What is "canaan"

Canaan \Canaan\ n. an ancient country is southwest Asia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

Syn: Palestine, Holy Land.

Canaan (; Northwest Semitic: ; Phoenician: ????????????????; Biblical Hebrew: / ; Masoretic: / ) was a Semitic-speaking region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. 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, Philistia, Phoenicia, 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 an ethnic catch-all term covering the varied indigenous populations of both settled and nomadic-pastoral groups throughout the regions of the southern Levant or Canaan. It is by far the most frequently used ethnic term in the Bible. in which they are commonly described as a people which, in the Book of Joshua are marked down on a list as one of the nations to be exterminated, and later as a group which 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 (16th − 11th century BC), with usage of the name almost disappearing following the Late Bronze Age collapse (ca. 1206−1150 BC). 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. The Amarna Letters and other cuneiform documents use , while other sources of the Egyptian New Kingdom mention numerous military campaigns conducted in .

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, 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 also of significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni 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.

Canaan was the ancient Biblical region of the Levant. It is also a Semitic personal name or surname used by Arabic and Hebrew-speaking people.

Canaan may also refer to:

Canaan, according to the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, was a son of Ham and grandson of Noah, and was the father of the Canaanites. He was the recipient of the so-called Curse of Ham.

Canaan is a 13-episode anime television series, conceptualized by Type-Moon co-founders Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi, based on the scenario that they created for the Nintendo Wii visual novel 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de, which is noted for being one of the few games to have been awarded a perfect score by games publication Famitsu. The series spawned manga and light novel adaptations.

A sequel to the 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de game, it centers on three women and their connections to one-another and an upcoming anti-terrorism summit in Shanghai, China. One of them is Canaan, a Middle Eastern assassin and mercenary. Another is Alphard, Canaan's rival and also a skilled assassin and mercenary who heads a terrorist organization called Snake. The final girl is Maria Ōsawa, a victim of an attempted biological terrorist attack in the streets of Shibuya two years previous. Their encounters lead to armed interventions between Canaan and Alphard with a deep and tragic history in common.