The Suez Canal

From the desert road it looks impossible: a container ship stacked ten stories high, gliding through the sand as if on land. The Suez Canal cut the voyage between Europe and Asia by about 7,000 kilometers when it opened in 1869, and in 2023 a record 26,434 ships used it, roughly an eighth of world trade by common estimates. It has no locks, because the Mediterranean and the Red Sea sit at nearly the same level. It is also among Egypt's largest sources of foreign currency, which is why the collapse in traffic after attacks on Red Sea shipping began in late 2023 hit Cairo so hard.

The canal runs about 193 kilometers across the Isthmus of Suez, from Port Said on the Mediterranean to Suez on the Gulf of Suez, separating mainland Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. It passes through Lake Manzala, Lake Timsah beside the city of Ismailia, where the Suez Canal Authority has its headquarters, and the Great Bitter Lake, where convoys can pass. Ships move in scheduled northbound and southbound convoys. The channel is about 24 meters deep and admits ships drawing up to about 20 meters. A 2015 expansion added a 35-kilometer parallel channel and deepened another 37 kilometers, allowing two-way traffic along part of the route, and later works widened and doubled more of the southern section. The SUMED pipeline nearby carries crude from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

The French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps led the decade of construction, much of it by Egyptian forced labor, and the canal opened on November 17, 1869. Britain bought Egypt's shares in 1875 and soon occupied the country. Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal in 1956, prompting the Suez Crisis, and it was closed from 1967 to 1975 after the Six-Day War. In March 2021 the grounded Ever Given blocked it for six days. Houthi attacks on ships from late 2023 drove many lines around Africa, and revenue fell from a record $9.4 billion in fiscal 2022–23 to about $4 billion in 2024. The Suez Canal Authority reported $4.67 billion for fiscal 2025–26, up 23 percent, and by September 2026 weekly transits were climbing but remained well below 2023 levels.

• The Cape of Good Hope Route
  The long way around Africa between Asia and Europe, revived by the Red Sea crisis and the 2026 Iran war alternative route
• Mediterranean Sea
  The cradle sea of Western civilization, locked between three continents connects
• Red Sea
  A young ocean in the making, splitting Africa from Arabia connects
• The British Empire
  The largest empire in history, covering about a quarter of the worlds land by 1920 controlled by
• The Panama Canal
  The rain-fed staircase of locks that lifts ships across the Isthmus of Panama between the Atlantic and the Pacific fellow interoceanic canal
• Egypt
  The gift of the Nile and a bridge between Africa and Asia located in
• Cairo
  Egypt's capital, the Arab world's largest city beside the Nile national capital
• The Asia–Europe Route via Suez
  The main artery between Asian factories and European ports, through Malacca, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal part of
• The Bab-el-Mandeb
  The Gate of Grief between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, southern door of the Red Sea and the Suez route southern approach