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}} | Population = Tens of thousands | blank_name_sec2 = Languages | blank_info_sec2 = | blank_name_sec3 = Religions | blank_info_sec3 = }} Canaan (; Northwest Semitic: '; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍; Biblical Hebrew: / '; Masoretic: / ') was, during the late 2nd millennium BC, a region in the Ancient Near East. In the Bible it corresponds to the Levant, in particular the areas of the Southern Levant that are the main setting of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, i.e. the area of Israel, Phonecia, Philistia, and other nations. The name Canaan (' ) is used commonly in the Hebrew Bible, with particular definition in references and , where the "Land of Canaan" extends from Lebanon southward to the "Brook of Egypt" and eastward to the Jordan River Valley. References to Canaan in the Bible are usually backward looking, referring to a region that had become something else (i.e. the Land of Israel). The term Canaanites is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible,〔William G. Dever, (Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? ), p.219, quote: "Canaanite is by far the most common ethnic term in the Hebrew Bible. The pattern of polemics suggests that most Israelites knew that they had a shared common remote ancestry and once common culture."〕 in which they are commonly described as a people who had been annihilated by the Israelites.〔 Archaeological attestation of the name ''Canaan'' in Ancient Near Eastern sources is almost exclusively during the period in which the region was a colony of the New Kingdom of Egypt, with usage of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse. The references suggest that during this period the term was familiar to the region's neighbors on all sides, although it has been disputed to what extent such references provide a coherent description of its location and boundaries, and regarding whether the inhabitants used the term to describe themselves.〔For details of the dispute, see the works of Lemche and Na'aman, its main protagonists.〕 The Amarna Letters and other cuneiform documents use ', while other sources of the Egyptian New Kingdom mention numerous military campaigns conducted in '.〔Redford, Donald B. (1993) ''Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times'' (Princeton University Press)〕 The name "Canaanites" (''kana`nīm, chanani'') is attested, many centuries later, as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient Greeks from c. 500 BC as Phoenicians,〔: "The name ‘Canaan’ did not entirely drop out of usage in the Iron Age. Throughout the area that we—with the Greek speakers—prefer to call ‘Phoenicia’, the inhabitants in the first millennium BCE called themselves ‘Canaanites’. For the area south of Mt. Carmel, however, after the Bronze Age ended references to ‘Canaan’ as a present phenomenon dwindle almost to nothing (the Hebrew Bible of course makes frequent mention of ‘Canaan’ and ‘Canaanites’, but regularly as a land that had become something else, and as a people who had been annihilated)."〕 and following the emigration of Canaanite speakers to Carthage, was also used as a self-designation by the Punics (''chanani'') during Late Antiquity. This mirrors later usage in later books of the Hebrew Bible, such as at the end of the Book of Zechariah, where it is thought to refer to a class of merchants or to non-monotheistic worshippers in Israel or neighbouring Sidon and Tyre, as well as in its single independent usage in the New Testament, where it is alternated for "Syrophoenician" in two parallel passages. Canaan was of significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian Empires converged. Much of the modern knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo, and Gezer. Canaanite culture apparently developed ''in situ'' from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of Near Eastern Harifian hunter-gatherers with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming cultures, practicing animal domestication, during the 6200 BC climatic crisis.〔Zarins, Juris (1992), "Pastoral nomadism in Arabia: ethnoarchaeology and the archaeological record—a case study" in O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanov, eds. "Pastoralism in the Levant"〕 The Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit (at Ras Shamra in Syria) is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically,〔Tubb, Jonathan N. (1998), "Canaanites" (British Museum People of the Past)〕 even though its Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite group proper.〔.〕〔.〕 == Etymology == The English term ''Canaan'' (pronounced since c. AD 1500, due to the Great Vowel Shift) comes from the Hebrew (''knʿn''), via Greek ''Khanaan'' and Latin ''ラテン語:Canaan''. It appears as in the Amarna letters (14th century BC), and ' is found on coins from Phoenicia in the last half of the 1st millennium. It first occurs in Greek in the writings of Hecataeus as ''Khna'' (Χνᾶ).〔David Asheri, Alan Lloyd, Aldo Corcella, ''A Commentary on Herodotus, Books 1-4,'' Oxford University Press, 2007 p.75.〕 Scholars connect the name ''Canaan'' with ', ''Kana'an'', the general Northwest Semitic name for this region. The etymology is uncertain. An early explanation derives the term from the Semitic root ' "to be low, humble, subjugated".〔Wilhelm Gesenius, ''Hebrew Lexicon'', 1833〕 Some scholars have suggested that this implies an original meaning of "lowlands", in contrast with Aram, which would then mean "highlands",〔(Bible Places: The Topography of the Holy Land ), Henry Baker Tristram, 1884〕 whereas others have suggested it meant "the subjugated" as the name of Egypt's province in the Levant, and evolved into the proper name in a similar fashion to Provincia Nostra (the first Roman colony north of the Alps, which became Provence). An alternative suggestion suggested by Ephraim Avigdor Speiser in 1936 derives the term from Hurrian ''Kinahhu'', purportedly referring to the colour purple, so that ''Canaan'' and ''Phoenicia'' would be synonyms ("Land of Purple"). Tablets found in the Hurrian city of Nuzi in the early 20th century appear to use the term ''Kinahnu'' as a synonym for red or purple dye, laboriously produced by the Kassite rulers of Babylon from murex shells as early as 1600 BC, and on the Mediterranean coast by the Phoenicians from a byproduct of glassmaking. Purple cloth became a renowned Canaanite export commodity which is mentioned in Exodus. The dyes may have been named after their place of origin. The name 'Phoenicia' is connected with the Greek word for "purple", apparently referring to the same product, but it is difficult to state with certainty whether the Greek word came from the name, or ''vice versa''. The purple cloth of Tyre in Phoenicia was well known far and wide and was associated by the Romans with nobility and royalty. However, according to Robert Drews, Speiser's proposal has generally been abandoned. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Canaan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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