Canaan
Canaan: Looking beyond ancient Mesopotamia
"Our army was annihilated... Our food... incinerated... our vineyards... devastated. Our city is ravaged. Know this! Know this!" - Final message from Ugarit city, Canaan c.1190 BC.
A coalition of "Sea Peoples" raided every major city in the eastern Mediterranean sea; defeating the armies there, inciting revolt, overthrowing authority and weakening the dominant empires in the region. This eventually brought about the Late Bronze Age collapse, involving nearly every single empire in the eastern Mediterranean.
Canaan - the Bridge of 3 Empires;
Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Hittite.
Near East - general map [source- Wikipedia]
Bronze Age in the Near East [source- Wikipedia]
Levant Location
Canaan was a civilisation of nomadic-pastoral peoples in the Levant before biblical times. Much of the geo-political information was derived from ancient Egyptian texts. Much of the cultural information on Canaan was found in 1928 in Ugarit, Syria and is called the Ugaritic texts (in cuneiform).
The land of Canaan is near the end of the Fertile Crescent where it fronts the Mediterranean Sea. Canaan's agriculture was mostly dependent on seasonal rainfall. In contrast, both Mesopotamia and Egypt had mighty rivers to provide irrigation for their lush vegetation. Anatolia to the North, was basically hilly. The mass of lands to the south-east of Canaan was mainly desert.
Canaan can be thought of as a trade confederation of the nations of Phoenicia, Philistia, Israel, Ammon, Moab and more. Canaan was surrounded by dominant empires: Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Hittite (Anatolia) and Mycenaea (Greece). For trade, this location was precious and precarious. The city-states era was from 2000 BC - 1550 BC, after which the area was absorbed by the larger empires.
Cosmopolitan Canaan
We can generalise Canaan as being controlled in the north by the Hittites, in the centre by the Mesopotamians, and in the south by the Philistines. Phoenicia was the ancient greek name for the collective peoples in Canaan, famed for their sea-faring trade routes.
The Philistines operated the sea trade routes. They were transmigrated to settle in south Canaan by the ancient Egyptians to expand the Egyptian empire. Philistines are thought to be from ancient Greece and Crete. While many Philistines had served loyally in the ancient Egyptian empire, some Philistines had been at war with them. Another group of Philistines were a major component of the Sea Peoples.
Ugarit in the north was controlled by the Hittites. The Hittite empire existed from c.1600 BC to c.1178 BC. Their religion favoured weather-gods (or storm-gods) called Tarhunts. The capital city, Hattusa in central Anatolia, was a centre for astronomical observations and religious events. The Hittites language was a variant of Luwian language. The Luwians were the peoples of the southern-half of Anatolia and its Mediterranean coast. We can think of the Hittites as being an independent offshoot of the Luwians. They used two writing systems; with Luwian hieroglyphs as well as cuneiform (for phonetic syllables).
Israel, Moab, Ammon & other city states were identified culturally as being Mesopotamian. They operated the land trade routes between Canaan and Mesopotamia along the Fertile Crescent. Their languages and Canaanite language were semitic languages. The Canaanites wrote using cuneiform.
Semitic Language
In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians were the first rulers and introduced cuneiform script as a form of universal written communication because different city-states spoke different languages. The Akkadians were the second rulers and they promoted their language as the uniting language of the empire. Akkadian language is the earliest known Semitic language.
"Semitic" (or Syro-Arabian) refers to the family of languages which includes Akkadian, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic & Egyptian. We can generally identify semitic word sounds as the number "5" would be something like "khames" while "7" would be like "seba".
Literature
The Ugaritic texts reveals 3 literary works: 1. The Ba'al Cycle, 2. Epic of Keret, and 3. Tale of Aqhat.
Ba'al Cycle Ba'al Cycle Ba'al Cycle [4] c.1300 BC
El is the chief god and creates the subordinate gods Yam, Mot, Ba'al and Anat,
El appoints Yam as commander over the other (subordinate) gods. Yam is a tyrant.
