researcher wrote of the Tripoli-Murzuk-Lake Chad route, “Most of the [trans-Saharan] traffic from the Mediterranean coast during the last 2,000 years has passed along this road.” Another Libyan route was Benghazi to Kufra to the lands of the Wadai Empire between Lake Chad and Darfur. The western routes were the Walata Road, from the Sénégal River, and the Taghaza Trail, from the Niger River, which had their northern termini at the great trading center of Sijilmasa, situated in Morocco just north of the desert. The growth of the city of Aoudaghost, founded in the 5th century BCE, was stimulated by its position at the southern end of a trans Saharan trade route. To the east, three ancient routes connected the south to the Mediterranean. The herdsmen of the Fezzan of Libya, known as the Garamantes, controlled these routes as early as 1500 BC. From their capital of Germa in the Wadi Ajal, the Garamantean Empire raided north to the sea and south into the Sahel. By the 4th century BC, the independent city-states of Phoenicia had expanded their control to the territory and routes once held by the Garamantes. Shillington states that existing contact with the Mediterranean received added incentive with the growth of the port city of Carthage. Founded c. 800 BCE, Carthage became one terminus for West African gold, ivory, and slaves. West Africa received salt, cloth, beads, and metal goods. Shillington proceeds to identify this trade route as the source for West African iron smelting. Trade continued into Roman times. Although there are Classical references to direct travel from the Mediterranean to West Africa (Daniels, p. 22f), most of this trade was conducted through middlemen, inhabiting the area and aware of passages through the drying lands. The Legio III Augusta subsequently secured these routes on behalf of Rome by the 1st century AD, safeguarding the southern border of the empire for two and half centuries. The Garamantes also engaged in the trans-Saharan slave trade. The Garamantes used slaves in their own communities to construct and maintain underground irrigation systems known as the foggara. Early records of trans-Saharan slave trade come from ancient Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC, who records the Garamantes enslaving cave-dwelling Egyptians in Sudan. Two records of Romans accompanying the Garamantes on slave raiding expeditions are recorded - the first in 86 CE and the second a few years later to Lake