The Dead Sea and the Jordan River 2015038819, 9780253019363, 9780253019523, 9780253019592

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DEAD SEA THE

A N D T H E J O R DA N R I VE R

Map of the Dead Sea (detail) with its various names, showing the Cities of the Plain in flames. From A Pisgah-sight of Palenstine, by Thomas Fuller, 1650. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.

DEAD SEA THE

A N D T H E J O R DA N R I V E R

BARBARA KREIGER

Indiana University Pr ess Bloomington & Indianapolis

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press Office of  Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of  t he American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of  Paper for Printed Library Materials, A NSI Z39.48–1992.

iupress.indiana.edu

Manufactured in the United States of  A merica

Copyright © 1988, 1997, 2016 by Barbara Kreiger

Library of  Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Portions of this book were originally published in 1988 as Living Waters: Myth, History, and Politics of the Dead Sea by The Continuum Publishing Company, New York and in 1997 as The Dead Sea: Myth, History, and Politics by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH

Names: Kreiger, Barbara, author. Title: The Dead Sea and the Jordan River / Barbara Kreiger. Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015038819 | ISBN 9780253019363 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253019523 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253019592 (eb) Subjects: LCSH: Dead Sea (Israel and Jordan)—History. | Jordan River—History. Classification: LCC DS110.D38 K725 2016 | DDC 956.94—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038819

All rights reserved No part of  t his book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of  A merican University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

1 2 3 4 5  21 20 19 18 17 16

For my sons,

Saul Lelchuk and Daniel Lelchuk For my brother,

Michael N. Kreiger, and in his memory In memory of my father,

Samuel Kreiger In memory of my nephew,

Adam Marc Kreiger

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CONTENTS



· Preface ix



· Acknowledgments xv



· A Note on Usage xix



Part one This Strange Water 1 Some Early History, Travelers, and Myths 3 Part two Nineteenth-Century Exploration



2 Three Sailors and a River 31



3 Along the Briny Strand 78



Part thr ee Origins and Evolution 4 The Life of a Lake 131 Part four Further Exploration



5 A Gentleman from Siberia 159



6 A Lake Divided 180



Part five The Twenty-First Century



7 The River and Lake in Distress 211



8 Reclamation and a Vision of the Future 235



· Sources and Notes 259



· Index 273

PREFACE

More than two decades have passed since I first wrote parts of this book. It seems contradictory to say at the same time that nothing has changed and much has changed, and yet that paradox is an accurate reflection of the environmental and political developments that determine the condition of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. We despair at lack of movement, then recharge ourselves hopefully when events signal progress, understanding it is the latter outlook that propels activists and residents in their pursuit of environmental cooperation and justice. Few bodies of water can lay claim to geographical and chemical unique­ness and few can be said to have provoked curiosity and even passion in travelers, geographers, and scientists, not for mere centuries but for millennia. The Dead Sea is such a place. One finds descriptions of its peculiar properties in the works of ancient writers; one hears it reviled in the accounts of medieval pilgrims; and one sees it enthusiastically studied by early and modern explorers. What is the attraction of this salty reservoir? What secrets does it hold that two centuries of serious investigation have been required to fathom them? This book, in part, traces the course of Dead Sea and Jordan River exploration. That course has not been routine, for the environment is forbidding, the Jordan River a riddle, and the Dead Sea often misrepresented. The region had been subjected for many centuries to hyperbolic pronouncements, and the first serious investigators were confronted with tales that were at times more impediment than tool. Yet explorers of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have contributed important if only partially told chapters in the history of the Holy Land. It would be diffiix

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cult to exaggerate the wealth of information contained in their accounts. And for all their erudition, these narratives are highly readable and often beautifully written records of deeply felt experience. The Dead Sea is not merely the lowest place on the face of the earth: at 1400 feet below sea level it is the lowest by far. The second lowest is variously given as Lake Assal in Djibouti or the Turfan Depression in China, both at approximately 500 feet below sea level. The lowest place in the western hemisphere is Death Valley, in California, at minus 280 feet, or one-fifth the depth of the Dead Sea. The question regularly asked is how the Dead Sea got to be that way, and I try to make some sense of the stones and strata in order to piece together that strange geological tale. The readjustment of one’s inner clock to accommodate a time span of millions of years results in a new way of looking at the lake and its environs. Rocks are no longer mere rocks but details of something akin to facial features; the Dead Sea comes to life, and one sees why early travelers were prone to personifying it. There is something decidedly human about the shores of the Dead Sea and the banks of the Jordan River, whose stories are inseparable, perhaps because such an important part of our early collective life was played out there. Beyond that, the uniqueness, beauty, and fragility of this environment charge us with the responsibility of defining our relationship with the natural world. That relationship has far-reaching implications, for it happens that the fate of the Dead Sea and Jordan River is inextricably bound up with the daily lives of those who share it. Monumental demands have been placed on these waters to give, produce, and contribute, and those demands have had environmental and political costs, as we will see. Nevertheless, there have long been voices—Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian—that staunchly maintain the Dead Sea might serve as an instrument of peace. That view has generally been seen as improbable, and perhaps it is, given that as far back as ancient days the lake’s resources have been frequently contested. But to deny the possibility is to give in all too readily to the obvious, and if there is one thing we can say about the story of the Dead Sea and Jordan River, it is that it is anything but predictable. When you stand on one bank of the Jordan River, you could fairly leap across to the other. And when you gaze out at the Dead Sea, you can’t distinguish Arab waves from Jewish ones as they heedlessly wash

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over the fluid international boundary that even a map cannot depict persuasively. The other side is less than ten miles away, and as you look across you cannot help but think that the notion of peaceful cooperation is sensible. Reason suggests that it is not harmony that is inapt, but discord; not affinity, but aggression. It would be a fitting chapter in the valley’s history for the river and lake to bring people together. Cooperation between neighbors? Stranger things have happened on these shores. •

For a number of years, while a state of war existed between Israel and Jordan, I hiked in the wadis along the western side of the Dead Sea guided by an increasingly tattered topographical map. Drawn to a scale of 1:100,000, it was detailed enough to convey a tactile sense of the landscape, yet not so specific as to lose a novice in a wilderness of elevation markings. The cream-colored shore was smudged with cinnamon where the mountains rose to the west and east, and the wadis were sketched in as perforated lines. Dominating the map was the Dead Sea itself: long and narrow, watercolor blue. What struck me the most, however, was the decorative lavender line that gracefully unfurled down the lake’s presumed center, curving with the authority of trigonometric accuracy, but suggesting an eye more tuned to aesthetics. Maybe the surveyor’s level had been an instrument influenced by hope, or the line had been an expression of some unabashed cartographer’s disdain for the unnatural sundering of this landscape. For if the aim was to intimidate with that lavender stroke of the brush, the order was in vain; duty was less demanding than the refusal to participate in the Dead Sea’s vivisection. Whoever this unknown cartographer was, others shared this view, and finally in 1994, with the Israel-Jordan Peace Accord, diplomacy started to catch up to the natural world’s vision of unity. Yes, the Dead Sea was still divided in two, and one day, many hope, it will be divided in three. But suddenly, in those buoyant years, the division was self-defining rather than xenophobic. Finally, that lavender line was consistent with the international relationship it was always supposed to reflect. Indeed, one was able to say something very different about it: that here, at this border, two nations were not divided, but brought together. After the signing of the Peace Accord, a comprehensive vision of the valley began to take hold in both Jerusalem and Amman, and plans for

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cooperation were put forth with frankness that was almost unthinkable for most of the twentieth century. Events of the new millennium have mocked that hopeful moment, which has come to seem like only a remission from a terrible disease. Yet the possibility of peace is renewable, and those with the strength to imagine it are true believers. I remember those days of the late 1990s, when there was a feeling of excitement as the possibilities for partnership were discussed. In some offices the phrase “joint ventures” was used with such brazenness that one sensed innocent and determined experimentation with forbidden words—the vocabulary of neighbors, just plain neighbors. It was mindboggling that a destructive relationship decades in the making had been overturned—as though the whole mess had been a clerical error. But there was a cautious tone as well. What was the meaning of the peace? The question hovered over discussions as faith in the future competed with the pressure of the past. In science, too, a new exchange was a direct result of the treaty, as researchers were offered access to sites on opposite shores. I spoke to a number of them back then and felt their ebullience. Geologists, archaeologists, and others had for years looked longingly through binoculars across the valley, dreaming of one day making discoveries in outlawed territory. And then, as though commanded by an incantation, the wall obscuring their view had crumbled. One could not help but marvel at how a turn of the pen had offered such a change. The promise of transformation also had an immediate effect on tourism. A kind of giddiness over the anticipated growth spurt that accompanied open borders led to more development than was sustainable, but at that time such a term was not widely used in everyday speech. In 1995, Jordan opened a spectacular new road along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, and within a few years numerous hotels had sprung up, with small towns built to accommodate employees and tourists. On the Israeli shore, too, more hotels were constructed, popping up like salt formations. Today hotels are clustered on both sides; widely frequented by domestic and foreign clientele, they nonetheless look like impassive flotillas run aground. The Palestinians also have a rightful claim to a segment of the Dead Sea shore, and even now one can envision another cluster at the northern tip.

