The same as Acco (Jg 1:31), now the port 'Akka, called in the West, since Crusading times. Acre or St. Jean d'Acre. Acco received the name Ptolemais some time in the 3rd cent b.c., probably in honour of Ptolemy ii., but although the name was in common use for many centuries, it reverted to its Semitic name after the decline of Greek influence. Although so very casually mentioned in OT and NT, this place has had as varied and tragic a history as almost any spot in Palestine. On a coast peculiarly unfriendly to the mariner, the Bay of 'Akka is one of the few spots where nature has lent its encouragement to the building of a harbour; its importance in history has always been as the port of Galilee and Damascus, of the Hauran and Gilead, while in the days of Western domination the Roman Ptolemais and the Crusading St. Jean d'Acre served as the landing-place of governors, of armies, and of pilgrims. So strong a fortress, guarding so fertile a plain, and a port on the highroad to such rich lands to north, east, and south, could never have been overlooked by hostile armies, and so we find the Egyptian Thothmes iii., Setl i., and Rameses ii., the Assyrian Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, and several of the Ptolemys engaged in its conquest or defence. It is much in evidence in the history of the Maccabees,