EMBRIACHI — Tablets of articulated ivory consoni (14th–15th cent.) — Milan, Casa Cagnola.
...nadad, king of Damascus, and Achab, king of Israel, against Salmanessar III; but in the end it was reduced to an Assyrian province by Sargon II, and its inhabitants were led away as colonists to Samaria (II Reg. 17, 24; 18, 34; 19, 13). After this, the history of the «region of E.» (I Mach. 12, 25) becomes merged with the general history of Syria. Under the Seleucids, the capital received the name Epifonia in honour of Antico IV Epifane. The ancient name is found again in present-day Hama, on the Orontes, a city of 60,000 inhabitants and an important centre of commerce. The excavations of 1931 brought to light many pages of its ancient history.
2. The expression «passage of E.» (Vulg. introitus E.; Heb. lēbhō Hāmāth) in the Old Testament marks the northern boundary of the Promised Land (Num. 13, 21; 34, 8; Ios. 13, 5; I Reg. 8, 65; Ez. 47, 16; 48, 1). It most probably refers to the entrance of the pass between Mount Hermon and Lebanon, which constituted the natural route «to go to E.» (lēbhō Hāmāth). The texts that require Rohob to be near Lais-Dan (Num. 13, 22; Indc. 18, 28) do not have a fixed and specific point in view, but place the boundary south of the Beqā' (= Coelesyria) and north of Merq' Ajūn.
The recent conjecture that lēbhō contains a surviving proper name in 'Ajn Lebweh, 38 km. south of Ribāh, has no support in the biblical texts.
3. A locality in the tribe of Nephtali (Ios. 19, 35), Heb. Hammath, today Hammām south of Tiberias, where there is a spa with curative hot waters, already praised by Flavius Josephus (An-
tiq. Iud., XVIII, 2, 3; Bell. Iud., IV, 1, 3). An ancient synagogue was discovered there in 1931.
BIBLI: F.-M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, I, Paris 1933, p. 300; II, there 1938, pp. 341–42. Donato Baldi