Sodom and Gomorrah, notoriously sinful cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. They are now possibly covered by the shallow waters south of Al-Lisān, a peninsula near the southern end of the Dead Sea in Israel. Sodom and Gomorrah constituted, along with the cities of Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar (Bela), the five biblical “cities of the plain.” Destroyed by “brimstone and fire” because of their wickedness (Genesis 19:24), Sodom and Gomorrah presumably were devastated about 1900 bc by an earthquake in the Dead Sea area of the Great Rift Valley, an extensive rift extending from the Jordan River valley in Israel to the Zambezi River system in East Africa.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the area was once fertile in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1500 bc), with fresh water flowing into the Dead Sea in sufficient amounts to sustain agriculture. Because of the fertile land, the biblical Lot, the nephew of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, selected the area of the cities of the Valley of Siddim (the Salt Sea, or the Dead Sea) to graze his flocks. When the catastrophic destruction occurred, the petroleum and gases existing in the area probably contributed to the imagery of “brimstone and fire” that accompanied the geological upheaval that destroyed the cities. Har Sedom (Arabic: Jabal Usdum), or Mount Sodom, at the southwestern end of the sea, reflects Sodom’s name.
An inspiration to writers, artists, and psychologists, Sodom and Gomorrah and their legendary wickedness have been the subject of numerous dramas, including the History of Lot and Abraham, a medieval mystery play; Sodome et Gomorrhe, by the French dramatist Jean Giraudoux, in 1943; and Sodhome kye Ghomorra, by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, in the 1950s. In art the subjects involved in the biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah have been portrayed in numerous medieval psalters, Renaissance frescoes, and paintings down to the present. Sexual acts attributed to the Sodomites gave the city’s name to the contemporary term sodomy.