ONO

ONO (Heb. אוֹנוֹ), town in Judea, first mentioned in Thutmosis III's list of conquered towns in Canaan (No. 65). It was apparently settled originally by descendants of Benjamin (I Chron. 8:12). It appears with Lod and Hadid in the list of places resettled after the return from Babylonian Exile (Ezra 2:33; Neh. 7:37). It was situated near the border of Samaria, for Sanballat offered to meet Nehemiah in one of the villages of the Plain of Ono as on neutral ground (Neh. 6:2). According to Nehemiah 11:35, it was located in the Ge-Harashim ("Valley of Craftsmen"). Ono is frequently mentioned in talmudic sources. According to the Mishnah (Arak. 9:6), it had been fortified "from the days of Joshua"; the Babylonian Talmud locates it 3 mi. (c. 5 km.) from Lod, but relations between the two towns were unfriendly (Lam. R. 1:17, no. 52). Sometime in the third century, it was made an independent municipality: a councilor of Ono is mentioned in a papyrus from Oxyrrhynchus dated 297 (no. 1205). It appears as an independent town in Byzantine town lists of the fifth and sixth centuries (Hierocles Synecdemus 719:4; Georgius Cyprius 1006). The former Arab village of Kafr ʿAnā occupied the spot until 1948. An urban settlement called kiryat Ono now exists nearby. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Klein, Ereẓ Yehudah (1939), 7–8, 20; Mazar, in: BJPES, 8 (1941), 106; Noth, in: ZDPV, 61 (1938), 46; EM, S.V. (incl. bibl.). (Michael Avi-Yonah)