The Xerxes Canal () was a navigable

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface ...

through the base of the

Mount Athos Mount Athos (; ) is a mountain on the Athos peninsula in northeastern Greece directly on the Aegean Sea. It is an important center of Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox monasticism. The mountain and most of the Athos peninsula are governed ...

peninsula in

Chalkidiki Chalkidiki (; , alternatively Halkidiki), also known as Chalcidice, is a peninsula and regional unit of Greece, part of the region of Central Macedonia, in the geographic region of Macedonia in Northern Greece. The autonomous Mount Athos reg ...

, northern

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

, built in the 5th century BC. King

Xerxes I Xerxes I ( – August 465 BC), commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was a List of monarchs of Persia, Persian ruler who served as the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC. He was ...

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

ordered its construction, which was overseen by his engineer Artachaees, as part of Xerxes' preparations for his second invasion of Greece in the

Greco-Persian Wars The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Polis, Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world ...

. It is one of the few monuments left by the

Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

.B. S. J. Isserlin, R. E. Jones, V. Karastathis, S. P. Papamarinopoulos, G. E. Syrides and J. Uren "The Canal of Xerxes: Summary of Investigations 1991-2001" The Annual of the British School at Athens Vol. 98 (2003), pp. 369-385 .

Location

The canal is located near the village of Nea Roda in the Athos peninsula. Starting to the east of Nea Roda on the north coast it follows a fairly straight southwesterly direction towards the south coast, ending west of the village Tripiti. The canal is now completely covered by sediments, but its outline is visible from air photos, and has been detected by several surveys. The total length of the canal was , its width was , and it was deep, enough for a

trireme A trireme ( ; ; cf. ) was an ancient navies and vessels, ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greece, ancient Greeks and ancient R ...

to pass. One end is at , the other at .

History

According to the ''

Histories Histories or, in Latin, Historiae may refer to: * the plural of history * ''Histories'' (Herodotus), by Herodotus * ''The Histories'', by Timaeus * ''The Histories'' (Polybius), by Polybius * ''Histories'' by Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust) ...

'' of the ancient Greek historian

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

, which recounts the events of the

, the Persian commander Mardonios, in 492 BC, lost a great part of his fleet, 300 ships and 20,000 men, in a storm going around the cliffs of the Athos peninsula, during the

First Persian invasion of Greece The first Persian invasion of Greece took place from 492 BC to 490 BC, as part of the Greco-Persian Wars. It ended with a decisive Classical Athens, Athenian-led victory over the Achaemenid Empire during the Battle of Marathon. Consistin ...

. Xerxes, in preparation for the

Second Persian invasion of Greece The second Persian invasion of Greece (480–479 BC) occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars, as King Xerxes I of Persia sought to conquer all of Greece. The invasion was a direct, if delayed, response to the defeat of the first Persian invasi ...

, in 483 BC ordered a channel built through the Athos isthmus in order to avoid falling prey to the same catastrophe.Herodotu
VII, 22
/ref> Herodotus speculates that pride also was a motivating factor:

As far as I can judge by conjecture, Xerxes gave the command for this digging out of pride, wishing to display his power and leave a memorial; with no trouble they could have drawn their ships across the isthmus, yet he ordered them to dig a canal from sea to sea, wide enough to float two triremes rowed abreast.

The work, led by the two Persians Bubares and Artachaees, lasted three years. It was completed in 480 BC by forcibly recruited locals, as well as

Egyptian ''Egyptian'' describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of year ...

and

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

n workers. The length, according to Herodotus, was 12 stadia (about ), and it was capped at both ends by

dikes Dyke or dike may refer to: General uses * Dyke (slang), a slang word meaning "lesbian" * Dike (geology), formations of magma or sediment that cut through and across the layering of adjacent rocks * Dike (mythology), ''Dikē'', the Greek goddess ...

to prevent surf from clogging it. The canal soon fell into disrepair as it was not used after the Persian fleet had passed through on their way first to the

battle of Artemisium The Battle of Artemisium or Artemision was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The battle took place simultaneously with the land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off t ...

and then on to that of Salamis. The canal still formed part of the landscape 80 years later as it is mentioned in passing by Thucidydes in The History of the Peloponnesian War from around 400 BC:

After the taking of Amphipolis, Brasidas and his allies marched to the so-called Actè, or coastland, which runs out from the canal made by the Persian King and extends into the peninsula; it ends in Athos, a high mountain projecting into the
Aegean sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...
.

