CANATHA
(Qanawat) Syria.
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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. 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
