Semites

Semitic people related to the Canaanites—the classical Greeks will call them Phoenicians—have moved to coastal Lebanon from the Arabian Peninsula.

In terms of archaeology, language, and religion, there is little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other cultures of Canaan.

As Canaanites, they are unique in their remarkable seafaring achievements.

Herodotus's account (written c. 440 BCE) refers to the Io and Europa myths. (History, I:1). “According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel. These people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea [modern Yemen], having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria…”

Gubla is the first Phoenician city to trade actively with Egypt and the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE), exporting cedar, olive oil, and wine, while importing gold and other products from the Nile Valley.

Byblos is the Greek name of the Phoenician city Gebal (earlier Gubla).

Located on the Lebanese coast at present Jebeil, Byblos is believed to have been founded around 5000 BCE, and, according to fragments attributed to the semi-legendary pre-Trojan war Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon, was the first city ever built, and even today is believed by many to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

During the third millennium BCE, the first signs of a town can be observed, with the remains of well-built houses of uniform size.

The hinterland remains heavily forested; the Egyptians sponsor seafaring expeditions to Byblos to bring back "cedars of Lebanon.”

Commercial and religious connections, probably by sea, between Phoenicia and Egypt are in place by the time of the Fourth dynasty.

Canaanite civilization begins to develop.

Tyre and Sidon are important maritime and trade centers; Gubla (later known as Byblos and now as Jubayl) and Berytus (present-day Beirut) are trade and religious centers.

The site of Lagash (modern al-Hiba), located about one hundred and twenty miles (two hundred kilometers) northwest of Basra, Iraq, may have been first occupied about 3000.

The dynasty of Lagash, though omitted from the king list, is well attested through several important monuments and many archaeological finds.

Sumerian pictographs are evolving into phonograms during the period of about 2900 BCE to 2400 BCE.

Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expands beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BCE, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits.

Forms of the Genesis story and the tale of the Flood (the earliest parts of the Bible) are written in Mesopotamia around this time.

Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools are established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.

Canaan, later to be known as Palestine, extends from the Mediterranean on the west to the Arabian Desert on the east, and from the lower Litani River in the north to the Gaza Valley in the south.

Most of the towns in northern or central Palestine known in historic times came into existence in the Early Bronze Age and developed in tandem with the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

Semitic peoples first appear in Canaan in the Early Bronze Age, when the introduction of bronze brings about a cultural revolution, marked by the development of metallurgy and by a decline in painted pottery.

Walled towns begin in the course of the third millennium to appear throughout Palestine.

Evidently, the next step of unification under the leadership of a single town does not take place in Palestine, as it has in Mesopotamia and Egypt; Palestine's towns presumably remain independent city-states, except insofar as Egypt may at times exercise a loose political control. (The name "Canaanite" comes from the Bible, where it designates the peoples that occupied Syria-Palestine —Canaan—before the coming of the Israelites.)

The Canaanites speak a Semitic language that will later develop into Hebrew and Phoenician.

Hebron, located in the southern Judaean Hills on the West Bank of the Jordan River, is one of the most ancient cities in the Middle East, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

It is a Canaanite royal city, which according to archaeological findings had probably been founded in the thirty-fifth century BCE.

The occupation of Ophel, within present-day Jerusalem, is indicated by ceramic evidence to date as far back as the Copper Age during the fourth millennium BCE, with evidence of a permanent settlement during the early centuries of the Early Bronze Age, around 3000-2800 BCE.

Some archaeologists, including Kathleen Kenyon, believe West Semitic people in around 2600 BCE founded Jerusalem as a city with organized settlements.

Eannatum of Lagash, grandson of Ur-Nanshe, creates one of the first historically known empires, albeit a short-lived one.

Eannatum annexes practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk (controlled by Enshakushanna, who is on the King List), Ur, Nippur, Akshak (controlled by Zuzu), and Larsa, and reduces to tributary status the city-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash, making every person pay a certain amount of grain into the treasury of the goddess Nina and the god Ingurisa.

In addition, his realm extends to parts of Elam, including the city Az on the Persian Gulf.

He allegedly smites Subartu or Shubur, and demands tribute as far as Mari.

Parts of his empire are often in revolt, however.

During Eannatum’s reign, many temples and palaces are built, especially in Lagash.

The city of Nina, probably a precursor of Nineveh, is rebuilt, with many canals and reservoirs being excavated.

Eannatum is notable for the policy of having deliberately introduced the use of "terror" as a matter of policy—his stele of the vultures has been found, showing violent treatment of enemies.

The full stele, carved of limestone and approximately five feet eleven inches (one point eight meters) high, is set up around 2600–2500 BCE as a monument of the victory of Eannatum over Enakalle of Umma.

Found in fragments in Ngirsu, (modern Telloh) Iraq, in 1881, the stele is now in the Louvre.

Eannatum’s empire collapses shortly after his death.

The linguistically Semitic Akkadians, whose infiltration and conquest of Mesopotamia begins around 2410 BCE, come to dominate the northern plains by the end of the twenty-fifth century, when kings in Sumer have ceased to be automatically high priests of the city deity. (Roux 1980)

The Sumerians now make and use all manner of sophisticated jewelry: necklaces, earrings, rings, bracelets, and their ornaments.

A woman's burial headdress, for example, (such as the one found in the royal tombs at Ur and now displayed at the British Museum in London) might consist of sheet-gold pendants on strings of lapis lazuli.

Sumerian goldsmiths employ sophisticated metalworking techniques; casting, cloisonné enameling, cold hammering, soldering, and particularly granulation, the use of minute drops of gold, and decorating with filigree (fine-wire ornamentation).

The Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns that delimits the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system, first appears in the the period 2700–2300 BCE.