HAMAN (pri, 'Aadv), the son of Hammedatha, appears in the Bk of Est as the enemy of the Jews, and the chief minister of Ahasuerus. He is described as the .\gagite (Est .3'- '" etc.). but in the LXX as a Bugean (liauyaTot, 3' 12*), or a Macedonian (92-1 igio) 'I'lig Heb. term we should probably understand of a descent from the Am.alekite king Agag (so Jos. Ant. XI. vi. 5, and Targ.), in which case the author of the book perhaps meant to con- trast the descendant of Israel's ancient enemy with Mordecai, the descendant of Kish, the lienjamite. Provoked by Mordecai's refusal to bow before him, H. procured from the king a decree authorizing the massacre of all the Jews in the Persian dominions on the i:!tli Adar. He also prei)are<l a gallows .50 cubits high for Mordecai. l!ut queen Esther, having heard of the plot, invited H. and the king to a banquet, and there denounced H., who was forthwith hanged on his own gallows. The queen also obtained jiermi.ssion for her countrymen to defend themselves, and among other victims of the Jews' vengeance the ten sons of H. were slain and their bodies gibbeted.
In later times, at the Feast of Purim, it seems to have been customary to hang an ethgy of H. ; but as the gibbet was sometimes maile in the form of a cross, riots between .lews and Christians were the result, and a warnin" against insults to the Christian faith was issued by the emperor Theo- dosius II. (Coif. Theoil. .\VI. viii. 18; cf. 21). The origin of the name H. is uncertain; .len.sen con- nects it with the name of an Elamite di\-inity, lluinman or llumban (cf. Ozf. Heb. Lex. a.v.).
H. A. White.
HAMATH (n^D 'fortress,' 'citadel,' or iK^rhans 'sacred enclosure,' see W. R. Smith, RS* 1411 [eo.'
?90
HA. MATH
IIAMMKAII, TUE TOWER OF
p. 150] ; "iludO, 'F.niO, Alfide, Eimith).— At tlio time of Ainos, this was the chief city of a kin^'doiii of tlie same name which surrounded tlie ciipilnl, extending to the S. of Ril)lah and even iniludin<; that place (2 K 23" etc.). Situated on the banks of the Orontes (now called el-'Asi), in a narrow- valley with Jebel al-A'la on its north and south- •ivst, and the Nusniriyh mountains (the Moits Bargylus of the ancients) to the west, it lay on a very frenuented and convenient trade-route. Tlie ojienin;; iietween the Nusairiyeh munntains al)Ove 1 rijioli and the north point of the Lel>anon chains is called in the OT 'the entrance of llamath' (Nu .S4«, Jos 13», Ezk 47"-^'). N. of Homs the Orontes pass leads to Hamatli, S. toward Baal- frad in CceleSyria, E. to the frreat plain of the Syrian desert, and W. to the KaCat al-Hosn and the Me<iiterranean.
' The entrance ' or ' the approach ' to Hamath is often mentioned as a territorial limit (Nu .'54*, Jg 3' etc.), and usually denotes the acctnited northern boundary of Israeliti.sh dominion (.Jos 13'). The province is called 'Great Hamath' (Am fi'), and IS mentioned with Damascus, Tyre, and Zidon (Zee 9'-), as well as witli Arpad (Jer 49^), in the prophecies against Hadrach.
Originally a Hamite colony (Gn 10"), it flourished at the time of David (2 S 8'") under a king named Toi (or Tou), who had friendlj' intercourse witli the Israelitish ruler. Hamath (possibly identical with Hamath - Zobah [which see] of 2 Ch 8') came, however, afterwards under the dominion of Solomon (compare 1 K g-'-'-^ with 2 Ch 8*), and its king was no doubt among the many princes who ' brought presents and served Solomon all the days of his life.' Hamath was regarded as the granary of N. Syria, and there Solomon built store-cities (2 Ch 8^). But, on the death of that kin^, Hamath seems to have regained her inde- pendence, as is shown by the inscriptions of Shal- mane-ser II. (B.C. 800), where we see that her king, Irhuleni, made an alliance with the Hittites, Damascus (under .i4fWi« - irfri = Ben -Hadad = Ben- Hadadhiilri), Ahab of Israel, and several other states. Jeroboam II. of Israel, about the year B.C. 810, 'recovered Hamath' (2 K 14'-") from Judah, and partly destroyed it, as well as Gath, which, in the prophecies of Amos, is spoken of along with it (Am 6'-). In the Assyrian inscriptions Eni-ilu (Eniel), king of Hamath, brings tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. (730), who had parcelled out the land of Hamath among his generals, annexing 19 districts to Assyria, and transported 1223 people of Hamath to the sources of the Tigris. Sargon boasts of having rooted out the land of Hamath and dyed the skin of tlie foolish (?) Tlu-bi'di (variant Yau-bi'dt) like wool, colonizing Hamath with 4300 Assyrians. One of those exiled tliither by this king was the Mede Deioces. After what seems to have been the capture of the place by Sennacherib's Rabshakeh, or 'chief of the captains,' Hamath lost much of its importance. It is spoken of in Is 11" as one of the places containing Israelitish exiles, and is mentioned in 1 Mac 12^ in connexion with the movements of Jonathan and Demetrius.
The Greeks and Romans knew it under the name of Epiiiltaneia, which had been given to it by Antiocluis Epiphanes (Jos. Ant. I. vi. 2), thougli the inhal)itants still called it Hamath, and its present name, ^amdh, is but slightly changed rron:' its old form. In 1310 Abulfeda, the eminent Arabian scholar, a descendant of the family of Saladin, was appointed governor of the district, which had been under the Moslem power since A.D. 6;W, and with his death (1331) Hamath's prosperity declined. In 1812 Burckhardt visited Hamath, saw the