Names of the Levant attributed to the region's easterly location on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The ancient Egyptians called the Levant "Reṯenu". Ancient Egyptian texts (c. 14th century BCE) called the entire coastal area along the Mediterranean Sea between modern Egypt and Turkey "rṯnw" (conventionally "Reṯenu"). Reṯenu was subdivided into four regions: "Kharu" ("ḥꜣ-rw"), North Syria, "Amurru", South Syria (the land of the biblical Amorites), "Rmnn", Lebanon, "Ysriar" ("ysrỉꜣr"), Israel, and "Ḏahy" ("ḏꜣhy";"Ṯahi", "Ḏahi"), the region of Palestine (comprising the southern and central Levant—west of the Jordan River and south of Lebanon—and all the kingdoms, territories, tribes, etc., that existed within that
Syria (region) as the Syrian region, gave the boundaries of the region as such: the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia to the east, and the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia to the north. For Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela, Syria covered the entire Fertile Crescent. In Late Antiquity, "Syria" meant a region located to the East of the Mediterranean Sea, West of the Euphrates River, North of the Arabian Desert and South of the Taurus Mountains, thereby including modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the State of Palestine, and parts of Southern Turkey, namely the Hatay Province and