Sodom and Gomorrah

The southern basin of the Dead Sea is one of the strangest landscapes on earth: salt pans, sulphur nodules, and ridges of collapsed marl standing over water 400 metres below sea level. Tradition and several excavated tell sites — Bab edh-Dhra, Numeira and, more controversially, Tall el-Hammam — place the cities of the plain here.

Whatever your reading of the archaeology, the ground itself preaches. Abraham stood over this valley and bargained for it; Lot lingered in it; and the smoke that rose from it became Scripture's standing image of judgement.