Canaan

Canaan (Phoenician: , Kana'n, Hebrew: כנען , Arabic: كنعان Kanaʿān) is an ancient term for a region encompassing modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, plus adjoining coastal lands and parts of Jordan, Syria and northeastern Egypt. In the Hebrew Bible, the "Land of Canaan" extends from Lebanon southward across Gaza to the "Brook of Egypt" and eastward to the Jordan River Valley, thus including modern Israel and the Palestinian Territories. In far ancient times, the southern area included various ethnic groups. The Amarna Letters found in Ancient Egypt mention Canaan (Akkadian: Kinaḫḫu) in connection with Gaza and other cities along the Phoenician coast and into Upper Galilee. Many earlier Egyptian sources also make mention of numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na, just inside Asia.

Various Canaanite sites have been excavated by archaeologists. Canaanites spoke Canaanite languages, closely related to other West Semitic languages. Canaanites are mentioned in the Bible, Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian texts. Although the residents of ancient Ugarit in modern Syria do not seem to have considered themselves Canaanite, and did not speak a Canaanite language (but one that was closely related, the Ugaritic language), archaeologists have considered the site, which was rediscovered in 1928, as quintessentially Canaanite. Much of the modern knowledge about the Canaanites stems from excavation in this area. Canaanite culture apparently developed in situ from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of Harifian hunter gatherers with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing animal domestication, during the 6,200 BC climatic crisis.

Nomenclature

The name Canaan is mentioned frequently in the Bible. It referred to parts or all of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in antiquity

In Egyptian campaign accounts the term Djahi was used to refer to the watershed of the Jordan river.

Proceeding northward Lebanon is bordered by the Litani river to the watershed of the Orontes river which is known by the Egyptians as upper Retnu. Between Lebanon and Syria Canaan is bordered to the North by Hazor, Aram and Kadesh which include the lands of the Amurru.

Canaan should not be considered to include any part of Syria, Aram, Hazor, Kadesh, Lebanon or any of the territory of the Amurru in the west of Syria despite the fact that some of the tribes of Israel extended into those regions as far north as Hamath at the northern bound of Aram and as far east as the Golan heights.

Similarly ancient Canaan and Israel would not have included the lands of Midian, Edom, Moab, the Sinai, the Negev, or TransJordan. Prior to the conquest, Canaan included parts of the lands of the Amalek, the Emim, the Horites, the Zamzumim, the Amorites and the Ammonites where they are located within the Jordan watershed but generally not where they extended through the seir into the table land of Meriba and the plains of Moab. Many earlier Egyptian sources also make mention of numerous military campaigns conducted in Ka-na-na, just inside Asia. Probably the best descriptions of Israels conquest and occupation of Canaan are given in Deuteronomy 3:12-17 and in Joshuah 12-21.

Canaan predates the Land of Israel and describes a land with different bounds. The classical Jewish view, as explained by Schweid, is that "Canaan" is the geographical name, but this is not a view that is universally subscribed to; the renaming as "Israel" after its occupation by the Israelites marks the origin of the concept of a Holy Land.

The region of Judaea existed by that name from the 6th century BC until it was renamed "Palestina" by the Romans following the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in the 2nd century AD. In the Bible and elsewhere, Zion originally meant the region of and around Jerusalem but, because of the importance of this city to zionists, came to designate the whole of the Israelite land, as for example in the naming of Zionism.

Etymology

The English name Canaan ultimately comes from the Hebrew כנען, via Greek Χαναάν and Latin Canaan. The Hebrew name Canaan is of obscure origins, with one suggestion connecting it with the non-Semitic Hurrian term Kinahhu found at Nuzi (c. 1450 BC), and referring to the colour purple— also said to be the meaning of Phoenician (which itself is often used as synonym for Canaan).

Another etymology is straightforward. "Can" means low as "Aram" means high. A straightforward meaning of Canaan is "lowland." This was first applied to the lowland or classical Phoenicia, mainly Sidon, then by extension to the whole region.

A third possibility is that Canaan derives from the Semitic root *k-n-' meaning "to be subdued", or "to be humbled", possibly connected with the above meaning "low".

The Bible attributes the name to Canaan, the son of Ham and the grandson of Noah, whose offspring correspond to the names of various ethnic groups in the land of Canaan, listed in the "Table of Nations" (Gen. 10), where Sidon is named as his firstborn son, to be subdued by the descendants of Shem.

The eponym Ham[2] merely means "Hot" or "Red" in Hebrew or Canaanite, although it may have been derived initially from the Egyptian word Kemet (KMT), a word applied to the land along the Nile. Some authors reason that the attribution was made because the Canaanite coast but not the interior was under Egyptian domination for several centuries.

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