Iron Age 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.
Kingdom of Judah 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
battle against 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.
Edomite period Following these events,
Edomites who had lived east and south of the
Dead Sea migrated to the area and Maresha emerged as a major Idumean city. Hence, from the Persian rule and throughout the Hellenistic kingdoms' rule in the region (6th – 1st century BCE), Maresha was part of the area known as
Idumea, a
Hellenised form of Edom. During the period of Persian rule,
Phoenician colonies were encouraged to spread out along the coastal regions of
Palestine and in the adjacent hill country of
Judea, whence their early settlement in Maresha took its rise. With the advent of Hellenisation, the settlement pattern changed, as most everywhere in the region, and the city expanded far beyond the constraints of the fortified, raised
tell or mound of Iron Age Maresha. Maresha became the center of an administrative district in the
Ptolemaic empire, while from 200 BCE onward the center of a Seleucid administrative district. The
Book of Maccabees reports that
Judas Maccabeus and his forces marched through Marisa in around 163/2 BCE when the city was burnt during Judas' conquest of the Idumaean region, from
Hebron to Azotus (
Ashdod). Following the rebellion and its success,
John Hyrcanus conquered the city in c. 112 BCE, forcibly converting its inhabitants to Judaism, Very meager artifactual remains are evident from the late 2nd century BCE up to 40 BCE, found in only one corner of the upper city, and almost none in the large lower city surrounding it, which once covered an area of 320
dunams. Maresha was finally destroyed in 40 BCE by the
Parthians as part of the power struggle between
Antigonus of the
Hasmoneans who had sought their aid and
Herod, who was a son of the converted
Antipater the Idumaean and was being supported by the Romans.
After Maresha: Beth Gabra/Eleutheropolis After the demise of Maresha, the
Idumean/Jewish town of Beth Gabra or
Beit Guvrin succeeded it as the main settlement in the area. Shaken by two successive and disastrous Jewish revolts against Roman rule in the 1st and 2nd centuries, the town recovered its importance only at the beginning of the 3rd century when it was re-established as a Roman city under the new name of
Eleutheropolis. By the time of
Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 340 CE), Maresha itself was already a deserted place: he mentions the city in his
Onomasticon, saying that it was at a distance of "two milestones from
Eleutheropolis".
Modern era The Palestinian Arab village
Bayt Jibrin, the Arabized form of Beth Gabra, was depopulated during the
1948 Arab-Israeli war. In 1949 Kibbutz
Beit Guvrin was established on part of Bayt Jibrin's lands. Most of the archaeologically important areas of ancient Maresha and Beit Guvrin/Eleutheropolis are now part of the
Beit Guvrin-Maresha National Park. == Archaeology ==