KENATH

KENATH (Heb. קְנָת), ancient city of the hauran . Kenath is possibly the city mentioned as Qen in the Egyptian Execration texts (19th/18th centuries B.C.E.), Qanu in the list of cities conquered by Thutmosis III (c. 1469 B.C.E.), and Qana in the el-Amarna Letters (no. 204). It was captured by the tribe of Manasseh and named after its leader Nobah; the Arameans later took it from Israel (Num. 32:42; I Chron. 2:23). It was probably taken by Tiglath-Pileser III during his expedition in 733/2 B.C.E. and appears in his inscriptions as (Qa-)ni-te on the border of Aram-Damascus. Kenath, called Canatha in Hellenistic-Roman times, was the site of a battle between Herod and the Nabatean Arabs and in 23 B.C.E. it was given to Herod by the emperor Augustus (Jos., Ant., 15:112; Wars, 1:366). It was a city of the Decapolis (Pliny, Historia Naturalis 5:18; Ptolemeus, 5:14, 18) and apparently the earliest urban unit in the Hauran. Its founding by Pompey is commemorated in its date (64 B.C.E.); its name Gabiniana recalls its building by Gabinius. In the time of Claudius coins were struck there with the images of Tyche, Athena, and Zeus. Septimus Severus made it a colony called Septimia Canotha. It continued to be an episcopal see into Byzantine times (Hierocles, Synecdemus 723:4; Georgius Cyprius 1075). It is the present-day Druze town of al-Qanawāt in Syria. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Schuerer, Gesch, 2 (19072), 166; R. Dussaud, Topographie Historique de la Syrie (1927), 362ff.; Dunand, in: Syria, 11 (1930), 272ff. (Fr.); Tadmor, in: Kol Ereẓ Naftali, ed. by H.Z. Hirshberg (1967), 65. (Michael Avi-Yonah)