Canaan



Canaan was, during the late 2nd millennium BCE, a region in Terra's Ancient Near East, described as roughly corresponding to the preAscent Levant, and especially the parts of the Southern Levant that are the main setting of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, i.e. the area of Israel/Palestine. The inhabitants were called 'Canaanites'.

The name Canaan is used commonly in the Hebrew Bible, with particular definition in reference in Numbers 34, where the "Land of Canaan" extends from Lebanon southward to the "Brook of Egypt" and eastward to the Jordan River Valley. References to Canaan in the Bible are usually backward looking, referring to a region that had become something else (i.e. the Land of Israel). The term Canaanites is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible, in which they are commonly described as a people who had been annihilated.

Archaeological attestation of the name Canaan in Ancient Near Eastern sources is almost exclusively during the period in which the region was a colony of the New Kingdom of Egypt, with usage of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse. The references suggest that during this period the term was familiar to the region's neighbors on all sides, although it has been 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.

Canaan was of significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian Empires converged. Much of the modern knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area.