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The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History
A human history of one of the planet’s most iconic lakes, and the civilizations that surrounded its shores
The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and Mamluks. Today it has become a tourist hotspot, but its drying basin is increasingly under threat.
In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake’s human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.; Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. He reveals the religious, economic and scientific importance of the lake to the many civilizations which have lived around its shores—and, amidst ecological collapse and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.
The Dead Sea is a place of many contradictions. Hot springs around the lake are famed for their healing properties, though its own waters are deadly to most lifeforms—even so, civilizations have built ancient cities and hilltop fortresses around its shores for centuries. The protagonists in its story are not only Jews and Arabs, but also Greeks, Nabataeans, Romans, Crusaders and Mamluks. Today it has become a tourist hotspot, but its drying basin is increasingly under threat.
In this panoramic account, Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. Moving through the ages, Arielli reveals the religious, economic, military, and scientific importance of the lake, which has been both a source of great wealth and a site of war. The Dead Sea weaves together a tapestry of the lake’s human stories—and amidst environmental degradation and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.; Nir Arielli explores the history of the Dead Sea from the first Neolithic settlements to the present day. He reveals the religious, economic and scientific importance of the lake to the many civilizations which have lived around its shores—and, amidst ecological collapse and renewed conflict, makes a powerful case for why it should be saved.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionJewish
304 pages, Hardcover
Published January 28, 2025
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December 27, 2025
Nir Arielli Studies The Expansive, 10,000 Year History Of Mankind's Oldest Salt Lake, The Dead Sea.
Located between two nations, Israel and Jordan, and populated with a diverse spectrum of cultures, the area surrounding the Dead Sea is a brilliant and colorful mosaic of human civilization with over 10,000 years of rich history to explore and a wondrous variety of significant locations to admire and appreciate. Mr. Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History is an ambitious study that seeks to provide an overview of the Dead Sea region's remarkable past by analyzing a set of historical periods ranging from 23 million years ago all the way up to present day. It is known as Yam Ha-Melach in the Hebrew language, as al-Baḥr al-Mayyit in the Arabic language, and as Mare Mortuum in the Latin language, and this ancient salt lake is mankind's oldest, with the first trace of human inhabitation dating back to the Natufian civilization whom settled in the area at the end of the last great Ice Age, roughly 13,000 years ago c. 11000 BCE. Mr. Arielli's exceptional introduction outlines each chapter's content and also describes in compelling prose what makes this unique region so special.
This hardcover edition of Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History was published in 2024 by Yale University Press, and features a 229-page main text that is split into an introduction, 7 chapters, and an epilogue, with 24 full-color illustrations of various maps, fortresses, ruins, shorelines, aerial photographs and other related items and locations. Also included are 4 detailed maps depicting the region as it would have appeared throughout different historical periods, which the author does an excellent job of utilizing for points of reference as his story progresses. There is a 5-page timeline and 28 pages of extended notes, followed by a 10-page bibliography and an index.
In Chapter 1, A Harsh but Welcoming Site Mr. Arielli canvasses several epochs in the Dead Sea region's expansive past, including its geological beginnings during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras as well as the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age periods. He soundly backs up his theses with compelling evidence from the findings of an élite group of nineteenth- to twenty-first-century geologists and archaeologists, and the manner in which they are explained is very accessible for those unacclimated (such as the reviewer) with these prehistoric periods.
The early history of the Dead Sea is a fascinating geological story of ancient oceans, shifting plate tectonics, and emerging fertile valleys. The disappearance over millions of years of the prehistoric Tethys Sea, and the seismic activity that occurred as the African Plate and the Arabian Plate gradually rifted (moved away) from one another and ground up against the larger Eurasian Plate led to the creation of the Sinai Subplate, and the birth of what is now the Jordan or Levantine Rift Valley.
The Dead Sea is located in this region, which mostly evaporated by the end of the Miocene but again became submerged during the Zanclean Flood that occurred during the early formation of the Mediterranean Sea, and upon the disappearance of its connection to the ocean 2 million years ago, the remaining water lay stagnant and accumulated concentrated salt deposits, which have remained to present day. The Dead Sea was actually part of a much larger body of water called Lake Lisan, which gradually disappeared during an arid period that began approximately 15000 BCE and concluded with the Younger Dryas.