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The participants knew that the peace treaty, along with continued negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, gave them unprecedented opportunities for development, and they realized that cooperation would benefit everyone. With that in mind, a trilateral plan emerged to present the newly unified Dead Sea environment as “the lowest park on earth.” While the name had an unfortunate circus-like ring to it, the idea consisted primarily of an open border between Israel and Jordan, and eventually, one supposed, between Israel and Palestine. As the plan was envisioned, tourists would arrive and depart from a shared airport and pass from one country’s shore to the other by land or sea, without the need for visas or complicated border proceedings. The urge to do something daring was understandable. Yet there was a lot to think about when one contemplated the number of tourists who might be drawn to the Dead Sea. True, imposing cliffs on either side offered natural protection from unlimited lateral expansion, but could the environment withstand the pressure of the volume of people projected? Would the wilderness surrounding the lake be undermined? Would the major archaeological sites be turned into souvenir shops? What, in other words, happens when peace is thrust into the marketplace? With hindsight, one can only wish that a land use study had been conducted by neutral parties to recommend limits on the expansion that euphoria was preventing those closely involved from demarcating. There are moments when our vision of the future is blurred, not clarified, by the environmental debate of which the Jordan River and Dead Sea have long been the heart. Despite the intimidating array of views, everyone has always seemed to agree that the river and the lake must be preserved. The complication is that an agreeable definition of preservation remains elusive. From an environmental point of view, the debate strikes to the core of our relationship with the natural world. The stakes are as high as when we contemplate the final disappearance of any living thing from our midst. However we answer it, with political bias or purity of intention, the question is the same: Do we have the right, as temporary residents on the earth, to oversee the final passing of a unique natural phenomenon? It is a hopeful sign in important ways that it is impossible for this book to remain entirely current. Developments are occurring at a near

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daily rate in issues of sustainable water and energy use, as well as social relations and geopolitical shifts. There is no permanence of policy in any sector. Environmental issues are inevitably tied to political and social concerns, and one can only hope that at some point they converge in an image of mutual benefit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have long admired all those who have devoted their energy to the preservation of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Commitment comes in many forms, and I also admire those who are simply drawn to this region for reasons that one can never quite name. Some are artists, painters, and photographers who find their inspiration here. Others are naturalists by inclination if not vocation: hikers, birdwatchers, amateur geologists, and those who are simply given to reflection as they view—as they experience, I should say—this singular landscape. I thank them for enriching my own experience over the years. Many people have devoted years to the study of the Dead Sea and Jordan River and their environs and shared their knowledge and experiences with me as I traipsed up and down the wadis and along the lakeshore, stowed away on a boat going out to study the water and sediment, and worked my way from library to library—all along accosting anyone who might take a few minutes to answer my questions or provide me with a new lead. I would not have been able to absorb the information and articulate the developments of recent years without the patient guidance of Eco­ Peace Middle East. Aside from all I’ve learned from them, both in conversation and on field trips, I appreciate their understanding of my need to research and represent differing views as thoroughly as I try to their own. Although passionately committed, they never sought to introduce bias and understood that I needed to learn and integrate as much as I possibly could from all quarters. I thank EcoPeace’s three directors: Munqeth Mehyar, Jordanian director; Nader Khateb, Palestinian direcxv

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Acknowledgments

tor; and Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director. I also especially thank Mira Edelstein, Jordan River Rehabilitation Project Coordinator at EcoPeace, for her endless patience, good humor, detailed explanations, and helpful leads. I am very grateful to Her Majesty Queen Noor of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for helping to ensure that my stay in Jordan some years ago was productive. In Amman I learned about the intricacies of Jordan Valley development, the Red Sea–Dead Sea canal, and tourism development. At Safi, the managers of the Arab Potash Company explained their plans for the Jordanian mineral extraction industry. In Israel, I thank Dr. Doron Markel, head of the Israel Water Authority’s Sea of Galilee Monitoring and Management Unit, for his clear and strong views and for his readiness to explain them to me. I also thank Dr. Ittai Gavrieli, who clarified certain important points. Notable among the scientists who provided valuable explanations of their work were oceanographer David Anati, zoologist Len Aronson, hydrologist Cippora Klein, geologist David Neev, microbiologist Aharon Oren, botanist Uzi Plitmann, and geologist Mordecai Stein. I am grateful for their time and expertise. I was also privileged to spend time with Professor Leo Picard, “father of geology in Israel.” Eli Raz, while head of the field school at Ein Gedi, talked with me about his work, as did Dov Gavish, professor of aerial photography and cartography. I also thank Hani E. Abu-Dayyeh, founder of NET Tours in East Jerusalem, for offering me a Palestinian perspective on development in the Dead Sea region. Rudolph Bloch related to me the genesis of the idea that led to the solar electric ponds. Eli Nevo talked to me about the early days of the first kibbutz established in the area, and Moshe Langotzki related his fascinating story. Shlomo Drori shared his recollections of individuals and events connected to the Dead Sea, while Ze’ev Vilnay told me the stories of his discovery of certain Dead Sea relics. As co-leader of the excavations at Bab edh-Dhra and other nearby sites over the course of a number of years, Professor Walter E. Rast gave me an important perspective on archaeological thought concerning those Early Bronze Age towns. I’m very grateful to CNN and to Bill Weir and his team, who included me in their own work at the Dead Sea and Jordan River and opened avenues of discussion that were extremely fruitful. At Dartmouth Col-

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lege, I want to thank Janice C. Allen, Curator of Visual Resources in the Visual Resource Center in the Department of Art History, for her timely and generous help. I was greatly aided in my research by the assistance of the staffs of several libraries and archives: the National Library of Israel, the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, and Baker-Berry Library at Dartmouth College. I also wish to thank the staff of the photo archives of the Jewish National Fund, the Central Zionist Archives, the Israel Government Press Office, and the Israel State Archives for their generosity and assistance. I could not have written parts of this book without the patient help of Yisrael Saraf, who guided me through the labyrinth of geological history and made it all real to me through our field trips. I also thank Gila Yudkin, professional tour guide, who was my hiking companion in the Dead Sea wadis along the western shore, and whose careful reading of my manuscript was most valuable. Finally, I thank my husband and sons, whose encouragement and continuing interest have meant so much to me over the years.

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A NOTE ON USAGE

Virtually every place I have reason to mention has two names, Hebrew and Arabic, and sometimes a very different English equivalent—as in the very name of the Dead Sea itself. Where it is important, I give both the Hebrew and Arabic; otherwise I have tried to use the name by which the place is more commonly known to an English reader. One will also notice that spelling varies, since current transliteration practice is often different from what it was at other times. My purpose throughout has been clarity, and respect for both Arab and Jewish usage, which reflects the long histories of these languages in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. Biblical quotations are taken from a variety of sources, including the Standard Jewish Version (Jewish Publication Society, 1917).

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Map of the Dead Sea region.

Part one

This Strange Water In graceful lines the hills advance, The valley’s sweep repays the glance, And wavy curves of  winding beach; But all is charred or crunched or riven, Scarce seems of  earth whereon we dwell; Though framed within the lines of  heaven The picture intimates a hell.

Herman Melville Clarel, A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

(II, xxix, 11.13–19), 1876

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one

Some Early History, Travelers, and Myths

• The drive down to the Dead Sea from Jerusalem is a plunge of  more

than 4,000 feet in the space of  t wenty miles, and the sensation it creates is that of  landing in an airplane, ears stopped and voices muffled. If  one can reach the bottom of  the valley before the sun shows itself  over the eastern Moab Mountains, one will catch the pink wash that is thrown briefly on the western side. One drives south along the shore, with the lake stretching out on the left and separated from the road by bare, rocky beach, a few scrappy bushes scattered among the stones. Immediately to the right is the line of  cliffs whose contours the road will follow most of  the length of  the sea. The Moab Mountains, just a few miles across the lake, are veiled by a dusty haze, and the entire southern portion of  the sea is barely distinguishable from the sky. The shore is outlined by a line of  f roth created by little waves stirring the edge of  the water. The two-lane asphalt road winds as the coast does, a black ribbon imitating the thread of  white foam. It is still early, this late winter day, yet the sun is high enough for the morning to feel full. As the road swings up, the shape of  the shoreline becomes apparent, and one can also see whitecaps on the now active sea. Breezes pick up at either end of  the day, with the heating or cooling of  the air, and the waves may increase, then die down, only to resume in the evening. The lake seems to breathe with a life of  its own, and one comes to feel its rhythms, often agitated in the morning, placid in mid-afternoon. 3

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This Strange Water

The haze begins to lift, but even on clear days it may hang for some hours over the sea. From lake level, one notices that it is not resting on the water but is suspended over it. Beneath it the lake is cobalt, perhaps gray, later turquoise with patches of  green and purple. From earliest times, observers have remarked on the ever-changing colors of  the Dead Sea. Nineteen centuries ago, the Jewish historian Josephus digressed from his account of  the Jewish war against the Romans to describe the lake, saying that “thrice daily it alters its appearance and reflects the sun’s rays with varying tints.” As the sun climbs, the blue of  the water intensifies, and the surface of  the lake is flecked with points of  light, as though tiny crystals had been strewn and remain afloat to catch the light. It is hardly any wonder that over the centuries for every traveler who disparaged the sea, there were others who found its beauty unsurpassed. What one found “dreary and dismal,” another described as “a shining lake, whose immense and silvery surface reflects the rays of  l ight like a mirror.” The Dead Sea, rich in historical and legendary associations, had power to impress beyond that of  even more spectacular natural phenomena. Almost without exception, travelers projected their moods onto the sea, often investing it with the specters conjured up by their imaginations. The shores of  the Dead Sea are regions of  contrasts. One has simultaneous impressions of  d isparate qualities, and at times it is difficult to draw those perceptions into line to define time and place. Coming down to the valley from the west, one is aware of  extraordinary depth and fantastic height. The lakeshore itself  is arid and infertile, but it is interrupted by spring-fed expanses of  reeds and rushes. There is one place where pools of  spring water rest next to the lake, separated only by a yard-wide stretch of  beach. Where the shore is barren, the fields of  a kibbutz enrich the monotone. The green expanse lies with the royal blue of  the sea, with multi-toned brown cliffs behind and purplish mountains across. A visitor may squint from the sheer intensity of  this multiple juxtaposition of  colors. Then there are the wadis: the dry river beds that have carved their way down to the lake with winter floods, inviting a wealth of  plant and animal life. And water, the fresh, cool waterfalls of  some of  the gorges, splashing into clear pools not half  a mile from the sea. This shore, life­less

Some Early History, Travelers, and Myths

5

and gloomy one has heard, is vitalized by overwhelming beauty and irrepressible life. The saltiest water in the world, and some of  the sweetest; naked beach and rich canyons; plants, animals, and birds winging their way between steep walls; colors running the length of  the spectrum. Opposites mingling, as they always have here, in a lasting symbiosis. By late afternoon there is not a ripple on the sea, and soon the entire western side is in shadows. The sun is so bright that the glare turns the lake and eastern mountains into a pastel rendition of  the midday landscape. The whole scene is muted, suffused in light, the brilliance of  a few hours ago attenuated as the sun sinks. But once it has settled behind the mountains, the day clears again, as though having shaken off  a late afternoon lethargy. The Moab Mountains are rose in the setting sun, their shade spilled into the sea in pools of  pink and purple light that seem to float on the slate blue water. The hiker who has spent some time here knows that this unexpected visual delight is just one more surprise of  beauty from the valley’s store. •

