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Historical Period

The Canaanite city-states, the first alphabet, and the gods of the Levant.

Use the timeline below to navigate through major events and milestones.

Canaan & the Bronze Age · 3000-1200 BC
The Ancient Levant

Canaan & the Bronze Age

Between Egypt and Mesopotamia, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, lay Canaan — a land of walled towns, cedar forests, and seafaring merchants. Here Semitic peoples built the first alphabet, worshipped Baal and El, and lived under the shadow of the pharaohs, until the great Bronze Age world collapsed around them. Slide across the millennia of Canaan before Israel.

3000 BC
Early Bronze Age
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3000 BC

Early Bronze Age
  • Cultural

    The first cities of Canaan

    Walled towns rise across Canaan, from Jericho to Megiddo, trading with Egypt and the wider Near East.

9 milestones

Meanwhile

Around 3000 BC

Full Chronicle

Canaan & the Bronze Age

Between Egypt and Mesopotamia, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, lay Canaan — a land of walled towns, cedar forests, and seafaring merchants. Here Semitic peoples built the first alphabet, worshipped Baal and El, and lived under the shadow of the pharaohs, until the great Bronze Age world collapsed around them. Slide across the millennia of Canaan before Israel.

  1. Early Bronze Age

    • The first cities of Canaan

      Walled towns rise across Canaan, from Jericho to Megiddo, trading with Egypt and the wider Near East.

  2. Early Bronze Age

    • Ebla, archive of the north

      The Syrian city of Ebla flourishes as a commercial power, leaving thousands of tablets in an early Semitic tongue.

  3. Middle Bronze Age

    • Byblos and the cedars

      The port of Byblos grows rich shipping Lebanese cedar to timber-poor Egypt, binding the two worlds together.

  4. Middle Bronze Age

    • The first alphabet

      Canaanite workers adapt Egyptian signs into a simple alphabet — the ancestor of nearly every alphabet on earth.

  5. Middle Bronze Age

    • The Hyksos rule Egypt

      Canaanite rulers, the Hyksos, seize the Egyptian Delta and govern Egypt itself for a century.

  6. Late Bronze Age

    • Thutmose III at Megiddo

      The pharaoh Thutmose III crushes a Canaanite coalition at Megiddo, bringing the Levant under Egyptian rule.

  7. Late Bronze Age

    • Ugarit: gods and letters

      The rich port of Ugarit records the myths of Baal and El in its own cuneiform alphabet.

  8. Late Bronze Age

    • The Amarna letters

      Canaanite city-kings beg the pharaoh for help against rivals and marauding Habiru in letters found in Egypt.

  9. Bronze Age Collapse

    • The Bronze Age collapse

      Invasions by the Sea Peoples and a wider catastrophe destroy Ugarit and shatter the old order of the Levant.