The Bronze Age period brought a host of new advancements in the areas of technology and commerce for the Dead Sea region's inhabitants. The ancient town of Jericho was among the area's main settlements, and from 3200 BCE onward the appearance of Egyptian artifacts at the site's ruins suggests that the town engaged in a healthy degree of trade with the first Egyptian dynasties. Mr. Arielli discusses Jericho's city walls, which were constructed from a yellow-colored brick and placed upon a limestone foundation, as well as fortifications from other large settlements such as Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, located roughly 14 kilometers apart on the Dead Sea's southeast coast, near the Lisan Peninsula.
The Bronze Age period saw Jericho and another settlement, Tall el-Hammam, sustain considerable damage in an earthquake occurring roughly 2700 BCE, and also bore witness to other adverse events such as a drought, a conflagration and the diminution of Egyptian trade, which merely amounted to minor setbacks for the region's resourceful inhabitants. Some of the age's major technological advancements included copper tools and weapons, the potter's wheel, and the crucial copper-tin alloy we know as bronze.
The next section, entitled Chapter 2, A Site of God, discusses the historical and archaeological findings associated with religious legends from many different cultures. Among the most interesting is Arielli's explanation of a mysterious conflagration occurring c.1650 BCE, which caused drastic damage to the Middle Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam. In 2006, annual excavations began at the location and a team of archaeologists uncovered, "melted mudbrick fragments, melted roofing clay, melted pottery, ash, charcoal, charred seeds, and burned textiles, all intermixed with pulverized mudbrick." Destruction by a wildfire, earthquake, or through warfare were all ruled out, as the heat generated was simply too great to have been the product of these occurrences.
Their scientific explanation had a cosmic origin and involved an extremely rare occurrence known as an airburst, during which an asteroid or comet explodes at close proximity to the Earth. They supported their hypothesis by citing a similar event that occurred in 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, in which a 2,000 square-kilometer area was severely damaged by an asteroid that exploded 5-10 kilometers from Earth's surface and felled an estimated 80 million trees.
In 1946 or 1947, fifteen kilometers southwest of Jericho at the northwest edge of the great salt lake, a group of Bedouin shepherds were tending to their herds near a network of caves in a place called Khirbet Qumran when one of them found a remarkable group of manuscripts stored in jars which forever changed the course of Biblical and historical study. One of the jars contained the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, a set of ancient documents written mainly upon sheepskin but also on papyrus and composed in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.
These scrolls dated from approximately 205 BCE to the first century CE and contained copies of some 220 books from the Bible which predate the medieval period by an entire millennium and originate from the Second Temple period. There were also non-biblical manuscripts in the Qumran cave scrolls, among them the Damascus Document, which outlines the history, rules and regulations of an exiled community, the Zadokites, who were members of the Jewish Essene movement.
In Chapter 3, A Site of Wealth, War and Refuge, Arielli explores the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the early centuries of the Byzantine empire. The Romans sometimes referred to the Dead Sea as Lacus Asphaltes, or the Asphalt Lake, as it was an ideal location to harvest the material which had many useful properties during this era just as it does today. Blocks of asphalt would float upward from the lakebed, and teams of men would venture out to break up these into smaller chunks which were transported back to shore. The Diodochus Antigonus Gonatus waged a naval battle with the Nabataeans c.311 BCE over control of the Dead Sea's asphalt supply, but his tenacious adversaries bested Hieronymus of Cardia, the general Antigonus had delegated to oversee the harvesting operations.
The Hasmonean dynasty lasted from c.141-37 BCE and emerged in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid empire which occurred from 167-160 BCE. The dynasty's second and third rulers, John Hyrcanus I and Alexander Jannaeus, established a presence in the Dead Sea region after fighting against the nomadic Arab Nabataeans who ruled the lands to the southwest of the great salt lake. In an effort to provide aid to ships crossing the Dead Sea, Alexander Jannaeus established a fortified dock at Khirbet Mazin, although the sea's receding waters rendered it unviable within three decades.
