DepthReading

Egypt’s Final Redoubt in Canaan

Summary: The fiery end of the last Egyptian colony
The fiery end of the last Egyptian colony

(Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY)

A fragment of a painted limestone relief dating to about 1400 B.C. from Thebes in Egypt depicts defeated Canaanites.

 




For three centuries, Egyptians ruled the land of Canaan. Armies of chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers under the pharaoh Thutmose III thundered through Gaza and defeated a coalition of Canaanite chiefdoms at Megiddo, in what is now northern Israel, in 1458 B.C. The Egyptians then built fortresses, mansions, and agricultural estates from Gaza to Galilee, taking Canaan’s finest products—copper from Dead Sea mines, cedar from Lebanon, olive oil and wine from the Mediterranean coast, along with untold numbers of slaves and concubines—and sending them overland and across the Mediterranean and Red Seas to Egypt to please its elites.


(© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Nachom Selpak)

Category: English DepthReading
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