1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. Gavin Menzies
to these countries.”
The Ming Shi-lu says, “Year 6 [1408] Zheng He went to Hormuz and other countries returning home in Year 8 [1410].” Further corroboration that Zheng He’s fleets visited Cairo is found in maps. The 1418 map has this description: “There is a huge city here built with stone, the dimensions of stones can be compared to those used in tombs of the Qin dynasty Emperor.” The volume of Emperor Qin’s pyramid tomb and the volume of the Pharaoh Khufu’s pyramid at Giza are about the same—Qin’s has a larger base area, while Khufu’s is higher. The Map of Southwest Maritime Countries, from Zheng He’s era, also describes the Egyptian Pyramids.
So Egypt was not a new frontier to Zheng He: his forebears had been traveling there for centuries. They had reached Cairo through the shallow Red Sea–Nile canal, which Zheng He’s smaller junks would have used as well. From Cairo, the Mediterranean—and southern Europe—were well within reach.
Notes Chapter 5
1. Tai Peng Weng, “Zheng He Visit to Cairo,” p. 2, n. 18, and “Tale of Globalisation.”
2. Nelson had twenty-seven ships at Trafalgar.
3. Yingzong Shi-lu, chap. 31, 38, 45.
4. Xi Feilong, Yang Xi, and Tang Xien inTai Peng Wang, “Zheng He Delegation to Papal Court,” p. 6, detailing Hong Bao; and “Zheng He and His Envoys” p. 1.
5. Hall, Empires of the Monsoon, p. 87–89.
6. Ibid., p. 124.
7. Tai Peng Wang, “Zheng He and His Envoys, p. 1.
8. Ibn Tagri Birdi, Al Nujun AzZahira Fi Mulek Misr Wal Kahira.
9. Lam Ye Din and Liu Gang research, on www.gavinmenzies.net. See also Tai Peng Wang, “What Was the Route Taken to Florence”, p. 1.
10. Ibn Battuta vol 4, p. 813.
11. The Travels of Ibn Battuta AD 1325–1354, vol. 4 Hakluyt Society, 1994), p. 773.
12. Tai Peng Wang, “Zheng He and His Envoys,” p. 2. See also S. D. Goitein, “New Light on the Beginnings of Karim Merchants,” both available at www.gavinmenzies.net.
13. Tai Pang Weng, “Zheng He and His Envoys,” p. 2.
14. Tai Peng Wang, see 1434 website
15. Poole History of Egypt. Frank Cass and Co Ltd London 1894
16. Tai Peng Wang, see 1434 website.
17. On 1434 website.
18. Tai Pang Weng and Lam Yee Din research on 1434 website
CAIRO AND THE RED SEA–NILE CANAL
The best place to understand the importance of the River Nile to Cairo and Egypt is from the Windows on the World on the 36th floor of the Ramses Hilton. Every time I visit Cairo, I make a point of quaffing lager there surrounded by swifts and swallows twittering at sunset. To the west, highlighted by the setting sun, are the plateau and the Pyramids. The Moqattam Hills are to the east. North and south, the great river storms out of Africa, traveling in a great curve past the Hilton to the green smudge of the delta up north.
Between the Pyramids and the Moqattam Hills rests the large, wide valley over which modern Cairo sprawls. This valley was once more than eight hundred feet below the sea and some thirty to forty miles across. The enormous river gradually dried up thousands of years ago and became heavily forested and rich in game—elephants, hippopotamus, antelope, and all manner of deer and birds. The river, then as now, teemed with fish. Beautiful sunshine for most of the year coupled with the endless flow of water made life easy for hunters.1 This is why Egypt has one of the oldest civilizations in the world, comparable to that of China along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers or Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates.
Over the centuries the silt brought down through Africa by the mighty river has gradually been deposited on the eastern and western banks of what is now modern Cairo. As the river narrowed, the ports have moved steadily north.
The first Europeans here were Greeks, who built a city at Heliopolis, about four miles south of the Ramses Hilton on the east bank of the Nile. The Romans built Babylon, north of Heliopolis; the Arabs built Al-Fustat/Misr (Cairo) still farther north, and in the late Middle Ages the port moved north of where the Hilton stands now—first to Maks and then to Bulaq, which is now opposite Cairo’s main railway station. As the ports migrated, so did the entrance to the Red Sea–Nile canal from the river. By the 1420s, the entrance was below what is now the Hilton. Looking to the northeast from the Windows on the World, one can still see its outline. When it was filled in 1899, the walls on either side were left, allowing it to retain water. Today the tramway passes right over this forgotten canal—a green pencil line stretching from the Hilton to the railway station.2 One can travel beside the canal today from Cairo to Zagazig, as Marcella and I did in 2006; it remains about one hundred feet wide the entire way.
To see how the river has gradually narrowed, you can take a felucca up the Nile, sailing with a gentle breeze against the current, which in autumn is about half a knot. The old Roman fortress of Babylon is still visible, with a very old Coptic church on top of it. A little group of Coptic churches and a synagogue surround the remains of the Roman city. Here the Egyptian authorities, have erected a sign stating: THIS WAS THE ENTRANCE TO THE RED SEA NILE CANAL.
A mass of information exists about the evolution of the canal from the time of the Pharaoh Necho II (610–595 B.C.). Herodotus tells us (Histories) that four steles were erected by Darius (522–486 B.C.) to commemorate the canal’s construction. Berkeley professor Carol A. Redmount in “The Wadi Tumilat and the Canal of the Pharaohs” writes that the steles were placed on elevations so they could be seen by boats on the canal. The westernmost stele was discovered at Tell el-Maskhuta; the others were found along the canal, ending about six kilometers north of Suez. One face of each stele features hieroglyphs, the other cuneiform (in Persian, Elemite, and Babylonian characters).3
Professor Redmount