Arielli next summarizes the reign of the Jewish monarch King Herod the Great, discussing his ambitious building programme and early relationships with the triumvir Mark Antony and Queen Cleopatra, who wished to hoard the profits from the Dead Sea's asphalt for her own nation's benefit. Despite the region's seismic activity, Herod undertook elaborate renovations of the Hasmonean palace at Jericho and the forts at Machaerus, also constructing a series of three new palaces at various locations in the surrounding area and another fortress at Cypros, some of which utilized technology such as aqueducts for fresh water and Roman concrete for sturdier buildings.
King Herod also built a port on the hot springs of Callirrhoe, where he would spend his later years trying to cure his ailments via the waters' healing properties. Sections of this chapter reference the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, whose extant histories, the Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War are considered among the most influential historical accounts of their respective periods. The latter work provides a contemporary, first-hand record of the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE.
The Dead Sea region's most prosperous era in Late Antiquity was approximately 300-600 CE, a period that coincides with the time of Byzantine supremacy and is believed to have come about through a number of factors. The most immediate was the increased security brought about by the Romans and Byzantines installing forts and fortifications along the imperial limes, or borders, which were frequently threatened by Saracen raids and encroachment. The imperial limes spanned the empire's entire breadth, including a line to the east of the Dead Sea which ran all the way south to the Red Sea, and they did not fulfill a fortification's traditional role, to prevent raids and entry from intruders - these bastions served a different purpose.
Chapter 4, A Site of Decline, New Beginnings and Myths, canvasses the medieval and early modern periods as they relate to the Dead Sea region, with the first section concentrating on the area's steady decline in prosperity after the waning of Byzantine influence which occurred as the Eastern Roman Empire became weaker and shifted its priorities elsewhere. The lack of a strong military presence led to a massive Persian-Sassanian invasion in 614 CE, and although the Byzantine emperor Heraclius was able to temporarily halt the tide, eventually the entire Levant came under Arab control. Two environmental factors are also believed to be partially culpable for the area's economic hardships after 600 CE - reduced precipitation and cooler temperatures led to the lake's recession and separation into two basins, widespread droughts, and decreased agricultural yields, with existing evidence that can attribute these conditions to lower sunspot counts and a solar minimum.
Sugarcane and indigo were the Dead Sea region's two emerging cash crops during the Early Islamic period which followed the diminution of Byzantine power, and in this chapter the author discusses how and why these commodities became so valuable and the methods used by the inhabitants to grow and harvest them. Indigo, or Indigofera tinctoria, was utilized for its rich blue dye and used in paints and cosmetics. It was produced and sold in Zoar, an ancient city on the Dead Sea's southeastern edge.
Sugarcane may have first began being processed in large quantities as early as the Fatimid period, but it became immensely popular during the age of the Crusader States in the late eleventh century, as the Crusaders would chew it to control their appetites during long sorties and shipped it home where it was considered a delicacy. The processing of sugarcane was also practiced in the Dead Sea's immediate environs, which required access to fast-moving water to turn the mills that ground the cane into powder.
The nineteenth century was a highly influential period for science, and the Dead Sea's unique environment rendered it the ideal site for a variety of experiments through the course of which scientists hoped to decipher the great salt lake's many mysteries, which are the subject of Chapter 5, A Site of Science and Exploration. The Dead Sea's fluctuating water levels have been the subject of much speculation, since time immemorial. Why does the lake appear to lose water even though it has a major tributary, the Jordan River, and no known outlets? During the Middle Ages, early scientists believed that there was an underground tunnel which connected it to the Mediterranean.
An American naval officer, William Francis Lynch, set out to measure distances from Lake Hula and the Sea of Galilee, and from there south to the Dead Sea, in an effort to ascertain how far below sea level the the surrounding region lies, and according to their barometric findings, the salt lake was 1,316.7 feet, or 401.33 meters below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. But neither this nor any other experiments answered the question of the lake's fluctuating water levels, except one. The Palestinian Exploration Fund employed a British Doctor, Ernest William Gurney Masterman, who, along with his colleagues, annually marked the water level on a rock on the Dead Sea's northwest coast from 1900-1913, and using this data they concluded that the dynamic occurring between rainfall and evaporation played a major role in the lake's rising and falling water levels.
