Canatha
CANATHA(Κάναθα). In Josephus (J. AJ), Κάναθαis a various reading for Kava, and is apparently the same place as that referred to in the preceding article. In the parallel passage in the War (1.19.2) the reading is Κάναθα τῆς Κόλης Συρίας, and both Ptolemy (Ptol. 5.15.23) and Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.18) mention a city of that name in Coelesyria, which the latter reckons among the cities of the Decapolis.
[G.W]In the Hauran N of Soueida, Canatha was one of the cities of the Decapolis at the end of the Hellenistic period. The city, perched on a steep plateau bordered to the E by a deep ravine, contains many ancient monuments: temples, palaces, churches, a triumphal arch, the SW rampart gate, and tower tombs. Travelers in the past saw a dozen of the latter, still several stories high.
On a wooded slope to the NW stood a temple, a peripteral structure, with Corinthian columns and carved pedestals and bases. The principal street led E to a flagged space bordered by columns, then some ruins of baths, and nearby a building with a vaulted hall containing inscriptions that refer to Agrippa, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Julia Domna. On the opposite side of the ravine was an odeon designed like a theater, almost entirely cut in the rock, and next to it a nymphaeum. At the highest point of the city, at the E end of a long terrace, was a portico of Corinthian columns, then an atrium that led to a basilica. The latter had a doorway framed with carved foliated scrolls and maeanders. A church is attached to the W side of the atrium by its chevet. This church is a modification of a building with a porticoed entrance to the N and a semicircular three-lobed exedra to the S, originally a praetorium. Farther S, beyond a Byzantine cistern, are the ruins of a so-called temple of Jupiter.
BIBLIOGRAPHYR. E. Brünnow & A. v. Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia III (1909) MPI; H. C. Butler, PAES II, Architecture, Sec. A, Southern Syria (1916) MPI; E. Will, “La tour funéraire de la Syrie,” Syria 26 (1949); E. Frézouls, “Les théâtres romains de Syrie,” Annales archéologiques de Syrie 2 (1952).
J.-P. REY-COQUAIS