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 the West, such as texts relating to the Council of Florence, to present the Western viewpoint. The ancient name "Hellenes" was synonymous to "pagan" in popular use, but was revived as an ethnonym in the Middle Byzantine period (11th century). While in the West the term "Roman" acquired a new meaning in connection with the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome, the Greek form "Romaioi" remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire. The term "Byzantines" or "Byzantine Greeks" is an exonym applied by later historians like Hieronymus Wolf; the "Byzantines" continued to call themselves "Romaioi" (Romans)