Royal Navy officer William Allen journeyed to the Levant region in 1849-50, and formulated a proposal to drastically alter the landscape by creating a pathway to the ocean so the area could better facilitate communications between the British Empire and its eastern territories. He later published a book in 1855, The Dead Sea: A New Route to India, which delineated a plan to dig two major canals - the first would have originated in Kaiffa and created a pathway along the Jezreel Valley which would have flooded the Jordan Valley with seawater, enlarging the salt lake dramatically. The second canal would have connected the Dead Sea with the Red Sea at Aqaba, but neither project was pursued due to construction commencing on the Suez Canal in 1859.
In closing, Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History is a wonderfully appealing study which demonstrates through its first-rate presentation and superior quality the colossal degree of research and hard work that went into its composition. The author adopts an academic prose style which conveys his subject matter effectively just as it is a pleasure to read. The book is very well-organized, featuring chapters that are judiciously divided into subtopics and smoothly segue between their respective historical periods.
The reviewer had limited knowledge of the Levant region prior to picking up this book, and he thoroughly enjoyed learning the exciting history of the Dead Sea and its surrounding regions. The later chapters reinforce the seriousness of the environmental situation, which the reader will likely be thinking about long after he or she has put the book down. Upon finishing it, the reviewer was left with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, and he would certainly recommend Mr. Arielli's study to anyone at all curious to learn about the beautiful and magnificent Dead Sea. It was an honor and a privilege to read and review this fantastic work of scholarship. Thank you so very much for reading, I hope that you enjoyed the review!
Located between two nations, Israel and Jordan, and populated with a diverse spectrum of cultures, the area surrounding the Dead Sea is a brilliant and colorful mosaic of human civilization with over 10,000 years of rich history to explore and a wondrous variety of significant locations to admire and appreciate. Mr. Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History is an ambitious study that seeks to provide an overview of the Dead Sea region's remarkable past by analyzing a set of historical periods ranging from 23 million years ago all the way up to present day. It is known as Yam Ha-Melach in the Hebrew language, as al-Baḥr al-Mayyit in the Arabic language, and as Mare Mortuum in the Latin language, and this ancient salt lake is mankind's oldest, with the first trace of human inhabitation dating back to the Natufian civilization whom settled in the area at the end of the last great Ice Age, roughly 13,000 years ago c. 11000 BCE. Mr. Arielli's exceptional introduction outlines each chapter's content and also describes in compelling prose what makes this unique region so special.
This hardcover edition of Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History was published in 2024 by Yale University Press, and features a 229-page main text that is split into an introduction, 7 chapters, and an epilogue, with 24 full-color illustrations of various maps, fortresses, ruins, shorelines, aerial photographs and other related items and locations. Also included are 4 detailed maps depicting the region as it would have appeared throughout different historical periods, which the author does an excellent job of utilizing for points of reference as his story progresses. There is a 5-page timeline and 28 pages of extended notes, followed by a 10-page bibliography and an index.
In Chapter 1, A Harsh but Welcoming Site Mr. Arielli canvasses several epochs in the Dead Sea region's expansive past, including its geological beginnings during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras as well as the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age periods. He soundly backs up his theses with compelling evidence from the findings of an élite group of nineteenth- to twenty-first-century geologists and archaeologists, and the manner in which they are explained is very accessible for those unacclimated (such as the reviewer) with these prehistoric periods.
The early history of the Dead Sea is a fascinating geological story of ancient oceans, shifting plate tectonics, and emerging fertile valleys. The disappearance over millions of years of the prehistoric Tethys Sea, and the seismic activity that occurred as the African Plate and the Arabian Plate gradually rifted (moved away) from one another and ground up against the larger Eurasian Plate led to the creation of the Sinai Subplate, and the birth of what is now the Jordan or Levantine Rift Valley.
