The Chalcolithic Age in Palestine was characterized by the introduction of copper extraction and manufacture, but also the reproduction of a model of socio-political organization already present in Mesopotamia. With the first signs of urbanization of Palestine in the Bronze Age, a social model that fostered new inequalities came into force; in traditional communities, a council of elders had maintained civic authority, but now an aristocracy replaced it and controlled a more or less extended area spreading out from the city-state.

Antagonism between these economic and political centers (the city-states) and external power-seekers (the urban centers of Egypt and Mesopotamia) as well as the semi-nomadic tribes (the majority of people in the region), manifested in reinforcement of the fortifications of those cities. Between 2200 and 1900 BCE, incursions by these tribes put an end to this first urban experience, not only in Palestine, but in the entire cultural area that the Egyptians termed “Asiatic” - that is to say, the countries of Sham and Mesopotamia.

After this interval, the urban network was reconstituted, striking a balance between areas governed by pastoral tribes and those administered by the cities. >From the eighteenth to the fifteenth century BCE, urban civilization reached its peak, and its rulers, named the Hyksos (in Egyptian, “ruler of foreign countries”) imposed their authority as far as the Nile Delta. In the fifteenth century BCE, Pharaoh Thutmose III conquered the Hyksos and thus took control of the Syro-Palestinian region, appointing local suzerains as his intermediaries. Far from the influence of local-regional characteristics being dominant, the economic, diplomatic, literary and religious relations fell under the predominant influence of Egypt and Mesopotamia – whose Babylonian language became the lingua franca - which thus formed a single homogenous culture.