Beneath are the titles and inscriptions in Persian, Turanian, and Babylonian; on the back is an inscription in hieroglyphics which has been destroyed with the exception of a word; but of the Persian and Turanian version we can still read a part: "Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of the lands, the king of this wide earth, the son of Hystaspes, the Achæmenid. Darius the king says: 'I, the Persian, have governed Egypt; I have caused a canal to be dug from the river which flows in Egypt to the sea which reaches to Persia.'" Darius did not, like Ramses and Necho, think only of a direct communication by water with South Arabia, but rather of a communication with Persia, and not only with the coasts of Persia but even with the mouths of the Indus. His expedition to explore the Indus did not sail back to the Persian Gulf, but coasted Arabia and returned to the Red Sea; and Herodotus tells us that Darius, after that expedition, made use of the southern sea.[399] After opening a road by water into the Red Sea, Darius could, if he thought fit, order the ships of the Ionians and Phenicians to the coast of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, or the Indus, and send the ships of Babylon to the Mediterranean. Traders made a constant use of the canal; the ships of Sidon and Tyre could sail from the Nile to the shores of Arabia Felix, a voyage which the Phenicians at the time of Solomon, and Uzziah of Judah, attempted to make from Elath with the permission and assistance of those princes. From Arabia they could visit the mouth of the Indus, as their ships had done nearly 500 years before at the time of Solomon.