High above the Dead Sea’s south-eastern shore, pilgrims once climbed to a cave they believed had sheltered Lot after he fled the destruction of Sodom. For centuries the site survived in Christian memory alone, visited by occasional pilgrims such as St Stephen the Sabaite, until the Greek archaeologist Konstantinos Politis, who has died aged 67 following a series of strokes, began excavating in 1988.
He uncovered a Byzantine basilica built over the mouth of the cave, its floors still adorned with mosaics laid in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. The discovery, at Deir ’Ain ’Abata, gave physical form to one of the Bible’s most vivid stories and set the course for a career spent excavating and protecting the archaeology of Jordan’s Dead Sea shore.
