The drive down to the Dead Sea, whether from Jerusalem or Arad, never fails to fascinate as you pass one sign after another marking the rapid descent. Always great excitement when spotting the sign “Sea Level” and then the steady serpentine descent through the dry colored terrain with the beautiful hues of blue below interspersed with white islands of salt and its beguiling visual invitation – “Come, let’s get to know each other.” And getting acquainted is what a visit to the Dead Sea is all about.
It is a ‘hot spot’ in more ways than climatically.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors for thousands of years. It was a place of refuge for King David and was one of the world’s first health resorts for King Herod who had a penchant for setting up lavish palaces in idyllic locations.
Lying in the heart of the Great Rift some 430m below sea level, between the Jordanian and the Judean desert, the Dead Sea, is one of the Jewels in the crown of nature. It is little wonder that thousands of tourists visit this area each year to bath in the sea renowned for its healing qualities. Some of its most famous visitors include the Chilean miners who so nearly lost their lives in 2010 in a collapsed mine. No strangers to great depths, “at least here at the Dead Sea” the lowest spot on earth, “it’s good for our health,” bellowed one miner floating on his back upon the salty water.
Since ancient times, the Dead Sea remains a supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers to an array of health products.
However, ask anyone about the Dead Sea and it is ‘salt’ that immediately comes to mind; an image explained from childhood exposure to the Bible when we first read of Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking back upon the evil and corrupt cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But [Lot’s] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” — Genesis 19:25-26
First-time visitors to the Dead Sea will always insist on visiting the rock formation referred to as “Lots wife”.
What is evident is that salt became vitally important in this ‘neck of the desert’ generating economies from ancient times until today. During the Roman conquest, the Dead Sea was looked upon like today’s ‘Wall Street’ where its economic impact reached far beyond the immediate region. The salt extract was frequently used as a substitute currency. According to Pliny the Elder, the word ‘salarium’ meaning ‘salt-money’ was originally awarded for “the very honours, too, that are bestowed upon successful warfare.” ‘Salarium’ is believed to be the Latin origin for the modern word ‘salary’.
So why were the Roman soldiers paid partially in salt?
Salt was used to preserve food, particularly meat and it was said that to control the flow of salt was to control life and death itself. The soldiers sent much salt back home to their families for the preservation of food, because food, especially during the civil wars, became very expensive.
Photo Credit: Lonely Planet
It has been suggested that Rome’s siege against the zealots on Masada in 73 CE was founded on Rome’s fear that Dead Sea salt and mineral production would be threatened by Jewish insurgency.
However, the region’s value goes beyond salt. It was no surprise when, in 2011, the Dead Sea made the finals in a global internet vote for the “New Seven Natural Wonders of the World”. It was up against stiff competition, and although it did not make the final seven, the Dead Sea was a ‘hot’ favorite and won the hearts and minds of people all over the world.
One local resident who cast her vote in 2011 was Heather Shamir from Kibbutz Ein Gedi, whose nature reserve is a popular tourist attraction. For this former South African, who has lived on the edge of the Dead Sea for over three decades, the Dead Sea is “heaven on earth.” Irrespective of the vote, the Dead Sea for Heather remains “one of the natural wonders of the world. Having this great expanse of water before our eyes and being surrounded by majestic mountains that nearly every minute of the day seems to change color as the rays of the sun make contact, is a beauty to behold. I could not think of living anywhere else.”
Over and above the beauty, she asserts health and climate as other factors. “Our air is free of pollution; over 330 sunny days annually; dry, high oxygen levels, low UV rays all add up to a healthy way of life. This place gives me such energy. I don’t know if it’s the combination of its unique beauty and the special air we breathe but whatever – this place may be called the Dead Sea – but for me, it’s a cocktail of life.”
Photo Credit: Mazada Tours
Russian scholars who were the first to chemically analyze the water in 1911, titled their findings a “gold mine”. Apart from the salt, the sea is rich in precious minerals such as potassium bromide and magnesium; all manufactured both by Jordanian and Israeli companies to be marketed around the world. On its shores, broad deposits of the Dead Sea mud, rich with sulfur and many other minerals are known for their healing and rejuvenating qualities. One of the Dead Sea’s earliest well-known fans was thought to be Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, who it is said, convinced her suitor Marc Anthony to award her this strip from the province of Judea. The irresistible queen was thought to have used the mud of the sea for preserving her beauty.
Regrettably, no ‘I Love You’ hearts with the names of ‘Anthony’ and ‘Cleopatra’ have yet been found chiseled in stone in the area!
Over and above its chemical values (Cleopatra could hardly have been expected to know) that the Dead Sea is probably one of the healthiest places to roll out a towel and sunbathe – hence the best-known cure for psoriasis. Before reaching the Dead Sea surface, the radiation from the sun has to travel through an extra 430m of air with the highest condensation. The immediate surroundings might be dry, but the massive evaporation creates a constant mist that hovers some 200-300m above the sea, naturally filtering UV and other harmful radiation. This enables safe-sun bathing in the numerous solariums around the Dead Sea built especially for this purpose.
