Khor (also ''Hurru'', ''Kharu'') is the second, later name used by

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ians after using

Retjenu Retjenu (''wiktionary:rṯnw, rṯnw; Reṯenu, Retenu''), later known as Khor, was the Ancient Egyptian name for the wider Syria (region), Syrian region, where the Semitic languages, Semitic-speaking Canaanites lived.Georg Steindorff, Steindorff, ...

in designating the wider Syrian region, where speakers of

Canaanite languages The Canaanite languages, sometimes referred to as Canaanite dialects, are one of four subgroups of the Northwest Semitic languages. The others are Aramaic and the now-extinct Ugaritic and Amorite language. These closely related languages origin ...

lived. It was long an outpost of ancient Egypt and is explicitly mentioned in the

Great Hymn to the Aten The Great Hymn to the Aten is the longest of a number of hymn-poems written to the sun-disk deity Aten. Composed in the middle of the 14th century BC, it is varyingly attributed to the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten or his courtiers, dependin ...

as a geographic region, along with the kingdoms of

Kush KUSH 1600 AM is a radio station licensed to Cushing, Oklahoma. The station broadcasts a Full service format, consisting of local and national talk, sports Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, tha ...

and Egypt. Based on the Amarna letters, it is plausible that Khor is a

Middle Egyptian The Egyptian language, or Ancient Egyptian (; ), is an extinct branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large corpus of surviving texts, which were made accessible to the modern world f ...

reference to

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

. This word spelled as ''Hurru'' or ''Kharru'' is also used on the

Merneptah Stele The Merneptah Stele, also known as the Israel Stele or the Victory Stele of Merneptah, is an inscription by Merneptah, a pharaoh in ancient Egypt who reigned from 1213 to 1203 BCE. Discovered by Flinders Petrie at Thebes, Egypt, Thebes in 1896, i ...

. In this inscription,

Taharqa Taharqa, also spelled Taharka or Taharqo, Akkadian: ''Tar-qu-ú'', , Manetho's ''Tarakos'', Strabo's ''Tearco''), was a pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and qore (king) of the Kingdom of Kush (present day Sudan) from 690 to 664 BC. ...

, Tarqo of Kush and

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian language, Egyptian: ''wikt:pr ꜥꜣ, pr ꜥꜣ''; Meroitic language, Meroitic: 𐦲𐦤𐦧, ; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') was the title of the monarch of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty of Egypt, First Dynasty ( ...

of the

Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt The Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXV, alternatively 25th Dynasty or Dynasty 25), also known as the Nubian Dynasty, the Kushite Empire, the Black Pharaohs, or the Napatans, after their capital Napata, was the last dynasty of t ...

, claimed to conquer this territory as attested by the "list of conquered Asiatic principalities" from the Mut temple at

Karnak The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (), comprises a vast mix of temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BC) in the ...

, as well as in Sanam temple inscriptions. Taharqa disputed this region with

Sennacherib Sennacherib ( or , meaning "Sin (mythology), Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705BC until his assassination in 681BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous A ...

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

. The Egyption

Story of Wenamun The Story of Wenamun (alternately known as the Report of Wenamun, The Misadventures of Wenamun, Voyage of Unamūn, or nformallyas just Wenamun) is a literary text written in hieratic in the Late Egyptian language. It is only known from one incom ...

refers to a location named ''Kharu''. According to

Alessandra Nibbi Alessandra Nibbi (30 June 1923 – 15 January 2007) was an Italian-born Australian archaeologist. Biography Born on 30 June 1923 in Porto San Giorgio, Italy, in 1928 she migrated with her family to Australia because of the political si ...

, the expression "the great '' ym'' of Kharu" is often connected to the Mediterranean sea. But she was trying to reinterpret this and other associated geographical names and to tie them to other locations.A. Nibbi
The City of Dor and Wenamun
Discussions in Egyptology 35 (1996), 76-95

Notes

{{reflist Extra-biblical references to Canaan New Kingdom of Egypt Geography of ancient Egypt Ancient Lebanon