Archaeologists have found the remains of a huge Roman fortress and fortified town near the Suez canal that guarded one end of a trade route linking ancient Egypt and Palestine.

The discovery provides dramatic clues to the biblical peninsula's murky history.Roman records spoke of a fortress that stood in the vicinity, but excavators were amazed by the size and grandeur of the ruin they are uncovering. There had been no indication of the existence of a large town servicing the fortress.

"This changes everything we thought we knew," said Mohammed Abdel Maksoud, head of the excavation. "In one moment we've changed the face of the desert. There's life again here in the Sinai."

In mid-September, excavators began unearthing the 1,700-year-old fortress in sight of a modern highway connecting Egypt's western Sinai with Israel that generally follows the ancient road. The site is a five-minute drive from the Suez Canal.

The discoveries are the latest in a series of surprises for archaeologists working hard to stay ahead of bulldozers carving a canal system in the Sinai desert that is to transform thousands of arid acres into farmland.

The Salaam Canal follows the ancient highway's path and threatens 1,000 known antiquity sites. So far, Egyptian and foreign teams are excavating or recording 23 sites along a 20-mile stretch.

Maksoud said the discovery is the first Roman fortress found in northern Egypt. Similar forts in the Nubian region, which straddles the Egypt-Sudan border, were lost in the 1960s with construction of the Aswan High Dam and the creation of Lake Nasser behind it.

The fort, once defended by 12 towers, is unique in Egypt because its mud-brick walls are colored white, Maksoud said. "Maybe they mixed chalk with mud. We don't know, because we've never seen anything like this," he said.

Work at the site is frantic. The excavators worry that much history will be lost if water moves in. Relics peek from their sandy graves. Coins and pottery from Egypt and other outposts of imperial Rome already have emerged from the bleak landscape.

In late September, diggers unearthed a worn limestone statue of a bemused lion, his front paws crossed casually. Later came a colored erotic fragment showing a cheerful, nude male bather that once was part of an elaborate decoration adorning a Roman bath.

"All you have to do is scratch the surface and something appears," said Maksoud, who raced from one excavation to the other under a bright late-September sun.

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The mud-brick fortress, 660 feet by 412 feet, originally was surrounded by a large town that grew up near the Pelusium branch of the Nile and two large lakes. Today, ruins of the town stretch for almost half a mile in salty desert soil.

The fortress marked the entrance to the rich Nile Delta, where Asia meets Africa. Traders, travelers and armies had used the highway near the Mediterranean Sea from earliest times.

Maksoud said the fortress served two purposes for the third-century Romans.

But for Maksoud the fort's more important function was financial, as the toll station controlling the lucrative trade along the popular highway. Traders and caravans had to stop and buy a government stamp allowing them to carry on with their business.

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