ASHTAROTH (niltrn ; Sept. 'Acrrapc.58), and ASIITAROTH-CARNAIM nilnev ; Sept.
'Aorapth0 !cal Kapvatv), a town of Bashan (Dent. 4; Josh. ix. to), which was included in the terri tory of the half-tribe of Manasseh (Josh. xiii. 31), and was assigned to the Levites Chron. vi. 71). It is placed by Eusebius six miles from Edrei, the other principal town of Bashan, and twenty-five miles from Bostra. The town existed in the time of Abraham (Gen. xiv. 5); and as its name of Ashtaroth appears to be derived from the worship of the moon under that name [see the following article], there is little need to look further than the crescent of that luminary and its symbolical image for an explanation of the addition CARNAIM, or rather KARNAIM, 'horned.' In 2 Macc. xii. 26, mention is made of the temple of Atergatis (Ash. taroth) in Camion,which is described as a strongly fortified town of difficult access, but which was taken by Judas Maccabxus, who slew 25,000 of the people therein (2 Macc. xii. 21, 26). Astaroth Carnaim is now usually identified with Mezareib, the situation of which corresponds accurately enough with the distances given by Eusebius. Here is the first castle on the great pilgrim road from Damascus to Mecca. It was built about 34o years ago by the
Sultan Selim, and is a square structure, about too feet on each side, with square towers at the angles and in the centre of each face, the walls being 40 feet high. There are no other ruins. (Burckhardt, p. zetz ; Buckingham's Arab Tribes, p. 162.) [The identity of Ashtaroth and Ashtoroth Karnaim has been questioned by some. The strongest argu ments against it are, that Eusebius and Jerome re garded the two places as distinct, and that the Samaritan and Arabic versions assign different names to the two. But the statements of both Jerome and Eusebius bearing on this point are far from clearly intimating their distinctness,—and to us Jerome appears rather to incline to their being the same, as he places both in the same region, and refers from the later article to the earlier (` diximus et supra de Ash. Carnaim'—De Loc. Heb.) As to the versions, the Arabic is too late to be of much authority, and the name given by the Samaritan to Ashtoroth Car., viz. Haishinith, is confessedly un known.]