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Because of the large volume of ancient trade in the lake's naturally occurring free-floating bitumen, its usual names in ancient Greek and Roman geography were some form of Asphalt Lake ( Greek: Ἀσφαλτίτης or Ἀσφαλτίτις Λίμνη, Asphaltítēs or Asphaltítis Límnē Latin: Lacus Asphaltites) or Sea ( Ἀσφαλτίτης Θάλασσα, Asphaltítēs Thálassa). Historical English names include the Salt Sea, Lake of Sodom from the biblical account of its destruction and Lake Asphaltites from Greek and Latin. Less often, it has been known in Arabic as the Sea of Zo'ar from a formerly important city along its shores.
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In Arabic, it is also known as the Sea of Lot ( بحر لوط, Buhayrat, Bahret, or Birket Lut) from the nephew of Abraham whose wife was said to have turned into a pillar of salt during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Other Hebrew names for the lake also mentioned in the Bible are the Sea of Arabah ( ים ה ערבה, Yām Ha‘Ărāvâ) and the Eastern Sea ( ה ים ה קדמוני, HaYām HaKadmoni). The usual biblical and modern Hebrew name for the lake is the Sea of Salt ( ים המלח, Yām HaMelaḥ ⓘ). The name also occasionally appears in Hebrew literature as Yām HaMāvet ( ים ה מוות), 'Sea of Death'. The English name "Dead Sea" is a calque of the Arabic name Bahr or al-Bahr al-Mayyit ⓘ ( البحر الميت), itself a calque of earlier Greek ( Νεκρά Θάλασσα, Nekrá Thálassa) and Latin names ( Mare Mortuum) in reference to the scarcity of aquatic life caused by the lake's extreme salinity. Multiple canal and pipeline proposals, such as the scrapped Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, have been made to reduce its recession. The Dead Sea is receding at a swift rate its surface area today is 605 km 2 (234 sq mi), having been 1,050 km 2 (410 sq mi) in 1930. Today, tourists visit the sea on its Israeli, Jordanian and West Bank coastlines.
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It was one of the world's first health resorts, and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilisers. The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean Basin for thousands of years. The Dead Sea's main, northern basin is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point. This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. With a salinity of 342 g/kg, or 34.2% (in 2011), it is one of the world's saltiest bodies of water – 9.6 times as salty as the ocean – and has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. It is 304 m (997 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.
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It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.Īs of 2019, the lake's surface is 430.5 metres (1,412 ft) below sea level, making its shores the lowest land-based elevation on Earth. The Dead Sea ( Arabic: اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū Hebrew: יַם הַמֶּלַח, Yam hamMelaḥ), also known by other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel to the west. Short video about the Dead Sea from the Israeli News Company Jordan, Palestine ([[Israeli occupation of the West Bank|Israeli-occupied West Bank), IsraelĢ98 m (978 ft) (elevation of deepest point, 728 m (2,388 ft) BSL, minus current surface elevation)ġ Shore length is not a well-defined measure.