Hector Totti, age 12, of Long Island, N.Y., for is question:

How old is the Suez Canal?

The Suez Canal that connects the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was opened to shipping on nov. 17, 1869. The pharaohs built canals in this sandy wasteland at least 4,000 years ago, and millions of years ago there was a natural channel across this narrow isthmus of land.

The Isthmus of Suez is a land bridge of sand dunes linking africa with asia. Its northern beaches are washed by the balmy Mediterranean, and its southern shoreline chives around the northern end of the red sea. At one point it is no wider than 75 miles. This region of the world was the cradle of several early civilizations, and the sandy isthmus played a major role in history 4,000 or 5,000 years ago.

There were thriving ports along the red sea and a rich civilization just a short journey away in the nile valley. But trade routes between the neighboring cultures had to cross the dry and scorching isthmus. The earliest routes from egypt probably went eastward from the nile to a pair of salty desert lakes, then turned due south to the gulf of suez.

We do not know when the Egyptians first planned and built waterways along this trade route, but they were in use around 2000 b.c. The Suez Canals of the pharaohs were the first man made canals of history. They made use of the bitter lakes along the desert route, little dreaming that these salty lakes were the remains of a still older waterway. Some 50 million years ago the Mediterranean and red seas were joined by a natural channel that separated the continents of Africa and Asia.

The old canals of the pharaohs became useless with neglect long ago. In the 16th century, when trade began between Europe and the far east, the long shipping lanes went south around the Cape of Good Hope. In the 18th century the french saw the advantage of a short cut across the Isthmus of Suez. For almost 100 years French engineers, diplomats and investors made and re made plans to build a waterway that would reduce their far eastern trade routes by 6,000 miles. The actual building of the 100 mile ditch through the desert took 10 years. The present Suez Canal was opened in 1869, so today is its 96th birthday anniversary.

The French planned to divide the cost and the ownership of the canal between the major nations likely to use it. They also planned it as a neutral waterway, open to every ship that paid the tolls for its use. But the suez canal has lived through a stormy period of human history, and some of its fine original plans have been changed.