Canaan (Phoenician: .
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Canaan (Phoenician: .
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 It is also sometimes used interchangeably with Palestine, Land of Israel, Zion, the Holy Land or the Promised Land.Fact: date=March 2008
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 SyriaFact: date=January 2009 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.
