CHAMOS, or CHEMOS, the idol or god of the Moabites.
The name of chamos comes from a root which, in Arabic, signifies to make haste; for which reason many believe chamos to be the sun, whose precipitate course might well procure it the name of swift or speedy. Others have contended chamos with the god Hammon, adored not only in Libya and Egypt, but also in Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Indies.
Champagne Macrobius shews that Hammon was the sun; and the horns, with which he was represented, denoted his rays. Calmet is of opinion, that the god Hamonus, and Apollo Chomeus, mentioned by Strabo and Ammianus Marcellinus, was the very same as chamos or the sun. These deities were worshipped in many of the eastern provinces. Some who go upon the resemblance of the Hebrew term chamos, to that of the Greek chamos, have believed chamos to signify the god Bacchus the god of drunkenness, according to the signification of the Greek chamos. St Jerom, and with him most other interpreters, take Chamos and Peor for the same deity. But it seems that Baal-Peor was the same as Tammuz or Adonis; so that Chamos must be the god whom the heathens call the Sun.