The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. The artificial waterway crosses Egypt’s Isthmus of Suez, creating a direct maritime route between Europe and the Indian Ocean without requiring ships to sail around Africa.
The modern canal runs from Port Said on the Mediterranean to Suez, near the northern end of the Gulf of Suez. Construction began in 1859 under the direction of Ferdinand de Lesseps, and the canal officially opened on 17 November 1869. It was built as a sea-level canal, so it has no locks.
The canal’s importance is both commercial and strategic. It sharply reduces the distance between ports in the Atlantic and those in the Indian Ocean, making it one of the world’s most important shipping corridors. Egypt nationalized the canal in 1956, triggering the Suez Crisis, and the waterway was closed from 1967 until 1975 after the Six-Day War.
The Arabian Sea is connected to the Red Sea farther south through the Gulf of Aden and Bab-el-Mandeb, but it is not the sea directly linked to the Mediterranean by the canal.