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Floating, ancient scrolls and wild goats on desert cliffs. Ten questions about one of the most unusual places on Earth.
Toe in the water 0–4 · Happy floater 5–8 · Salt sea expert 9–10
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The water holds so much salt that it is much heavier than your body, so you bob on top like a cork. Visitors love to lie back and read a newspaper while floating.
Photo: لا روسا, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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The water lies more than 400 metres below sea level, lower than any other dry land on the planet. The record for the hottest temperature belongs to Death Valley in the United States.
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The dark mud along the shore is full of minerals. People coat themselves from head to toe, let it dry in the sun and then rinse it off in the sea.
Photo: Cristian-Mihail Miehs ( Miehs at Romanian Wikipedia ), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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The Jordan River flows south through the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea. The Euphrates flows far away, through Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
Photo: Jean Housen, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The Dead Sea has no link to any ocean, and no river flows out of it: the water can only escape by evaporating in the heat, which leaves the salt behind. It is called 'dead' because its water is too salty for fish and plants; only tiny microbes manage to live in it.
Photo: Peter Summerlin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Nubian ibex are amazing climbers that can stand on the tiniest ledges. The males have huge horns that curve back in a half circle. Barbary sheep live in the mountains of North Africa.
Photo: netzach farbiash, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.
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Young Bedouin shepherds exploring a cave found tall clay jars holding scrolls about 2,000 years old. Over the following years, thousands of scroll pieces turned up in caves nearby.
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The water level drops by about a metre a year. Fresh groundwater then dissolves layers of salt underground, the ground caves in, and thousands of holes have appeared along the shore.
Photo: Peter1936F, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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The Dead Sea spits up lumps of asphalt from deep below, so the ancient Greeks called it the 'Asphalt Lake'. The ancient Egyptians even used asphalt from the Dead Sea area when they made mummies.
Photo: Daniel Tzvi, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Most of the scrolls are in Hebrew, and others are in Aramaic and Greek. They include copies of books of the Hebrew Bible about a thousand years older than any copies known before.
Photo: Tamar Hayardeni, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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