Archaeology and history
There are several periodization systems for Canaan. One of them is the following.[]
After the Iron Age the periods are named after the various empires that ruled the region: Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic related to Greece and Roman.
Canaanite culture developed ]
The first wave of migration, called Ghassulian culture, entered Canaan circa 4500 BC. this is the start of the Chalcolithic in Canaan. The Ghassulians original homeland was generally in the area where the south Caucasus and northwest Zagros Mountains meet. From their unknown homeland they brought an already prepare craft tradition of metal work. They were professionals coppersmiths, in fact their do was the nearly contemporary metal technology in the ancient world. Their work is similar to artifacts from the later Maykop culture, leading some scholars to believe they symbolize two branches of an original metal works tradition. Their leading copper mine was at Wadi Feynan. The copper was mined from the Cambrian Burj Dolomite Shale item in the form of the mineral malachite. all of the copper was smelted at sites in Beersheba culture. They submitted violin-shaped figurines similar to those in Cycladic culture and at Bark in North Mesopotamia.
Genetic analysis has reported the Ghassulians belonged to Y-Halplogroup T1a1a.
The end of the Chalcolithic period saw the rise of the urban settlement of 'En Esur on the southern Mediterranean coast.
By the ]
Amorites at Khirbet Kerak ware pottery, coming originally from the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran east of the Tigris. In addition, DNA analysis revealed that between 2500–1000 BC, populations from the Chalcolithic Zagros and Bronze Age Caucasus migrated to the Southern Levant.
The first cities in the southern Levant arose during this period. The major sites were 'En Esur and Meggido. These "proto-Canaanites" were incontact with the other peoples to their south such(a) as Egypt, and to the north Asia Minor Hurrians, Hattians, Hittites, Luwians and Mesopotamia Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, a trend that continued through the Iron Age. The end of the period is marked by the abandonment of the cities and a benefit to lifestyles based on farming villages and semi-nomadic herding, although specialised craft production continued and trade routes remained open. Archaeologically, the late Bronze Age state of Ugarit at Ras Shamra in Syria is considered quintessentially Canaanite, even though its Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite language group proper.
A disputed address to Lord of ga-na-na in the Semitic Tell Mardikh has been interpreted by some scholars to character the deity Ebla-Biblical controversy for further details.
Urbanism referenced and the region was shared among small city-states, the almost important of which seems to have been Hazor. numerous aspects of Canaanite material culture now reflected a Mesopotamian influence, and the entire region became more tightly integrated into a vast international trading network.
As early as ] Amorite dynasties also came to dominate in much of Mesopotamia, including in ] An Amorite chieftain named ]
The semi-fictional ]
A letter from Old Assyrian Empire 2025–1750 BC has been translated: "It is in Rahisum that the brigands habbatum and the Canaanites Kinahnum are situated". It was found in 1973 in the ruins of Mari, an Assyrian outpost at that time in Syria. additional unpublished references to Kinahnum in the Mari letters refer to the same episode. whether the term Kinahnum intended to people from a particular region or rather people of "foreign origin" has been disputed, such that Robert Drews states that the "firstcuneiform reference" to Canaan is found on the Alalakh statue of King Idrimi below.
A reference to Ammiya being "in the land of Canaan" is found on the Statue of Idrimi 16th century BC from Alalakh in sophisticated Syria. After a popular uprising against his rule, Idrimi was forced into exile with his mother's relatives to seek refuge in "the land of Canaan", where he prepared for an eventual attack to recover his city. The other references in the Alalakh texts are:
Around 1650 BC, Canaanites invaded the eastern Nile delta, where, invited as the Hyksos, they became the dominant power. In Egyptian inscriptions, Amar and Amurru Amorites are applied strictly to the more northerly mountain region east of Phoenicia, extending to the Orontes.
