Pontus (region)  Pontus or Pontos (; , "Sea") is a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region and its mountainous hinterland (rising to the Pontic Alps in the east) by the Greeks who colonized the area in the Archaic period and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: "("")", "Hospitable Sea", or simply "Pontos" () as early as the Aeschylean "Persians" (472 BC) and Herodotus' "Histories" (). Having originally no specific name, the region east of the river Halys was spoken of as the country "()", lit. "on the [Euxinos] Pontos", and hence it acquired the name of Pontus, which is first found in Xenophon's "Anabasis" (). The extent of the region varied through the ages but generally extended from the borders of Colchis (modern western Georgia) until well into Paphlagonia in the west, with varying amounts of hinterland. Several states and provinces bearing the name of Pontus or variants thereof were established in the region in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, culminating in the late Byzantine Empire of Trebizond. Pontus is sometimes considered as the original home of the Amazons, in ancient Greek mythology and historiography (e. g. by Herodotus and Strabo). From the Classical and Hellenistic periods into the Byzantine and Ottoman, Pontus became important as a bastion of ancient Greek, Byzantine and Greek Orthodox civilization and attracted Greeks from all backgrounds (scholars, traders, mercenaries, refugees) from all over Anatolia and the southern Balkans. These Greeks of Pontus are generally referred to as Pontic Greeks. Pontus remained outside the reach of the Bronze Age empires, of which the closest was Great Hatti. The region went further uncontrolled by Hatti's eastern neighbors, Hurrian states like Azzi and (or) Hayasa. In those days, the best any outsider could hope from this region was temporary alliance with a local strongman. The Hittites called the unorganized groups on their northeastern frontier the Kaška. As of 2004 little had been found of them archaeologically. In the wake of the Hittite empire's collapse, the Assyrian court noted that the "Kašku" had overrun its territory in conjunction with a hitherto unknown group whom they labeled the Muški.