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Canaan [i] [1] [2] 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.
The seven nations are all descendants of Canaan, son of Ham and grandson of Noah, from whom they derive their collective name Canaanites. When enumerated separately, one of the seven nations is called Canaanites, while the others are called the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites and the Perizzites. [3]
The English term Canaan (pronounced / ˈ k eɪ n ən / since c. AD 1500, due to the Great Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew כנען (knʿn), via Greek Χαναάν Khanaan and Latin Canaan. It appears as KUR ki-na-ah-na in the Amarna letters (14th century BC), and knʿn is found on coins from Phoenicia in the last half of the 1st millennium.
The Hebrew Bible contains the only surviving ancient text known to use the term Jebusite to describe the inhabitants of Jerusalem; according to the Generations of Noah , the Jebusites are identified as Canaanites, listed in third place among the Canaanite groups between the biblical Hittites and the Amorites.
These settlements were built by inhabitants of the "general Southland" (i.e. modern Sinai and the southern parts of Israel and Jordan), who abandoned their pastoral-nomadic ways. Canaanites who lived outside the central hill country were tenuously identified as Danites, Asherites, Zebulunites, Issacharites, Naphtalites and Gadites.
Luz is the ancient name of a royal Canaanite city, connected with Bethel (Genesis 28:19; 35:6). It is debated among scholars [1] whether Luz and Bethel represent the same town - the former the Canaanite name, and the latter the Hebrew name - or whether they were distinct places in close proximity to each other.
Mentioned as a Canaanite city in the Amarna Letters, it later appears in the Hebrew Bible as the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel following the split of the United Monarchy. [2] According to Joshua 21:20–21, it was located in the tribal territorial allotment of the tribe of Ephraim.
By the Iron Age, [24] Adullam is referred to in the Hebrew Bible as being one of the royal cities of the Canaanites, [25] and is listed along with the cities Jarmuth and Socho as occupying a place in the region geographically known as the Shefelah, [26] or what is a place of transition between the mountainous region and the coastal plains.