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Excerpt from History of the City of Gaza: From the Earliest Times, to the Present Day Gaza, as the most southwesterly town of Palestine on the route to Egypt, has enjoyed from the earliest times a unique position in the history of that land. All exact knowledge of its foundation has been lost in the mists of legend and folk-lore; but it has existed from the remotest period and has had an almost unin terrupted history down to the present day. The secret of its long-continued existence is its position on the border of the Egyptian desert. As the last town on the road to Egypt and the first to be reached after emerging from the desert, it became a provisioning point for the caravans. In early times numerous trade-routes centered here; and the commercial importance of the place was only rivaled by its strategic value from a military point of view. The possession of Gaza became a bone of conten tion between the rulers of Egypt and those of Palestine and Syria. This rivalry was particularly acute between the older Pharaonic dynasties and the Assyrians, and, later, between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae; and during the medieval period and in modern times the struggle was renewed between the Egyptian kings and the lords of Damascus. It may be noted, too, that whenever Egypt was able to conquer and hold Gaza, the affairs of that kingdom were in general at the highwater mark of prosperity. Only during the palmiest days of the king dom was Egypt able to hold this outpost of Palestine, whose possession meant the control of the trade and military routes between Asia and Africa. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection