On the South of ttie Dead Sea the ctiaracter of the soil is very different : there is here a large saline morass, ett-Sel/kha (above, p. 512'* note •), some 6 miles broad and 10 long, bounded on the N. half of its W. side by the cliffs of rock-salt called Jebet Usdum (vol. i. p. 575^, iij. 152), consisting of tine mud brou^jht down by the wadvs on the S.W. and S. and mingled with drainin^s of the Jebel Usdura : this is entirely destitute of vegetation, and only passable with danger and ditticulty (see descriptions in KoU li. 112 ; Tristram, Laiid o/ Isr. 326-9 ; Gautier, op. cit. 48-52). The Wady Ghurundel divides the Sebkha from ttie Ghdr cs-Satiyeh.
At present there is nothing in the Gh6r e?- Safiyeh but a wretched village of reed huts, en- closed by a reed stockade, with camps round about, inhabited by Bedawis (Tristram, 330; Gautier, 53 f., with views, 48, 56) ; anil Wetzstein (p. 56S f.) thinks that, from the climate, there could never have been a much more substantial place here ; but he points to a castle which may well have been the site of the (ppoijpiov mentioned in ancient times ; and per- haps the ancient Zo'ar stood in a higher and more healthy situation than the actual floor of the Ghdr (cf. the two ruins to the S.E. a little way up the W. el-Ahsd [Tristram, Mcah, 46-49]).
• Tristram, Moab, 60, 64. The map at the end of Tristram's Land of Itraet shows very distinctly the different fertile snuts on the shores of the Dead Sea. The elevations will be nest learned from O. A. Smith's large Topngr. and Phys. Map of Pat.
t See Lagrange, La Mosaique giogr. dt Mddaba, in the Rev. Bibl., April 1S97, Map (ia which the Eait is at the top), and
p. 17a.
The usually accepted site of both ?o'ar and of the othei ' cities of the Ki/ckur' has been at the S. end of the Dead Sea; but it was argued by Mr. (afterwards Sir G.) Grove in Sniith'i VB, 8. V. ' Zoar,' that they were at the North end of the Sea ; and this view has been followed since by Tristram (L. of }sr. 354 ff.), Conder (Tent-Work, 154, 207 f., 210), and other English writers (cf. above, arta. (Somorrah and SodomX The principal grounds upon which it is supported are (1) that in On 13'" Lot is said to have seen from near Bethel (v. 3) ' all the Kikkar of Jordan," and afterwards to have dwelt in the 'cities of the Kikkar,' whereas the S. end of the Dead Sea is not visible from near Bethel, and a plain situated there would not naturally be called the ' Plain of Jordan ' ; (2) that the S. end of the bead Sea is not visible from Nebo, as it is implied in Dt 34^ (quoted above) that ^i^o'ar was ; (3) that Gn 14?, which states that Chedorla'omer, coming up from ihe S., after smiting the Amalekites in Hazazon-tamar (- En-gedi, 2 Ch 202), proceeded to the Vale of Siddiin, implies that this vale, and consequently the cities of the Kikkar (which were near it), were at the N. end of the Sea. It is true, the language of Gn 1310- 11a. 12b does not seem to suggest that the narrator (J) pictured the part of the Kikkar, to which IjOl would naturally descend from Bethel, as separated from Sodom by the Dead Sea, with practically no passage along either shore : on the other hand, this conclusion is not necessary ; the narra- tive may well be condensed, and Lot may not then and there have directly ' moved his tent as far as Sodom.' The evidence that the po*f-bibL Zo ar wag at the S. end of the Dead Sea clearly cannot be resisted : and in the case of what must anciently have been a well-known place, it seems scarcely likely that the Zo'ar of Josephus wa^ on a different site from the biblical Zo'ar. Further, as regards (1), Kikkar does not mean ' Plain,' but * Round,' and it may thus have been applied to the entire basin in which both the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea lay, the ' Kikkar of the Jordan ' (Gn 1310- ", 1 K 7«) being in particular the part of it including the lower course of the Jordan : in Gn 13^0, also, it is not said that Lot saw the exact part of the KiJ:kdr in which the cities were (for 'all' must be an exaggeration, even if the cities were at the N. end of the Dead Sea, since only a part of the plain there is discern- ihle from near Bethel); (2) the view described in Dt 34' ■•■* includes many points (as Dan) not actually visible from Nebo (Thomson, L. ana B. iii. 653), and v,8 implies naturally that Zo'ar was at some distance off, not a place at the foot of Nebo (Tell Sfta^fliur, Conder, Heth and Moah^, p. 154 f., 6 m. N.E. of the Dead Sea, in spite of the facts that ShaghOr does not correspond jihoneti- cally to Zo'ar, and that Tell Shaghflr is not distinguishable from Has Siaghah, ib. p. 137); (3) the route from En-gedi to the N. end of the IJead Sea, whether inland (across a succession of steep wfidis ; Rob. i. 526-32) or alon^ the coast (by wading or clambering round promontories : Rob. i. 606 n. ; Tristram, Land of Isr, 252, 274, 278, ;?S4 f.). is much more impracticable for an amiv than that to its S. end : according to others also. IJazazoD- tamar is not En-gedi at all, but the T.amar of Ezk 4719 4329, a village on the road between Elath and Hebron (Onom. 210X perhaps (Rob. ii. 202) JCumuf), 22 m. S.W. of the S. end of the Dead Sea.