Canaanite city-state of Sidon

Canaan (/¿ke¿n¿n/; Northwest Semitic: knän, Ken¿¿an) was a Semitic-speaking civilization and region in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. The name Canaan appears throughout the Bible, where it corresponds to the Levant, in particular to the areas of the Southern Levant that provide the main setting of the narrative of the Bible: Phoenicia, Philistia, Israel, and other nations.The word Canaanites serves as an ethnic catchall term covering various indigenous populations ¿ 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 the Book of Joshua, the Canaanites are included in a list of nations to exterminate, and later described as a group, which the Israelites had annihilated. Biblical scholar Mark Smith notes that archaeological data suggests "that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature".