This canal played a vital role in the city's history, and its maintenance was a perpetual concern not only of the Ptolemies, but of the Romans and the Muslim dynasties as well. We have a number of lapidary inscriptions and literary texts which mention cleaning, widenings and repairs. For instance, a bilingual inscription, in Greek and Latin, found near the Canopic Gate, states that Augustus renovaated the canal in AD 10-11: 'The emperor Caesar, son of a god, Augustus, high priest, has brought the august river to Schedia, so that it flows [...] through the whole city. [Given] when Gaius Julius Aquila was prefect of Egypt, in the year 40 of Caesar.'

The archaeological remains and avove all the accounts of travelers, both Arab and Western, provide us with information about this reliance on the waters of the Nile. A special feature of Alexandria that must be emphasized is that, in contrast to the rest of the Greek world, in the dry season the rising of the Nile used to bring the city more water than usual. The water supply had to be regulated by means of dams and locks. In 1318 Abul Feda, Prince of Hama and a relative of the Ayyubids, went into raptures: 'the canal, which comes from the Nile, is an enchanting sight. It is steep-sided, covered in greenery on both banks and surounded by gardens. The poet Dhafer also called Alhaddad, praises it too: "how often has it offered to your yes in the evening light a sight which filled your heart with the purest of delight!"'

In 1422 Ghillebert de Lannoy, who had been instructed by Henry V of England to report to him on the state of the region in connection with a plan to re-establish a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem, gave this description: 'Underneath the streets and houses, the whole city is hollow. Under the ground there are conduits roofed over with arches, through which the wells would have no fresh water in the town, since it rains there very little or not at all and there are neither wells nor natural springs in the city. Thirty miles from here, starting from a village on the Nile called Hatse, a man-made canal begins its course. It runs for a mile close to the city, along the walls, and flows into the sea in the Old Harbour [Western Harbour]. Every year, at the end of August and throughout all of September, the River Nile, which rises considerably at this time of year, flows through this canal to fill all the wells of the city for a year, and also the wells outside the city, which are used for watering the gardens.'

In 1737, Captain Norden of the Danish Royal Navy speaks in his turn of the canal which he calls 'the calisch or canal of Cleopatra' (calisch is a deformation of khalig- the Arabic for canal- and it is attributed to Cleopatra, like all things ancient): 'It was simply dug out of the earth, without being re-inforced by any facing in stone or brick and it has filled up by degrees. [...] Nowadays it resembles a badly maintained ditch, and only just enough water flows in it to fill the reservoirs required to meet the needs of modern Alexandria. I crossed it dry-shod in the month of June.'

Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria: Rediscovered (George Braziller Publisher, NY, 1998), p 130-131.