Canaan

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Canaanites and Land of Canaan redirect here. For the 1940s Israeli movement, see
Canaanites (movement). For the film, see Land of Canaan (film).
For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation).

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Canaan
region
A 1692 depiction of Canaan, by Philip Lea
A 1692 depiction of Canaan, by Philip Lea
Polities and peoples
Phoenician city states
Phoenicians
Philistines
Israelites
Moab Ammon Tjeker
Geshur Edom
Canaanite languages
Hebrew Phoenician Ammonite Moabite Edomite
Ancient history
Preceded by Prehistory
Ancient Near East
Sumer Egypt Assyria Elam Akkad Babylonia Canaan Israel and Judah Hittite Empire
Arzawa Mitanni Minoan Crete Mycenaean Greece Syro-Hittite states Hayasa-Azzi
Georgia Anatolia Armenia Neo-Assyrian Empire Urartu Neo-Babylonian Empire Medes
Classical antiquity
Greece Persia (Achaemenid)
Hellenism Rome Africa
Late Antiquity
East Asia
China Korea Japan
South Asia
Indus Valley Vedic period Maha Janapadas Maurya Empire Tamilakam Satavahana Gupta
Empire
Pre-Columbian Americas
Mesoamerica Olmec Maya civilization Teotihuacan Aztec Andean civilizations Chavn
culture Moche Inca empire
See also
History of the world
Ancient maritime history Protohistory Axial Age Iron Age Historiography Ancient
literature Ancient warfare Cradle of civilization
Followed by the Postclassical Era
v t e
Canaan ('ke?n?n; Northwest Semitic kna?n; Phoenician ????????; Biblical
HebrewMasoretic ????????? K?naan; ??naan) was a Semitic-speaking region in the
Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. In the Bible it corresponds to
the Levant, in particular to the areas of the Southern Levant that provide the main
setting of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the area of Israel, Philistia,
Phoenicia, and other nations.

The name Canaan occurs commonly in the Hebrew Bible. In particular, the references
in Genesis 10 and Numbers 34 define the Land of Canaan as extending from Lebanon
southward to the Brook of Egypt and eastward to the Jordan River Valley.
The word Canaanites serves as an ethnic catch-all term covering various indigenous
populationsboth settled and nomadic-pastoral groupsthroughout the regions of the
southern Levant or Canaan.[1] Canaanite is by far the most frequently used ethnic
term in the Bible.[2] In the Book of Joshua, Canaanites are included in a list of
nations to exterminate,[3] and later described as a group which the Israelites had
annihilated.[4]

Archaeological attestation of the name Canaan in Ancient Near Eastern sources

relates almost exclusively to the period in which the region operated as a colony
of the New Kingdom of Egypt (16th11th centuries BC), with usage of the name almost
disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 12061150 BC).[5] The
references suggest that during this period the term was familiar to the region's
neighbors on all sides, although scholars have disputed to what extent such
references provide a coherent description of its location and boundaries, and
regarding whether the inhabitants used the term to describe themselves.[6] The
Amarna Letters and other cuneiform documents use Kina??u [Kinakh'khu], while other
sources of the Egyptian New Kingdom mention numerous military campaigns conducted
in Ka-na-na.[7]

The name Canaanites (????????????? k?naanim, ??????????? k?naani) is attested,

many centuries later, as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient
Greeks from c. 500 BC as Phoenicians,[4] and following the emigration of Canaanite-
speakers to Carthage (founded in the 9th century BC), was also used as a self-
designation by the Punics (chanani) of North Africa during Late Antiquity.

Canaan had significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna period
(14th century BC) as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian,
Hittite, Mitanni and Assyrian Empires converged. Much of modern knowledge about
Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel
Hazor, Tel Megiddo, and Gezer.

Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 Archaeology
2.1 Origins
2.2 Middle Bronze Age
2.3 Late Bronze Age cuneiform (15001000 BC)
2.4 Late Bronze Age Hieroglyphic and Hieratic (15001000 BC)
2.5 Later sources
3 Greco-Roman historiography
4 History
4.1 Overview
4.2 Prehistory
4.3 Early Bronze Age (35002000)
4.4 Middle Bronze Age (20001550)
4.5 Late Bronze Age (15501200)
4.6 Bronze Age collapse
4.7 Iron Age
5 Culture
6 Legacy
7 List of Canaan's rulers
8 In Jewish and Christian Scriptures
8.1 Hebrew Bible
8.2 New Testament
9 Black Africans as descendants of Canaan
10 See also
11 Notes
12 Bibliography
13 External links
Etymology[edit]

Map of the Near East by Robert de Vaugondy (1762), indicating Canaan as limited to
the Holy Land, to the exclusion of Lebanon and Syria
The English term Canaan (pronounced 'ke?n?n since c. AD 1500, due to the Great
Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew ????? (kn?n), via Greek ?a?a?? Khanaan and Latin
Canaan. It appears as KUR ki-na-ah-na in the Amarna letters (14th century BC), and
kn?n is found on coins from Phoenicia in the last half of the 1st millennium. It
first occurs in Greek in the writings of Hecataeus as Khna (???).[8] Scholars
connect the name Canaan with kn?n, Kana'an, the general Northwest Semitic name for
this region.

The etymology is uncertain. An early explanation derives the term from the Semitic
root kn? to be low, humble, subjugated.[9] Some scholars have suggested that this
implies an original meaning of lowlands, in contrast with Aram, which would then
mean highlands,[10] whereas others have suggested it meant the subjugated as the
name of Egypt's province in the Levant, and evolved into the proper name in a
similar fashion to Provincia Nostra (the first Roman colony north of the Alps,
which became Provence).[11]

An alternative suggestion put forward by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser in 1936 derives

the term from Hurrian Kinahhu, purportedly referring to the colour purple, so that
Canaan and Phoenicia would be synonyms (Land of Purple). Tablets found in the
Hurrian city of Nuzi in the early 20th century appear to use the term Kinahnu as a
synonym for red or purple dye, laboriously produced by the Kassite rulers of
Babylon from murex shells as early as 1600 BC, and on the Mediterranean coast by
the Phoenicians from a byproduct of glassmaking. Purple cloth became a renowned
Canaanite export commodity which is mentioned in Exodus. The dyes may have been
named after their place of origin. The name 'Phoenicia' is connected with the Greek
word for purple, apparently referring to the same product, but it is difficult to
state with certainty whether the Greek word came from the name, or vice versa. The
purple cloth of Tyre in Phoenicia was well known far and wide and was associated by
the Romans with nobility and royalty. However, according to Robert Drews, Speiser's
proposal has generally been