Canaan (historical region), Middle East

Canaan was an ancient region in the Middle East that encompassed the area where Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank are in modern times. Canaan plays a prominent role in the biblical Old Testament, where it was viewed as the promised land of “milk and honey,” but its inhabitants condemned as sinful and deserving of God’s wrath. Historically, humans first settled in the region of Canaan about ten thousand years ago and built one of the world’s first urban centers. The region’s inhabitants, who were a collection of peoples who spoke Semitic languages, eventually evolved to become the seagoing Phoenicians. Although the Bible says Canaan and the Canaanite people were wiped out by the Israelites, archaeologists see many similarities between the two cultures and have found Canaanite DNA in the modern Israeli and Lebanese people.

Background

For the majority of ancient human history, people were hunter-gatherers who lived a nomadic existence, moving from place to place in search of food. As the glaciers from the last ice age finished retreating about twelve thousand years ago, the planet’s climate slowly became more temperate. Ancient humans began to form more stable communities and utilize wild grains and plants for food. Eventually, these nomadic peoples built permanent settlements and transformed into more agricultural-based societies.

This transformation first took hold in a swathe of land in the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent. This region extended from western Iran, into Iraq, Syria, Jordan, southeastern Turkey, Israel, and Palestine. With a more readily available food supply, humans did not have to be constantly on the move and were able to construct increasingly larger settlements. Among the largest of these settlements was Çatalhöyük, a site in modern-day Turkey. Archaeologists believe Çatalhöyük was first occupied about 9,500 years ago and had about eight thousand residents at its peak.

Hundreds of miles to the south, in what became the West Bank territory, another large settlement, Jericho, was likely occupied far earlier. Evidence suggest about seventy homes were located on the site about 11,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, the inhabitants of Jericho surrounded the settlement with a stone wall about 12 feet (3.7 meters) high and towers reaching 28 feet (8.5 meters). Archaeologists estimate early Jericho had a population ranging from 300 to as much as 3,000.

Overview

The first inhabitants of what would later be called Canaan settled in and around Jericho. Over the centuries, the settlement was abandoned multiple times and later reestablished. These inhabitants were not a unified people, but rather consisted of different groups who invaded or migrated into new territories. Rulers established control of their own city-states but never came together under a centralized authority. As the population increased, the existing settlements grew and new settlements sprang up, were abandoned, and were resettled repeatedly. By about four to five thousand years ago, many of the region’s settlements developed into true cities. The area was assimilated into the Akkadian Empire—the first known empire in the world—about 2300 BCE and was later overrun by invading Semitic tribes about 2000 BCE.

The peoples who lived in Canaan were a mix of different ethnic groups who eventually developed a common culture. The first known mention of their land as Canaan comes from Mesopotamian records dating to about 1800 BCE. A letter written by the king of the city-state of Mari describes a land where “thieves and Canaanites” dwell. Mentions of Canaan first appear in Egypt about 1500 BCE when a king named Idrimi wrote that he had been forced to flee to a city in Canaan. The origin of the name is unknown. Some experts speculate it could come from the word kinahhu, which means “purple” in the local Hurrian dialect. This a possible reference to the dyed cloth traded by the region’s merchants. The fact that the name Phoenicians—the successors to the Canaanites—comes from the Greek word for “purple” lends some credence to the theory. However, the Old Testament book of Genesis says the land was named after Canaan, the grandson of Noah.

In the first half of the second millennium BCE, Canaan was a major trading partner with Egypt, eventually becoming a tributary state. During this period, the Canaanites, influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs, invented a method of writing that used symbols to represent language sounds. Other writing systems of the time used symbols to represent words or concepts, but the Canaanite system became the world’s first alphabet. This alphabet was later modified by the Greeks and the Romans, evolving into the common Latin alphabet used for many European languages today.

Sometime about 1725 to 1675 BCE, a group of Semitic peoples known as the Hyksos conquered Canaan and held the land until Egypt drove them out about 1570 BCE. Fearing the presence of potential invaders on its borders and wanting to protect its trading investment, Egypt again made Canaan a tributary state. Canaan prospered under Egypt’s protection, achieving somewhat of a “golden age” from about 1550 to 1250 BCE. References to Canaan being under Egypt’s control are found in numerous sources from the period. One, written about 1350 BCE, was from a Babylonian king to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten describing how his merchants were robbed and murdered while passing through Canaan. The king asks Akhenaten to compensate him for the loss because, “The land of Canaan is your land and its kings are your servants.” However, Egypt’s protection wasn’t enough to maintain complete peace; Canaan experienced a number of internal rebellions and outside invasions during that time.

