Ancient Libya valley, Cowper says, "There had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it." In ancient times, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Persian Achaemenid Empire ("see Libya (satrapy)"), the armies of Alexander the Great and his Ptolemaic successors from Egypt, then Romans, Vandals, and local representatives of the Byzantine Empire ruled all or parts of Libya. The territory of modern Libya had separate histories until Roman times, as Tripoli and Cyrenaica. Cyrenaica, by contrast, was Greek before it was Roman. It was also known as Pentapolis, the "five
Cyrenaica by their ancestors are still found in the Awjila language of the oasis of Awjila. The ancient Berbers founded a number of cities and settlements, both on the coast and in the inland oases. Egyptian records mention that, during the New Kingdom of Egypt (thirteenth century BC), the Libu and Meshwesh tribes of Cyrenaica made frequent incursions into Egypt. Cyrenaica was colonized by the Greeks beginning in the 7th century BC, when it was known as Kyrenaika. The first and most important colony was that of Cyrene, established in about 631 BC by colonists from the Greek island of Thera,