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The Latin name ''Libya'' (from Greek Λιβύη, ''Libyē'') referred to the region west of the Nile Valley, generally corresponding to modern Northwest Africa. Its people were ancestors of the modern Berber people.〔(Gabriel Camps, L'origin des berbères )〕 Berbers occupied the area for thousands of years before the beginning of human records in Ancient Egypt. Climate changes affected the locations of the settlements. More narrowly, ''Libya'' could also refer to the country immediately west of Egypt, viz. Marmarica (''Libya Inferior'') and Cyrenaica (''Libya Superior''). The Libyan Sea or ''Mare Libycum'' was the part of the Mediterranean south of Crete, between Cyrene and Alexandria. In the Greek period the Berbers were known as ''Libyans'',〔Oliver, Roland & Fagan, Brian M. (1975) ''Africa in the Iron Age: c. 500 B.C. to A.D. 1400''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; p. 47〕 a Greek term for the inhabitants of northwest Africa. Their lands were called ''Libya'', and extended from modern Morocco to the western borders of Ancient Egypt. Modern Egypt contains the Siwa Oasis, historically part of Libya, where the Berber Siwi language is still spoken. == Name == The name ''Libya'' (in use since 1934 for the modern country formerly known as Tripolitania and Barca) was the Latin designation for the region of Northwest Africa, from the Greek (Ancient Greek: Λιβύη ''Libúē'', Λιβύᾱ ''Libúā'', in the Attic and Doric dialects respectively). In Classical Greece, the term had a broader meaning, encompassing the continent that later (2nd century BC) became known as ''Africa'', which, in antiquity, was assumed to constitute one third of the world's land mass, besides Europe and Asia. The Greek name is based on the ethnonym ''Libu'' ( ''Líbues'', (ラテン語:Libyes)). The land of the Libu was (''Libúē'') and (''Libúā'') in the Attic and Doric dialects, respectively. These ''Libu'' have been attested since the Late Bronze Age as inhabiting the region (Egyptian: ', Punic: ''lby''). The oldest known references to the ''Libu'' date to Ramesses II and his successor Merneptah, Egyptian rulers of the nineteenth dynasty, during the 13th century BCE. ''LBW'' appears as an ethnic name on ''the Merneptah Stele''.〔Gardiner, Alan Henderson (1964) ''Egypt of the Pharaohs: an introduction'' Oxford University Press, London, p. 273, ISBN 0-19-500267-9〕 Homer also names Libya, in ''Odyssey'' (IX.95; XXIII.311). Menelaus had travelled there on his way home from Troy; it was a land of wonderful richness, where the lambs have horns as soon as they are born, where ewes lamb three times a year and no shepherd ever goes short of milk, meat or cheese. Homer used the name in a geographic sense, while he called its inhabitants ''Lotophagi'', meaning "Lotus-eaters". After Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar, and other Ancient Greek writers use the name. When Greeks actually settled in the real Libya in the 630s, the old name taken from Egyptians was applied by the Greeks of Cyrenaica, who may have co-existed with the Libu.〔Fage, J. D. (ed.) (1978) "The Libyans" ''The Cambridge History of Africa: From c. 500 BC to AD 1050'' volume II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, p. 141, ISBN 0-521-21592-7〕 Later, the name appeared in the Hebrew language, written in the Bible as Lehabim and Lubim, indicating the ethnic population and the geographic territory as well. Herodotus (1.46) used Λιβύη ''Libue'' to indicate the African continent; the ''Libues'' proper were the light-skinned North Africans, while those south of the Ancient Egypt (and Elephantine on the Nile) were known to him as "Aethiopians";〔''The Cambridge History of North Africa'' and the people between them as the Egyptians, p. 141.〕 this was also the understanding of later Greek geographers such Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, etc. In the neo-Punic inscriptions, it was written as ''Lby'' for the masculine noun, and ''Lbt'' for the feminine noun of ''Libyan''. Latin absorbed the name from Greek and the Punic languages. The Romans would have known them before their colonization of North Africa, because of the Libyan role in the Punic wars against the Romans. The Romans used the name Libyes, but only when referring to Barca and the Western desert of Egypt. The other Libyan territories became known as ''Africa''. Classical Arabic literature called Libya ''Lubya'', indicating a speculative territory west of Egypt. Modern Arabic uses Libya''. Lwatae, the tribe of Ibn Battuta,〔The full name of Ibn Battuta was Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah al-Lawati at-Tanji ibn Battuta〕 as the Arabs called it, was a Berber tribe that mainly was situated in Cyrenaica. This tribe may have ranged from the Atlantic Ocean to modern Libya, however, and was referred to by Corippius as ''Laguatan''; he linked them with the Maures. Ibn Khaldun reports, in ''The History of Ibn Khaldun'', that Luwa was an ancestor of this previous tribe. He writes that the Berbers add an "a" and "t" to the name for the plural forms. Subsequently, it became ''Lwat''. Conversely, the Arabs adopted the name as a singular form, adding an "h" for the plural form in Arabic. Ibn Khaldun disagrees with Ibn Hazam, who claimed, mostly on the basis of Berber sources, that Lwatah, in addition to Sadrata and Mzata, were from the ''Qibts'' (Egyptians). According to Ibn Khaldun, this claim is incorrect because Ibn Hazam had not read the books of the Berber scholars.〔(''The History of Ibn Khaldun'', third chapter p. 184-258 )〕 Oric Bates, a historian, considers that the name ''Libu'' or ''LBW'' would be derived from the name ''Luwatah''〔Bates, Oric (1914) ''The Eastern Libyans''. London: Macmillan & Co. p. 57〕 whilst the name Liwata is a derivation of the name Libu. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ancient Libya」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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