The region that was occupied by the Canaanite people in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (part of the area described by the ancient Egyptians as Retenu) roughly corresponds to modern Lebanon, on the northern coast of the Levant. This territory essentially consisted of a number of city-states, including bybi. os, Lachish, megiddo and Ugarit.
A typical 'Canaanite amphora' from el-Amarna.
H. 58.8 cm. Just as the territorial and ethnic connotations of the name 'Canaan are somewhat ambiguous, so the term 'Canaanite amphora ’ is conventionally applied to this type of Bronze Age pottery vessel, although it was usedfor transporting commodities not only in Cannan but throughout the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. The name reflects the fact that the form clearly originated in Syria-Palestine, although local copies were made elsewhere.
The Canaanites were a Semitic people related to the IIYK. SOS, who had invaded Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. They occupied this part of the Levant during the Late Bronze Age from around 2000 to 1200 BC, after which they were displaced by the Israelites and Philistines from the south and PHOENICIANS from the north. Several of their cities, such as Byblos, remained important under their new masters, and much of Canaanite culture is reflected in that of the Phoenicians.
Canaan acted as a kind of ‘clearing house’ for the trade not only of itself but of its neighbours, the Egyptians, the iirriTn-s, and the states of - ME. SOPOTAMIA, and was much influenced by them. It may have been the need to develop sophisticated record-keeping or to deal with traders of many nationalities which led to the development here of an alphabetic .script around 1700 bc, roughly the same date as the appearance of alphabetic inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim in sinai. These are knowm as the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanitc scripts (see byblos).
K. K.'.'S. Yty>i, Amnrites and Canaanites {0IorA., 1966).
A. R. M11.L. ARD, ‘The Canaanites’, Peoples of Old Testament times, ed. D. J. Wiseman (Oxford,
1973), 29-52.
J. E Healy, ‘The early alphabet’, Reading the past (London, 1990), 197-257.
D. B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan and Israel in ancient (Princeton, 1992), 167-8, 192-213.
World History
