Peter & Vinci
- Mar 4, 2020
- 7 min read

Part 24 : More from the Negev

Updated: Apr 24, 2020

Midreshet

Today's plan was to head back to the Dead Sea to visit Mount Sodom and Lot's wife, both of which we drove past in darkness back on the 4th of March. But first, we wanted to try to locate the wild herd of Ibex that are commonly seen on the cliff edges of Midreshet, especially in the morning. In recent weeks, this has been more difficult than usual due to all the rare growth appearing from the desert which gives the animals a much broader area to forage.

We headed to the northern edge of the settlement and walked through an opening in the fence towards the canyon. Within seconds, Vinci had spotted a couple of them on the edge of a cliff. We spent a wonderful hour or so photographing these very interesting animals, with around 60 animals in all. As expected, very few mature males were seen, as there is often only one or two per herd. We had arrived just prior to mating season where more males try to infiltrate the herd to challenge the leader to take control of the harem, where quite often, these fights turn extremely violent. What was interesting to see was the amount of young babies with no less than 15 seen feeding, resting or perfecting their mountain climbing skills. I have included more photos of these fantastic animals at the bottom of this page.

Dimona

To get to Mount Sodom, we headed north to Dimona, then east on route 25 before meeting up with route 90, which hugs the west coast of the Dead Sea. We did have a slight stop over when I saw a pair of ex-Croatian railways GT26CW-2 Diesel locomotives in a passing loop running parallel to the road. This passing loop (Google Maps 31°02'13.74"N 35°04'26.57"E) is just prior to a rail junction and has a fantastic horseshoe curve, one of three within 20 kilometers. The line heading east serves a large container yard and phosphate mine at Zin and the line south to another phosphate mine at Oron. I presumed (correctly) that another train should be approaching, which happened only 10 minutes later in the form of a container train behind a very rare Alstom Prima JT 42CW diesel locomotive. Unfortunately, photography any further east of this spot for the next 10 kilometers is strictly forbidden as the road runs past the northern perimeter of Israel's only nuclear 'research' facility.

The drive along route 25 was impressive, particularly in the final 10 kilometers passing through the mountain range and then descending down to the Dead Sea. I took my best guess at taking the Mount Sodom entrance road which I had attempted to study the night before. I guessed correctly and for anyone visiting, the exit is just north of the huge salt mountains after the magnesium factory (there are no sign posts).

Mount Sodom

Mount Sodom is a large mountain on the western side of the Dead Sea. It comprises of approximately 80% salt and is growing at a rate of around 2cm's each year. This mountain has some spectacular salt caves inside, some running up to two kilometers in length, but most have been sealed off due to their instability.

The pending destruction of the city of Sodom was revealed to Abraham after he and Sarah had shown hospitality to some angels. Abraham asked God to spare the city if he could find 50 righteous people within. God agreed, although Abraham negotiated the number of decent people down to ten. The angels headed off to Sodom and were met by Abraham's nephew, Lot. Unfortunately a mix of young and old men of the city had noticed that Lot had some male visitors and demanded he hand them over so they could essentially rape them. When Lot refused, they lost their minds and tried to break the door down before the Angels struck them all with blindness. The angels told Lot to take his family and get out of the city immediately and not to look back. It would seem curiosity killed cats even 4,000 years ago, because Lot's wife was unable to resist turning back to see the carnage that ensued, immediately turning into a pillar of salt.

There is no definitive location to where the ancient city was, however all the evidence found so far is overwhelming that there was a city here and it was indeed reduced to ash. These two cities were very large places and thousands of graves have been found in the area. A lot of stone structures appear as natural erosion at first sight, however they exist mostly in places like flat ground where this doesn't make sense, not to mention they comprise mainly of calcium sulphate.

The historian Josephus, who was around during the time of Christ, mentions that the ruins of both these cities could still be clearly seen at his time. Many of the remains of the structures seen here today are in such a rapid state of decay, they literally powderise in your hand just by touching them.

One can find pebble sized balls of white sulfur all over which are around 90 - 100% purity as opposed to most other yellow/green sulfur found all over the world which is around 50% purity. Vinci and I found a number of these small balls and they can be set on fire with a match. The most common building material used for cities at the time was limestone and when this is heated with sulfur, the resulting material is what is now found here - calcium sulphate. Archaeologists have also found fine seams of charcoal in the middle of the building remains, possibly indicating timber beams used.

Mount Sodom not only serves as a warning of those who continue to lead their lives against God, but also as a lesson about obedience and trust.

"By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah - from the Lord out of the heavens."

- Genesis 19:23-24

Lot's Wife

Right on the edge of Mount Sodom while driving north along the Dead Sea, we stopped over at Lot's Wife, a large pillar of salt that has over time eroded to form the shape we have today. It is named after the wife of the prophet Lot, who disobeyed God to look back at the city of Sodom on fire and turned into a pillar of salt. I don't think anyone seriously believes that this particular pillar of salt is actually that of Lot's wife however. Even Jordan claims to have a Lot's wife pillar of salt on their side of the border as well! Regardless of who has the largest pillar, the event would have taken place in the plains as they were fleeing the city anyway.

This is still an interesting stop over point. Lot's (proverbial) Wife stands on top of another salt cave. A few years ago this was fenced off to prevent people from entering due to the cave roof being very unstable. Sure enough, it has recently seen a large scale collapse. There has been a hole cut in the fence so we had a quick sticky beak inside. It is fascinating to see so many boulder sized salt rocks on the ground as well as huge rocks of salt jutting out of the walls.

"But Lot’s wife looked back,and she became a pillar of salt." - Genesis 19:26

It was time to head back to Jerusalem, and we headed north once more up route 90 and then route 1. On the way back, I took out another mortgage to fill up the car with fuel and we arrived back at the YMCA Three Arches hotel just in time to drop off our poor Mitsubishi ASX before they closed. Happily the wheels and all the panels were still attached, at least up until the point where I walked away with the signed condition report.

Jerusalem

After checking in and settling down, we took dinner in a nice fish restaurant, which was so good we would end up eating here a couple more times as well. After dinner, we went for a quick walk through the Old City.

We walked through all the dead streets and ended up as far as a section on the Temple Mount Wall known as the Small Wailing wall. This section of the wall is physically closer to the remains of the temple on Temple Mount but is much less well known and certainly less visited than the larger section of the wall in the Jewish Quarter. This part of the wall dates to the Second Temple period from 516BC to 70 AD. It is much rougher than the larger section, due to having far few visitors that pray here or touch it. Apparently this area is what the main wailing wall section looked like prior to 1967 before a number of houses and buildings were torn down to create the large open area we have today.

Vinci felt a bit uncomfortable walking around here so late at night and as it had been a big day, we headed back to the hotel to decide how to approach Jerusalem over the next few days with a massive list of sites to see.

More photos below of the Ibex at Midreshet, landscape at Mount Sodom and night street scenes from Jerusalem below.