Ramesses II’s rbw became the modern name Libya
The State of Libya fills Maghreb North Africa between Tunisia and Egypt with a vast Sahara backcountry. Hieroglyphs of Ramesses II already wrote rbw for a Berber confederacy—the root of today’s country name—long before oil made it Africa’s tenth-largest reserve holder.
A victory inscription from the reign of Merneptah describes the fallen chief of Libya, Meryey son of Ded, invading Egypt with Sherden, Shekelesh, and other allied bowmen. The Italian geographer Federico Minutilli revived the name in 1903 to replace Tripolitania, the Ottoman province that ruled the coast from 1551 to 1911. Independence in 1951 created the United Libyan Kingdom, renamed the Kingdom of Libya in 1963, and in December 2017 the country told the UN its official name was the State of Libya.
Neolithic peoples lived on the coastal plain by 8000 BC, and ancestors of the Berbers had arrived by the Late Bronze Age; the earliest named tribe is the Garamantes, based at Germa. Phoenicians founded trading posts in the west, and in 630 BC Greeks founded Cyrene near Barca, adding four more cities in what became Cyrenaica, home of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy.
After Carthage fell, Tripolitania stayed with Numidian kings until its coastal cities sought Roman protection, and Ptolemy Apion bequeathed Cyrenaica to Rome. Christians appeared there by the reign of Claudius, but the Kitos War nearly emptied Cyrenaica of Greeks and Jews. Amr ibn al-As took Cyrenaica for the caliphate, Tripoli fell for good in 647, and Uqba ibn Nafi conquered the Fezzan in 663; Berbers accepted Islam but resisted Arab rule.
When the Zirids broke with the Fatimids, Cairo sent the Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal tribes west. The Banu Khazrun held Tripolitania from 1001 until the Normans of Sicily seized it in 1146, and the Ottomans took Cyrenaica in 1517 and the Fezzan between 1556 and 1577. Gaddafi’s 1969 coup remade the state, and since 2011 rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk have split the country.
Source: Libya
