In the same spirit as for the relations to southern Africa and to the Arabian states, and in a more pleasing way, provision was made in Egypt itself for the routes of commercial intercourse, in the first instance by Augustus, and beyond doubt by all its intelligent rulers. The system of roads and harbours established by the earlier Ptolemies in the footsteps of the Pharaohs had, like the whole administration, fallen into sad decay amidst the troubles of the last Lagid period. It is not expressly mentioned that Augustus put again into order the land and water routes and the ports of Egypt; but that it was done, is none the less certain. Coptos remained through the whole imperial period the rendezvous of this traffic.[271] From a recently found document we gather that in the first imperial period the two routes leading thence to the ports of Myos Hormos and of Berenice were repaired by the Roman soldiers and provided at the fitting places with the requisite cisterns.[272] The canal which connected the Red Sea with the Nile, and so with the Mediterranean Sea, was in the Roman period only of secondary rank, employed chiefly perhaps for the conveyance of blocks of marble and porphyry from the Egyptian east coast to the Mediterranean; but it remained navigable throughout the imperial period. The emperor Trajan renewed and probably also enlarged it--perhaps it was he who placed it in communication with the still undivided Nile near Babylon (not far from Cairo), and thereby increased its water-supply--and assigned to it the name of Trajan’s or the emperor’s river (_Augustus amnis_), from which in later times this part of Egypt was named (_Augustamnica_). [Sidenote: Piracy.] Augustus exerted himself also in earnest for the suppression of piracy on the Red and Indian Seas; the Egyptians long even after his death thanked him, that through his efforts piratical sails disappeared from the sea and gave way to trading vessels. No doubt what was done in that respect was far from enough. The facts that, while the government doubtless from time to time set naval squadrons to work in these waters, it did not station there a standing war-fleet; and that the Roman merchantmen regularly took archers on board in the Indian Sea to repel the attacks of the pirates, would be surprising, if a comparative indifference to the insecurity of the sea had not everywhere--here, as well as on the Belgian coast, and on those of the Black Sea--clung like a hereditary sin to the Roman imperial government or rather to the Roman government in general. It is true that the governments of Axomis and of Sapphar were called by their geographical position still more than the Romans at Berenice and Leuce Come to check piracy, and it may be partly due to this consideration that the Romans remained, upon the whole, on a good understanding with these weaker but indispensable neighbours. [Sidenote: Growth of the Egyptian active traffic to the East.]