WHO ARE THE REAL HEIRS OF PALESTINE ? THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

In one word modern historians will give an answer: The Canaanites.

Canaanites were people who lived in the land of Canaan, an area which according to ancient texts may have included parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

WERE THE CANAANITES ?

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM ?

Canaan , according to the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, was a son of Ham and grandson of Noah, and was the father of the Canaanites.

Now let us explore the Noah myth:

Utnapishtim is a character in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. He is tasked by the god Enki, to create a giant ship to be called Preserver of Life in preparation of a giant flood that would wipe out all life. The character appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The Biblical story of Noah is copied from the older flood myths seen around the world civilizations. Utnapishtim is one of several mythic characters who are protagonists of Near Eastern flood myths, including Atrahasis, Ziusudra and the biblical Noah. So lets not even consider the Bible stories.

WHOM DID THE CANAANITES WORSHIP ?

The Gods worshipped by a civilization gives important details of the life style, work and culture of its people. So let us see who their gods were.

In 1928, a farmer digging in his field in northwest Syria accidentally discovered an ancient tomb. The tomb was part of a cemetery located in the area of the ancient city of Ugarit, a center of wealth and commerce from about 1450 to 1180 B.C. French excavators working at the site discovered the remains of two temples, a palace, and private dwellings, as well as two libraries of ancient clay tablets written mainly in alphabetic Ugaritic, the major language of the city. Other texts were inscribed in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hurrian. Translations of the Ugaritic literary texts provided the first insights into the religion of the Canaanites.

 The major gods reflect local geographical concerns about the fertility of the earth and the importance of water as well as relationships to the sky and the underworld. The universe was believed to be ruled in tandem by the older god El and a main warrior-god, Baal, surrounded by a council of deities and a lower level of attendant gods. The divine council included the older generation of the god El and his wife, war god Baal and the war goddesses. Forces of destruction included Yamm, the god of the seas and Mot, the god of death. In total, more than 234 deities are recorded in Ugaritic texts.

They gave importance to Baal, which means they went for periodic wars, presence of Yamm, the god of seas makes them sea travellers.

The earliest definite reference to the Canaanites is a Sumerian text in Syria from the 18th century BCE which mentions Canaan. Egyptian documents from 1897–1878 BCE refers to kingdoms in the region organized as fortified city-states and led by warrior chiefs. This was the same time that the Greek cities were fortified and organized in a similar manner. Those documents don't mention Canaan specifically, but this is the right region. It's not until the Letters from the mid-14th century BCE that we have Egyptian references to Canaan.

Canaan had significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni and Assyrian Empires converged. Before the Iron Age, the inhabitants of these city-states were called the Canaanites. During the Bronze Age, Canaanites dwelled in the south Syrian and Lebanese coast.

The name Phoenicians was given to them by the Greeks, it derives from the Greek Phoinikes, referring to the purple-colored dye which the Phoenicians extracted from the murex shell, and with which they produced highly prized textiles. It is likely that the Phoenicians of the Iron Age came from the Canaanites of the Bronze Age.

 The name "Phoenician" comes from the Greek phoinix.

 The name "Canaan" came from the Hurrian word, kinahhu.

Both words describe the same purple-reddish color.

It is not certain what the Phoenicians called themselves in their own language; it appears to have been Kedmus or  Kena’ani (Akkadian: Kinahna), “Canaanites.” In Hebrew the word kena’ani has the secondary meaning of “merchant,” a term that well characterizes the Phoenicians which takes us to ancient vedas.

To support the correctness of our present research path we can also refer to historical records that claim that Phoenicians called themselves Kedmus In the Semitic language Kedmum, which means the East.It is probable that the Phoenicians came from the East and so gloried in the name of Kedmus, i.e., an Eastern people. This again would show that civilization had travelled from the east and had not its origin in Egypt.

Ancient writers believed the Phoenicians had arrived from the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean.

Let us observe the names that were given to them by different civilizations :

The names given to the Phoenicians, like Poeni by the Romans and Phoinike by the Greeks, resemble the Vedic terms Pani meaning bargainer or trader, Paani meaning shop, Vani and Vanik  meaning bargainer and trader. Many scholars have identified the Vedic Panis with the Phoenicians about whom a lot has been stated in the Rig Veda. 

Phoenicians in Vedas

The Panis are not spoken of very highly in the Vedas. They were regarded as miserly, lowly, rude of language, child sacrificers and cow thieves.They were ultimately driven away from the Sapta-Sindhu region for the same reason, their defeat was at the hands of Indra himself as per vedas.

A great war broke out in the remote old days between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians in which the latter were defeated and compelled to leave wholly or partially the land of the Aryans.The Panis left Sapta-Sindu through sheer necessity. They first settled among the Cholas and Pandyas of Southern India; these aborigines learnt from the Panis the culture and spirit of navigation and trade. From this place they went to the coasts on the Persian Gulf, accompanied by the Cholas; there they settled down for generations; they were in constant communication with South India, became friendly with the aboriginal inhabitants and taught them their principal vocation—trade."

After ages, when the colony was invaded by the uncivilized Semites, the Panis moved on towards the north and settled on the sea-coast of Syria, which they called Phoenicia, or the land of the Panis or Panikas. This land gave them facilities to trade in the islands of the Greek Archipelago, South Europe, and North Africa.

Some may asked for solid proof about the presence of vedic gods in the lands of Phoenicians. Vedic Gods, Indra, Mitra, Varun and Mahesh are mentioned in the peace treaty between Hittites and Mitannis. The area of Phoenicia, Hittites and Mitannis has overlapped with each other and is today's Syria, Lebanon and Western Turkey area were the phoenicians settled first.

THE ARYAN-PANI WAR AS PER VEDAS.

THE MYTH

" Praised by the Angirases Indra slaughtered Vala, and burst apart the bulwarks of the mountain. He tore away their deftly-built defences. These things did Indra in the Soma's rapture.

In Soma's ecstasy Indra spread the firmament and realms of light, when he cleft Vala limb from limb.

Brhaspati, when he with fiery lightnings cleft through the weapon of reviling Vala, consumed him as tongues eat what teeth have compassed: he threw the prisons of the red cows open.

Lord of the thunder, thou didst burst the cave of Vala rich in cows. The Gods came pressing to thy side, and free from terror aided thee

Indra kills Vritra, the dragon Ahi. 

Indra smites Dasa and opens the caves where cows were imprisoned"

The clans of the Asuras, the Ilbis, the Ahis, the Bals, etc. were friends of the Panis and were opposed to the vedic tribe or Aryan tribe of Angirás, the Agnis, the Bayûs, the Marûts. The word Asura has been repeatedly used in the Rig Veda, and have already shown elsewhere that Assyria was named after them to denote the country they lived in. After the war a branch of the great Asura clan passed over into Asia Minor and founded Assyria, In India they as well as their country had been known by the name of Asura. This leads us to conclude that it was from India and not from Central Asia that the Aryans -migrated into different lands using the trading ships of the Panis in their travels.

With time the word Pani distorted to Kani and became the endonym that the Phoenicians gave themselves. They called themselves Kanana, or Canannites.

The Canaanites are the villains of the story because they are living on land promised to the Israelites by Yahweh.In the Book of Joshua, Canaanites are included in a list of nations to exterminate, and later described as a group which the Israelites had annihilated. Biblical scholar Mark Smith notes that archaeological data suggests "that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture. In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature.The ancient Canaanites, who the Bible says were commanded to be exterminated, did not die out, but lived on to become modern-day Lebanese, according to the first study to analyse their DNA.