Canaan (; Phoenician: đ€đ€đ€đ€ â ; â , in pausa â ; â ; â ) was a Semitic-speaking civilization and region of the Southern Levant in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. 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 or overlapped. Much of present-day knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo, En Esur, and Gezer.
The name "Canaan" appears throughout the Bible as a geography associated with the "Promised Land". The demonym "Canaanites" serves as an ethnic catch-all term covering various indigenous populationsâboth settled and nomadic-pastoral groupsâthroughout the regions of the southern Levant or Canaan. It is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible. Biblical scholar Mark Smith, citing archaeological findings, suggests "that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature."
The name "Canaanites" is attested, many centuries later, as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient Greeks from BC as Phoenicians, and after the emigration of Phoenicians and Canaanite-speakers to Carthage (founded in the 9th century BC), was also used as a self-designation by the Punics (as ) of North Africa during Late Antiquity.
Etymology
The English term "Canaan" (pronounced since , due to the Great Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew (), via the Koine Greek and the Latin . It appears as KinĂąáž«na (, KURki-na-aáž«-na) in the Amarna letters (14th century BC) and several other ancient Egyptian texts. In Greek, it first occurs in the writings of Hecataeus as "" (). It is attested in Phoenician on coins from Berytus dated to the 2nd century BCE.
The etymology is uncertain. An early explanation derives the term from the Semitic root , "to be low, humble, subjugated". Some scholars have suggested that this implies an original meaning of "lowlands", in contrast with Aram, which would then mean "highlands", 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).
An alternative suggestion, put forward by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser in 1936, derives the term from Hurrian , 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 as a synonym for red or purple dye, laboriously produced by the Kassite rulers of Babylon from murex molluscs 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 abandoned.
Archaeology and history
Overview
There are several periodization systems for Canaan. One of them is the following.
Prior to 4500 BC (prehistory â Stone Age): hunter-gatherer societies slowly giving way to farming and herding societies 4500â3500 BC (Chalcolithic): early metal-working and farming 3500â2000 BC (Early Bronze): prior to written records in the area 2000â1550 BC (Middle Bronze): city-states 1550â1200 BC (Late Bronze): Egyptian hegemony 1200âvarious dates by region (Iron Age)
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 in situ from multiple waves of migration merging with the earlier Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing animal domestication, during the 6200 BC climatic crisis which led to the Neolithic Revolution/First Agricultural Revolution in the Levant. The majority of Canaan is covered by the Eastern Mediterranean coniferâsclerophyllousâbroadleaf forests ecoregion.