In the days of  the Exodus of  the Israelites from Egypt, given roughly as the thirteenth century bce, the western side of  the Dead Sea was in the province of  Canaan. At around the same time the eastern side became settled by the kingdoms of  Moab and Edom. When the Israelites entered Canaan, the tribe of  Reuben and the Moabites both occupied the lake’s east bank, while the west belonged first to the tribe and then to the kingdom of  Judah. Such was the status of  the Dead Sea environs for the next several centuries. In the sixth century bce, the Jews were exiled to Babylonia, and around that time the eastern shore was conquered by the Nabateans, a people from southern Arabia. The western side was divided between Judah and, to the south, Idumea, settled by the Edomites when they were pushed from the east to the west side of  the valley. Given the long history that has been enacted on its shores by many nations, it is not surprising that the Dead Sea has had various names. Its oldest is Yam Ha-Melah, the Salt Sea, that name first appearing in the Bible in the books of  Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, where it usually serves as a geographical landmark. To the Greeks it was Lake Asphaltites because of  the lumps of  asphalt that were periodically thrown up from its depths, and that name persisted in the texts of

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medieval writers. Christians of  t he Middle Ages also knew it as the Devil’s Sea, and their Arab contemporaries referred occasionally to the Stinking Lake, presumably because of  the smell of  sulphur emitted from several places along the shore. But the names that appear most frequently in Arab texts are commemorative of  the cataclysm that engulfed Sodom and Gomorrah. They called it simply The Overwhelmed, “from the cities of  Lot that were overwhelmed in its depths,” or the Sea of  Zughar (i.e., Zoar), after the town that had escaped destruction and flourished in the Middle Ages. Likewise the Jews, who sometimes referred to it as the East Sea, to distinguish it from the Mediterranean, or the Sea of  the Aravah, referring to the valley in which it lies, but more often called it the Sea of  Sodom. Except for the little used Arab name Al Buhairah al Miyyatah, the Dead Lake, the notion of  lifelessness is not reflected in Arab and Jewish names, though Mare Mortuum, the Dead Sea, had appeared in early Roman texts. (In Tacitus’ History we also find it called the Jewish Sea.) Today the Arabs call it Bahr el-Lut, the Sea of  Lot. To Jews it is still Yam Ha-Melah. As early as Hellenistic times, and through the days of  the Roman Empire, geographers and historians wrote about the peculiar nature of  the Dead Sea. In the Middle Ages, however, religious attitudes overtook scientific curiosity, and the medieval attraction to the fantastic found a natural subject in the strange lake. Christian pilgrims sometimes stopped at the Dead Sea, either en route from Mt. Sinai to Jerusalem or as an excursion from the holy city. But many were also discouraged from undertaking the dangerous trip, warned off  by tales of  deadly beasts and poisonous reptiles lurking about on the shore and in the water. “In this country the serpent tyrus is found,” wrote a fourteenth-century German pilgrim. “When it is angry it puts out its tongue like a flame of  fi re, and one would think that it was fire indeed, save that it does not burn the creature. . . . Were it not blind, I believe that no man could escape from it, for I have heard . . . that if  they bit a man’s horse, they would kill the rider.” The Dead Sea itself  had a reputation that was dreadful and frightening, its vapors thought to be fetid and noxious. “In storms it casts up many beauteous pebbles,” this pilgrim went on, “but if  anyone picks them up his hand will stink for three days so foully that he will not be able to bear himself.” Those who did descend approached timidly, not taking

Some Early History, Travelers, and Myths

7

lightly this sea that had opened to swallow the evil cities of  Sodom and Gomorrah as brimstone and fire raged out of  an angry heaven. As one pilgrim explained, “It is plain that here is a mouth of  hell, according to us Christians, because we believe that hell is in the midst of  the earth, and that the Holy City standeth on the mountains above it.” For centuries the Dead Sea had inspired this kind of  curiosity, awe, and even contempt. As they journeyed to the remote valley, travelers had absorbed the myths of  the region, and if  they did not add their own to the accumulation, others more sedentary did. The collection of  fantastic tales was reinforced by the quite real dangers of  the region, and by modern times the lake had become shrouded in superstition. In an attempt to break the intellectual quarantine which had been imposed, one of  the first Dead Sea explorers, traveling in 1810, refuted, first of  a ll, the notion “that iron swims upon it, and light bodies sink to the bottom—that birds, in their passage over it, fall dead into the sea.” And several decades later, a Frenchman approached the Dead Sea and demanded with temerity, “Where then are those poisonous vapours, which carry death to all who venture to approach them? Where? In the writings of  the poets who have emphatically described what they have never seen. We are not yet five minutes treading the shores of  the Dead Sea, and already, all that has been said of  it appears as mere creations of  fancy. Let us proceed fearlessly forward, for if  anything is to be dreaded here, certainly it is not the pestilential influence of  the finest and most imposing lake in the world.” A Dutch contemporary concurred: “In vain my eye sought for the terrific representations which some writers . . . have given of  the Dead Sea. I expected a scene of  unequalled horror, instead of  which I found a lake, calm and glassy, blue and transparent, with an unclouded heaven, with a smooth beach, and surrounded by mountains whose blue tints were of  rare beauty.” Some of  the many explorers who journeyed to the Dead Sea in the nineteenth century were adventurers, others were driven by religious fervor. But the largest number were scientists and geographers, and their combined efforts over the course of  the century yielded important finds in the fields of  Biblical geography and the natural sciences. The Dead Sea, they would come to discover, is hundreds of  feet below sea level and is part of  the great Syrian-African Rift. They would discover that it is nearly

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one third solid; that its salt-encrusted shores had been cultivated by centuries of  Jews, Romans, and Byzantines. They did not know that in the caves of  Qumran, on the northwest side of  the lake, manuscripts were stored that twenty centuries later would be found and become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But they did identify Masada, thirty miles south, where the Jewish zealots made their last stand against the Romans in 73 ce. The puzzle would be slowly pieced together, and the image that emerged was rich in detail. A great deal of  attention has been paid to the exploration of  the Nile River, where European efforts were more glamorously concentrated in the nineteenth century. The Nile was wrapped in the mystery of  a region that had never been seen by westerners, and the race to locate its source was intense and at times bitter. This was not the case with the Dead Sea. There was no compulsion to be the first. No Burton-like expeditions were ever mounted to discover where its strange water came from; it had one major and well-known source, and no issue, thus containing its own mystery in a basin just forty-seven miles long and eleven wide. Why did so many travelers—dozens in each decade of  the nineteenth century—make their way down to what according to some accounts was not just a mouth of  Hell, but a fair approximation of  the place itself? Why are the pages of  the geographic journals filled with reports and articles ranging from the most carefully analytical to the vastly speculative, all concerning this one small lake? What was the attraction? There are probably almost as many answers to these questions as there were explorers. Certainly the Dead Sea’s uniqueness and strangeness had a lot to do with it. Many travelers, especially early on, were prompted to verify for themselves the strange phenomena about which they had heard. No doubt also the Dead Sea’s connection to the Biblical Cities of  the Plain served to attract. More than a few, and they not eccentrics, searched assiduously for the ruins of  the ancient towns, and an occasional claim was made that Sodom or Gomorrah had been discovered. That impulse to bring to light evidence of  the Bible’s authenticity suggests another reason. One of  the most striking shared traits of  those who explored the Dead Sea region was their familiarity with the Bible. Having read it all their lives, they felt they knew the territory, were somehow at home there. The routes these modern explorers took had been walked

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by their spiritual ancestors; the places they visited had been named by them; the events they recalled as they trudged up and down the cliffsides were some of  those that defined western civilization. How available it all must have seemed. And yet it wasn’t. The events and figures that made the Dead Sea and its environs familiar were two thousand years past, and the familiar had receded into shadow. Exploring in the Dead Sea valley was like cutting one’s way through thick underbrush to get to a path marked on the map. No one, not even the most coolly scientific, doubted that the path was there, or questioned that hard work would reveal it. A well-worn copy of  the Bible would be found among the gear of  any serious expedition, along with the compasses, thermometers, and barometers. Early in the century one traveler observed that “the manners and customs of  the natives of  these countries remain unchanged since the days of  the passage of  the Children of  Israel from Egypt into the Land of  Promise,” and he went on to say that “the Bible is, beyond all comparison, the most interesting and the most instructive guide that can be consulted by the traveler in the East.” Such was the universal opinion, and so strongly felt that the author of  a popular guide, having devoted years to its compilation, opened by agreeing that “the Bible is the best Handbook for Palestine; the present work is only intended to be a companion to it.” No fear of  heresy prompted his modesty; all the travel accounts of  his day, teeming with Biblical allusions, express the same opinion. So while nineteenth-century explorers of  A frica were stepping into darkness, those of  the Dead Sea region were walking in a hazy light thrown by antiquity—oblique, but nonetheless considerable. In the early part of  t he nineteenth century, it required no small amount of  courage to travel to Palestine, let alone to such a remote place as the Dead Sea. The Ottoman Empire was fast coming apart—Palestine was in fact seized by Mohammad Ali, the ruler of  Egypt, in 1831 and held for nine years—and the Bedouin tribes who lived in the desert around the lake recognized no outside ruler. The Turks had sole authority to issue firmans (a kind of  v isa) to those wishing to enter their territory, but Constantinople was far from the Dead Sea valley, and the Turks exercised virtually no control there. The land was divided among the Bedouin much as in Biblical days it had been divided among the tribes

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of  Israel, and the Bedouin did as they pleased, from exacting tribute of  European travelers to plundering the villages and farmlands of  sedentary Arabs. From time to time the Turks would engage in a bloody show of  force, in retribution or capriciously. But for the most part the Bedouin were left to themselves, and their relationships with one another, more than any external influence, determined their lot until late in the century. Westerners were easy prey, so many studied Arabic and Moslem customs before setting out disguised as Arabs. No explorer traveled unarmed or unguarded, and no account concludes without some pages having been devoted to the skirmishes that were fought, or the care taken to avoid them. Aside from being dangerous, travel was extremely arduous. The most famous Dead Sea explorer, the American William F. Lynch, described what it was like near mid-century to convey his boats overland in order to reach the lake: “The word road means, in that country, a mule-track. Wheel carriages have never crossed it before. In their invasion of  Syria [during the Napoleonic wars], the French transported their guns and gun-carriages (taken apart) on the backs of  camels, over the lofty ridges, and mounted them again on the plain.” Without the help of  their Bedouin guides, who knew the terrain most intimately, knew which regions were impassable, and always knew where at least a little stagnant pool of  water could be found, very few Europeans would have been able to make the trip—their Bibles notwithstanding. By the second half  of  the century, a trip to the northern, more accessible, end of  the Dead Sea took no special courage and had in fact become standard fare for a new kind of  traveler—not explorer but tourist. They came in increasing numbers—French, English, Dutch, German, American—often traveling in sizeable groups, their objective usually being a quick glimpse of  the lake and a chance to scoop up a jar of  water from the Jordan River to take home. The travel guide book so familiar to modern tourists is no recent innovation; many travelers carried one for help in identifying sites. A particularly popular one was John Porter’s Handbook for Travelers in Syria and Palestine, first published in 1858. Porter’s “route 10” sent tourists on a three-day excursion which took in Jericho, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, the monastery of  Mar Saba, and Bethlehem—a journey more

