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
Greek colonisation of the Teians. On the eastern shore, which was known in ancient times as Colchis and in which today for the greater part is in Georgia and the autonomous region of Abkhazia, the Greeks founded the cities of Phasis and Dioscouris. The latter was called "Sebastopolis" by the Romans and Byzantines and is known today as Sukhumi—the ruins of the ancient and Byzantine foundations are now found principally below the waterline. The Greek colonies expanded as far as the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. In North Africa, on the peninsula of Cyrenaica, colonists from Thera founded Cyrene, which evolved into