Although the political structure of Canaan during the MBA is largely unknown, it seems likely that the region consisted of city-states each controlling a number of dependent towns and villages. Competition and the necessity of protecting wealth resulted in the development of a distinctive fortification system. Canaanite cities now had a new kind of rampart: a massive slanted bank of packed earth called a glacis. The glacis joined an exterior ditch, a fosse, obstructing the most likely avenues of approach. The architecture, of course, was a reaction to the use of the chariot and battering-ram in warfare.
Hazor (=Tell el-Qedah) was probably the most important Canaan city in northern Palestine. Situated between the Sea of Galilee and Lake Huleh, it dominated the ‘Way of the Sea’ (Latin: Via Maris), the coastal route between Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. Hazor reached its first peak in the eighteenth century BC when the 200 acre (≈81 ha) ‘lower city’ (≈eight times the area of the earlier ‘upper city’ to the south) was founded. Why the city expanded so rapidly at this time is not clear but it seems that Hazor must have experienced a sudden and dramatic increase of settlers (up to 30,000).
Megiddo, southwest of Hazor and southeast of modern Haifa, guarded the pass across the Carmel range through which the Via Maris crossed from the Sharon Plain into the Jezreel Valley. Its strategic importance meant that Megiddo was strongly fortified by the Canaanites, Egyptians and Israelites, and that the Romans later stationed a legion there.
Beth-Shean (=Tell el-Hosn), due to its at the junction of the Jordan Valley and Jezreel Valley, essentially controlled access from the interior to the coast, as well as from Jerusalem to Galilee. After its capture by Thutmose III (r.c.1479-c.1425 BC), Beth-Shean became one of the major strongholds from which the pharaohs controlled Palestine.
Shechem (=Tell Balata) is located north of Jerusalem and southeast of Samaria at the convergence of several east-west and north-south trade routes. The site was on a shoulder at the lower slope of Mount Ebal, and was thus open to attack on three sides. Because of this, massive fortifications were built very early in the city’s development. Several of the Amarna Letters mention a chieftain named Labaya, the ‘Lion Nan’, who gained control over Shechem and built up a kingdom that stretched to the Mediterranean coast.
Gezer was located on the northern edge of the Shephelah, approximately thirty kilometres west of Jerusalem. It sat at the junction of two trade routes, the Via Maris and the road leading inland from the sea up to Jerusalem. It reached its greatest importance in the MBA when it was fortified with a wall and towers and, later, a glacis.
Jerusalem is located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northwest edge of the Dead Sea. Until the fifteenth century BC it was apparently little more than a mountain fortress containing a small town. The Canaanites built a city on the hill, named it Zion, and ruled the region until they were defeated by Thutmose III. It was inhabited in the late second millennium BC by Jebusites, a people of uncertain origin.
Towards the end of the LBA a number of Canaanite cities were destroyed, including Aphek, Debir (=Khirbet Rabud), Hazor, Lachish and Megiddo. The Canaanites survived on the coast and inland valleys, but eventually their culture was absorbed by that of Philistines, Phoenicians and Israelites.
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