The Land of Canaan: Shared Geography and Origins

Phoenicia occupied a narrow coastal strip of the Mediterranean Levant, corresponding roughly to modern Lebanon and adjoining parts of Syria and Israel, hemmed in to the east by the Lebanon mountain range, a barrier that pushed its economy toward the sea rather than the interior. The broader region of Canaan, of which Phoenicia formed the northern coastal edge, functioned historically as a land bridge between Egypt and Mesopotamia, divided into parallel geographic strips: the Mediterranean coastal plain, the central highlands of Judea and Samaria, the Jordan Valley, and the eastern plateaus of Transjordan. The Jordan Valley, which includes the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea — the lowest point on the Earth's surface — forms part of the Great Rift Valley system, while a Mediterranean climate prevailed in the north and the Negev in the south was semi-arid to desert, a divide that strongly shaped patterns of agriculture and settlement across the whole region.