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than enough for most. One of  these tourists was Mark Twain, whose account of  h is trip is contained in The Innocents Abroad. He was not very appreciative of  eastern life or people and evinced, at best, disappointment in what he encountered in the Holy Land. But for insight into the collective frame of  mind of  one of  these tourist-pilgrim groups, his narrative is singular. He humorously described the reluctance with which his group, having heard rumors of  tribal war in the Dead Sea valley, undertook the journey. Tempted to remain in Jerusalem, they found to their chagrin that a little caravan had already been assembled and was waiting for them. “With the horses at the door and every body aware of  what they were there for, what would you have done? . . . You would have done as we did: said you were not afraid of  a million Bedouins—and made your will and proposed quietly to yourself  to take up an unostentatious position in the rear of  the procession. “I think we must all have determined upon that same line of  tactics, for it did seem as if  we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously slow horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear. . . . He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a little, and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of  any use. The others all got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time with saddles. It was the first time any of  them had got out of  order in three weeks, and now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking, for exercise—I had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy places. But it was a failure. The whole mob were suffering for exercise, and it was not fifteen minutes till they were all on foot and I had the lead again. It was very discouraging.” Jericho was a welcome destination. It was the only town in the vicinity of  the lake, it was the point from which pilgrims went to the Jordan River for immersion in the holy water, and, as an oasis, it offered year-round relief  to weary travelers. Jericho is the lowest, and probably the oldest, city in the world. By virtue of  its location, climate (tropical in summer and mild in winter), and fertility, it first attracted settlers some 12,000 years ago. The very beginnings of  civilization are revealed in its strata, and evidence indicates it witnessed the transition early humans made from a nomadic to a sedentary way of  life. As early as the eighth millennium bce, the settlement was organized into an urban unit. Archaeologists believe that some 2,000 people lived in the town, which suggests

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a dependence on agriculture that brought with it advances in irrigation and the need for communal fortifications. Josephus, writing nineteen centuries ago, referred to one section of the town as Old Jericho. According to the Bible, it was the first town conquered by Joshua and the Israelites on their entry into the Promised Land in the late Bronze Age, Joshua instructing his spies: “Go view the land, and Jericho” (Joshua 2:1). Yet archaeological evidence suggests that Jericho was destroyed in the second half  of  the fourteenth century bce—a century before the Israelites appeared—and had not yet been rebuilt. For centuries, kings and queens had their winter palaces there, and Jericho was one of  the most coveted sites in all the surrounding lands in ancient days. The palm trees and sugar-cane that flourished into the Middle Ages were gone by the nineteenth century, but Mark Twain still found it “one of  the very best locations for a town we have seen in all Palestine.” Of  the old city he observed: “Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down with his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he hardly left enough of  the city to cast a shadow.” Starting out the next morning—very early, advised the Handbook, to the dismay of  the group—they crossed the plain to the Jordan River. Again, Mark Twain described the less exalted aspect of  this milestone in the lives of  Christians: “With the first suspicion of  dawn, every pilgrim took off  his clothes and waded into the dark torrent, singing. . . . But they did not sing long. The water was so fearfully cold that they were obliged to stop singing and scamper out again. Then they stood on the bank shivering, and so chagrined and so grieved, that they merited honest compassion. . . . They had promised themselves all along that they would cross the Jordan where the Israelites crossed it when they entered Canaan from their long pilgrimage in the desert. . . . They were at the goal of  their hopes at last, but the current was too swift, the water was too cold!” From there it was an hour’s ride to the Dead Sea. “Here we feel the oppressive atmosphere of  this desolate region,” notes the Handbook. “The air becomes close and hazy as the sun ascends, giving a wavy motion to the parched soil and a strange indistinctness of  outline to distant objects.

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The Conquest of  Jericho, from Yosifon, 1743, a Yiddish translation of Josippon,   tenth century. Collection of  the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

After an hour’s weary ride we reach the shore of  the Dead Sea, with its unwholesome swamps and slimy margin, and ridges of  drift wood, all incrusted with salt.” Those inclined would take a quick dip, expressing general disappointment at the dreariness of  the setting while picking up bits of  sulphur commonly supposed to have been left by the raining down of  brimstone described in Genesis. One can understand the determination of  pilgrims to bathe in the revered water of  the Jordan River, but one hardly knows why many of  them agreed to go any further on a journey which, though but two days longer, was stressful and taxing by any estimation. Even Mark Twain’s humor evaporated under the midday sun: “I can not describe the hideous afternoon’s ride from the Dead Sea to Mars [sic] Saba. It oppresses me yet, to

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think of  it. The sun so pelted us that the tears ran down our cheeks once or twice. The ghastly, treeless, grassless, breathless canons [i.e., canyons] smothered us as if  we had been in an oven. The sun had positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect under it. All drooped low in the saddles.” On their approach to Mar Saba, tourists who referred to their Handbook were warned of  the rule that holds even today: “Ladies will remember that they cannot under any circumstances obtain admission” to the monastery. But the men were treated to a tour of  “the most extraordinary building in Palestine.” In the fifth century, St. Saba retreated to the desert, drawing thousands of  followers to the site on which they would construct the magnificent, jeweled monastery that in its prime (until plundered by the Persians in the seventh century) would be home to 5,000 Greek Orthodox monks. It was built over the course of  many years, and its treasures were hauled all the way from Greece. “By God’s grace,” wrote the twelfth-century Abbot Daniel, “the situation of  the Laura of  St. Sabbas is a marvelous and indescribable one. A dry torrent bed, terrible to behold, and very deep, is shut in by high walls of  rock, to which the cells are fixed and kept in place by the hand of  God in a surprising and fearful manner. These cells, fastened to the precipices flanking this frightful torrent, are attached to the rocks like the stars to the firmament.” The blue-domed monastery is stitched to the walls of  Wadi Kidron, and today a handful of  monks studiously maintains the complex while performing the same isolated devotions that St. Saba observed fifteen centuries ago. The Dead Sea was as much a catalyst to the literary imagination as it had earlier been to the religious one. Half  a century before Mark Twain traveled there, Sir Walter Scott had found in the Dead Sea region (which he never visited) the setting he required for his novel The Talisman, A Tale of  the Crusaders. As his knight crossed the desert of  the Dead Sea in the book’s opening page, he forgot all his privations as he recalled, “the fearful catastrophe which had converted into an arid waste and dismal wilderness the fair and fertile valley of  Siddim, once well watered, even as the garden of  the Lord, now a parched and blighted waste, condemned to eternal sterility.

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Monastery of  Mar Saba with view of  t he Dead Sea, from The Holy Land by David Roberts, vol. 2, 1843. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

“Crossing himself  as he viewed the dark mass of  rolling waters, in color as in quality unlike those of  every other lake, the traveler shuddered as he remembered that beneath these sluggish waves lay the once proud cities of  the plain, whose grave was dug by the thunder of  the heavens, or the eruption of  subterraneous fire, and whose remains were hid, even by that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff  on its surface, and, as if  its own dreadful bed were the only fit receptacle for its sullen waters, sends not, like other lakes, a tribute to the ocean.”

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Benjamin Disraeli’s hero Tancred wandered in the desert east of  the lake, and Gustav Flaubert made the journey himself. But in no literary imagination did the Dead Sea burn so keenly as in Herman Melville’s. The lure of  the East extended as far back as his childhood. In his autobiographical Redburn, he recalled having seen a man who had just returned from Egypt and the Dead Sea: “I very well remembered staring at a man . . . who was pointed out to me by my aunt one Sunday in Church, as the person who had been in Stony Arabia, and passed through strange adventures there, all of  which with my own eyes I had read in the book which he wrote, an arid-looking book in a pale yellow cover. “‘See what big eyes he has,’ whispered my aunt, ‘they got so big, because when he was almost dead with famishing in the desert, he all at once caught sight of  a date tree, with the ripe fruit hanging on it.’ “ . . . I never saw this wonderful Arabian traveler again. But he long haunted me.” Melville traveled to the Holy Land some years later, in 1856, a few years after Moby Dick was published and lambasted. Suffering still from the depression brought on by his novel’s reception, he found in the East something quite different from what his boyhood fantasies had taught him to expect. His despondency found a focus in the Dead Sea, which provoked him to the melancholic reflection recorded in his journal: “Ride over mouldy plain to Dead Sea— . . . smarting bitter of  the water,—carried the bitter in my mouth all day—bitterness of  life—thought of  a ll bitter things—Bitter is it to be poor & bitter, to be reviled, & Oh bitter are those waters of  Death, thought I.” But his experience provided him with the material for a major literary effort, the 18,000 line poem Clarel, large portions of  which are set either in Jerusalem or at the Dead Sea. There was the holy city on high, overlooking the dry, sunken valley 4,000 feet below. The geographical arrangement could not have been better devised by Dante himself, and Melville made full use of  it. •

Since the Middle Ages, not a century has passed during which some European traveler, motivated by religious fervor, scientific curiosity, or personal eccentricity, hasn’t made his way to the Holy Land and descended to the lowest place on earth—its reputation established by the sinners of  Sodom and Gomorrah and nurtured by superstitions of  later

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ages—and identified it as a facsimile of  Hell. The accounts of  those early travelers are enlightening, though the light they shed is often not so much on the nature of  the Dead Sea as on the preconceptions of  those who eagerly awaited the latest report on the desolate chasm from the brave ones who, it seems, did not always in fact make the descent, but fashioned their accounts to coincide with the fantastic expectations of their readers. Thus, for instance, the much-quoted thirteenth-century description of  the sea as “always smoking, and dark like Hell’s chimney.” Passed on in a text for pilgrims, the hyperbolic expression was perhaps intended to discourage Christians from venturing too near the presumably still contagious seat of  ancient sin. There were voices, too, which sought from the earliest stage of  western encounter with the lake to dispel superstition and lift the cloud of  ignorance which hung over this most strange body of  water, whose peculiarity had been recognized and remarked on throughout historical times. The Dead Sea first attracted the notice of  t he ancient Greeks and Romans: Aristotle referred to it in his Meteorology, Pliny discussed it in his Natural History, and Strabo in his Geography—all by the end of  t he first century ce. Medieval reports were frequently less informed, though not because their authors were less serious. On the contrary, if  seriousness is a measure, texts of  t he Middle Ages hold up with any. “Much has been written and said about this sea by divers [sic] people,” wrote Burchard with thirteenth-century solemnity; “you must know that I fear not to tell what I have seen with my own eyes . . . which is, that the whole of  t he valley which used rightly to be called the Illustrious Valley . . . is made barren by the smoke of  t his sea. . . . This is indeed a dreadful judgment of  God, who for so many centuries so punished the sins of  t he Sodomites, that even the land itself  pays the penalty thereof  a fter so many thousands of  years.” As the passage suggests, the works were intended not as natural history but, as stated in the introduction to a popular thirteenth-century compendium, “to explain the allusions to natural objects met with in the Scriptures.” Faithful reporting was not the foremost goal, though at times an accurate chord was struck. In this latter book, the English Franciscan Bartholomew described a lake called the Dead Sea because “it breedeth, ne receiveth, no thing that hath life.”

