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Horvat Rimmon (), or simply Rimmon, alternatively Khirbet Umm er-Ramanin (), is an archaeological site in the southern Shephelah in Israel. Located on a low hill about south of Lahav, it preserves the remains of a Jews village occupied from the late Second Temple period into the Bilad al-Sham. The site is home to a large synagogue complex, which went through three main construction phases from the 3rd to the 7th century CE, as well as a cemetery of , a subterranean hiding complex, a mikveh (ritual bath) and domestic structures, and several late Roman and Byzantine coin hoards.
The site is commonly identified with En-Rimmon ( Eremmon/ Rimmon), a sizeable Jewish village mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, by Eusebius, in rabbinic literature, and in a document from the Bar Kokhba revolt. The biblical settlement itself is usually placed at nearby Tel Halif, and the name Rimmon appears to have shifted to the site in later centuries.
Excavations have uncovered a synagogue paved with decorated with rosettes and a Temple menorah. They also revealed a funerary inscription reading "Jacob son of Rabbi", as well as a ceramic amulet inscribed with a love charm whose formula and "magic signs" closely parallel medieval Jewish texts.
Eusebius of Caesarea, a Church historian and theologian (known as one of the Church Fathers) active in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries CE, places En-Rimmon sixteen Roman miles from Eleutheropolis, describing it as a "very large village of Jews ... in the Daroma," a late antique term for the southern Hebron Hills. The site is also mentioned in rabbinic texts, including the Tosefta and Genesis Rabbah, and appears once in the Muraba'at papyri, texts dating from the Bar Kokhba revolt found in caves of Wadi Murabba'at in the Judaean Desert.
In the Byzantine Empire era, Rimmon was situated among several Christian villages, including Thella at Tel Halif and Khirbet Abu Hoff, where churches have been excavated.
A final major renovation, Phase III of the synagogue, introduced flagstone pavement laid in cement bedding and a central 3 × 3 m "carpet" of pavers engraved with five rosettes and a seven-branched menorah. Additionally, a bema was built along the north wall, measuring 5 × 1.7 m, likely supporting a wooden Torah ark. Coins of the Byzantine Emperor Phocas (r. 602–610 CE) found beneath the pavement indicate construction no earlier than the early 7th century CE. The synagogue was likely abandoned in the mid-7th century CE, followed by domestic reuse, as indicated by the presence of a tabun oven and ash layers.
Although only part of the text survives, it is clear that the spell originally began with a sequence of six magical or angelic names, each enclosed within a circular frame similar to a cartouche. These are followed by an invocation calling upon "holy and mighty" angels to ignite passion in a named individual. This name is only partially preserved and has been reconstructed as Rachel,in (the portion in brackets representing a scholarly restoration of the damaged text). The name of the petitioner remains unknown. The text concludes with magical characters resembling Paleo-Hebrew and Greek alphabet letters.
The charm's wording and magical characters match nearly identical recipes found in medieval Jewish manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza. Its archaeological discovery, which allows the amulet to be dated to the 5th–6th century CE, shows that these formulas were already in use centuries before their medieval attestation in Egypt. Through this finding, scholars of Jewish magic have been able to trace continuity in Jewish magical tradition from the Byzantine period, through the Middle Ages, and even into the 20th century, when parallels were still observed among Jews in Iraq (as attested by archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson in his study of folklore in Mosul). According to , this continuity indicates that the Horvat Rimmon amulet was not composed from memory, but reflects the "wide circulation of such magical recipe books in late antique Palestine and probably in Egypt as well."
Seven caves were excavated; they exhibit a range of burial forms: Rock-cut tomb-type caves characteristic of the late Second Temple period (2nd century BCE – 1st century CE); chambers with Arcosolium, loculi, standing pits and multiple burial troughs typical of the late Roman period (2nd–4th century CE); and later caves with simple, sunk-in graves typical of the Byzantine-era (5th–6th century CE). Many caves contained stone ossuaries, usually of soft limestone, often crudely made, sometimes decorated with geometric designs, and fitted with gabled lids bearing Acroterion. The lid of one of the ossuaries is inscribed with the name "Jacob son of Rabbi" ().
A system of subterranean tunnels and caves excavated at the site is attributed to the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE), based on typological parallels to other Bar Kokhba hiding complexes in the Judean Lowlands and the Hebron Hills.
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