Archaeology

Funeral mound at the southern end of the Canal of Xerxes

The veracity of Herodotus' claims was doubted already in ancient times, but land surveys and geophysical investigations of the peninsula have confirmed the canal's existence. In the second century BC, Demetrius of Scepsis stated—based on first-hand information—that there had indeed been a canal there, but he could not trace all of it. Three separate modern land surveys, led by the Frenchman M. Choiseul-Gouffier in the 18th century, by T. Spratt of England in 1838, and by the German A. Struck in 1901, all found evidence of the canal in the central part of the isthmus. But as late as 1990 the length and width of the canal was in dispute, as was the question of whether the canal reached all the way across the isthmus or if ships were dragged through parts of it. A British and Greek collaborative geophysical investigation launched in the 1990s found, using seismic survey and sediment analysis, that the canal had crossed the whole isthmus. Herodotus' account was vindicated, as they also confirmed that the canal was constructed rapidly and that it was only used for a short period of time. Some studies suggest the workers were both regular Achaemenid soldiers and recruited local Balkan people (Thracians and Greeks) with the legal status of '' kurtaš,'' who were paid for and fed from the Persian treasury.

References

Bibliography

Ancient sources

, '' The Histories'' *

Thucydides Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...

, ''

History of the Peloponnesian War The ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' () is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Classical Athens, Athens). The account, ...

Modern sources

* B.S.J. Isserlin, R.E. Jones, V. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, G.E. Syrides, J. Uren: "The Canal of Xerxes: Summary of Investigations 1991–2001" ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' Vol. 98 (2003), pp. 369–85 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30073214 * B.S.J. Isserlin: ”The Canal of Xerxes: Facts and Problems”. ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' 86 (1991), 83–91. * B.S.J. Isserlin, R.E. Jones, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, J. Uren: “The Canal of Xerxes: Preliminary Investigations in 1991 and 1992”. ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' 89 (1994), 277–84. * B.S.J. Isserlin, R.E. Jones, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, G.E. Syrides, Y. Maniatis, Y. Facorellis, J. Uren: “The Canal of Xerxes: Investigations in 1993–1994”. ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' 91 (1996), 329–40. * B.S.J. Isserlin, R.E. Jones, V. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, G.E. Syrides, J. Uren: "The Canal of Xerxes: Summary of Investigations 1991–2001". ''Annual of the British School at Athens'' Vol. 98 (2003), pp. 369–85 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30073214 * R.E. Jones, B.S.J. Isserlin, V.K. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, G.E. Syrides, J. Uren, I. Balatsas, Ch. Kapopoulos, Y. Maniatis, Y. Facorellis: ”Exploration of the Canal of Xerxes, Northern Greece: the Role of Geophysical and Other Yechniques“. ''Archaeological Prospection'' 7 (2000), 147–70
Abstract
. * V.K. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos: ”Preliminary Results of the Implementation of the Shallow Seismic Techniques in Order to Detect the King Xerxes' Canal“. ''Extended Abstract. Newsletter'' (European Geophysical Society) 53 (1994), 8–9. * V.K. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos: “The Detection of the Xerxes Canal by the Use of Shallow Reflection and Refraction Seismics – Preliminary Results”. ''Geophysical Prospecting'' 45 (1997), 389–401
Abstract
. * V.K. Karastathis, S.P. Papamarinopoulos, R.E. Jones: “2-D Velocity Structure of the Buried Ancient Canal of Xerxes: An Application of Seismic Methods in Archaeology”. ''Journal of Applied Geophysics'' 47 (2001), 29–43. * Y. Bhattacharjee: “Persian Canal Discovery Is Testament to Ancient Engineering Skills”. ''The New York Times'', 13. November 2001

. {{coord, 40.3732, N, 23.9245, E, source:wikidata, display=title Canals in Greece Chalkidiki Greco-Persian Wars Achaemenid Empire Ancient canals Ship canals Mount Athos Xerxes I