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Two hundred years saw virtually no alteration in approach, and we read in another pilgrims’ text about a lake known as the Dead Sea “because it does not run, but is ever motionless.” Yet another two centuries did witness a change; travelers who claimed to have seen the lake were more likely to have done so, and among those who did see it, there was a growing inclination to report soberly. The basic pedagogical approach lingered, however, nowhere more unabashedly manifested than in Thomas Fuller’s 1650 A Pisgah-sight of  Palestine. This lake, he explained, is sometimes called the Dead Sea “either because the charnel-house of  so many dead carcasses then destroyed therein; or because it kills all creatures coming into it; or lastly, because dull and dead, not enlivened with a tide, or quickened with any visible motion, one main cause of  the offensive favor there, laziness disposing men to lewdness, and waters to putrefaction.” Explorers were generally familiar with the accounts of  travelers who preceded them, and two early works they admired were Henry Maundrell’s 1697 A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem and Richard Pococke’s lengthy 1740 account, A Description of  the East, and Some Other Countries. Given its early date, Maundrell’s book is notable for its author’s attitude: “I am sensible of  t wo general Defects . . . running through this whole paper,” he wrote in a preface addressed to his uncle. “One is, frequent Errours; the other, Tediousness . . . But . . . I profess with a clear Conscience, that whatever Mistakes there may be, yet there are no Lies.” Maundrell’s and Pococke’s works were used by numerous later explorers for the purpose of  comparison. Despite the currency of  certain myths, there were those even before the turn of  the nineteenth century who attempted to dig for truths about the lake over or on which, it was said, no living thing could pass without being affected by its vapors. The more we read, the more we realize that the achievements of  those early travelers were not just quaint but truly significant. One of  the lake’s greatest mysteries had to do with its level: How did the Dead Sea, which received the abundant water of  t he Jordan River and other smaller tributaries—and which had no apparent issue—maintain a constant level? Diodorus had observed in the first century bce that “although great rivers of  remarkable sweetness empty into it, the lake gets the better of  t hem by reason of  its evil smell.”

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Thirteen centuries later, the Arab geographer Dimashki summarized the various views then current about how the lake maintained its level: “The people have many opinions concerning the disappearance of  t he waters (of  the Dead Sea). Some say that its waters have an exit into a country afar off, whose lands they irrigate and fertilize, and here the waters may be drunk. . . . Others say that the soil all round the lake being extremely hot, and having beds of  sulphur beneath, there never cease to rise vapours, and there, causing the water to evaporate, keep it to a certain level. Others again say there is an exit through the earth whereby its waters join those of  t he Red Sea; and others again affirm it has no bottom, but that there is a passage leading down to the Behemoth (who supports the earth).” Charming, and on the whole farfetched—yet the second, for all its elaborateness in suggesting evaporation as the cause, approached the truth. Whether or not later western science read medieval Arab geography is unclear, but it would be six more centuries before Europe came to some agreement about the phenomenon. Thomas Fuller filled the gap. While his less pedantic successors would struggle with the question, Fuller displayed singular equanimity: this sea, he asserted, “hath but one good quality, namely, that it entertains intercourse with no other seas; which may be imputed to the providence of  nature, debarring it from communion with the ocean, lest otherwise it should infect other waters with its malignity.” A century later, Pococke puzzled over the phenomenon, wondering whether so much water could indeed be lost to evaporation, and he leaned toward the theory that there must be some secret outlet: “It is very extraordinary that no outlet of  this lake has been discovered, but it is supposed that there must be some subterraneous passage into the Mediterranean.” Apparently his was the prevailing view of  the eighteenth century, and it took another half  century or so for that view to shift. According to a book published in the first years of  the 1800s, it had until recently been a prominent view that the Dead Sea “discharges its superfluous waters by subterraneous channels,” but it was by then commonly believed that evaporation was in fact the cause of  the disappearance of  a ll the excess water. Many early explorers regarded as untenable the notion that nothing could live in the Dead Sea—for of  what use is a body of  water, if  not

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to support God’s creatures? (The famous sixth-century Madaba map depicting a startled fish turning back up the Jordan before entering the lake was not uncovered until the 1880s.) Early on, rumors of  t he extraordinary phenomenon were accepted with aplomb not found in later, more sophisticated, investigators. Again the inimitable Fuller: “This Salt-Sea was sullen and churlish, differing from all other in the conditions thereof. . . . [The] most sportful fish dare not jest with the edged tools of  t his Dead-Sea; which if  unwillingly hurried therein by the force of  t he stream of  Jordan, they presently expire.” Pococke, for one, found it particularly hard to accept, especially as he heard that a monk had seen fish caught in the lake, but he agreed to reserve judgment until all the evidence was gathered. Early in the 1800s the Frenchman François de Chateaubriand, camping by the Dead Sea one night, was startled by a sound upon the water and was told by his Bedouin guides that the noise was caused by “legions of  small fish which come and leap about on the shore.” An editor compiling such anecdotes some twenty years later was amused by Chateaubriand’s gullibility and smirked that the fish were “doubtless seeking to be delivered from the pestilential waters.” He chuckled that this was “nothing more than a hoax upon the learned Frenchman.” Though Chateaubriand had disavowed any scientific intentions and insisted his book be read simply as memoir, he was subjected to criticism throughout the century for his impressionability. As for the editor, his smugness was made possible by a report that had come out around the same time as Chateaubriand’s book, in which a highly respected scientist, having collected the snail shells that to many had been proof  of  l ife in the sea, identified them as a land species. (Actually they were freshwater snails, either washed down by the winter floods or coming from springs.) There are probably few natural phenomena in the world that have so perplexed and enchanted travelers of  a ll ages as the buoyancy of  the Dead Sea. In the fourth century bce, Aristotle had mused about a fabled lake in Palestine, “such that if  you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink.” Three hundred years later, Strabo turned his attention to the same subject: “The water is exceedingly heavy, so that no person can dive into it; if  anyone wades into it up to the waist, and attempts to move forward, he is immediately lifted out of  the water.”

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Diodorus explained that “this liquid by its nature supports heavy bodies that have the power of  growth or of  breathing,” and Tacitus wrote that “its sluggish waters support their freight as if  on solid ground, and trained swimmers as well as those ignorant of  the art are equally buoyant upon its surface.” Josephus observed that it “is not easy to go down into the depths even by deliberate effort,” and he recounted that Vespasian, later to become Roman emperor, came to examine the water. Ordering some slaves to be thrown in with their hands tied behind them, he “found that they all came to the surface as if  blown upwards by a strong wind.” Finally among the ancient writers, Pliny described how “the bodies of  animals will not sink in its waters, and even those of  bulls and camels float there,” but a nineteenth-century editor of  his work assures us he exaggerated, that error itself  an illustration of  the uneven progress of  Dead Sea investigation even in modern times. In the thirteenth century, Bartholomew wrote that “whensoever thou wouldst have drowned therein anything that hath life with any craft or gin, then anon it plungeth and cometh again up; though it be strongly thrust downward, it is anon smitten upward.” His Arab contemporary, the geographer Yakût, wrote that anyone who falls into the lake “cannot sink, but remains floating about til he dies.” A century later, an Englishman known as Maundeville—about whom there is doubt he ever lived, let alone traveled to the Dead Sea—disagreed: “Neither man, beast, or anything that hath life, may die in that sea; and that hath been proved many times by men that have been condemned to death, who have been cast therein, and left therein for three or four days, and they might never die therein, for it receiveth nothing within him that breatheth life. . . . And if  a man cast iron therein, it will float on the surface; but if  men cast a feather therein, it will sink to the bottom; and these are things contrary to nature.” Recent geographers believe Maundeville’s book to have been plagiarized from various sources, but consider it important anyway, as George H. T. Kimble noted, as an illustration of  the layman’s idea of  the world in the fourteenth century. If  the appeal of  the fantastic was as great as Kimble explains it was in that age of  supreme faith, one need have no fear that the medieval imagination went unexercised. With regard to the lake’s buoyancy, the opportunities for invention were endless. A burning

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lantern will float, but an extinguished one will sink; try to immerse a living creature, and it will immediately leap out; no ship may sail on it, “for all things that hath no life sinketh down to the ground.” The attraction of  the Dead Sea by virtue of  this singular phenomenon did not end when it was explained. Early in the nineteenth century one explorer observed that “those of  our party who could not swim, floated on its surface like corks,” and a contemporary complained of  the embarrassing posture forced on the would-be swimmer, whose stroke was rendered useless as his behind bobbed high out of  the water. Another was positive he could have slept, “and it would have been a much easier bed than the bushes at Jericho.” Less pleased was the traveler who evidently had not taken to heart what he had heard about the effects of  the water: “I think we were all good swimmers, but when I dashed in and threw myself  forward to get out of  my depth, there was enough to do without observing my friends. The unusual degree of  buoyancy in the briny liquid threw me off  balance, the salt stung my eyes, ears, and every abrasion of  my skin, and I could scarcely tell in what direction I was striking out.” Yet another put it most succinctly, saying simply that “the trial of  skill is not to swim, but to sink.” Finally we have Mark Twain’s account, whose encounter with the waters of  the lake occupies a full two pages in The Innocents Abroad: “No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy ooze and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance. . . . It was a funny bath. We could not sink. . . . No position can be retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over. . . . If  you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a stern-wheel boat. . . . A horse is so top-heavy that he can neither swim nor stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side at once. Some of  us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out coated with salt till we shone like icicles.” This strange water is as capable of  supporting life on it as it is incapable of supporting life in it—both attributable to its chemical make-up. The Dead Sea is close to one third solid—more than Utah’s Great Salt Lake (which is one quarter) and ten times more saline than the Mediterranean. While the salt content of  most seas and lakes is largely sodium chloride, the Dead Sea’s largest concentration is magnesium chloride, which accounts for approximately one half  its mineral content. Sodium

