We are excited to include a new site in Jordan on our January 2022 trip itinerary: Tall el-Hammam. This ancient city dominated the southern Jordan Valley as the center of a city-state kingdom for almost 1,500 years beginning around 3000 B.C. The territory once ruled by Hammam is estimated to be about 125 square miles, nearly all of it visible on a clear day from the upper city palace complex.
Why is a visit to Tall el-Hammam exciting for us? Archaeologists excavating the site have proposed that it is the ancient city known as Sodom. Genesis 13:10-12 describes the area as a well-watered plain (or “disk” in Hebrew). Steven Collins, head of the dig at Tall el-Hammam, identifies the area described in Genesis as the disk-shaped alluvial plain just north of the Dead Sea. If the identification is correct, we stand to learn much from the site about the civilizations of the “cities of the well-watered plain (disk) of the Jordan” that appear in Genesis 10-19, including the dramatic events of Genesis 19 presumably set there.
Of special interest in the study of the site is the discovery that Tall el-Hammam and its neighboring city-states suffered a localized, civilization-ending catastrophic event somewhere near the end of what archaeologists call the Middle Bronze Age, or about 2000 to 1550 B.C. Cities and towns to the west, north, and east continued, while those in the eastern Jordan disk did not. The area brought to an end by the destruction remained unoccupied for the next 500-700 years. The cause of the destruction is currently under study, and the results of those studies are pending publication. We will follow that work with interest.
The archaeological site of Tall el-Hammam is now open to the public, and Faith Connections Travel will be among the early groups to get to see it up close. Excavation teams have been working there seasonally since 2005, so we will get to see the results of quite a bit of digging. We expect to hear directly from the archaeology staff as we tour the site and learn about its possible biblical connections and significance.
Stay tuned to our blog for more information on Tall el-Hammam because I’ll be posting additional details that will help us prepare for our visit. In the meantime, brush up on your understanding of what a “tall” is (also spelled “tell” or, in Hebrew, “tel”) by reading my previous post here. Know what the “Tall” in Tall el-Hammam means and why it is significant in understanding a site like this.
Photo: Deg777, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
