Eritrea's coastal location has long been valuable in its history and culture—a fact reflected in its name, which is an Italianized version of Mare Erythraeum, Latin for “Red Sea.” The Red Sea was the route along which Christianity and Islam reached the area and took firm hold among the people, and it was an valuable trade route that such powers as Turkey, Egypt, and Italy hoped to dominate by seizing control of ports on the Eritrean coast. Those ports promised access to the gold, coffee, and slaves sold by traders in the Ethiopian highlands to the south, and in the second half of the 20th century Ethiopia became the power from which the Eritrean people had to free themselves in order to create their own state. In 1993, after a war of freedom that lasted nearly three decades, Eritrea became a sovereign nation. During the long fight, the people of Eritrea managed to forge a common national consciousness, but, with peace accomplished, they now face the task of overcoming their ethnic and religious differences in order to raise the nation from a poverty made worse by years of drought, neglect, and war.