It was Napoleon's engineers, those around 1800 n. Chr., the idea, a shorter trade route to India over a Suez channel. However has itself with the computation of French engineers showed a difference in height of 10 meters between the two seas. If under such circumstances built, will a large surface is flooded. Later the computations than wrong showed, and the last attempt to dig the channel was accomplished by the former French consul in Cairo and famous Canal excavator Ferdinand de Lesseps. It kept " Firman" or decree of the Khedive Said from Egypt to the channel for 99 years after conclusion lead.

In the year 1859 began Egyptian worker at the building of the channel under conditions, which described of historians as slave work, and which became project around 1867 with perfection. On 17 November 1869 the channel was inaugurated officially by the viceroy Ismail in extravaganten and complex ceremony. French, the British, Russians and other Royalty for the opening, those with RH-fell the planning of Cairo invited. A motorway was built for linkage Cairo, in order the new city Ismailia, an opera house was built, and Verdi was assigned, its famous opera to compose, was " Aida" for the opening celebration. Ironically Verdi " not completely the work in the time and; Aida" Premiere at the opera Cairo one year later.

The Suezkanal emerging on the political scene in 1956, during the Suez crisis. It became in July this year the Egyptian president of wet, at the age of 38, quit the nationalization of the channel on Mansheya Square in Alexandria before a jubilant crowd. Its decision became as reaction to the British, French, and American refusal for a loan for the setting up the Aswan dam was. The incomes from the channel, then he argued, became with the financing High dam project. The announcement solved a fast reaction from Great Britain, France and Israel, the invasion completely Egypt less than two months later.
Their effect would be condemned by the international community, and wet would finally state, would triumph. In the year 1967 the channel in the consequence six-day war, as Israel occupied Sinai peninsula closed, to act so that the channel as a buffer zone between armed forces. The Egyptians processing of the channel on the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and the renewed opening found in the year 1975. Since then the channel, which extends 167 km over the Egyptian desert, was extended twice. Today, over approximately 100 ships the channel daily, and with the threat by the war for a long time past, the cities and beaches along the lakes and the bitter channel as summer-resort for tourists serve.