In the thirteenth century BCE, Canaan and the entire Mediterranean region became caught up in a cataclysmic event known as the late Bronze Age Collapse. Thriving civilizations across the region were devastated by a combination of events ranging from foreign invasions to famine, drought, and earthquakes. Historians have determined that the major Canaanite cities were destroyed sometime after 1250 BCE, and much of the population was driven out. Egyptian texts from the period claim the region had been “plundered into every sort of woe.”

The fall of Canaan coincided with the emergence of the Israelite kingdoms in the southern part of the region. According to the Old Testament, an Israelite army commanded by Joshua attacked and besieged the city of Jericho. Daily for six days, the Israelites marched around the city carrying the Ark of the Covenant, the golden chest said to hold the tablets of the Ten Commandments. On the seventh day, they marched around the city seven times, after which the people let out a great shout, causing the walls of Jericho to crumble. The Bible goes on to record that God commanded the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child, saying “You shall not leave alive anything that breathes.” Although the destruction of Canaan was real, historians doubt that the Israelites were responsible.

According to the Bible, the land of Canaan was preordained by God as the promised land of the Jewish people. God told Abraham, the biblical founder of the Jewish people, that his descendants would build a great nation in Canaan, a land said to be overflowing with “milk and honey.” Abraham and his family moved to Canaan, but his descendants did not find the prosperity God had promised. After experiencing a famine, the Jews were forced to seek refuge in Egypt, where they were eventually enslaved. After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and escaped from slavery, God once again promised the land of Canaan to the Jewish people. He laid out its boundaries as the Desert of Zin and the southern border of the Dead Sea in the south, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Nur Mountains in the north, and the Jordan River to the east. According to the Bible, it was this promise that prompted Joshua to destroy Jericho and conquer Canaan.

The Bible often describes the Canaanites as sinful, sexually deviant people who worshiped false gods. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were said to have been destroyed by a fiery rain sent by God, were both located in Canaan. The Bible also describes the Canaanites as practicing human sacrifice, specifically burning children alive as offerings to the god Moloch. Although historians are unsure about the name Moloch, they have found evidence that children were sacrificed in Canaan.

The chief god of the Canaanite pantheon was El, considered the father of most of the other deities. His wife was Asherah, a mother figure and fertility deity. Another significant deity, Baal, was a male fertility figure who is mentioned several times in the Bible as a false god worshipped by the Canaanites. In one story, the prophet Elijah challenges the priests of Baal to a contest to prove which deity is the true god. Both would prepare a bull to be sacrificed, but neither could set fire to the altar. The deity who lit the altar with fire from the heavens would be the true god. The priests of Baal called upon their god to answer, but nothing happened. Elijah soaked his altar in water, and then called upon his God who responded by igniting the sacrifice. As punishment, the priests of Baal were executed.

The authors of the biblical Old Testament may have portrayed the Canaanites as the enemy of the Israelites, but it seems likely that they were closely related. The Canaanites were never a unified ethnic group, and some scholars believe the Israelites were themselves Canaanites who later separated themselves based on their religious beliefs. The Hebrew language spoken by the Israelites is a Semitic language from the same family as other Canaanite languages. The one God of the Jewish religion may have evolved from a merger of the deity El with another deity named Yahweh. Many historians also believe the so-called “conquering” of Canaan described in the Bible was more likely a gradual migration into the region by the Israelites. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries BCE, most Canaanites in the region had been absorbed into Israelite societies.

To the north of the Israelite kingdoms, the Canaanites formed a civilization that would later be classified by the Greeks as the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were a seagoing people who developed an influential trading society across the Mediterranean. A Phoenician colony in northern Africa called Carthage later rose to power and formed its own empire. For a brief time, Carthage rivaled the might of Rome before eventually falling in the second century BCE. A Canaanite/Phoenician port city the Greeks called Byblos was one of the most famous cities of ancient Canaan. Byblos was a major exporter of papyrus in the ancient world, so much so that the Greek word for book was named after the city. In this way, the Greek, byblos, evolved into the modern word Bible.

Starting in the eighth century BCE, the region of ancient Canaan fell to a series of conquerors, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. In the seventh century CE, the region was conquered by Islamic forces. With continued migrations and invasions, the ethnic identity of the Canaanite peoples became lost over time.

However, whoever the Canaanite people were, they did leave behind a significant genetic legacy in the people of the region. A study from 2017 found that the modern-day Lebanese people received more than 90 percent of their DNA from the Canaanites. A 2020 study found that DNA from the Canaanites exists in the majority of Arabs and Jews living in the region today. The study examined DNA from more than ninety individuals found in ancient burial sites in modern-day Jordan and Israel. These remains were tested against human DNA originating from the sites located inside Israel. Positive genetic links were established between the two groups. According to the researchers, people across the region received about half their DNA from the inhabitants of ancient Canaan.

Bibliography

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