In modern terms the interior of modern Syria (the Assyrian north-east excluded), the region had since at least the 24th century BCE been inhabited by the Canaanite speaking Amorites and for a time the East Semitic speaking Eblaites also, thus much of this region had been known as the 'Land of the Amurru'. However from the 12th century BCE a new Semitic group appeared, in the form of the Arameans, and by the late 11th century BCE this region was known as Aramea/Aram and Eber-Nari ("Across the River", that is, west of the Euphrates), and remained named as such during the latter part of the Middle Assyrian Empire, Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire, Median Empire and Achaemenid Empire. The term Syria which today applies to the region is in actuality originally a 10th-century BCE Indo-Anatolian name for Assyria, many centuries later applied by the Greeks during the Seleucid Empire (311-150 BCE) not only to Assyria itself but much of the Levant (see Etymology of Syria).[citation needed]