Western Desert (Egypt) as the "Libyan Desert", taking its name from Ancient Libya, which lay between the Nile and Cyrenaica. With the formation of the state of Libya, the term "Western Desert" has come to describe that part of the Sahara in Egypt. To the Ancient Greeks, the term Libya described the whole Saharan littoral west of the Nile to the Atlas mountains. During Roman times the term Libya was limited to Cyrenaica and the region between there and Egypt, which were organized as the provinces of Libya Superior and Libya Inferior. The term Libyan Desert then applied to the area to the
Byzantine Greeks Greeks (Yunani) in matters of culture." The Muslim Ottomans also referred to their Byzantine Greek rivals as Rûm, "Romans", and that term is still in official use in Turkey for the Greek-speaking natives (Rumlar) of Istanbul "cf." Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (, "Roman Orthodox Patriarchate"). Many place-names in Anatolia derive from this Turkish word (Rûm, "Romans") for the Byzantines: Erzurum ("Arzan of the Romans"), Rumelia ("Land of the Romans"), and Rumiye-i Suğra ("Little Rome", the region of Amasya and Sivas). Byzantine Greeks, forming the majority of the Byzantine Empire proper at the height of its power, gradually came under the