Levantine Sea to be the oldest known ocean crust worldwide. The Suez Canal was completed in 1869, linking the Levantine Sea to the Red Sea. The Red Sea's level is higher than the Eastern Mediterranean, so the canal serves as a tidal strait that pours Red Sea water into the Mediterranean. The Bitter Lakes, which are hypersaline natural lakes that form part of the canal, blocked the migration of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean for many decades, but as the salinity of the lakes gradually equalized with that of the Red Sea, the barrier to migration was removed, and plants and
Suez Canal recorded in the "Description de l'Égypte", include detailed maps that depict the discovery of an ancient canal extending northward from the Red Sea and then westward toward the Nile. Later, Napoleon, who would become French Emperor in 1804, contemplated the construction of a north–south canal to connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. But the plan was abandoned because it wrongly concluded that the waterway would require locks to operate. These would be very expensive and take a long time to construct. This decision was based on an erroneous belief that the Red Sea was higher than the Mediterranean. The