Canaan in the Late Bronze Age

The general situation in Canaan (the Egyptian "Retinu") was as follows. Pharao Thutmose III (1486 BCE) had put down a rebellion of Canaanite city states and reduced the region to the status of a mere dominion of Egypt. A century later, the major cities enjoyed a measure of self-rule, their competing with each other preventing any concerted action against their Egyptian overlords. On the Eastern borders, Hurrians from the kingdom of Mittani (the biblical Hivites or Horites) were beginning to encroach on the Egyptian sphere of influence in Canaan. While the Hurrians were Aryans rather than Semites they adopted Akkadian, a Semitic dialect written in cuneiform, as their administrative language. Hurrians widely established themselves as a ruling elite that coexisted with the native clans.

In the letters to his souzerain, Abdi Hipa refers to his realm as "the land of Jerusalem, of which the name is Beit Shulmani [House of Salem]" (Armstrong p. 14). The hoped for military support against his various internal and external enemies does not seem to have materialized but there is considerable building activity in Jerusalem during this period, beginning in the fourteenth century and continuing until the late twelvehundreds (Late Bronze Age). Foundations and a stepped structure from this period have been found on the South Hill.

The late Bronze Age corresponds to what scholars presume may have been the time of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt and the beginning of their settlement or consolidation as a discernible group in Canaan. Sometime during this period the Jebusites, mentioned in the Bible, must also have settled in Jerusalem, a group which seems related to the Hittites whose empire is destroyed at around 1200 which may have been the cause of their migration southward. (Uria, the first husband of Batsheba, the mother of the later King Solomon, is called a Hittite, and the Jebusites are assumed to have resided alongside the Judahites and Benjaminites who settled in and around Jerusalem without conquest.