Egyptian Geography

Military
Ismailia is the base for the Egyptian primary army named "the second field army".

Tourist Attraction In Ismaïlia
Ismaïlia does get tourists from within Egypt, but is not a major tourism destination for international tourists. The city is approximately a ninety minute automobile drive from Cairo. From Ismaïlia it is approximately a four hour drive to Sharm el Sheikh in South Sinai. Driving to the Taba Border Crossing at Taba and the Rafah Border Crossing at Rafah are both approximately four hour drives.

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.

Wadi Tumilat

The Wadi Tumilat, through which the Ismailia Canal runs over a considerable section of its course, can be regarded as the most easterly arm of the Nile. In the Early Historical Period it was already navigable during the Nile flood by boats of shallow draft, providing a means of transport for both people and goods to and from the east coast of Africa and Syria. It was much favored by the Pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom, who improved and deepened the channel. Ramses II was particularly active in this respect, building on the banks of the canal the towns of PeRamses and Pithom, which ranked with Bubastis as important trading and market centers. The remains of steeply battered masonry embankments show the canal to have been 150ft/45m wide and 16ft/5m deep. In later times the canal fell into disrepair, and the frequent incursions into the Wadi Tumilat by warlike nomadic tribes made it unsafe. In the seventh C. B.C. Necho set about improving it, but according to Herodotus abandoned the idea because of an unfavorable prophecy.

Museum

			To the east of the Garden of the Stelae is a small but very interesting Museum containing antiquities from the Canal Zone. So much destruction was caused by war and political disturbances that little material of the early period has survived. Outside the entrance to the museum is a sphinx found during the construction of the Canal.
On the walls of the museum are displayed a number of mosaic pavements, including one with representations of Phaedra and Hippolytus and the Dionysiac mysteries and with Greek verses, surrounded by birds. Other exhibits include Graeco-Egyptian terracottas and bronze figures (many of them from Tell el-Maskhuta). In the museum garden are fragments of a stela set up by Darius to commemorate the completion of the first freshwater canal 5mi/8km north of Suez, with a hieroglyphic inscription and cuneiform inscriptions in the Persian, Babylonian and Elamite languages.