The Dead Sea is located in this region, which mostly evaporated by the end of the Miocene but again became submerged during the Zanclean Flood that occurred during the early formation of the Mediterranean Sea, and upon the disappearance of its connection to the ocean 2 million years ago, the remaining water lay stagnant and accumulated concentrated salt deposits, which have remained to present day. The Dead Sea was actually part of a much larger body of water called Lake Lisan, which gradually disappeared during an arid period that began approximately 15000 BCE and concluded with the Younger Dryas.
The Bronze Age period brought a host of new advancements in the areas of technology and commerce for the Dead Sea region's inhabitants. The ancient town of Jericho was among the area's main settlements, and from 3200 BCE onward the appearance of Egyptian artifacts at the site's ruins suggests that the town engaged in a healthy degree of trade with the first Egyptian dynasties. Mr. Arielli discusses Jericho's city walls, which were constructed from a yellow-colored brick and placed upon a limestone foundation, as well as fortifications from other large settlements such as Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, located roughly 14 kilometers apart on the Dead Sea's southeast coast, near the Lisan Peninsula.
The Bronze Age period saw Jericho and another settlement, Tall el-Hammam, sustain considerable damage in an earthquake occurring roughly 2700 BCE, and also bore witness to other adverse events such as a drought, a conflagration and the diminution of Egyptian trade, which merely amounted to minor setbacks for the region's resourceful inhabitants. Some of the age's major technological advancements included copper tools and weapons, the potter's wheel, and the crucial copper-tin alloy we know as bronze.
The next section, entitled Chapter 2, A Site of God, discusses the historical and archaeological findings associated with religious legends from many different cultures. Among the most interesting is Arielli's explanation of a mysterious conflagration occurring c.1650 BCE, which caused drastic damage to the Middle Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam. In 2006, annual excavations began at the location and a team of archaeologists uncovered, "melted mudbrick fragments, melted roofing clay, melted pottery, ash, charcoal, charred seeds, and burned textiles, all intermixed with pulverized mudbrick." Destruction by a wildfire, earthquake, or through warfare were all ruled out, as the heat generated was simply too great to have been the product of these occurrences.
Their scientific explanation had a cosmic origin and involved an extremely rare occurrence known as an airburst, during which an asteroid or comet explodes at close proximity to the Earth. They supported their hypothesis by citing a similar event that occurred in 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, in which a 2,000 square-kilometer area was severely damaged by an asteroid that exploded 5-10 kilometers from Earth's surface and felled an estimated 80 million trees.
In 1946 or 1947, fifteen kilometers southwest of Jericho at the northwest edge of the great salt lake, a group of Bedouin shepherds were tending to their herds near a network of caves in a place called Khirbet Qumran when one of them found a remarkable group of manuscripts stored in jars which forever changed the course of Biblical and historical study. One of the jars contained the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, a set of ancient documents written mainly upon sheepskin but also on papyrus and composed in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.
These scrolls dated from approximately 205 BCE to the first century CE and contained copies of some 220 books from the Bible which predate the medieval period by an entire millennium and originate from the Second Temple period. There were also non-biblical manuscripts in the Qumran cave scrolls, among them the Damascus Document, which outlines the history, rules and regulations of an exiled community, the Zadokites, who were members of the Jewish Essene movement.
In Chapter 3, A Site of Wealth, War and Refuge, Arielli explores the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great and the early centuries of the Byzantine empire. The Romans sometimes referred to the Dead Sea as Lacus Asphaltes, or the Asphalt Lake, as it was an ideal location to harvest the material which had many useful properties during this era just as it does today. Blocks of asphalt would float upward from the lakebed, and teams of men would venture out to break up these into smaller chunks which were transported back to shore. The Diodochus Antigonus Gonatus waged a naval battle with the Nabataeans c.311 BCE over control of the Dead Sea's asphalt supply, but his tenacious adversaries bested Hieronymus of Cardia, the general Antigonus had delegated to oversee the harvesting operations.
