter Lakes which suffered from the absence of maintenance for a very long time, form the Red Sea.
Today, remnants of that canal can be found in Geneva a place near the city of Suez ( ). That was to promote trade and facilitate communication between the East and the West as the ships came from the Mediterranean, sailed through the Nile until Zagazig and then to the Red Sea via the Bitter Lakes that were connected to it at the time. It is a well-established historical fact that the first one to come up with the idea of connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, via the Nile and its branches, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Senausert III of the Twelfth Dynasty.
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