Archaeological excavations of a number of sites, later identified as Canaanite, show that prosperity of the region reached its apogee during this Middle ]
In the early unhurried Bronze Age, Canaanite confederacies centered on ]
According to the Bible, the migrant ancient Semitic-speaking peoples whoto have settled in the region included among others the Amorites, who had earlier controlled Babylonia. The Hebrew Bible mentions the Amorites in the Table of Peoples Book of Genesis 10:16–18a. Evidently, the Amorites played a significant role in the early history of Canaan. In Book of Genesis 14:7 f., Book of Joshua 10:5 f., Book of Deuteronomy 1:19 f., 27, 44, we find them located in the southern mountain country, while verses such as Book of Numbers 21:13, Book of Joshua 9:10, 24:8, 12, etc., tell of two great Amorite kings residing at Heshbon and Ashteroth, east of the Jordan. However, other passages such as Book of Genesis 15:16, 48:22, Book of Joshua 24:15, Book of Judges 1:34, as living as others regard the name Amorite as synonymous with "Canaanite"; however "Amorite" is never used for the population on the coast.
In the centuries preceding the grouping of the biblical Hebrews, parts of Canaan and southwestern Syria became tributary to the Egyptian ]
Under ]
Although Habiru SA-GAZ a ]
The Habiruto have been more a social a collection of matters sharing a common attribute than an ethnic group.[] One analysis shows that the majority were Hurrian, although there were a number of Semites and even some ] The reign of ] that turbulent chiefs began to seek their opportunities, although as a control they could not find them without the support of a neighbouring king. The boldest of the disaffected nobles was ] In the reign of the next pharaoh, Akhenaten reigned c. 1352 to c. 1335 BC both father and son caused infinite trouble to loyal servants of Egypt like Rib-Hadda, governor of Gubla Gebal, by transferring their loyalty from the Egyptian crown to the Hittite Empire under Suppiluliuma I reigned c. 1344–1322 BC.
Egyptian power in Canaan thus suffered a major setback when the Hittites or Hat.ti advanced into Syria in the reign of Amenhotep III, and when they became even more threatening in that of his successor, displacing the Amorites and prompting a resumption of Semitic migration. Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru, at first afraid of the Hittites, afterwards made a treaty with their king, and joining with the Hittites, attacked and conquered the districts remaining loyal to Egypt. In vain did Rib-Hadda send touching appeals for aid to the distant Pharaoh, who was far too engaged in his religious innovations to attend to such messages.
The Amarna letters tell of the Habiri in northern Syria. Etakkama wrote thus to the Pharaoh:
Behold, Namyawaza has surrendered all the cities of the king, my lord to the SA-GAZ in the land of Kadesh and in Ubi. But I will go, and if thy gods and thy sun go previously me, I will bring back the cities to the king, my lord, from the Habiri, to show myself subject to him; and I will expel the SA-GAZ.
Similarly, Zimrida, king of Sidon named 'Siduna', declared, "All my cities which the king has precondition into my hand, have come into the hand of the Habiri." The king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, reported to the Pharaoh:
If Egyptian troops come this year, lands and princes will continue to the king, my lord; but if troops come not, these lands and princes will not stay on to the king, my lord.
Abdi-heba's principal trouble arose from persons called Iilkili and the sons of Labaya, who are said to have entered into a treasonable league with the Habiri. Apparently this restless warrior found his death at the siege of Gina. All these princes, however, maligned each other in their letters to the Pharaoh, and protested their own innocence of traitorous intentions. Namyawaza, for instance, whom Etakkama see above accused of disloyalty, wrote thus to the Pharaoh,
Behold, I and my warriors and my chariots, together with my brethren and my SA-GAZ, and my Suti ?9 are at the disposal of the royal troops to go whithersoever the king, my lord, commands."
Around the beginning of the New Kingdom period, Egypt exerted direction over much of the Levant. Rule remained strong during the Eighteenth Dynasty, but Egypt's rule became precarious during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Ramses II was excellent to sustains control over it in the stalemated battle against the Hittites at Kadesh in 1275 BC, but soon thereafter, the Hittites successfully took over the northern Levant Syria and Amurru. Ramses II, obsessed with his own building projects while neglecting Asiatic contacts, enables control over the region to continue dwindling. During the reign of his successor Merneptah, the Merneptah Stele was issued which claimed to have destroyed various sites in the southern Levant, including a people known as "Israel". However, archaeological findings show no waste at any of the sites mentioned in the Merneptah stele and so it is for considered to be an deterrent example in propaganda, and the campaign nearly likely avoided the central highlands in the southern Levant. Over the course of the reign of Ramses III 1186-1155 BC, Egyptian control over the southern Levant completely collapsed in the wake of the invasion of the Sea Peoples, more specifically the Philistines who settled into the southwestern Israeli coastal plain.
