_History._--The earliest references to the sea or its basin are in the patriarchal narratives of Lot and Abraham, the most striking being the destruction of the neighbouring cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (See SODOM.) The biblical name is the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Arabah (the south end of the Jordan valley), or the East Sea. The name in Josephus is _Asphaltites_, referring to the bituminous deposits above alluded to. The modern name is Bahr Lut or "Sea of Lot"--a name hardly to be explained as a survival of a vague tradition of the patriarch, but more probably due to the literary influences of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Koran filtering through to the modern inhabitants or their ancestors. The name Dead Sea first appears in late Greek writers, as Pausanias and Galen. At En-Gedi on its western bank David for a while took refuge. South of it is the stronghold of Masada, built by Jonathan Maccabaeus and fortified by Herod in 42 B.C., where the last stand of the Jews was made against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem, and where the garrison, when the defences were breached, slew themselves rather than fall into Roman hands.
The sea has been but little navigated. Tacitus and Josephus mention boats on the lake, and boats are shown upon it in the Madeba mosaic. The navigation dues formed part of the revenue of the lords of Kerak under the crusaders. In modern times navigation is practically _nil_. The lake, with the whole Jericho plain, is claimed as the personal property of the sultan.
The medieval travellers brought home many strange legends of the sea and its peculiarities--some absurd, others with a basis of fact. The absence of sea-birds, due to the absence of fish, probably accounts for the story that no birds could fly over it. The absence of vegetation on its shores, due to the scanty rainfall and general want of fresh water--except in the neighbourhood of springs like 'Ain Feshkhah and 'Ain Jidi, where a luxuriant subtropical vegetation is found--accounts for the story that no plant could live in the poisonous air which broods over the sea. The mists, due to the great heat and excessive evaporation, and the noxious miasmata, especially of the southern region, were exaggerated into the noisome vapours that the "black and stinking" waters ever exhaled. The judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (which of course they believed to be _under_ the waters of the lake, in accordance with the absurd theory first found in Josephus and still often repeated) blinded these good pilgrims to the ever-fresh beauty of this most lovely lake, whose blue and sparkling waters lie deep between rocks and precipices of unsurpassable grandeur. The play of brilliant colours and of ever-changing contrasts of light and shade on those rugged mountain-sides and on the surface of the sea itself might have been expected to appeal to the most prosaic. The surface of the sea is generally smooth (seldom, however, absolutely inert as the pilgrims represented it), but is frequently raised by the north winds into waves, which, owing to the weight and density of the water, are often of great force.