Though there lies on either side of Egypt an almost impassable desert, yet at the north-eastern corner, along the shores of the Mediterranean, the desert has a fringe of coast which is not so desert as the rest, and shades farther north into a strip of fertile, fairly watered, low coast land and inland hills, the home of Philistines, Hebrews and Phoenicians. This district forms a connecting link between the two great early centres of civilization, and owes its supreme importance to that fact.
Thus in the study of advance in civilization, of history, we are introduced to another geographical control. Not only do men live in places where existence is easiest, in the sense that more energy may be used, but they move in the directions in which movement is easiest, where least energy is expended in motion. Movement is always along the lines of least resistance, as we say. When roads exist men pass along them, but long before roads existed there were routes along which, owing to geographical distributions, movement was easier than elsewhere. These are ways, not roads. A road is so many feet or yards wide, a way has not any definite width. There is a way from the door of a room to the fireplace, the way one walks avoiding any obstacles between, but there is no road. There may be one way and many roads. The way to Scotland from London lies northwards between the Humber and the Pennines, through the plain of York and the Newcastle plain, round the coast to Edinburgh. The Great North Road was, and is, one form of it ; the Great Northern RaiEway with its allies is the corresponding Railroad. There is no road from Mesopotamia to Egypt, but there are very definite ways which for part of the distance become one. It was comparatively easy to pass from Babylon up the Euphrates valley, then across to the valley of the Orontes. between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, down the valleys of the Leontes and Upper Jordan, across the plain of Es draelon, past Megiddo or Armageddon, the meeting-place of the armies of this little world, through the land of the Philistines by the shores of the Mediterranean, across the narrow strip of desert to Egypt. It was less easy, but shorter and thus more economical of energy for traders who had reached a certain stage of civilization, to cross the narrow northern end of the Syrian desert to the oasis of Damascus, the jumping-off place for crossing the desert towards the east or the landing-place on the west, and the essential part of Syria. However they came, they all passed through Esdraelon and Philistia.
This Way did not spring into importance at once ; its importance grew with the growth in importance of the two lands between which it lay. Nor must it be thought
of as having even the traffic of a country road in Eng land; but it was the route taken by far the greatest portion of such trade as was carried on in the world at that time.
Naturally we need not expect the lands through which " the Way " passed to have a history as early as had Egypt and Mesopotamia. Between these there lies a wide space, so that they must have had a civilization of a high order, and their influence must have been extensive, before they came into contact with each other. Even then the first contact seems to have been purely accidental. In the times of the 4th Dynasty in Egypt and of Sargon of Accad, i. e. about 3800 B.c., expeditions from both lands were sent to the deserts of Sinai to work the copper mines or obtain stone suitable for sculpture. But by " the Way " in course of time commerce took place and armies marched, so that for 3000 years, during which Egypt and Mesopotamia were the important lands in the world, these fertile coasts of the southern Levant assumed an importance out of all proportion to their size. Since this home of Philistines and Israelites was the door between the two empires of the Ancient World, it is little wonder that these peoples figure so largely in history, though Palestine itself is so small that Elijah ran, as we are told, from end to end in a day.
Egypt and Mesopotamia at various times claimed the right of suzerainty, but even when it was claimed the control was not always effective, and for the greater part of the time we are considering, the lands through which " the Way " passed were occupied by peoples who owed allegiance to none and, at first continually at war with each other, were gradually civilized by recognition of the advantages obtained from trade passing through their midst. It was only about 1000 B.c., in the times of David and Solomon, when Egypt and Assyria had declined in power, that the hillmen of Palestine, the Israelites, as opposed to the coastmen, the Philistines, held " the Way " so effectively as to be able to establish an empire comparable to the other empires of the Ancient World. When that kingdom split in two, it lost effective control of " the Way," and became again merely a little hill state in its neighbourhood—centrally placed, indeed, but not politically effective. Leaning first to one and then to another of the two great empires, the kingdom of the Hebrews was finally crushed in the struggle between them.