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chloride makes up another quarter; the last fourth consists primarily of  calcium chloride, with potassium chloride, magnesium bromide, and several other minerals in relatively small concentrations. Roughly accurate analyses had been done since the end of  t he eighteenth century, and so confident was one traveler that he announced (prematurely) in 1837 that “modern science has solved all the mystery of  t his water.” As noted, one of  the major attractions of  the Dead Sea was its connection to the Cities of  the Plain, whose arrogance and evil ways were dealt with by God in the days of  Abraham and Lot, and whose fate is recorded in the Book of  Genesis: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and 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.” Many hundreds of  years later, Josephus reflected on the conflagration when describing the region: “The country of  Sodom borders upon . . . [the lake], which was of  old a happy land, both for the fruits it bore and the riches of  its cities, although it is now all burnt up by lightning for the impiety of  its inhabitants.” The possibility that the remains of  the punished cities might be found was enough to prod on certain travelers who might otherwise have lacked the courage to descend to the mysterious valley. One such was Maundrell, who badly wanted to see the remains of  those ancient towns “made so dreadful an example of  the divine vengeance,” and he looked hard for some sign. “But neither could I discern any heaps of  r uins, nor any smoak [sic] ascending above the surface of  the water; as is usually described in the writings and maps of  geographers.” (It has been suggested that Maundrell was possibly encouraged by a map such as the fifteenthcentury one which illustrated William Wey’s Itineraries, in which one can distinguish the outlines of  the Cities of  the Plain lying beneath the transparent blue water of  the Dead Sea.) In the nineteenth century, numerous travelers eagerly sought the ruins commonly thought to be located in the lake’s depths. “Lying between the barren mountains of  A rabia and Judea,” considered one, “was that mysterious sea which rolled its dark waters over the guilty cities of  Sodom and Gomorrah.” Another referred to the damned Cities of  the Plain “seething below the [Dead Sea’s] waters,” and a third observed that “to the north was the calm and motionless sea . . . while many fathoms deep

Map of  t he Dead Sea showing the Cities of  t he Plain submerged beneath its waters, from The Itineraries of  William Wey, 1458 and 1462 (from an 1867 facsimile of  t he original in the Bodleian Library). Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

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in the slimy mud beneath it lay embedded the ruins of  the ill-fated cities.” At mid-century, the Dutchman C. W. M. Van de Velde described most evocatively the feeling that was shared by many who walked on the Dead Sea’s shores in those days of  g reater spiritual certainty: “Solemn ride along this briny strand! . . . The burning and vanishing ground, with its doomed cities, comes up vividly before the mind. What a tract of  country! What a terrible witness to the righteous vengeance of  God’s justice!” Jewish, Moslem, and Christian tradition all placed the Cities of  the Plain at the southern end of  the Dead Sea, though some nineteenth-century investigators were convinced that a combination of  geographical and Biblical evidence proved that they had been situated on the northern shore. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Arab town of  Zughar flourished at the southern part of  the lake. But whether the site it occupied was indeed the one that had been occupied by the ancient town of  Zoar was a matter for the most tentative conjecture. (In the early 1920s, the eminent archaeologist William Foxwell Albright determined that it was not.) Theories about the cataclysm—some based on observable, if  w rongly interpreted, evidence, others just fantasy—were frequently put forth, and debate was widespread. One speculator departed from the widely held theory of  volcanic destruction, suggesting instead that the cities had unfortunately been built upon a mine of  bitumen that was kindled by lightning, causing them to sink “in the subterraneous conflagration.” Another collected lumps of  nitrate and small bits of  sulphur, hypothesizing that they could have been left from the raining down of  brimstone. The Frenchman Louis Félicien de Saulcy caused a commotion in 1850 by announcing that he had identified as Sodom the remains of  a small stone building. His precipitous claim provoked indignation in one Reverend Albert Isaacs, who devoted an entire book to disproving it and discrediting de Saulcy in a caustic reprimand. The matter was put into perspective by someone less excitable, who simply responded that de Saulcy had gotten the answers he wanted from the local Arabs by asking them leading questions. But de Saulcy was not alone in hoping, even believing, that the ruins of  the cities might be unearthed. “It is not perhaps impossible,” wrote one, “that the wrecks of  the guilty cities may still be found: we have even heard it asserted with confidence, that broken columns and other

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This Strange Water

architectural ruins are visible at certain seasons, when the water is much retired below its usual level.” And an American traveler named John Lloyd Stephens, usually modest in his expectations, was bent on searching in the deadly waters of  the lake “for the ruins of  the doomed and blasted cities.” Stephens was the most vocal—and the most persuasive— of  them all: “I had a longing desire to . . . search for the ruins of  the guilty cities. And why not? If  we believe our Bible . . . [the Dead Sea] covers the once fertile Vale of  Siddim and the ruins of  Sodom and Gomorrah; and why may we not see them? The ruins of  Thebes still cover for miles the banks of  the Nile; the pyramids stand towering as when they were built. . . . Besides, that water [of  the Dead Sea] does not destroy; it preserves all that it touches . . . and I can see no good reason why it should hide forever from man’s eyes the monuments of  that fearful anger which the crimes of  the guilty had so righteously provoked.” By 1831, so much information had been gathered about the Dead Sea that one Josiah Conder compiled a summary of  the West’s geographical knowledge of  “this celebrated lake, which the prevailing passion for the marvelous long invested with imaginary horrors, and of  which the natives themselves still speak with a degree of  terror.” In The Modern Traveler—Palestine, Conder entered the Sodom and Gomorrah fray, though on the other side. He directed his respectful skepticism toward Strabo, who in the first century had even given the dimensions of  t he ruins of  Sodom. Conder concluded with some regret that such a legend must be classed “with the dreams of  i magination.” Reluctant but dutiful, he cited travelers who had observed that the sea itself  can throw up heaps of  stones, and that many have mistaken them for the ruins of  the ancient cities. Still, all the speculation stirred him: “The bare possibility, that any wreck of  the guilty cities should be brought to light, is sufficient to excite an intense curiosity to explore this mysterious flood, which, so far as appears from any records, no bark has ever ploughed, no plummet ever sounded.” Actually, as Conder’s book was being read, preparations were already being made to sound the lake’s depths. And though for centuries the only barks to plow its waters were Arab rafts, there were times in Roman days, in the Byzantine period, and during the Middle Ages, when navigation was common. Vespasian’s ships had pursued Jews who

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Section of  t he sixth century mosaic Madaba map, the earliest known map of  t he Dead Sea, showing two boats and two fish, one fleeing back up the Jordan River to warn the other. Reproduced by the Survey of  I srael and the Israel Exploration Society from Palmer and Guthe’s reproduction, 1906. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

were fleeing by way of  the sea during the Jewish war from 66 to 73 ce, and documents from the time of  the second Jewish rebellion against the Romans sixty-five years later suggest that Ein Gedi, on the western shore, was a major supply port. Part of  the mosaic floor discovered in the Byzantine church at Madaba, on the east side of  the Dead Sea, depicts a map of  the lake (the earliest known) and shows two ships, one carrying salt, the other laden, it appears, with wheat or corn. And the Arab geographer Idrisi, writing in the twelfth century, described trade on the Dead Sea: “There ply on the lake small ships which make the voyage of  these parts, and carry over corn and various sorts of  dates from Zughar [at the southern end] . . . to Ariha [Jericho, at the north].” Before the nineteenth century was half  over, navigation on the sea would resume, as science began to probe the lake’s depths.

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Part t wo

Nineteenth-Century Exploration The clouds lifted just as we reached the crest, and we looked down on the grand panorama of  the sea, and the line of  the Moab Mountains beyond . . . At the risk of  being accused of  suffering from “Holy Land on the brain”. . . . I must confess that few landscapes have impressed me more than the sudden unfolding of  the Dead Sea basin and its eastern wall from the top of  this pass.

Henry Baker Tristr am The Land of  Moab 1874

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t wo

Three Sailors and a River

• Exploration of  the Dead Sea, most of  which took place in the nine-

teenth century, may be roughly divided into two periods—from the end of  the 1700s to 1848, and from 1865 through the early years of  the 1900s, with the intervening years attached in different ways to both periods. Two hallmarks of  the century were the Lynch expedition of  1848, in which the first half-century of  exploration culminated, and the founding of  the Palestine Exploration Fund, a society established in London in 1865 for the purpose of  “ investigating the Holy Land by employing competent persons to examine . . . archaeology, manners and customs, topography, geology, [and] natural science.” It might be said that the first half  of  the century saw the transition from individual exploration to organized expeditions, and that the second half  systematized, organized, and refined the methods of  inquiry. If  the secrets of  the Dead Sea were by then less mysterious, the attraction of  the awesome valley was not less compelling, and more and more names—English, French, German, American—became associated with research efforts there. The first explorer to travel to the Dead Sea in the nineteenth century was the German Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, a naturalist and physician who was drawn to the East. The “indefatigable Seetzen,” as he was later called, prepared carefully for his dangerous journey, studying Arabic as well as geography before setting out, and he traveled disguised as an Arab. At the end of  1806, he left Jerusalem for the Dead Sea, and by the early part of  1807 had become the first European on record to travel completely around the lake. He died mysteriously in southern Arabia three years 31

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later—poisoned, it is thought, by Arabs suspicious of  the specimens he was collecting—and so his major work (untranslated) is a compilation done years later. But he did write a short account of  part of  his trip in the form of  a letter addressed to the Palestine Association in London. It is very brief, and Seetzen jumps miles in the space of  a paragraph; but a great deal of  information is compressed into those fifty pages, and his observations served as the measuring stick against which dozens of  f uture travelers gauged the accuracy of  their own findings. Throughout the century, the notes he took and the map of  the lake he drew were among the references most often cited by explorers. Seetzen was soon followed by the Swiss expatriate John Lewis Burck­ hardt, known principally for his rediscovery in 1812 of  the ancient Naba­ tean capital of  Petra, southeast of  the Dead Sea. (Burckhardt was also an important figure in the exploration of  A frica, as Alan Moorehead relates in The Blue Nile, spending four years there before dying, probably of  dysentery, in Cairo in 1817.) Although he did not concentrate on the Dead Sea itself, Burkhardt did study the Aravah, or Wadi Arabah, the region to the south that is part of  the same valley in which the lake lies. His work there was crucial in leading other investigators to suspect a structural link between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea—a theory that not only turned out to be accurate, but which was also of  central importance in future scientific research on the rift that stretched even further south into Africa. The significance of  his observations will become clear in a later chapter. In 1817, two officers in the Royal Navy set out for a brief  tour of  Europe and the Middle East. But curiosity soon turned into “an increasing admiration of  antiquities,” and the tour became a four-year journey. They had no intention of  publishing an account of  their travels, but friends later prevailed on them to consent to a limited edition of  the letters they had written to their families. Their book was praised by one explorer as “the most unpretending, and one of  the most accurate narratives” he had ever read. Armed with muskets, pistols, sabers, and a rifle-like blunderbuss, these two travelers, Charles Irby and James Mangles, came down to the Dead Sea at the neglected southern end, where they intended to concentrate their efforts. It was neglected for good reason, being a kind of

