The scope of this article needs definition. The term Canaanite designates the culture of the region often known as the Levant, roughly comprising the modern entities of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, beginning with the earliest extensive written records in the third millennium BCE and ending with the start of the Hellenistic period in the fourth century BCE. "Canaanite" did not have such a broad definition in antiquity; generally, and especially in the Bible, Canaan is the southwestern part of this region. The sources are not consistent in this usage, however, and many modern scholars apply it to the regions that in the first half of the first millennium BCE were divided into the political units of Phoenicia, Israel (later Israel and Judah), Ammon, Moab, Edom, and not infrequently, Aram, especially Aram-Damascus.

The term literature is used here to mean extended works composed in poetic...