Coele-Syria

Coele-Syria () was a region of Syria in classical antiquity. The term originally referred to the "hollow" Beqaa Valley between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges, but sometimes it was applied to a broader area of the region of Syria. The area is now part of modern-day Syria and Lebanon.

==Name== It is widely accepted that the term Coele is a transcription of the Semitic (Aramaic: ܟܠ) kul , such that the term originally identified all of Syria, the region between the Euphrates, Mediterranean, and Taurus. The word "Coele", with κοῖλος (koĩlos), fem. κοίλη (koílē) literally meaning in Ancient and Koine Greek, is thought to have come about via a folk-etymological reinterpretation referring to the "hollow" Beqaa Valley between Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. However, the term Coele-Syria was also used in a wider sense to indicate or , by the writers Pliny, Arrian, Ptolemy and also Diodorus Siculus, who indicated Coele-Syria to at least stretch as far south as Joppa, while Polybius stated that the border between Egypt and Coele-Syria lay between the towns of Rhinocolara and Rhaphia.