No single geographical definition for the land of Canaan exists in the Bible (Num. Mention of the Land of Canaan predominates in the Bible in the four books of Genesis, Numbers, Joshua, and Judges, but less so elsewhere. text from *Mari, the earliest written records mentioning Canaan are Egyptian from the late 15 th and 14 th centuries B.C.E., respectively a booty list of Amenophis II mentioning the deportation of Canaanites and the *Amarna letters. Apart from one instance of the mention of 'thieves and Canaanites (who) are in Rahishum' in an 18 th-century B.C.E. The land of Canaan is also known in ancient sources as, variously, ʿ Aʾ mu-ḥryw-šʿ (''Asiatics' who dwell in the sand'), Amurru, Retenu, Hurru, and Hatti (for the first see Helck in bibliography). Since purple cloth was the chief export of Phoenicia, the term Canaan also appears in the sense of merchant (Isa. Those who derive the name from the Semitic root kn' consider it either a name for the conchiferous snail which yielded purple dye, or a term for the western nations, because the sun set in the west (see also Astour 1965). Support for this is found in the similarity between the Greek Φοῖνιξ meaning reddish purple and Φοινίκη meaning Phoenicia. Most scholars connect the name with the Hurrian term kinaḫḫu meaning (reddish) purple.

w and P - knʿ n Ugaritic: Knʿ ny ('a Canaanite') Phoenician and Hebrew: Knʿ n.

and was variously written: Akkadian: Kinani ( m), Kinaḫḫu / i, etc.

The name Canaan first appears in documents from the 15 th century B.C.E.

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