"Asphalt was used extensively in the ancient world. It served agricultural purposes, protecting the trunks of date palms and vines from insects. It was also used for veterinary medical purposes, including treating skin diseases of domestic animals, and for insulating boats and vessels carrying liquids. Finally, asphalt played a role in the mummification process in Ancient Egypt, especially during the Hellenistic Period (323-30 BC)."
The Hasmonean dynasty lasted from c.141-37 BCE and emerged in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid empire which occurred from 167-160 BCE. The dynasty's second and third rulers, John Hyrcanus I and Alexander Jannaeus, established a presence in the Dead Sea region after fighting against the nomadic Arab Nabataeans who ruled the lands to the southwest of the great salt lake. In an effort to provide aid to ships crossing the Dead Sea, Alexander Jannaeus established a fortified dock at Khirbet Mazin, although the sea's receding waters rendered it unviable within three decades.
Arielli next summarizes the reign of the Jewish monarch King Herod the Great, discussing his ambitious building programme and early relationships with the triumvir Mark Antony and Queen Cleopatra, who wished to hoard the profits from the Dead Sea's asphalt for her own nation's benefit. Despite the region's seismic activity, Herod undertook elaborate renovations of the Hasmonean palace at Jericho and the forts at Machaerus, also constructing a series of three new palaces at various locations in the surrounding area and another fortress at Cypros, some of which utilized technology such as aqueducts for fresh water and Roman concrete for sturdier buildings.
King Herod also built a port on the hot springs of Callirrhoe, where he would spend his later years trying to cure his ailments via the waters' healing properties. Sections of this chapter reference the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, whose extant histories, the Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War are considered among the most influential historical accounts of their respective periods. The latter work provides a contemporary, first-hand record of the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 CE.
The Dead Sea region's most prosperous era in Late Antiquity was approximately 300-600 CE, a period that coincides with the time of Byzantine supremacy and is believed to have come about through a number of factors. The most immediate was the increased security brought about by the Romans and Byzantines installing forts and fortifications along the imperial limes, or borders, which were frequently threatened by Saracen raids and encroachment. The imperial limes spanned the empire's entire breadth, including a line to the east of the Dead Sea which ran all the way south to the Red Sea, and they did not fulfill a fortification's traditional role, to prevent raids and entry from intruders - these bastions served a different purpose.
"The limes should not be taken to mean a fortified line like a modern-day border. The aim of the outposts was not to prevent raids altogether. Indeed, raids could originate from within the territory ostensibly under imperial control. Instead, the forts helped to protect settlements and lines of communication. The outposts served as sanctuaries for settled populations. Manned by mounted troops, they were also able to provide armed escort. The outposts were placed in the vicinity of natural springs, water courses or artificial reservoirs."
Chapter 4, A Site of Decline, New Beginnings and Myths, canvasses the medieval and early modern periods as they relate to the Dead Sea region, with the first section concentrating on the area's steady decline in prosperity after the waning of Byzantine influence which occurred as the Eastern Roman Empire became weaker and shifted its priorities elsewhere. The lack of a strong military presence led to a massive Persian-Sassanian invasion in 614 CE, and although the Byzantine emperor Heraclius was able to temporarily halt the tide, eventually the entire Levant came under Arab control. Two environmental factors are also believed to be partially culpable for the area's economic hardships after 600 CE - reduced precipitation and cooler temperatures led to the lake's recession and separation into two basins, widespread droughts, and decreased agricultural yields, with existing evidence that can attribute these conditions to lower sunspot counts and a solar minimum.
Sugarcane and indigo were the Dead Sea region's two emerging cash crops during the Early Islamic period which followed the diminution of Byzantine power, and in this chapter the author discusses how and why these commodities became so valuable and the methods used by the inhabitants to grow and harvest them. Indigo, or Indigofera tinctoria, was utilized for its rich blue dye and used in paints and cosmetics. It was produced and sold in Zoar, an ancient city on the Dead Sea's southeastern edge.
Sugarcane may have first began being processed in large quantities as early as the Fatimid period, but it became immensely popular during the age of the Crusader States in the late eleventh century, as the Crusaders would chew it to control their appetites during long sorties and shipped it home where it was considered a delicacy. The processing of sugarcane was also practiced in the Dead Sea's immediate environs, which required access to fast-moving water to turn the mills that ground the cane into powder.
