Suez

Sources from old books:

1638. The merchants mappe of commerce wherein by Lewes Roberts.

Of SVES, and the trade thereof. SVES is now the reliques of that ancient Heros, to which place Cleopatra carried her Gallies by land after the defeate of Marke Anthony her beloved, accounted fifteene leagues from the neerest branch of Nilus running to Cairo, it is strengthned by a strong late fortification raised by the Turkes, not onely for the defence of the Towne, but in defence of those his Gallies here kept to command these Seas, and his maritime coasts on both •…des the gulfe; and here it was that severall Aegyptian Soltans intended to digge a channell, and thereby joyne the commoditie of this Sea to the Mediterranean, but all of them desisting ere the worke was brought to perfection, the reliques whereof in many places remaines yet to be seene, the divine providence having given bounds to Seas which the wit and power of man, though Princes, cannot transpose or alter. This place would long since have given way to the envie of time by decay and ruine, had it not been for that relique of trade which is here preserved by a few inhabiting Merchants, and the station for the great Turkes Gallies, which he is inforced to build on the Mediterranean Sea, for want here of wood and fit materials, and thence convay the same hither by camells and dromedaries in severall •…eeces, where afterward they are set up and accordingly imployed, sometimes mastering the Portugalls, and other Kings his neighbours, and sometimes againe being by them mastered, according to the fortune of warre; other subject of trade I finde not •…ere materiall, therefore in silence passe it over. And having thus then briefly run through the principall places of trade, comprised within the limits of Aegypt, and noted the concordancie of the waights and measures used commonly throughout this whole Country, both with Venice the former great traders hither, and with ours in England, before I come to the Coines currant of this Countrey, it will not be unproper I should insert a concordancie of the waights of this place with some other neighbouring Countries, according as I have gathered them out of the workes of Alexander de Pasi, a Venetian Merchant, which here for many yeares resided.