AMANA

AMANA (Heb.אֲמָנָה), mountain mentioned in Song of Songs 4:8. As it is referred to together with the Senir and Hermon mountains, it was apparently situated in southern Syria and should be distinguished from Mount Amanus farther to the north. Its marble or alabaster was already known at the end of the third millennium B.C.E., being mentioned in the inscriptions of Gudea, the Sumerian ruler of Lagash. The same stone and cedars were later imported to Assyria by Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, and Sennacherib. In Roman times, a road-station called Amana still existed on the Damascus-Palmyra road. Amana is usually identified with Jabal az-Zevedani (5,900 ft. (1,800 m.) high), which forms part of the Anti-Lebanon chain N.W. of Damascus. Amanah is also the name of a river flowing from the above, and one of the two rivers of Damascus mentioned in II Kings 5:12 (written Avanah but corrected to Amanah in the keri). It was called Chrysorhoas in Hellenistic literature and is now named Nahr Barada. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Abel, Geog, 1 (1933), 343 ff., 347, 486 ff.; EM, S.V.; Press, Ereẓ, 1 (19512), 26. (Michael Avi-Yonah)