Dead Sea Coast Israel Travel Guide

The Dead Sea ("Sea of Salt"; ألبَحْر ألمَيّت, "Dead Sea") is a salt lake between the West Bank and Israel to the west, and Jordan to the east. At below sea level, its shores are the lowest point on the surface of the Earth that are on dry land. At 330 m deep (1,083 feet), the Dead Sea is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also the world's second saltiest body of water, after Lake Asal in Djibouti. With 30 percent salinity, it is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. Israeli experts say it is nine times saltier than the Mediterranean Sea (31.5% salt versus 3.5% for the Mediterranean). The Dead Sea is long and 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.
In Arabic the Dead Sea is called ("the Dead Sea"), or less commonly (بحر لوط, "the Sea of Lot"). Another historic name in Arabic was the "Sea of Zoʼar", after a nearby town. In Hebrew, the Dead Sea is meaning "sea of salt," or (ים המות, "sea of death"). In antiquity it was sometimes referred to as (ים המזרחי, "the Eastern sea") or (ים הערבה, "Sea of the Arabah"). The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites (Attic Greek "the Asphaltite sea"; see below). (...) more....

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