Israel/Palestine

The term "Peleset" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people, who are generally identified with the Philistines,[2] or their land Philistia, starting from circa 1150 BCE during the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the Medinet Habu temple which refers to the Peleset among those who fought against Egypt during Ramesses III's reign,[3] and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue. The Assyrians called the same region "Palashtu/Palastu" or "Pilistu," beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to an Esarhaddon treaty more than a century later.[4][5] Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.[6]

The term "Palestine" first appeared in the 5th century BCE when the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" between Phoenicia and Egypt in The Histories.[7] Herodotus provides the first historical reference clearly denoting a wider region than biblical Philistia, as he applied the term to both the coastal and the inland regions such as the Judean Mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.[8][9][10][11] Later Greek writers such as Aristotle, Polemon and Pausanias also used the word, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.[12] There is not currently evidence of the name on any Hellenistic coin or inscription.[13]

In the early 2nd century CE, the term "Syria Palaestina"[a] (literally, "Palestinian Syria"[14][15]) was given to a Roman province incorporating Judaea and other territories, either before or after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135.[16][17][18][19] In around the year 390, during the Byzantine period, the imperial province of Syria Palaestina was then reorganized into Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda[20] and Palaestina Salutaris.[20] Following the Muslim conquest, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic,[4][21] and the Jund Filastin became one of the military districts within the Umayyad and Abbasid province of Bilad al-Sham.[22]