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no-man’s land where both climate and hostile tribes discouraged travel. In the tenth century, the Arab geographer Mukaddasi had written about Zughar, located in this district: the “people of  the two neighboring districts call the town Sakar (that is, Hell); and a native of  Jerusalem was wont to write from here to his friends, addressing, From the lower Sakar (hell) unto those in the upper Firdus (Paradise). And verily this is a country that is deadly to the stranger for its water is execrable; and he who should find that the Angel of  Death delays for him, let him come here, for in all Islam I know not of  any place to equal it in evil climate.” As if  this were not sufficient warning, the geographer Yakût took up the theme three centuries later. The valley in which Zughar lies “is most unhealthy, and its people only continue to dwell there because it is their native place. They are afflicted in most years with the plague, and it kills the greater number of  them.” European travelers may not have been acquainted with the Arab texts, but the dangers of  the region were no secret, and the prophecy of  Jeremiah, ominous and forbidding, rang in their ears as they plodded along: “Her cities are become a desolation, / A dry land and a desert, / A land wherein no man dwelleth, / Neither doth any son of  man pass thereby.” (Jer. 51:43) The area was taken to be “one of  the wildest and most dangerous divisions of  A rabia,” a reputation it would not soon lose. Two decades after Irby and Mangles’ trip, a Frenchman exclaimed: “Here is desolation on the grandest scale, and beyond what the imagination of  man could conceive: it must be seen—to describe it is impossible. In this striking and solemn waste, where nature is alike destitute of  vegetation and inhabitants, man appears but an atom:—all around is enveloped in the silence of  death—not a bird, not even an insect is seen! . . . The sun concealed itself  by thick clouds, and seemed unwilling to shine upon the land cursed by the Almighty.” And another report admonished in a manner that seems informed more by imagination than observation: “If  any one has a doubt that this whole district is undermined by craters and fire passages, let him only come and spend the night here.” Still, Irby and Mangles paid no heed even to the pleas of  their Arab guides, who begged them not to set up camp there. They passed an uneventful first night, but a chilly and sleepless one. Chilly because the wood the sea had thrown up was too salt-saturated to permit kindling.

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(Instead of  baking their bread, they drank the flour and water mixture “which, though not very palatable, served to appease our hunger.”) Sleepless because their guides kept them awake all night with their cries of  fear and warnings of  attack, false alarms that canceled sleep. The next day they arrived at what had appeared to be a sand hill, but which on closer inspection was revealed to be a mountain of  salt, spindles of  which hung from its sides like icicles. As they examined Mt. Sedom—Usdum, the Arabs called it—they recalled Strabo, who had written that south of  the Dead Sea were towns and cities built entirely of  salt. “Although such an account seems strange,” they commented, “yet when we contemplated the scene before us, it did not seem very improbable.” Crossing the salt marshes at the end of  the lake, Irby and Mangles found themselves in a lovely wooded area of  acacia, mimosa, tamarisk, osher, and a mustard-tasting plum-like fruit. Nearby, they met a tribe of  A rabs who became their hosts for the night. These Goahrnays, they explained, were very different from both city Arabs and Bedouin, for they were farmers who cultivated corn and lived in carefully planned villages of  reed, rush, and cane huts. They were wild-looking, according to the Englishmen’s account, but treated their guests well and complained to them of  oppression at the hands of  the Bedouin. (A century later, Albright would describe the “Ghawärneh” as the descendants of  black slaves brought by the Arabs centuries before to tend the sugar and indigo plantations for which the fertile region, the southern Ghor, was renowned, and from which their appellation was derived.) The letters that Irby and Mangles wrote as they traveled are especially important for the information they supply about the southern extremity of  the lake. They referred to the woods there as jungle separated from the water by just a narrow strip of  pebbly beach, and they noted the frequent tracks of  w ild boar in the marshes. They also drew the first map of  the southern end of  the lake, claiming that the lack of  definition of  the backwater accounted for discrepancies in reports of  the lake’s length. As sometimes happens, most of  Irby and Mangles’ careful notes received less attention than did an observation casually made as they were returning along the eastern shore. When they approached the Lisan (or Lashon, both the Arabic and Hebrew meaning tongue) Peninsula—the

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broad extension of  land that juts out of  the eastern shore and nearly severs the Dead Sea two thirds of  the way down—they met a small caravan of  horses and mules en route to Jerusalem. The two parties traveled together for a while, then the Englishmen went on as the caravan rested. Later, after rounding the southern tip and heading north along the western shore, they were surprised to see what they took to be the same caravan up ahead of  them. The distance between them may have been too great for positive identification to be possible, but they concluded that the caravan had forded the straits. It so happened that other investigators were engaged in a search for evidence that the straits were at times fordable, and had been so throughout history, and Irby and Mangles unwittingly threw themselves into a debate and subjected themselves to criticism from some who questioned their reliability. Nonetheless, they were probably correct in their observation. Over the following years a great deal of  supporting evidence would be accumulated, and it would come to be accepted that until climatic changes in the nineteenth century brought about a rise in the lake, the straits were easily crossed. “Should the Turks ever give permission,” mused Chateaubriand, “and should it be found practicable to convey a vessel from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, some curious discoveries would certainly be made in this lake.” In truth it was highly impractical, but a young Irishman, a student of  theology, attempted it anyway. No traveler to the Dead Sea evokes as much sympathy as Christopher Costigan, who in 1835 became the first modern traveler to sail on the lake, and whose story of  endless frustration and suffering came to epitomize the century of  exploration. It is likely that the details of  Costigan’s story would never have been assembled were it not for the determined efforts of  the American lawyer John Lloyd Stephens, and it may be worth reintroducing him here. A New Yorker, Stephens undertook his own journey to the East, not long after Costigan’s, on the recommendation of  his physician as treatment for a nagging throat infection. But once he set out from Egypt to the Holy Land, disguised as a merchant from Cairo, he became immersed in his adventure sometimes to the point of  foolhardiness (as for example, when he insisted on trekking across the desert to Petra, becoming the first American to enter the ancient city). It was Stephens, according to

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his biographer, whom Melville saw in church that day; Stephens’ intelligent and enlightened Incidents of  Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land which had so stirred the boy (and which was reviewed admiringly on its publication in 1837 by the young Edgar Allan Poe, who described it as being written “with a freedom, a frankness, and an utter absence of  pretension”). Stephens discovered Costigan’s small boat in Jericho, where it was serving as a wall of  the hut in which he was staying. He was so moved by the little bit he was able to learn that he committed himself  to reconstructing the “melancholy tale” the hapless vessel told. Costigan was twenty-five years old when he embarked on his journey to Palestine. Though he had been before to the East, he made a fatal error—choosing to travel in July and August, when the heat is greatest and the Jordan River lowest. Costigan and the Maltese servant who accompanied him had bought their boat in Beirut, transported it south to the town of  Acre, and from there had conveyed it overland by camel to the Sea of  Galilee. They explored the Galilee, then exited via the Jordan River, which they planned to follow down to the Dead Sea. But the rocks were so numerous and the rapids so fierce that after three days of  being constantly overturned, they gave up and abandoned the route, fortunate to escape the river with their lives. Hiring camels and guards, they sent their baggage to Jerusalem while they made the arduous trek south on foot. They finally reached Jericho, in rags, and Costigan went up to Jerusalem to fetch the luggage. A few days later, the two men squeezed into the little boat and set sail on the Dead Sea. So intent was Stephens on learning what had happened to the Irishman that he eventually tracked down the servant in Beirut and plied him for details. It seems they did the entire tour of  t he lake in eight days, sleeping on shore every night but one, when they stayed at sea for fear of  a band of  A rabs camped nearby. The servant recalled their having zigzagged the lake several times, sounding as they went with a line over a thousand feet long. They found the bottom to be rocky and of  very uneven depths, ranging in places from 180 feet to 240 to 480 in the space of  a few boat lengths. (Stephens, like Chateaubriand before him, believed that this alone contradicted the view that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by volcanic eruption and that the sea now sits in the crater thus formed. Having seen both Vesuvius and Etna, Stephens

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assured his readers that no other crater shows such irregularities as are found in the floor of  the Dead Sea. Actually, the Dead Sea’s floor is not at all as then described. In an extensive geophysical examination in 1974, the lake was shown to be somewhat shallower than earlier believed, and nearly flat-bottomed over almost half  its area.) In four different places they spotted ruins on the shore and could distinguish large hewn stones of  the sort used for buildings. Costigan identified one of  the sites as the ruins of  Gomorrah—a claim that the ever-solicitous Stephens called “the most intensely interesting illusion that any man ever had” (an especially interesting comment when we recall that no one was more ardent than Stephens in searching for the ruins of  the ancient cities). Costigan also identified what he at first took to be an island at the southern end of  the lake, but in falling victim to that visual deception he was not alone. Seetzen thought he had seen one, too, and his report prompted Irby and Mangles to search for it. Early on, however, they were able to verify the illusory source of  Seetzen’s report: “This evening, about sun-set, we were deceived by a dark shade on the sea, which assumed so exactly the appearance of  an island, that we entertained no doubt regarding it, even after looking through a telescope. It is not the only time that such a phenomenon has presented itself  to us. . . . We were unable to account for these appearances, but felt little doubt that they are the same that deceived Mr. Seetzen into the supposition that he had discovered an island of  some extent, which we have had the opportunity of  ascertaining, beyond all doubt, does not exist.” According to his servant, Costigan explained the optical illusion, satisfactorily for Stephens, as being a tongue of  high land protruding straight up the center of  the lake. The Lisan Peninsula does have a northern extension, and it was probably this raised horn that was responsible for the illusion. Working his memory for details of  their ill-fated voyage, the servant elaborated on the weather conditions. One detail, banal as it may seem, was the subject of  some lively discussion among both ancient and modern writers. Every night, he recalled, a north wind blew, bringing with it great waves. That observation ran contrary to what many believed— namely, that the water of  the Dead Sea was too heavy for waves to be raised. Tacitus was perhaps the first to suggest that the sea does not yield “to the action of  w inds.” The medieval view was in accord: the Dead Sea

