The Dead Sea and the Jordan River. Barbara Kreiger

Louis Félicien de Saulcy caused a commotion in 1850 by announcing that he had identified as Sodom the remains of a small stone building. His precipitous claim provoked indignation in one Reverend Albert Isaacs, who devoted an entire book to disproving it and discrediting de Saulcy in a caustic reprimand. The matter was put into perspective by someone less excitable, who simply responded that de Saulcy had gotten the answers he wanted from the local Arabs by asking them leading questions.

      But de Saulcy was not alone in hoping, even believing, that the ruins of the cities might be unearthed. “It is not perhaps impossible,” wrote one, “that the wrecks of the guilty cities may still be found: we have even heard it asserted with confidence, that broken columns and other architectural ruins are visible at certain seasons, when the water is much retired below its usual level.” And an American traveler named John Lloyd Stephens, usually modest in his expectations, was bent on searching in the deadly waters of the lake “for the ruins of the doomed and blasted cities.” Stephens was the most vocal—and the most persuasive—of them all: “I had a longing desire to . . . search for the ruins of the guilty cities. And why not? If we believe our Bible . . . [the Dead Sea] covers the once fertile Vale of Siddim and the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah; and why may we not see them? The ruins of Thebes still cover for miles the banks of the Nile; the pyramids stand towering as when they were built. . . . Besides, that water [of the Dead Sea] does not destroy; it preserves all that it touches . . . and I can see no good reason why it should hide forever from man’s eyes the monuments of that fearful anger which the crimes of the guilty had so righteously provoked.”

      By 1831, so much information had been gathered about the Dead Sea that one Josiah Conder compiled a summary of the West’s geographical knowledge of “this celebrated lake, which the prevailing passion for the marvelous long invested with imaginary horrors, and of which the natives themselves still speak with a degree of terror.” In The Modern Traveler—Palestine, Conder entered the Sodom and Gomorrah fray, though on the other side. He directed his respectful skepticism toward Strabo, who in the first century had even given the dimensions of the ruins of Sodom. Conder concluded with some regret that such a legend must be classed “with the dreams of imagination.” Reluctant but dutiful, he cited travelers who had observed that the sea itself can throw up heaps of stones, and that many have mistaken them for the ruins of the ancient cities.

      Still, all the speculation stirred him: “The bare possibility, that any wreck of the guilty cities should be brought to light, is sufficient to excite an intense curiosity to explore this mysterious flood, which, so far as appears from any records, no bark has ever ploughed, no plummet ever sounded.” Actually, as Conder’s book was being read, preparations were already being made to sound the lake’s depths. And though for centuries the only barks to plow its waters were Arab rafts, there were times in Roman days, in the Byzantine period, and during the Middle Ages, when navigation was common. Vespasian’s ships had pursued Jews who were fleeing by way of the sea during the Jewish war from 66 to 73 CE, and documents from the time of the second Jewish rebellion against the Romans sixty-five years later suggest that Ein Gedi, on the western shore, was a major supply port. Part of the mosaic floor discovered in the Byzantine church at Madaba, on the east side of the Dead Sea, depicts a map of the lake (the earliest known) and shows two ships, one carrying salt, the other laden, it appears, with wheat or corn. And the Arab geographer Idrisi, writing in the twelfth century, described trade on the Dead Sea: “There ply on the lake small ships which make the voyage of these parts, and carry over corn and various sorts of dates from Zughar [at the southern end] . . . to Ariha [Jericho, at the north].” Before the nineteenth century was half over, navigation on the sea would resume, as science began to probe the lake’s depths.

      Section of the sixth century mosaic Madaba map, the earliest known map of the Dead Sea, showing two boats and two fish, one fleeing back up the Jordan River to warn the other. Reproduced by the Survey of Israel and the Israel Exploration Society from Palmer and Guthe’s reproduction, 1906. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

      PART TWO

      Nineteenth-Century Exploration

      The clouds lifted just as we reached the crest, and we looked down on the grand panorama of the sea, and the line of the Moab Mountains beyond . . . At the risk of being accused of suffering from “Holy Land on the brain”. . . . I must confess that few landscapes have impressed me more than the sudden unfolding of the Dead Sea basin and its eastern wall from the top of this pass.

      HENRY BAKER TRISTRAM

       The Land of Moab

      1874