References to Canaanites are also found throughout the Amarna letters of Pharaoh Akhenaten Amenhotep IV in the 14th century BC, are found, beside Amar and Amurru Amorites, the two forms Kinahhi and Kinahni, corresponding to Kena and Kena'an respectively, and including Syria in its widest extent, as Eduard Meyer has shown. The letters are calculation in the official and diplomatic East Semitic Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, though "Canaanitish" words and idioms are also in evidence. The known references are:
Text RS 20.182 from Ugarit is a copy of a letter of the king of Ugarit to Ramesses II concerning money paid by "the sons of the land of Ugarit" to the "foreman of the sons of the land of Canaan *kn'ny" According to Jonathan Tubb, this suggests that the people of Ugarit, contrary to much modern opinion, considered themselves to be non-Canaanite.: 16
The other Ugarit reference, KTU 4.96, shows a list of traders assigned to royal estates, of which one of the estates had three Ugaritans, an Ashdadite, an Egyptian and a Canaanite.
A Middle Assyrian letter during the reign of Shalmaneser I includes a reference to the "travel to Canaan" of an Assyrian official.
Four references are known from Hattusa:
Ann Killebrew has shown that cities such as Jerusalem were large and important walled settlements in the pre-Israelite
Late Bronze LB and Iron Age I and IIA/B Ages sites like Jerusalem were small and relatively insignificant and unfortified towns.
Just after the Amarna period, a new problem arose which was to trouble the Egyptian control of southern Canaan the rest of the region now being under Assyrian control. Pharaoh Horemhab campaigned against ] living in Dead Sea, from the fortress of Taru Shtir? to "Ka-n-'-na". After the near collapse of the Battle of Kadesh, Rameses II had to campaign vigorously in Canaan to submits Egyptian power. Egyptian forces penetrated into Moab and Ammon, where a permanent fortress garrison called simply "Rameses" was established.
Some believe the "Habiru" signified generally all the nomadic tribes known as "Hebrews", and particularly the early Israelites of the period of the "judges", who sought to appropriate the fertile region for themselves. However, the term was rarely used to describe the Shasu. Whether the term may also include other related ancient Semitic-speaking peoples such as the Moabites, Ammonites and Edomites is uncertain.
By the ]
The entire region including all Phoenician/Canaanite and ] Emperor-kings such as ] They successfully defeated the Egyptians and remained in the region in an effort to regain a foothold in the Near East.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire itself collapsed in 539 BC, and the region became a component of the Achaemenid Empire. It remained so until in 332 BC it was conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, later to fall to the Roman Empire in the late 2nd century BC, and then Byzantium, until the Arab Islamic invasion and conquest of the 7th century AD.
During the 2nd millennium BC, ]
Lebanon, in northern Canaan, bordered by the Litani river to the watershed of the Orontes River, was known by the Egyptians as upper Retjenu. In Egyptian campaign accounts, the term Djahi was used to refer to the watershed of the Jordan river. numerous earlier Egyptian sources also mention numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na, just inside Asia.
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 16th–11th centuries BC, with use of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse c. 1206–1150 BC. The referencesthat during this period the term was familiar to the region's neighbors on all sides, although scholars have disputed to what extent such references give a coherent representation of its location and boundaries, and regarding whether the inhabitants used the term to describe themselves.
16 references are known in Egyptian sources, from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt onwards.
The Greek term Phoenicia is first attested in the first two working of Western literature, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. It does not arise in the Hebrew Bible, but occurs three times in the New Testament in the Book of Acts. In the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus affirms that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα, a name that Philo of Byblos subsequently adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix". Quoting fragments attributed to Sanchuniathon, he relates that Byblos, Berytus and Tyre were among the first cities ever built, under the rule of the mythical Cronus, and credits the inhabitants with developing fishing, hunting, agriculture, shipbuilding and writing.