Object description

Tel Zeton south of the Yarkon River. The mound rises to a height of 9 m above its surroundings and spans an area of 2–3 dunams . The site was inhabited in the Middle Bronze Age and later in the Iron and Persian periods. Jacob Kaplan identified the fortified settlement from the Persian period as a Jewish settlement from the time of the Return to Zion in the 5th century BCE, thanks to an ostracon bearing a Hebrew name which appears in the Hebrew Bible from the time of Nehemiah, a Jewish governor appointed by the Achaemenid Empire to govern the autonomous Jewish province. The site was inhabited as late as the 10th century CE, during the Roman, Byzantine, Early Arab, and Mamluk periods.