What is the historical significance of the Eastern Mediterranean?

[Jara sang]

The land that is now Israel and Lebanon. Other than it being the birthplace of three of the worlds most popular religions, it's obviously a cross roads between Asia and Africa. It is also a crossroads between Asia and Europe as many of the trade routes which crossed the Asian steppes(Silk Road) ended at ports on this coast for transport by ship to ports in southern Europe. How did this region fare within the confines of other empires? Roman, Greek, Persian, Ottoman, etc.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Only two of those religions

Islam was born on the Saudi Peninsula, along the northern Mediterranean.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. crusades,

wars, rape, moats, walled, fortified cities, war.

Remember from where the word Armageddon comes from. The town of Meggido was repeatedly attacked and fell back around 600BCE.

This region has two too many things:
1) religion
2) sand

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. The whole region changed hands many times.

It has been ruled by a large assortment of colonial, and/or, conquering powers.

Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, the Greeks, the Romans devastated it, the Kurds (Saladin), the Crusaders, the Turks, the Brits, the French, and scatterings of other tribes including the Philistines, the Canaanites, and the Hebrew tribes who had a few little civil wars among themselves over it.

It's probably as blood soaked a piece of real estate as exists anywhere in the world.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. It's been a battlefield since the Egyptian empire contacted the Hittite

Empire there, around 1500BC; maybe even earlier (it looks like the Syrian and Akkadian Empires both controlled the area close to 2300BC. 'Megido' in northern Israel is 'Armageddon'; probably picked as the site for the 'final battle' in the world because it had been a battlesite so many times before, between Egypt and empires to the north of the area.

The world's first alphabet (using symbols to represent individual sounds, rather than words) probably developed there. The Phoenicians developed a trading empire from there, spreading to Carthage, which was eventually destroyed by Rome, but gave it a run for its money.

[WinkyDink]

5. Too little space here for a course on Western Civ!