EDESSA (mod. _Vodena_), the ancient capital of Macedonia, previously known as Aegae, situated 46 m. W. of Thessalonica on the banks of a beautiful stream in the very centre of the kingdom, and at the head of a defile commanding the approaches from the coast to the interior. It was the original residence of the Macedonian kings; and even after the seat of government was removed by Philip II. to the more accessible Pella, it continued to be the burial-place of the royal family. At the celebration of his daughter's marriage here, Philip II. was murdered by Pausanias in 336 B.C. His son Alexander was buried at Memphis through the contrivance of Ptolemy; but the bodies of his granddaughter Eurydice and her husband Arrhidaeus were removed by Cassander to the ancestral sepulchre. On the occupation of the town by Pyrrhus the royal tombs were plundered by the Gallic mercenaries. Owing to its position commanding the Via Egnatia, the town retained its importance during the Roman and Byzantine periods. For its present condition, see VODENA. EDESSA, the Greek name of an ancient city of N.W. Mesopotamia (in 37° 21' N. lat. and 39° 6' E. long.), suggested perhaps by a comparison of its site, or its water supply,[1] with that of its Macedonian namesake. It still bears its earlier name, modified since the 15th century (by the Turks?) to Urfa. The oldest certain form is the Aramaic _Urhai_ ("Western" pronunciation _Urhoi_), which appears in Greek as an adjective as [Greek: Horrhoênhê][2], [Greek: -noi][3] (perhaps also as a fortress with spring, as [Greek: Orrha]),[4] and in Latin as Orr(h)ei,[5] and (in the inscription on Abgar's grave) _Orrhenoru(m)_.[6] The Syriac Chronicle ascribed to Dionysius of Tell-mahre derives the name from a first king Urhai, son of Hewya, whom Procopius (_De bello persico_, i. 17) calls Osroes (cf. below), connected by Bayer[7] with Chosroes,[8] from which G. Hoffmann would also derive the Syriac Urhai (_Z.D.M.G._ xxxii. 742). The Syriac town name has, however, the form of an ethnic, and we may therefore with Duval leave it unexplained (_Hist._ 22). The fact that the Arabic name is Ruhä supports the hint of the Graeco-Latin forms that there was a vowel between the R and the H. There is little plausibility in the suggestion of Assemani and others that Ruha comes from [Greek: rhoê] of Callirrhoe. A gentilic of the form Ru-u-ai occurs in a letter (of an Assyrian king?) to chiefs in a (Babylonian?) town as the designation of three captives (Harper, _Ass. and Bab. Letters_, No. 287 [= K 94], line 6; cf. Bezold, _Die Achämenideninschriften_, p. xii.), who have Semitic names; and Ru-'-u-a is the name of an Aramaic people mentioned with other Aramaeans by Tiglath-pileser IV., Sargon and Sennacherib. It is not impossible that some such people may have settled at Urhai and given it their name, although the Ru-'-u-a are always mentioned in