Calneh (כַלְנֵה) was a city founded by Nimrod, mentioned three times in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 10:10), (Isaiah 10:9), & (Amos 6:2).[1] The verse in Genesis reads:
Historical scholarship proposed candidate locations for the city of "Calneh", but it is now considered most likely, in a suggestion going back to W.F. Albright (1944), that the word did not in origin refer to a city but has been corrupted from an expression meaning "all of them".[2] In the Revised Standard Version, the English translation of the verse reads:
Calneh ("Chalanne") was identified with Ctesiphon in Jerome's Hebrew questions on Genesis (written ca. 390), following Eusebius of Caesarea.[1] Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary silently follows Sir Henry Rawlinson in interpreting the Talmudic passage Joma 10a[3] identifying Calneh with the modern Nippur, a lofty mound of earth and rubbish situated in the marshes on the east bank of the Euphrates, but 30 miles distant from its present course, and about 60 miles south-south-east from Babylon.
A second Calneh is mentioned in the Book of Amos, and some have also associated this place with Calno which is mentioned in similar terms in the Book of Isaiah. (Amos 6:2, Isaiah 10:9) This is identified by some archaeological scholars as Kulnia, Kullani or Kullanhu, modern Kullan-Köy, between Carchemish on the Euphrates River and Arpad near Aleppo in Northern Syria, about ten kilometers southeast from Arpad.[4] Canneh, mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel 27:23 as one of the towns with which Tyre carried on trade was associated with Calneh by A.T. Olmstead, History of Assyria. Xenophon mentioned a Kainai on the west bank of the Tigris below the Upper Zab.[5]