The Canal of the Pharaohs surviving into the seventeenth century

How would history change if the canal linking the Nile region to the Red Sea remained open into at least the seventeenth century?

The route would draw Spanish and Venetian traffic east earlier, enrich Egypt, complicate Ottoman control, and redirect competition over the spice trade and Indian Ocean bases.

The surviving waterway could enrich Egypt through passing trade and make its rulers less willing to accept Ottoman control. Merchants seeking access to India would give Egypt a reason to pursue a more pragmatic foreign policy even when that conflicted with Ottoman efforts to control the spice trade. The conversation tentatively extends the resulting competition over the canal and Silk Road to a longer survival of Zoroastrianism as a dominant culture in Iran. Canal revenue could fund Mamluk resistance and create an opening for the Byzantines to survive by playing the Mamluks against the Ottomans. A different branch has the Mongols committing more heavily to Egypt because its canal income makes conquest more attractive. The discussion presents these as branching possibilities in a changed timeline.