The nineteenth century was a highly influential period for science, and the Dead Sea's unique environment rendered it the ideal site for a variety of experiments through the course of which scientists hoped to decipher the great salt lake's many mysteries, which are the subject of Chapter 5, A Site of Science and Exploration. The Dead Sea's fluctuating water levels have been the subject of much speculation, since time immemorial. Why does the lake appear to lose water even though it has a major tributary, the Jordan River, and no known outlets? During the Middle Ages, early scientists believed that there was an underground tunnel which connected it to the Mediterranean.
An American naval officer, William Francis Lynch, set out to measure distances from Lake Hula and the Sea of Galilee, and from there south to the Dead Sea, in an effort to ascertain how far below sea level the the surrounding region lies, and according to their barometric findings, the salt lake was 1,316.7 feet, or 401.33 meters below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. But neither this nor any other experiments answered the question of the lake's fluctuating water levels, except one. The Palestinian Exploration Fund employed a British Doctor, Ernest William Gurney Masterman, who, along with his colleagues, annually marked the water level on a rock on the Dead Sea's northwest coast from 1900-1913, and using this data they concluded that the dynamic occurring between rainfall and evaporation played a major role in the lake's rising and falling water levels.
Royal Navy officer William Allen journeyed to the Levant region in 1849-50, and formulated a proposal to drastically alter the landscape by creating a pathway to the ocean so the area could better facilitate communications between the British Empire and its eastern territories. He later published a book in 1855, The Dead Sea: A New Route to India, which delineated a plan to dig two major canals - the first would have originated in Kaiffa and created a pathway along the Jezreel Valley which would have flooded the Jordan Valley with seawater, enlarging the salt lake dramatically. The second canal would have connected the Dead Sea with the Red Sea at Aqaba, but neither project was pursued due to construction commencing on the Suez Canal in 1859.
In closing, Nir Arielli's The Dead Sea: A 10,000-Year History is a wonderfully appealing study which demonstrates through its first-rate presentation and superior quality the colossal degree of research and hard work that went into its composition. The author adopts an academic prose style which conveys his subject matter effectively just as it is a pleasure to read. The book is very well-organized, featuring chapters that are judiciously divided into subtopics and smoothly segue between their respective historical periods.
The reviewer had limited knowledge of the Levant region prior to picking up this book, and he thoroughly enjoyed learning the exciting history of the Dead Sea and its surrounding regions. The later chapters reinforce the seriousness of the environmental situation, which the reader will likely be thinking about long after he or she has put the book down. Upon finishing it, the reviewer was left with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, and he would certainly recommend Mr. Arielli's study to anyone at all curious to learn about the beautiful and magnificent Dead Sea. It was an honor and a privilege to read and review this fantastic work of scholarship. Thank you so very much for reading, I hope that you enjoyed the review!
September 15, 2025
An informative and interesting historical overview of the Dead Sea, the surrounding areas and its many changes over the millennia. It's not a dry, academic work but an engaging narrative of the people living the area and their relationship with the environment as well as survey of the biblical and written references including the Dead Sea scrolls. In 300 pages, many topics are covered but this more of a quick overview than exhaustive historical analysis.
A similar type of historical book is "Alexandria: The City that Changed the World" by Islam Issa (2024) which examines one location throughout history. It's an effective method for learning history by covering one location over the course of time.
A similar type of historical book is "Alexandria: The City that Changed the World" by Islam Issa (2024) which examines one location throughout history. It's an effective method for learning history by covering one location over the course of time.
June 17, 2025
My interest in the subject matter was the only reason I finished this book. It felt like "work," like old-school history classes with their rote memorization of names and dates followed by the next names & dates and the next... I don't feel like there was much about the people who live in the area, what their lives were like. I suppose trying to cover 10,000 years doesn't leave room for such detail. Not sure how I could have expected otherwise.
October 26, 2025
Geology and history - from antiquity doen to modern conflict times and exploitation problems
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews