There are few achievements of modern man which can compare to the Suez Canal. In Egypt-the land of the most famous wonders of antiquity-the Suez Canal was built as the first technical wonder ofthe industrial revolution. Ferdinand de Lesseps was a man straddling two epochs-the romantic utopism of Saint­ Simon and the modern world of technocracy. The gigantic project was at its start shouldered by the crowds of tens of thousands of forced laborers still available and ended as a show-piece for modern mechanical earth-moving techniques. The canal builders themselves were still polyhistors in the old sense: engineers­ cum-zoologists; naval officers-cum-geologists; diplomats meddling with chem­ istry.