KENATH (n)p, possession ; ' Kcua- and Kaua-; Alex. Kc/ava• ; Chanath), a strong city of Bashan, situated in the province of Argob (Num. xxxii. 42 ; Chron. ii. 23 ; cf. Deut. i4). It appears to have been one of the three score great cities, fenced with high walls, gates, and bars' (Deut. iii. 3, 4), which Jair captured. Nobah, a Manassite, headed a separate expedition ag,ainst Kenath, took it, and called it Nobah (Num. 1.c.) The new name it retained for at least two hundred years, for when Gideon passed by the way of them that dwell in tents,' in pursuit of the kings of Midian, he went east of Nobah (Judg. viii. I) ; but we hear no more of it in Scripture. It lay on thc eastern border of Manasseh, among mountains, on the confines of a wild province, and exposed to the incursions of the desert tribes ; the Jews, therefore, probably either abandoned or were driven out of it at an early period. Josephus calls the city Canatha, and locates it in Ccelesyria (Kanali, Bell. Yud. i. 19. 2). In his time it was inhabited by Arabians, who defeated the troops led against them by Herod the Great. Ptolemy also places it in Ccelesyria (Geog. v. 13), and Pliny makes it one of the cities of D'ecapolis (Hist. Nat., v. 15). Eusebius' notice of it is important as tending to define its exact position, and to iden tify the Kenath of the Hebrews, the Canatha of the Greeks, and the modern Kuna.wat. He thus writes :—` Canath, a village of Arabia, now called Canatha (Kavaci.), to which Nobah gave his own name ; it belonged to the tribe of Manasseh. It is now situatcd in the province of Trachonitis, near Bostra ' (Onomast., s.v. Canath). In the
Pentinger Tables it is placed on the road leading from Damascus to Bostra, twenty miles from the latter (Reland, Pal. p. 420. It became the seat of a bishopric in the fifth century (hi., p. 6S2).
The above data clearly prove that the modern Kunawat is the Kenath of the Bible. It is beauti fully situated in the midst of oak forests on the western declivities of the mountains of 'Bashan, twenty miles north of Bozrah. The ruins, which cover a space a mile long and half a mile wide, are among the finest and most interesting east of the Jordan. They consist of temples, palaces, theatres, towers, and a hippodrome of the Roman age ; one or two churches of early Christian times, and a great number of massive private houses, with stone roofs and stone doors, which were probably built by the ancient Rephaim. The city walls are in some places nearly perfect. In front of one of the most beauti ful of the temples the writer discovered a colossal head of Ashteroth, a deity which seems to have been worshipped here before the time of Abraham, as one of the chief cities of Bashan was then called Ashteroth-Carnaim (Gen. xiv. 5). Kunawat is now occupied by a few families of Druses who find a home in the old houses. (Burckhardt, Travels in Syria, pp. 82, seq. ; Porter's Damascus, ii. pp. S7-115 ; Ritter, Pa/. und Syr., ii. pp. 931-939 ; Buckingham, Travels among the Arab Tribes, p.
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