Canaan[80] heads a central line of migration, and Sidon and Cheth are said to have been his leading sons. The first represents the Phœnician maritime power of Northern Syria, the second that great nation known to the Egyptians as Kheta and to the Assyrians as Khatti, whose territory extended from Carchemish on the Euphrates through the plain of Coele-Syria to Hebron in Southern Palestine, and not improbably into the delta. They were a people whose language was allied to that of Cushite Chaldea,[81] whose features were of a coarser type than those of their more southern _confrères_, and who, according to the Egyptian annals, were closely allied with the Amorites, Jebusites, and other people identified with Canaan in the Old Testament. The Cheta, at one time known only as the sons of Heth in the Old Testament, may be said in our time to have experienced a sudden resurrection, and now bulk so largely in the minds of archæologists that their importance is in danger of being exaggerated. [80] Canaan with our old historian is the name of a man, but it came to designate first the 'low country' or coast region of Western Palestine, and then the whole of Palestine. [81] Conder and others call it Turanian. A significant note is added: 'Afterwards were the families of the Canaanites scattered abroad.' How could this be? Their line of migration and settlement led directly to the great sea, and was hemmed in by that of the Japhetites on the north and of the Cushites on the south; but they made the sea their highway, and soon there was no coast from end to end of the Mediterranean, and far along the European and African shores of the Atlantic, that was not familiar with the Phœnician Canaanite. But it may be said these Phœnicians were a Semitic people. They certainly spoke a Semitic language allied to the Hebrew, but what right have we to attribute Semitic languages solely to the descendants of the Biblical Shem? Even if these languages originated with them they may have spread to other peoples, as we know they replaced the old Turanian speech of Babylonia, just as the Arabic has extinguished other languages in Egypt itself. In whatever way the Phœnicians acquired a Semitic tongue, in physical character they were not Semitic, but closely allied to the Hittites, the Philistines, and the people of Mitzor, or Egypt. The Egyptian sculptures prove this, and the celebrated Capuan bust of Hannibal reminds us of the features of the old Hyksos kings of Egypt, who were no doubt of Hamite or Turanian stock.