In The Dead Sea: A 10,000 Year His­to­ry, Nir Ariel­li, a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al his­to­ry of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds, offers a fas­ci­nat­ing dive into the noto­ri­ous­ly salty bed of water. Equal­ly at home in the sci­ence of desali­na­tion as he is in ancient and mod­ern geopol­i­tics, Ariel­li offers a com­pre­hen­sive but briskly-paced study.

As he details in schol­ar­ly but acces­si­ble prose, ​“the sto­ry of the Dead Sea involves salt and sul­phur, but also date palms and sug­ar­cane. It can be pieced togeth­er thanks to sed­i­ments that gath­ered at the bot­tom of the lake, scrolls that were hid­den in caves, the remains of mosaics, and the accounts of trav­el writ­ers. Its pro­tag­o­nists are Jews and Arabs, but also Moabites, Nabateans, Greeks, Idu­maeans, Romans, Cru­saders and Mamluks.” 

The site has been asso­ci­at­ed with bib­li­cal fig­ures like Lot’s wife, cov­ered in salt amidst the destruc­tion of Sodom. It was cap­tured in innu­mer­able con­quests over the cen­turies. Has­moneans, rebels at Masa­da, Chris­t­ian war­riors, and Turk­ish shep­herds have been just a few of the count­less vis­i­tors who came in search of spir­i­tu­al uplift, health treat­ments, or mil­i­tary action. Ariel­li weaves dozens of tales of cul­tures and king­doms that came to mine its resources and mar­vel at its myth­i­cal aura. In the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, scrolls were dis­cov­ered on its shores that changed how the his­to­ry of the Bible has been under­stood. Dozens of attempts have been made to have the Sea ser­vice the often-con­flict­ing polit­i­cal inter­ests of its neigh­bors, includ­ing, in recent decades, Jor­dan and the State of Israel.

After the Six Day War increased Israeli access to the sea led the brand Dead Sea Health Prod­ucts, now bet­ter known as Aha­va, to devel­op numer­ous soaps and creams. Tourists flock to the site to float almost mag­i­cal­ly on its water.

But in recent years the sea lev­el has dropped, caus­ing dan­ger­ous sink­holes around the area, a prob­lem that has not yet been ful­ly addressed. Ariel­li ends the book with a quote empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of sal­vaging what remains. He notes that in a doc­u­men­tary about the Sea, the Israeli swim­mer Oded Rahav plead­ed for its preser­va­tion. ​“We need to save the Dead Sea because it is a won­der­ful place,” Rahav says. ​“It is a meet­ing place of all civ­i­liza­tions of the Mid­dle East. It is a place of heal­ing, even though it is set in very chal­leng­ing con­di­tions. It is a won­der of nature.”