The two cities were located in a region known as the Kikar or the Jordan Disk, which according to World Religion News, is the “green” region blessed with water and vegetation making it the setting of ancient and Bronze Age cities like Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Once the angels struck the attackers with blindness, the Bible says, “Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven”.
By comparison, the site, at Tall el-Hamaam, dates back to between 3500 and 1540 BC.
The ruins of Tall-el-Hamaam in Jordan uncovered by Collins’ and his team.
One of these was a 5.2-metre thick mudbrick wall that reached 10 metres in height and was built during the early Bronze Age.
So far, the team of experts have concluded that it would appear that the city was continuously being expanded and fortified.
During the middle Bronze Age, this wall was replaced by a huge, 23ft-wide (7 metre) rampart with a flat top that doubled as a ring road around the city.
Archeologists, led by Steven Collins, believe that they have unearthed the biblical city of Sodom in Tall el-Hammam, an excavation site in Jordan. They say, “We agree that objective archeology should take us where the evidence leads; but we also understand the importance of ancient texts like the Bible that often provide an historical framework for the identification of geographical locations”.
Experts excavating the site, in Tall el Hammam, say they have discovered a Bronze Age city-state that matches “every Sodom criterion”.
Collins says that to find the city that God burned because of the sins of its residents, the team searched for the largest city on eastern Kikkar which existed during the Middle Bronze Age, the time when Abraham and Lot, his nephew, lived.
“When we explored the region, Tall el-Hammam was an obvious choice, as it was five to ten times larger than the other Bronze Age cities throughout the region, even those found beyond Jordan”.
“Very, very little was known about the Bronze Age in the Middle Ghor (southern Jordan Valley) before we began our excavations in 2005”, Collins told the magazine.
“Most archaeological maps of the area were blank”. They quoted Collins as saying the discovery is “monstrous” compared to other settlements from that period in the region.
The area remained deserted for around 700 years, after which the city was repopulated, evidenced by artefacts and remains of an Iron Age settlement.
Steven Collins from Trinity Southwestern University in New Mexico is leading the project.
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Both cities have been used as metaphors for vice and homosexuality. Scripture says God destroyed Sodom and another city, Gomorrah, with sulfur. These building were all found in the so-called upper city, while the lower city yielded a large monumental complex.
