Canaan (meaning the area covering roughly modern Israel, the Palestinian territories, and southern Lebanon to Byblos) in the Late Bronze Age is a collection of city-states under the authority of the Egyptians.

The cities are very small, no more than towns, and are concentrated along the coast and in a few inland valleys.

They are ethnically diverse, so far as can be judged, but they speak languages of the West Semitic language family (probably mutually intelligible) and share a common culture in many respects, including religion, diet, and economic and political organization.

Semitic-speaking Hebrews emerge in Canaan probably about 1250 BCE during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, developing small villages in the hill country and in the south.

Three other Hebrew-speaking peoples have settled east of the Jordan River: the Edomites in the south, ...