Zorah, Archaeological site in Judean region, Israel.

Zorah (Tel Tzora) is a hilltop site in the Judaean Foothills about 23 km west of Jerusalem, at roughly 350 m above sea level, overlooking the Sorek valley. Its crest is bare and white, with rough light grey and white limestone blocks and outcrops lying on bare earth; a larger fractured white slab sits in the centre, smaller stones scattered around, and a rusted iron grate covers a dark hollow set flush into the ground. Caves, tombs, cisterns and two rock-cut winepresses, one paved with mosaic, were found at the tell.

Zorah appears in the 14th-century BCE Amarna letters as a city attacked by the Apiru, alongside Ajalon. The Book of Joshua places it in the allotment of Judah and on the border of Dan; it is named as the home of Manoah and the birthplace of Samson. Rehoboam fortified it, and Eusebius, writing in the 4th century, described it as a village 10 miles north of Beit Guvrin.

The name survived in that of the Palestinian village Sar'a, destroyed in the 1948 war, and the nearby Kibbutz Tzora now carries the biblical name. The site is tied to Samson: his father Manoah came from Zorah, and a rock-cut altar below the tell is nicknamed "Manoah's Altar". Two winepresses were carved into the rock, one paved with mosaic.

Tel Tzora lies on a hilltop about 23 km west of Jerusalem near Nahal Sorek, reached from the Tzora area by road 38. The ground is bare earth and uneven limestone, with a rusted iron grate flush with the surface covering a dark hollow, so watch your footing. The rock-cut winepresses and the rock-hewn altar called "Manoah's Altar" below the tell are outdoors and unshaded.

Just below Tel Tzora lies a rock-cut altar nicknamed "Manoah's Altar", after Samson's father. It measures about 3 by 2.5 by 1.5 metres, with a roof of roughly 1.5 by 1.45 metres bearing more than ten small hollows and cupmarks, some linked by carved channels, possibly for draining sacrificial blood, oil or wine.