Names of the Levant


Over recorded history, there have been many names of the Levant, a large area in the Near East, or its constituent parts. These names have applied to a part or the whole of the Levant. On occasion, two or more of these names have been used at the same time by different cultures or sects. As a natural result, some of the names of the Levant are highly politically charged. Perhaps the least politicized name is Levant itself, which simply means "where the sun rises" or "where the land rises out of the sea", a meaning attributed to the region's easterly location on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Antiquity

Retjenu

Ancient Egyptian texts called the entire coastal area along the Mediterranean Sea between modern Egypt and Turkey rṯnw. In the Amarna letters, written in Akkadian cuneiform, Reṯenu is subdivided into five regions:kꜣnꜥnꜥ, i.e. Canaan proper ;

Canaan

Prior to the formation of the Israelite/Hebrew identity and polities in the region, the land was referred to natively as Canaan. Though it was once thought that the Hebrews were foreign settlers in Canaan, the modern consensus of most scholars is that Hebrew identity developed in situ'' as a direct indigenous evolution of earlier Canaanite tribes; the continuity from Bronze Age Canaanite civilization to [History of ancient Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Israel and Judah|Iron Age Israelite/Judean] civilization is indeed so seamless that many scholars stress that any dichotomy between the two is essentially arbitrary—with culture, language, etc., being indistinguishable during the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age. The Phoenicians—also descended from the Bronze Age Canaanites, and close relatives and neighbors of the Israelites—likewise continued to speak a Canaanite language and practice Canaanite religion at their Mediterranean ports, and referred to themselves natively as "Canaanites", and their land as "Canaan".

Phoenicia

In ancient times, the Greeks called the whole of Canaan Phoiníkē, literally " of the Tyrian purple|purple". Today, general consensus associates the Phoenician homeland proper with the Eastern Mediterranean coast, which includes coastal Syria, modern-day Lebanon, and Israel. Notable Phoenician cities include Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Also, there is a modern town in Turkey called Finike which is thought to have derived by the Lycians who traded with Phoenicians in ancient times.

Israel and Judea

Israel:
Judea:
The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were Iron Age Semitic nations spanning from Edom in the south to Aram in the north. Today, the modern State of Israel controls much of the former territory of the ancient Israelite/Judean kingdoms. According to the Deuteronomic history in the Bible, the polities of Israel and Judah originally split off from an earlier, united Kingdom of Israel, ruled by illustrious kings such as David and Solomon; though modern archaeology, biblical scholarship, and historians are generally somewhat skeptical of the historicity of the alleged united monarchy of Israel, suggesting instead that the two kingdoms developed separately, with the southern kingdom of Judah probably dependent on the northern kingdom of Israel as a satellite state at first.
The term Judaea is used by historians to refer to the Roman province that extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms. It was named after Herod Archelaus's ethnarchy of Judea of which it was an expansion, the name being derived from the earlier provincial designations Yehud Medinata and Yehud : all ultimately referring to the former Hebrew kingdom of Judah.

Aram and Syria

The part of the Northern Levant located east of Phoenicia was originally called Aram. It was inhabited by the Arameans, who spoke Aramaic. During the late Iron Age, the neighboring Assyrians invaded Aram, gradually bringing it under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians themselves originally spoke Akkadian but over the course of their expansion, they adopted Aramaic as a lingua franca.
At the time of Achaemenid Persian rule of the Near East, the ancient Greek writers applied the name Syria to Aram because it had been ruled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, although its population was predominantly Aramean. Over time, Syria came to denote the broader Levant, while Assyria referred to Mesopotamia. Herodotus consistently distinguished the two.
After the time of Herodotus, some Greek and Roman writers occasionally blurred the distinction between Syria and Assyria. Nevertheless, educated writers and administrative usage gradually preserved the distinction, with Syria referring to the Levant and Assyria to Mesopotamia.
During the Syrian Wars between the Seleucid dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty, the region was known in Greek as Κοίλη Συρία. The term appears first in Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander in AD 145 and has been much discussed; although literally meaning “hollow Syria” in Greek, it is usually interpreted by historians as a transcription of Aramaic kul, "all, the entire", identifying all of Syria.
Afterwards Syria continued to designate the Levant, and various subregions were identified: for example, Syria Damascena or Syria Palmyrena. In 135 CE, after the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judea, Hadrian renamed Judea as Syria Palaestina in order to punish the Jews by erasing the name “Judea”.
"Greater Syria" refers to a larger area that is supported by some nationalists.

Palestine

Palestine:
  • - from ; or perhaps Greek παλαιστής, in reference to Israel
  • Hebrew
  • - same word as Philistia
An early version of the name Palestine was first recorded by the ancient Egyptians as Peleset. Herodotus later called the whole area Syria Palaistinē in his Histories, and included the entire territory of ancient Israel and Judea, not specifically the coastal Philistine territory. The Romans applied the term Syria Palaestina to the southern part of the region—beginning in AD 135, following the Bar Kokhba revolt—to complete the disassociation with the former identity of Judaea. The name continued to be used for the province throughout later Byzantine and Islamic rule.
Standard Hebrew has two names for Palestine, both of which are different from the Hebrew name for ancient Philistia. The first name Palestina was used by Hebrew speakers in the British Mandate of Palestine; it is spelled like the name for Philistia but with three more letters added to the end and a Latin pronunciation given. The second name Falastin is a direct loan from the Arabic form, and is used today specifically to refer to the modern Palestinians and to political aspirations for a Palestinian state.

Philistia

Philistia:

Eber-Nari and Transeuphratea

Eber-Nari was the name given by Assyrians to the lands west of the Euphrates following the Assyrian conquest of Aram and of Phoenicia, as these lands became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Eber-Nari later became part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and finally a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire. It is also sometimes referred to in modern historiography as Transeuphratea.

Medieval and modern history

Shaam

The Arabic name for the region of Levant is Shaam comes from the Arabic root meaning "left" or "north". After the Islamic conquest of the region, the term was applied to the Levant.
In ancient times, Baalshamin or Ba'al Šamem, was a Semitic sky-god in Canaan/Phoenicia and ancient Palmyra. However, the syllable "sham" in Baalshamin has nothing to do with the name shaam but is just by chance the middle syllable of the word for "sky", comparable to Hebrew שָׁמַיִם.

Levant

Medieval Italians called the region Levante after its easterly location where the sun "rises"; this term was adopted from Italian and French into many other languages.

Outremer

Frankish Crusaders called the Levant Outremer in French, which means "overseas". In France, this general term was colloquially applied more specifically to the Levant because of heavy Frankish involvement in the Crusades and the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Latin settlements scattered throughout the area.

Eastern Mediterranean

Eastern Mediterranean is a term that denotes the lands or states geographically in the eastern, to the east of, or around the east of the Mediterranean Sea, or with cultural affinities to this region. The Eastern Mediterranean includes Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan. The term Mediterranean derives from the Latin word mediterraneus, meaning "in the middle of earth" or "between lands". This is on account of the sea's intermediary position between the continents of Africa and Europe.

Holy Land

In different languages:
The Holy Land is a term used in Judeo-Christian tradition to refer to sacred sites of the Levant — such as Shiloh, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth — but is also often used to refer to the Levant as a whole.