Tibna)(Arabic: خربة التبانة),[1] sometimes referred to by historical geographers as the Timnah of Judah (Hebrew: תמנה), is a small ruin situated on a high ridge in the Judaean mountains, in the Sansan Nature Reserve, 622 metres (2,041 ft) above sea level, about 3 kilometers east of Aviezer and ca.

[2] Khirbet et-Tibbaneh or Timnah is perched upon a high mountain ridge rising up from the Elah valley and is where the episode of Judah and Tamar is thought to have taken place.

[4] On its site is found the remnant of a square Iron Age fortress which apparently offered security along the route from the valley of Elah to Betar and to Jerusalem.

[24] The area of the fortress is 30 x 30 meters (98 x 98 feet), where two walls made of fieldstones and ashlar masonry still remain, whose hollowed spaces were filled-in with smaller stones.

[24] Amihai Mazar suggests that the structure served as either a fortress or an administrative center, and most likely manned by a garrison to secure the roads between the major towns of the Shephelah and the string of settlements along the edge of the hill region.

[27] Others suggest that the account in Maccabees may refer to another Timna (Thamnatha), that called Khirbet Tibnah in southwestern Samaria at Mount Ephraim, about 14 kilometers (9 miles) northwest of Bethel.

[28][29] It is generally accepted that the Mishnaic scholar Simeon the Yemenite was born and raised in one of the two Timnahs during the waning years of the Second Temple period based on the vowels assigned to his name (Hebrew: שמעון התִּימְנִי, romanized: Šimʿon hat-Tîmnî).

[33] The site was surveyed by Dani Weiss, Boaz Zissu and Gideon Solimany of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who discovered a segment of an ancient road that was 200 m. long, 2.5 m.