Conclusion: A Sad Sea? A Silk Road?

We finished our discussion of the Red Sea history describing an happy event: the reopening of the Suez Canal in 1975. It was an impressive ceremony full of hope, organized purposely to close a circle with the initial inauguration one hundred and six years earlier. It was the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 which turned the Red Sea from a side extension of the Indian Ocean into a major waterway globally.