The story of Dead Sea

You are close to the lowest land on Earth. As of 2025, the surface of the Dead Sea lay 439.78 metres below sea level. The lake is also 304 metres deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world, and 9.6 times as salty as the ocean.

In water this dense, swimming feels like floating. The harsh salinity keeps plants and animals from flourishing, hence its name. In Arabic it is also called the Sea of Lot, after the nephew of Abraham whose wife was said to have turned into a pillar of salt, while its oldest known name is the Hebrew 'Sea of Salt'.

Greeks and Romans called it Asphalt Lake, after the free-floating bitumen that was traded from here in large volumes. People have come here for thousands of years: it was one of the world's first health resorts, and it supplied asphalt for Egyptian mummification. But the sea is shrinking fast, from 1,050 square kilometres in 1930 to 605 today.