page_title: Tel Zeton
section_title: Identification
hierarchical_section_title: Tel Zeton / Identification
caption_attribution_description: English: Tell Abu Zeitun. Looking from S. Abu Zeitun, Tell, SRF_1(10 / 10). 3886 ---&gt; S.
context_page_description: Tel Zeton above its surroundings and spans an area of 2–3 dunams (1 acre). 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.
  Tel Zeton was suggested in 1938 as the location of Gath-Rimmon mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Kaplan supported this identification while Benjamin Mazar rejected it. If correct, Tel Zeton should also be identified with two cities mentioned in Egyptian sources from the 14th and 15th centuries BCE.
context_section_description: Félix-Marie Abel identified the site in 1938 with Gath-Rimmon, mentioned in the Book of Joshua as a Levite town in the territory of the Tribe of Dan. Gath-Rimmon is listed next to the Yarkon River and the cities of Yahud and Bnei Brak, in the vicinity of the site. It is believed to be the same city mentioned as Knt in the list of cities defeated by Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century BCE and also the city of Gimteti, which appears in one of the Amarna letters from the 14th century BCE. All of the Hebrew and Egyptian mentions of a city in the region of the Yarkon river by the name of Gath, Gimteti or Knt, suggest that it was an administrative center on the mouth of the Yarkon. Benjamin Mazar rejected Abel's identification of Gath-Rimmon with Tel Zeton and suggested the nearby Tel Gerisa instead because it is bigger than Tel Zeton and therefore more likely to be mentioned by the sources. After Jacob Kaplan's excavation on the site and the discovery of the "Hashub" ostracon, he supported Abel's identification, as the discovery of the ostracon may suggests it was resettled by Levites.
caption: Tel Zeton in 1926
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26"}