Bab edh-Dhra

Bab edh-Dhra is an archaeological site on the southeastern shore of the Dead Sea whose occupation dates back to the fourth millennium BCE, spanning the Chalcolithic period into the Early Bronze Age. Excavations uncovered a walled town and extensive charnel houses containing thousands of disarticulated bones — among the most systematically studied burial grounds in the Levant. The site gained wider attention through the hypothesis that it may have inspired the biblical narrative of Sodom: a pronounced burn layer and an abrupt abandonment around 2350 BCE have fueled that debate for decades, without scholarly consensus. Today the ruins are an open, unguarded landscape in stark desert terrain near the Lisan Peninsula, drawing archaeologists, biblical historians, and the occasional curious traveler willing to navigate remote roads along the Dead Sea's southern edge.