The British Museum has removed the word "Palestinian" from its ancient Middle Eastern displays after deeming it not to be a "meaningful" historical term.
The inclusion of the word appeared on information boards and maps showcasing the Levant between 2000BCE to 300BCE, and listing people who lived there during the time as being of "Palestinian descent".
However, the word "Palestine" is believed to have first been used as a name of the area in 500BCE to describe the coastal region associated with the Philistines, with the Romans later renaming the kingdom of Judea as “Syria Palaestina” in around 135CE.
This discrepancy prompted pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to lodge a complaint that the museum was creating a "false impression of continuity" and risking “obscuring the history of Israel and the Jewish people”.
In a letter to Nicholas Cullinan, the museum’s director, the group said: "Applying a single name - Palestine - retrospectively to the entire region, across thousands of years, erases historical changes and creates a false impression of continuity.
"It also has the compounding effect of erasing the Kingdoms of Israel and of Judea, which emerged from around 1000 BCE, and of reframing the origins of the Israelites and Jewish people as erroneously stemming from Palestine.
"The chosen terminology in the items described above implies the existence of an ancient and continuous region called Palestine."
Historical records show that the region at the time, pre-Israelite, was actually Canaanite.
The displays have now been changed to describing the people of the time as of “Canaanite descent”.
A British Museum spokesman said: “For the Middle East galleries for maps showing ancient cultural regions, the term ‘Canaan’ is relevant for the southern Levant in the later second millennium BCE.
"We use the UN terminology on maps that show modern boundaries, for example, Gaza, West Bank, Israel, Jordan, and refer to ‘Palestinian’ as a cultural or ethnographic identifier where appropriate."
UKLFI welcomed the changes, saying: “Museums play a vital role in public education, and it is essential that descriptions reflect the historical record with precision and neutrality.
"These changes are an important step toward ensuring visitors receive an accurate understanding of the ancient Near East.”
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