CANAAN and CANAANITES, geograph ical and ethnological terms applied to the coun try and the inhabitants of southern Syria in general. The country extended from the foot of Mount Hermon to the lower end of the Dead Sea, including territory both east and west of the Jordan; that is, Judea, Phcenicia and Phil istia proper. Ethnologically the name was ap plied to all of the heathen peoples (Jebusites, Hittites, Amorites, etc.) whom the Israelites found west of the Jordan. The country is in some instances connected with Phcenicia, and in consequence it appears (e.g. Hos. xii, 8: Is. xxiii, 8) in the general sense of merchant. The geographical inference is that the land was originally a small strip of coast, gradually ex tended by conquest. The etymology has been derived from the dialectic word meaning alow," because of the fact that in Egyptian the word appears with the article prefixed canaae; but this derivation has been con tested, and the suggestion has been made that the land took its name from the people, not vice-versa.
The earliest mention of is found in the Amama tablets where the name is used interchangeably with aAniurru) for the land subject to the Amorite Aziru (162, 41) (see AMORITE), but mostly as a general nomencla ture of Syria. In the Egyptian inscriptions, Canaan (Ka-n'n) is mentioned at the time of Seti I, and within the territory of Phcenicia in the days of Rameses III; and the ((land of Ca naan)) apparently as Philistia in two papyri from the 19th dynasty. Coins from the time of
Antiochus IV and his successors bear the leg end of a metropolis in Canaan.* What the original language of the Canaan ites was we do not know, but in later .times it was understood to mean Hebrew or the closely allied Plicenician dialect.
On the basis of the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions the history of Canaan may be di vided into three periods: (a) the pre-Israelitish, from about 3800 B.C. down to the definite con stitution of Israelitish supremacy; (b) the Israelitish supremacy from about 1100 ((c. 740 a.c.; (c) decline of this supremacy ending in the absorption of Canaan by Assyria and Babylonia 587 a.c. After the return of the He brews from the so-called Babylonian exile, the history of the north and south becomes in volved in the various attempts to found a world power by Persia, Macedonia and Rome. The characteristic note in the history is the im possibility of political union among the vari ous peoples, probably due to the split-up na ture of the coast lands which they inhabited. Consult the Letters) (ed. by Winckler with trans. 1896) ; Sellin's report of excavations at Tel Ta'annek; Vincent, (Ca naan) (1907); Benziger, Arche ologie) (1907) ; Bohl, (ICanaanier and Hebrier,) and any of the biblical dictionaries.