Baʿal Hadad opposes Yam, they battle. Yam is slain by Ba'al's 2 magic weapons.
Ba'al Hadad becomes the commander.
El is persuaded by Anat and Ashera for Ba'al Hadad to have a palace built on Mount Zephon by Kothar-wa-Hasis.
Ba'al Hadad, commander of the gods and ruler of the world seeks to subjugate Mot.
Mot is angry and threatens Ba'al Hadad, who offers his surrender.
Ba'al Hadad impregnates a cow which yields a facsimilie of himself.
At the underworld entrance, Mot finds the Ba'al facsimilie and eats him.
Everyone believes that Ba'al is dead.
Anat enters the underworld looking for Ba'al Hadad.
Unable to find Ba'al Hadad, the angry Anat finds Mot; kills Mot; slices, burns & grinds Mot's body and scatters the pieces.
But Ba'al is not dead. Shapash retrieves Baʿal Hadad returning him to his Mount Zephon palace.
Mot reintegrates himself and challenges Baʿal Hadad.
Shapash intervenes and convinces Mot of the politics in play.
Mot finally agrees to submit to Ba'al Hadad's command and Baʿal Hadad rules again.
The Ba'al Cycle tale has some similarities to the Horus vs Set myth from ancient Egypt:-
The god Osiris ruled the world. His wife was Isis.
His brother Set was jealous, trapped Osiris in a casket & floated it down the Nile.
Osiris died. Isis finds Osiris and attempts to resurrect him.
Set finds out and dismembers the body, scattering the parts.
Isis reassembles the body but without the penis.
Isis takes her falcon form, erects the body, forms a virtual phallus and gets pregnant.
The resurrected Osiris in incomplete and
Stele of deity Ba'al c.1350 BC brandishing his thunderbolt and planting his spear while attended by a king; currently at Louvre [source- WikiCommons, darkened edit by Yala Abdullah].
El, chief god, the Bull.
Ashera (or Athirat or Asratu), mother of the gods, Lady of the Sea.
- - -
Ba'al Hadad, god of Sky & Storms, Rider of Clouds.
Mot (Mavet), god of Death & theUnderworld.
Yam, god of the Sea and Rivers (Nahar).
Anat (Anath), goddess of War.
Shapash (Shemesh), goddess of the Sun.
- others -
Kothar-wa-Hasis, deft deity of architecture.
Baal is also called Ba'al Shamen in Phoenician.
Relief at Medinet Habu depicting the victory of Ramses III against the Sea Peoples in the Battle of the (Nile) Delta [source- WikiCommons].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian%E2%80%93Hittite_peace_treaty
https://luwianstudies.org/the-sea-peoples-inscriptions-and-excavation-results/
Canaanite Gods in the Torah - During the era of Abraham, the abrahamites worshipped the god named as "El" or "Elohim". From the era of Moses, the worshipped god was named as "Yahweh". In the Torah, the abrahamic texts refer to El-Elyon, El-Olam, El-Shadday, El-Ro'i, El-Betel plus Isra-El, Ishma-El, Beyt-El. After Moses, new names appear as Eli-Jah, Eli-Yah-U. {information taken from Christine Hayes lecture video, Yale University}
Eras of Sumeria, Akkadia, Canaan, Phoenicia, Phillistine and Israel. Information on Canaanite mythology is derived from the Ugarit archaeological site.
https://www.ancient.eu/Yahweh/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
https://www.ancient.eu/canaan/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Canaanite_Religion
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Canaan/Canaan_religion.htm
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cana/hd_cana.htm
https://www.ancient.eu/article/885/egyptian-gods---the-complete-list/
http://www.barr-family.com/godsword/philistines.htm
https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/fertility-cults-of-canaan
https://archive.org/details/epdf.tips_yahweh-and-the-gods-and-goddesses-of-canaan-the-li
Ba'al from Ugarit, now at Louvre [source- WikiCommons]
Relief of Gilgamesh between 2 bull men from Tell Halaf Museum, Germany [source- WikiCommons] (whited edit by Yala Abdullah).
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