"Western Asia may be roughly divided into three belts of country, the Mountains or high Table-lands, the Fertile Lands, and the Desert. Of these three, the first and last have been ceaseless in their pressure on the second, and the history of Western Asia is largely the story of the actions and reactions on each other of the peoples from the mountains of the north, and from the southern Desert, in the effort to occupy and to hold the Fertile Lands between them. This central belt stretches in a crescent (Breasted, Ancient Times, c. iv, gives it the name of the ' Fertile Crescent ') from the border of Egypt, north and north-eastwards through Palestine and the Lebanon to the Euphrates, then eastwards to the Tigris, and then southwards through the n plain to the head of the . Assyria occupies about the centre of the crescent, Babylonia its eastern wing, while its western wing includes Syria and Palestine, and is produced into the Nile valley to the edge of the African deserts. Round this crescent ran the main roads from Mesopotamia to Egypt, which trade or aggression was bound to follow."