The Dead Sea (Arabic: البحر الميت al-Baḥr al-Mayyit, Hebrew: יָם הַמֶּלַח, Yām HamMélaḥ, "Sea of Salt", also Hebrew: יָם הַמָּוֶת, Yām HamMā́weṯ, "The Sea of Death"), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are 423 metres (1,388 ft) below sea level, Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 377 m (1,237 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 33.7% salinity, it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, though Lake Assal (Djibouti), Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond) have reported higher salinities. It is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 67 kilometres (42 mi) long and 18 kilometres (11 mi) wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets. In 2009, 1.2 million foreign tourists visited on the Israeli side.
The Dead Sea seawater has a density of 1.240 kg/L, which makes swimming similar to floating.
Read more about Dead Sea: Etymology and Toponymy, Geography, Natural History, Climate, Chemistry, Health Effects and Therapies, Fauna and Flora, Human Settlement, Hebrew Bible, Industry, Recession and Environmental Concerns, Gallery
Other articles related to "dead sea, sea":
... Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the south western tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom ... lies in northern Syria and not near the Dead Sea, and ì-ma-ar is a variant of ì-mar, known to represent Emar, an ancient city located near Ebla ... in a list of cities that traces a route along the shores of, or quite possibly within the Dead Sea, whose position may have since shifted along its fault ...
... When the party arrives at the Dead Sea, they make camp, and are rejoined by Mortmain ... Seeming disturbed, he drinks the salty Dead Sea water despite warnings that it is poisonous ... While the company buries the man by the Dead Sea, Clarel looks out over the water ...
... Israeli highway beside the Dead Sea Jordanian highway along the Dead Sea coast Twisty coastline Coastline (from Israel) A rough Dead Sea, with salt deposits on cliffs Dead Sea northern coast (Jord ... Macalister of the Palestine Exploration Fund showing the level of the Dead Sea The Dead Sea region Dead Sea seen from Jordan Panorama of the Dead Sea from Masada, facing northeast ...
... That same year, he found that the Dead Sea, so called because it was thought to be too salty to sustain life, in fact supports several types of ... Hebrew (“Studies of the Microflora of the Dead Sea”) ... His discovery of microorganisms in the Dead Sea was the focal point of his work from 1936 to 1945 and was the theme of his doctoral thesis ...
... Peninsula is a large spit of land which now separates the North and the South basins of the Dead Sea ... territory, separates the northern section of the Dead Sea from its shallow southern part ... in 1835 from heat and thirst after being stranded on the sea for days ...
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or dead:
“I wouldn’t think of asking you to lie; you haven’t the necessary diplomatic training.”
—John Farrow. Consul in Valparaiso, The Sea Chase (1955)
“Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)