In November 1854, Egypt’s viceroy Sa‘id Pasha issued a firman (decree) granting his friend Ferdinand De Lesseps the exclusive power to constitute a universal joint-stock company to connect the Mediterranean and Red Sea by means of a maritime canal, and operate it for ninety-nine years. Notwithstanding its importance, this firman was not the first Ottoman decree ordering the construction of the canal. Almost two centuries earlier, a decree issued by the Ottoman Sultan Selim II ordered his Egyptian viceroy to assemble all “experienced architects and engineers and send necessary manpower” to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, to dig a canal. The Portuguese naval expedition was the cause of increasing anxiety in the Ottoman court, and the Sultan, already strengthening its naval arsenal, saw in the isthmus of Suez a barrier to his naval power. While both Selim II and Sa‘id died shortly after issuing their decrees, the former’s firman never materialized, and was soon forgotten, while the remembered is the Canal’s patron. This paper takes this failed attempt to dig through the isthmus as a vantage point though which to explore the transformations in government that made digging the Suez Canal, the engineering marvel of the nineteenth century, possible. It sets out to answer two questions: Why did this sixteenth century attempt to cut through the isthmus fail? What are the legal, political, economic and technical transformations that allowed for the project success in the nineteenth century? It challenges the standard narrative, propagated in part by the Suez Canal Company, which explains success through the technological developments intensifying in the nineteenth century, not the least because the Mediterranean and Red Sea were connected earlier by the ‘ancient canal.’ Instead, I argue that it was the rise of the joint-stock company as a political, economic and legal structure that allowed for the successful undertaking of the project. I explore the genealogy of this company, focusing primarily on the commercial and legal history of nineteenth century Egypt, the history and limitations of chartered companies, and the history of European joint stock companies.