1400 - 1300 BC, the Holy Land

As soon as Egyptian attention turned elsewhere, the native rulers of the Canaanite area began to reassert their own power. They quarreled among themselves, setting up mini-empires, while protesting their loyalty to Egypt or begging it for aid and defense. But pleas for help from Canaan went unheeded in Egypt.

When Egyptian law and order began to disappear, the nomads who inhabited the lands around the cities grew bolder. These people included Aramaeans and the Habiru, probably kin to the families of Israel. Shechem, under the control of Habiru kings, became a powerful city-state.

Towards the end fo the century, the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites settled in the Transjordan area, adding another strain to the Hurrian and still older Amorite principalities in the Holy Land.

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