The trade along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and across Palestine and the great Arabian deserts to Persia, to Babylonia, and possibly to India was evidently of importance to the fluctuating destinies of Egypt and Assyria, and later of Greece, Rome, and Turkey; so much so, that many wars were waged for the control of the great highway over which it passed. Palestine became a territory of importance. It is said Jerusalem has suffered some three score sieges, most of them because she dominated this highway, being at or near the confluence of its forks reaching east into the deserts, north toward the straits over which a crossing could be made into Europe, and southward to Egypt. Egypt and Assyria fought for its control; Greece and Rome in turn came into possession of it; Turkey and the Mohammedans for centuries monopolized it; and the recent great World War was no doubt accentuated by the cupidity of Germany to control a long line of transportation through Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Mesopotamia to Persia, Baluchistan and India.[9] Alexander the Great overran the East, besieged Tyre, and converted an island into an isthmus in order to secure and hold control of the highway and the rich bounty imagined to be at its farther end. “Babylon is a ruin, a stately and solitary group of palms marks where Memphis stood, jackals slake their thirst in the waters of the sacred lake by the hall of a thousand columns at Thebes, but the road that formed the nexus between these vanished civilizations remains after the winds of four millenniums have sighed themselves to silence over the graves of its forgotten architects and engineers.”[10]