2014 to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for to speed up the canal's transit time. The expansion intended to nearly double the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day. At a cost of LE 59.4 billion(US$9 billion), this project was funded with interest bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals. The Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel in 2016. This side channel, at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal. As the East Container Terminal is located on the Canal itself, before the construction of the new side channel it was not possible to berth or unberth vessels at the terminal while a convoy was running. Precursors Ancient west–east canals were built to facilitate travel from the Nile to the Red Sea. One smaller canal is believed to have been constructed under the auspices of Senusret II or Ramesses II. Another canal, probably incorporating a portion of the first, was constructed under the reign of Necho II, but the only fully functional canal was engineered and completed by Darius I. Second millennium BC James Henry Breasted attributes the earliest known attempt to construct a canal to the first cataract, near Aswan, to the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt and its completion to Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt. The legendary Sesostris (likely either Pharaoh Senusret II or Senusret III of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt) may have constructed the ancient canal, the Canal of the Pharaohs, joining the Nile with the Red Sea (BC 1897–1839), when an irrigation channel was constructed around BC 1848 that was navigable during the flood season, leading into a dry river valley east of the Nile River Delta named Wadi Tumilat. (It is said that in ancient times the Red Sea reached northward to the Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah.) In his Meteorology, Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote: One of their kings tried to make a canal to it (for it would have been of no little advantage to them for the whole region to have become navigable; Sesostris is said to have been the first of the ancient kings to try), but he found that the sea was higher than the land. So he first, and Darius afterwards, stopped making the canal, lest the sea should