Dead Sea Jordan

The Dead Sea is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west . Its surface and shores are 423 metres ( 1 ,388 ft ) below sea level , Earth's lowest elevation on land . The Dead Sea is 377 m ( 1 ,237 ft ) deep , the deepest hyper saline lake in the world . With 33 .7% salinity , it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water , though Lake Assal ( Djibouti ) , Garabogazköl and some hyper saline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica( such as Don Juan Pond ) have reported higher salinities . It is 8 .6 times saltier than the ocean . This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish , hence its name . The Dead Sea is 67 kilometres ( 42 mi ) long and 18 kilometres ( 11 mi ) wide at its widest point . It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley , and its main tributary is the Jordan River .
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years . Biblically , it was a place of refuge forking David . 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 balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilisers . People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets . In 2009 , 1 .2 million foreign tourists visited on the Israeli side . The Dead Sea seawater has a density of 1 .240 kg/L , which makes swimming similar to floating .