Names of the Levant homeland proper with the northwest coastal region of the Levant, centered at Phoenician cities such as Ugarit, Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Today, this place is usually equated with modern Lebanon and the coast of modern Syria. 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: Judea: The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were Iron Age Semitic nations spanning from Edom to Assyria. Today the modern State of Israel controls much of the former territory of the ancient Israelite/Judean kingdoms. According to the
Syria (region) Greater Lebanon, various Syrian-mandate states, Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan. The Syrian-mandate states were gradually unified as the State of Syria and finally became the independent Syria in 1946. Throughout this period, pan-Syrian nationalists advocated for the creation of a Greater Syria. Antoun Saadeh and his party, the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, envisioned "Greater Syria" or "Natural Syria" as encompassing the Sinai Peninsula, Cyprus, modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, the Ahvaz region of Iran, and the Kilikian region of Turkey. The oldest attestation of the name 'Syria' is from the 8th century BC in a bilingual