The bronze mouse of maresha

Maresha was the main city in Idumea during the Hellenistic period. It is located in the Judean lowlands at the intersection of the lateral road from Hebron to Gaza and on the longitudinal road from Beersheba to the Ayalon Plain and then to Jerusalem or Jaffa (fig. 1). The city consisted of an upper city (the tel) and a lower city that surrounded it (fig. 2). Excavations over the past 30 years (Kloner 2003; Stern 2014, 2019) have shown that it was inhabited from the Iron Age through the end of the Hellenistic period with a terminus ante quem dated to ca. 107 BCE.