Tel Maresha is the tell of the biblical Iron Age city of Maresha, excavations revealed that Maresha was inhabited during the Iron Age, the Persian period, and the Hellenistic period. John Hyrcanus of the Hasmonean dynasty seized Maresha in 113/112 BCE, leading to its decline and eventual desertion. The city faced its ultimate destruction at the hands of the Parthians in 40 BCE. Maresha was one of the cities of Judah during the time of the First Temple and is mentioned as part of the inheritance of the biblical tribe of Judah in the Book of Joshua.
Later, in the second Book of Chronicles, it is named as one of King Rehoboam’s fifteen fortified cities. In 2 Chronicles it is the site of a battleagainst an invading Ethiopian army. According to the Madaba Map, Maresha was the place “whence came Micah the Prophet”. In the 6th century BCE, as result of Zedekiah’s rebellion against the Babylonian kingdom and its king Nebuchadnezzar II, the latter occupied the Judean kingdom and sent many of its inhabitants into exile. This marked the end of Maresha as a Judahite city.
