The dead sea

The dead sea

Dead Sea, Arabic Al-Baḥr Al-Mayyit (“Sea of Death”), also called Salt Sea, landlocked salt lake between Israel and Jordan in southwestern Asia. 

It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

Its eastern shore belongs to Jordan, and the southern half of its western shore belongs to Israel. 

The northern half of the western shore lies within the Palestinian West Bank and has been under Israeli 

occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Jordan River, from which the Dead Sea receives nearly all its water, flows from the north into the lake.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean Basin for thousands of years. 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 asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash 

for fertilizers. Today, tourists visit the sea on its Israeli, Jordanian and West Bank coastlines.

The Dead Sea has the lowest elevation and is the lowest body of water on the surface of Earth.

For several decades in the mid-20th century, the standard value given for the surface level of the lake was some 1,300 feet (400 meters) 

below sea level. Beginning in the 1960s, however, Israel and Jordan began diverting much of the Jordan River’s flow and increased 

the use of the lake’s water itself for commercial purposes.