From the earliest times the Red sea has been a great highway of commerce between India and the Mediterranean lands, and traversed successively by Egyptians, Phenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs. It is first mentioned in the book of Exodus, on occasion of the passage of the Israelites, which is supposed to have taken place a little s. of the present town of Suez. The first recorded navigation of the sea was in the time of Sesostris, in the 14th c. me. Three centuries later, I iebrew and I'henician ships traversed the Red sea on the voyage to Ophir, from the port of Eziongeber, at the head of the gulf of Aka bah. The gulf of Suez was for many centuries apparently the scat of the Egyptian trade in this sea and to India. After the foundation of Alexandria, and during the dynasty of the Ptnlomies and the Roman dominion, the trade with India was vigorously carried on though the chief seat of traffic was moved further southward, to tha towns of Berenice and Myos Hormos, which sent out annually large fleets to India. After the establish ment of the Mohammedan empire in the 7th c., an important trade with India and China seems to have been carried on through the Red sea; and through it, in the period between the 12th and 15th c., the goods of the east passed to the Venetian factories in
Alexandria, until the discovery of the route round the cape of Good hope diverted rho traffic with India into a different channel, and put an end to the commerce of the Red sea. Since the establishment of the so-called overland route to India, and the opening of the Suez canal in 1870, the Red sea has regained its importance as the highway of commerce between Europe and the cast. See SUEZ.
For the classical geography of the Red sea, the Geographi Creel )finores of huller (Paris, 1855), and the atlas appended to it may be consulted. Fuller information on the subject of the Red sea, its coasts, and adjacent lands, will be found in the elder Niehuhr's lrarels, and Description of Arabia, in the ?ravels of Salt, Burekhardt, Rfippell, and others; in Wellsted's Observations on the Coast of Arabia, (Pc.; in Ehrenberg's work on the Coral Islands of the Red sea; Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. ii.; and the Admiralty Chart, based on the surveys of Moresby, Carless, and others.