FINAL WARNING: The Curtain Falls
discovered at Bab-Edh Dra’a (Bab edh-Dhra) in 1965, part of a
fortification built by the Canaanites during the time of Abraham; and
from 1975-79, excavations of pots and other items were unearthed,
which dated back to 2500 to 2000 BC. Four other sites have been
identified on the east side of the Dead Sea as part of the ruins of the
five plain cities involved in the turn of events, including Numeira
(discovered in 1973), Safi (identified as Zoar), Feifa, and Hanazir.
Because of evidence which proves that the area was fertile and
densely populated, all of these sites, along with Sodom and Gomorrah,
are believed to be the five cities of the plain. Excavations made since
1974 at the Tell Mardikh, site of the ancient Ebla, in northern Syria,
have turned up tablets from their archives which refer to all five cities
of the plain, and on one, even names them in the same sequence as in
Genesis 14:2.Nelson Glueck, while Director of the American School of Oriental
Research in Jerusalem (1932-39), made a survey of the southern
Transjordan area, east and south of the Dead Sea, and discovered that
the area had been settled before 2000 BC, but suddenly had been
abandoned. These cities were located at the Vale of Siddim, at the
southern end of the Dead Sea in the Great Rift Valley, which extends
from Mount Hermon and the Sea of Galilee in the north, as far south as
the Gulf of Aquaba, and includes the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea
region. It is part of a huge fracture in the Earth’s crust that begins
several hundred miles north at the foot of the Taurus Mountains in
Asia Minor, and ends beyond the Red Sea in Africa. It is 1,320 feet
below the level of the Mediterranean Sea.The Dead Sea, between Israel and Jordan, is the lowest spot on the
Earth’s surface, and is fed by the Jordan River. Without an outlet, the
water has evaporated for hundreds of years, leaving behind a variety
of minerals, including sodium chloride, potassium chloride,
magnesium bromine, magnesium chloride and hydrogen sulfide. As
the name suggests, fish cannot live in its waters. Along the southern
end of the Dead Sea is a ten mile mass of salt called Jebel Usdim
(Arabic for ‘mountains of Sodom’). The salt at its base is 150 feet deep
in places, and geologists have also indicated the presence of sulphur,
natural gas, oil, and bitumen. The “slimepits” mentioned in Genesis
14:10, refer to the bitumen, asphalt or pitch, a lustrous black petroleum
product which melts and burns. There are vast beds of it on both sides