Dead Sea hotels

The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מֶ‏ּ‏לַ‏ח‎, Yām Ha-Melaḥ, "Sea of Salt"; Arabic: البَحْر المَيّت‎, al-Baḥr l-Mayyit, "Dead Sea") is a salt lake between Israel and the West Bank to the west, and Jordan to the east. It is 420 metres (1,378 ft) below sea level, and its shores are the lowest point on the surface of the Earth on dry land. The Dead Sea is 380 m (1,247 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7 percent salinity. Only Lake Assal (Djibouti), Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica such as Don Juan Pond and perhaps Lake Vanda have a higher salinity. It is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. Experts say that it is almost ten times saltier than the Mediterranean Sea (34% salt versus 3.5% for the Mediterranean). This salinity makes for a harsh environment where animals cannot flourish. 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 satchets.

In Arabic the Dead Sea is calledal-Bahr al-Mayyit ("the Dead Sea"), or less commonly baḥrᵘ lūṭᵃ (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 Yām ha-Melaḥ, meaning "sea of salt," or Yām ha-Māvet (ים המוות, "sea of death"). In antiquity it was sometimes referred to as Yām ha-Mizraḥî (ים המזרחי, "the Eastern sea") or Yām ha-‘Ărāvâ (ים הערבה, "Sea of the Arabah"). The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites (Attic Greek ἡ Θάλαττα ἀσφαλτῖτης, hē Thálatta asphaltĩtēs, "the Asphaltite sea.

Source: CIA Factbook, Wikipedia

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