Tel-harsha

Tel-harsha ("mound of the silent forest" in Aramaic) was one of three Babylonian villages — alongside Tel-melah and Cherub-addan-immer — whose Jewish residents joined Zerubbabel's first wave of return from exile in 538 BCE but could not produce genealogical records proving Israelite descent (Ezra 2:59, Nehemiah 7:61). The 652 returnees from these three villages were initially excluded from the priesthood until the matter could be resolved by the Urim and Thummim — a procedure that never seems to have been carried out, leaving their status permanently uncertain.