CHALCIS. - Center of a kingdom already existing in the 14th century B.C. in upper Syria, as appears from the letters of Tell el-Amarna. In the time, then, of Saul and David it is an Aramean kingdom west of Damascus, in the region of Coele-Syria, under the name Sôbhâh (I Sam. 14:47; II Sam. 8:3 ff.), against whose king David waged war and won.

This Sôbhâh is identified with Chalcis of the Greeks, explaining the name as an appellation, from the copper deposit in this region. It seems to correspond to the present-day locality of 'Anğar, situated 15 km west of Zebedani, in Coele-Syria. In the years 85-40 B.C. Chalcis was the capital of a state under a certain Ptolemy, son of Mennaios. His son and successor, Lysanias I, called "king of the Itureans" by Cassius Dio, extended his kingdom from the Mediterranean as far as Damascus; he was killed by the triumvir Antony, at the instigation of Cleopatra, in 36, in order to annex Coele-Syria to Egypt. But the Romans gave the kingdom to Zenodorus, and in 20 to Herod the Great. The emperor Claudius gave the kingdom of Chalcis to Herod, brother of Agrippa I, in the year 41 A.D., and after his death, in 49, to Agrippa II, but only for four years; then Claudius took it back.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: F.-M. Abel, Geographie de la Palestine, I, Paris 1933, p. 248; II, ibid. 1938, pp. 131, 143 f., 150, 159; U. Holzmeister, Historia aetatis Novi Testamenti, Rome 1938, pp. 122, 124, 134.

Arduino Kleinhans

@incollection{ec3_calcide, author = {Kleinhans, Arduino}, title = {Calcide}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {329}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/calcide} }

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