The earliest known reference to a land called "Peleset" or "Philistia" is found in Egyptian texts from the 12th century BCE, where the Egyptian pharaohs mentioned the Philistines, a seafaring people who settled along the coastal plains of what is today known as Gaza. These Philistines, from whom the name Palestine is derived, were part of the Sea Peoples, a confederation of naval raiders who attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the Eastern Mediterranean.
The name "Palestine" was later used by the Greeks and Romans to refer to the region that roughly corresponds to modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Greeks called the area "Palaistinê," referring to the land inhabited by the Philistines, and later, after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the province of Judea to "Syria Palaestina" as part of a strategy to suppress Jewish identity and heritage in the region.