Fast forward two millennia from Cleopatra, Ziva Gilad, a spa technician, came up with the idea of marketing Dead Sea mud after watching women tourists scooping up the mud to take home. In 1988, a single stand selling bottles of Ahava body scrub to tourists earned $1 million. Today, the Dead Sea Works is the world’s fourth largest producer and supplier of potash products. The company also produces magnesium chloride, industrial salts, bath salts, table salt, and raw materials for the cosmetic industry.
The uniqueness of the Judean and Jordan desert enables abundant oasis to thrive to the feet of the barren dry mountains. Many freshwater springs provide green spots which attract a great variety of birds, reptiles and mammals, some of which are endemic to the Dead Sea shores.
So, despite the lack of wildlife in the Dead Sea itself, the region around it is blessed with unique flora and fauna, including endangered species such as ibex, leopards, and hyrax.
The wetlands surrounding the Dead Sea support several species, notably the indigenous ‘Dead Sea Sparrow’, and serves as an important resting and breeding site for millions of migratory birds crossing between Europe and Africa each year.
Birds that can be seen are the ‘Brown-necked Raven’, the ‘Blackstart’ and the ‘Tristram’s Starling’ that can easily be spotted for the orange tips of its black wings but also clearly heard because of its distinct whistle offering a musical soundtrack to the stunning sights.
Also to be seen are jackals, foxes, hyenas, hares, the cute Spiny Golden Mouse, and a lonely leopard, sadly the last of his disappearing community.
The flip side of the area’s beauty is that it could all disappear. The lonely leopard is a stark reminder of what is here today, could be gone tomorrow.
Like the Amazon, whose forests are threatened by industrial felling, the islands of the Maldives sinking into the Pacific due to rising seawater caused by Global Warming or the Great Barrier Reef, endangered by rising sea temperature and acidification, Israel’s glistening natural treasure – the Dead Sea – is shrinking rapidly, mainly due to the siphoning of its waters.
The slogan for the ‘New 7 Wonders of Nature’ global Internet contest was: “If we want to save anything, we first need to truly appreciate it.” During the buildup to the 2011 global vote, the Dead Sea shared its majestic and worthy competitors, not only its incomparable beauty but also its fragility. The hope was that if the Dead Sea was chosen as a Wonder of the World, it would not only promote tourism to the region, but would also raise awareness about the bleak reality facing the body of water, which is decreasing each year.
Photo Credit: UVM Blogs
The Dead Sea is 50 kilometers long. Only forty years ago it stretched 80 kilometers in length. The Ein Gedi Spa, set in a magical spot at the foot of high cliffs which stretch from the Dead Sea up to the Judean Desert, was on the edge of the sea just 15 years ago. Now visitors to the Spa have to catch a small train down to the sea, as the shoreline is several hundred metres away. This dramatic ‘disappearance act’ is starkly evident when looking upon the mark made by British explorers on a stone in 1917 at the water’s edge. That marker is now more than 15 metres up a cliff and a road runs between the cliff and the new shoreline.
Some calculations show that the Dead Sea could dry up by 2050. “It might be confined into a small pond,” warned water expert Dureid Mahasneh, a former Jordan Valley Authority chief. “Saving the Dead Sea is a regional issue, and if you take the heritage, environmental and historical importance, or even the geographical importance, it is an international issue.”
Although disappointed with the 2011 vote, the mayor of the Tamar Regional Council at the southern end of the Dead Sea was “very proud” at the combined Israel, Jordan and Palestinian entry reaching the top fourteen out of an original 400 nominees. Noting “every day in Israel there are new challenges to confront,” he was concerned that the Dead Sea “would be forgotten.” However, Litvinoff is determined that this will not happen. “We will not let anybody forget the Dead Sea…. again.”
Photo Credit: Green Olive Tours
While the region is rich with attractions, mostly the creations of Mother Nature, some are embellished by man. The most spectacular is Masada – the souring outcrop of rock overlooking the Dead Sea with a plateau on top which caught the imagination of Herod the Great. Not too many years later, Herod’s palace served as a fortification for the last stand of the Jews against the might of the Roman Empire. Today, it is one of Israel’s most important archaeological sites, and if it is remembered for the sounds of war, today in summer, one hears from this landscape a different tune.
Each June, it provides a stunning backdrop for the Masada Opera Festival. Since the performance of the first opera ‘Nabucco’ in 2010, the Festival has emerged as one of the world’s most stunning opera events. Not since General Flavius Silva, the commander in Roman Judea, assembled his legions below to begin the siege, have so many people again assembled, not to make war but to champion peace by listening to music.
Photo Credit: Medium
Following the success in recent years of such opera classics as Aida, Carmen, La Traviata and Tosca, this past June, thousands of Israelis from all over the country joined the mass of tourists from abroad at the base of Masada for the performance of Saint- Saëns’ Samson and Delilah.
As you can see the Dead Sea and the close area have much to offer. According to the Ministry of Tourism, the Dead Sea, only an hour’s drive from Jerusalem, is considered one of Israel’s most popular attractions with some 45% of all tourists to Israel visiting it.
Why not contribute to this statistic. You will be glad you did!
Photo: Mazada Tours