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“moveth not with the wind, for glue withstandeth wind and storms, by which glue all [the] water is stint.” A few hundred years later, Thomas Fuller aired an objection to the waves which decorated his map of  the Dead Sea: “Would not it affright one to see a dead man walk? And will not he in like manner be amazed to see the Dead-Sea moving? Why have you made the surface of  the waters thereof  waving, as if  l ike other seas it were acted with any tyde, which all Authors avouch, and your selfe confesseth to be a standing stinking lake?” Chateaubriand came away believing that “the most impetuous winds can scarcely ruffle” the sea. But he was contradicted by one Thomas Jolliffe, who declared that in fact “a light breeze is more than sufficient to ruffle the surface.” Jolliffe went on to claim, incorrectly, that the protection afforded by the mountains, not the density of  the water, was responsible for the infrequency of  waves. The water’s density does not by any means prevent waves from occurring—as this would-be sailor can attest—but apparently it does hold them down somewhat. Once they are raised, they can achieve a height of  three feet, and since they are forty percent heavier than waves in the sea, one can understand why they were described as pounding like “the sledge-hammers of  the Titans.” For the first five days Costigan had shared the rowing, but on the sixth their water ran out and with it his strength. It was dreadfully hot, and on the seventh day they were compelled to drink the sea water—a dangerous thing to do, as the chemical make-up of  t he lake can fatally disrupt one’s electrolyte balance. By the eighth, as they were nearing the head of  t he lake, the servant himself  could no longer lift an oar, and they raised sail. They then made coffee from sea water, and at long last a favorable wind sprang up, enabling them to reach the shore in a few hours. Leaving his deathly ill companion on the beach, the servant went looking for help. In the meantime, Costigan was found by a group of  A rabs who brought him to Jericho, where he was sheltered and nursed by an old woman. Here Stephens halts in his narrative, as though snapping out of  a reverie brought on by thoughts of  t he young man so close to him in age and adventurous spirit. He apologizes for detaining his reader with stories of  t he Dead Sea which could not possibly be of  interest to anyone else as they are to him, and resumes the tale of  h is own journey up through the

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View of  t he Dead Sea, from Picturesque Palestine, vol. 2, edited by Charles Wilson, 1881. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

Kidron Valley. Arriving that night at the monastery of  Mar Saba, he is given a divan and covers, crawls in, “and in a few moments the Dead Sea and the Holy Land, and every other land and sea were nothing to me.” So ends his account of  Costigan’s fate. But as Stephens lay deep in dreams on the divan at Mar Saba, Costigan lay where he left him, deep in fever in the old woman’s hut. And there he lay, so to speak, until 1911, when Edward G. Masterman (whom we will meet later in another connection with the Dead Sea) did some further digging and was able to complete the story. The servant, himself  on the verge of  collapse, his skin blistered from having poured sea water over his body to cool himself, finally reached Jericho, just a few miles away. He had water and horses sent back for his master, unaware he had been found. From Jericho, Costigan sent the servant to Jerusalem with instructions to send back a camel outfitted with mattresses and cushions “so as to admit of  h is lying should he not

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Ibex, denizen of  t he canyons on either side of  t he Dead Sea, from The Survey of Western Palestine: The Fauna and Flora of  Palestine by Henry Baker Tristram, 1884.

be able to ride his horse.” But no camel was sent, and Costigan was too feeble to make the nineteen-mile trip without it. The story grows increasingly moving, as it turns into a tale of  helplessness and frustration, the young man growing weaker, and his attempts to reach Jerusalem still futile.

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Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, a certain Rev. Mr. Nicolaisen, whom Stephens had referred to as “the English missionary to the Jews,” happened to hear the story and, there being no doctor in town just then, went himself  to Jericho. He found Costigan at two in the morning lying outside the hut, utterly debilitated and running a high fever. He immediately began contriving a way to convey him to Jerusalem, but the Arabs were unresponsive to his requests for help. The heat grew more oppressive, a strong wind blew, and Costigan continued to suffer. Finally, a plan was devised by which just three men could do the job required; with Costigan balanced on a straw bed on a horse’s back, a man on each side holding his legs and another in front guiding the animal, they set out after dark the next day. It was a long, painful trip up to Jerusalem, the sick man having to stop frequently and rest; the journey that now takes twenty-five minutes took them the entire night. They arrived Saturday morning, three days after Costigan had been found by the edge of  the lake, and Nicolaisen was finally able to make him comfortable in a bed at the Casa Nuova in the Old City. There he was attended by a European doctor, and for a time his condition improved. But when the fever (probably malaria) returned that night, he had no strength to repel the attack, and gradually he lost use of  his senses. He died quietly Monday morning and was buried the same day in the cemetery of  the Latin Convent, which stands on Mt. Zion, on the southern slope of  Jerusalem, from which the Judean Mountains roll down to the Dead Sea. No notes from his expedition were found among his papers. Masterman mentioned that he was able to locate Costigan’s gravestone, but by then—1911—it was upside down and obviously no longer marking the young man’s grave. Today, because of  the efforts of  the Israeli geographer Ze’ev Vilnay, the memorial can once again be found in the Franciscan cemetery on Mt. Zion. For a long time, Vilnay had wanted to locate the marker, which he knew was in East Jerusalem; but the city had been divided since 1948 and part of  Mt. Zion was under Jordanian rule. When the 1967 Arab–Israeli war left the entire city in Israeli hands, he began to look. The problem was that the Franciscan cemetery had been part of  the no-man’s land that ran along the border between Jewish and Arab Jerusalem, and it was dotted with mines that made entry impossible. Vilnay brought along a reconnaissance unit, had

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the soldiers clear the mines, and succeeded in finding and reerecting the large but long forgotten tombstone. As for the Casa Nuova, in the Christian Quarter of  the Old City, it is still a hostel; the proprietor, not surprisingly, has never heard of  the explorer who died there nearly a century and a half  ago. Two years after Costigan’s death, G. H. Moore and W. G. Beke (sometimes spelled Beek) went down to the Dead Sea to do a trigonometrical survey of  the lake. Setting out in March of  1837, the two Englishmen sailed from Beirut to Jaffa, then carried their boat overland to Jerusalem and down to Jericho. They managed to survey a good part of  the shore but were forced to abandon the project when their fearful guards and guides refused to continue. As a result, they accomplished much less than they had hoped. They confirmed the lake’s width as between ten and eleven miles, and they determined that it was shorter than had been supposed. Like Irby and Mangles, they realized that its length was subject to variation because an increase in water caused not a rise in the southern end but a flooding of  the shore flats. Since their time, and until recently, the length was given as about forty-seven miles. The significance of  Moore and Beke’s contribution would slowly be revealed, helped along by the findings of  others who were also at work trying to determine the elevation of  various sites in the Holy Land. At the time, though, their most important discovery was put to the public in a cautious understatement. In the report of  their progress, which was printed in the Journal of  the Royal Geographic Society, the editor conveyed Moore and Beke’s finding that from various observations they had made on the temperature of  boiling water, the level of  the Dead Sea “appears to be considerably lower than the ocean.” One would have expected more fanfare to attend this momentous revelation, but the editor’s hesitation was appropriate when we consider that determining a location’s elevation was not a simple matter in those days. One method, the one which Moore and Beke used, was the observation of  relative boiling points (the lower the place, the greater the air pressure, which in turn means that a higher temperature is needed to bring water to a boil). By their time, the 1830s, the barometer was widely in use and was accepted as a more precise method. It is unlikely, however, that Moore and Beke would

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have been able to convey so large and fragile an instrument as a mercury barometer with them on such a rough trip. (A decade later, an American explorer brought several, and halfway into his journey bemoaned the loss of  the last one, broken when a strong wind blew down his tent.) Thus their use of  boiling water, a method that could offer fairly precise readings. But not in their case, it seems, for their estimate of  five hundred feet below sea level was considerably shy, and the sudden curtailment of  their work prevented them from taking further measurements. It might be worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the degree to which explorers were hampered in their efforts at exactitude by the physical inconveniences they had to bear, for it is a problem epitomized in the subject of  barometers. Around the same time that Moore and Beke were at the Dead Sea, a Lt. Col. Sykes observed that good barometers were extremely costly and subject to breakage, beyond which, to give accurate readings, they had to be checked regularly for certain variables. Seven years later, Mr. Roderick M. Murchison, a senior officer of  the Royal Geographic Society, reiterated Sykes’ misgivings about barometers but emphasized that the boiling water method likewise demanded many careful corrections. Modern science, he remarked hopefully, “could not offer a greater boon to the traveler, than a really portable instrument for the correct measurement of  heights, an instrument neither fragile nor susceptible of  derangement.” That boon might have been the recently introduced aneroid barometer, a non-liquid alternative. In 1851, the Journal of  the Royal Geographic Society printed an article where it was observed that the aneroid’s portability had indeed lately induced occasional travelers to employ it. But in comparing readings of  mercury and aneroid barometers, the author determined that it was ill-advised to substitute the latter, since it needed frequent calibration and could not be relied upon for any length of time —a judgment that left travelers back where they had begun (though it might be noted that a few years later, one explorer did obtain an accurate aneroid reading for the Dead Sea). The drama of  t he scientific community’s awareness of  t he depression of  t he Dead Sea, first recorded in the 1837 volume, unfolded in the pages of  t he Journal of  the Royal Geographic Society over the next several years. Moore and Beke’s own report was expected in the near future,

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but inexplicably, nothing of  t heirs appeared. In 1839 Mr. William Hamilton, a senior officer, delivered the Society’s eighth anniversary address and reminded his fellow geographers that the “exact level of  t he surface of  t he Dead Sea is a point of  increasing interest not yet satisfactorily cleared up.” Mr. Hamilton’s remarks were occasioned by the reports of  several other travelers, all within two years of  Moore and Beke’s visit. Gotthilf von Schubert’s barometrical reading came to roughly minus six hundred feet, a tolerable discrepancy perhaps. But soon after, the Austrian Joseph Russegger offered the results of  his barometric measurements: minus fourteen hundred feet; and around the same time, the Count Jules de Bertou arrived at a figure of  approximately minus 1,330. Clearly something was amiss, but Mr. Hamilton was optimistic that the problem of  the apparent depression of  the Dead Sea, “one of  the most remarkable features in the physical geography of  the globe,” would soon be solved. For the Society had recently “placed an excellent barometer, made by Newman . . . in the hands of  t wo young Englishmen about to visit Palestine, with a special request that they would endeavor to settle the point in question.” Who these young men were we never find out, but their efforts must have been thwarted, for two years later we read with some sympathy: “We have not yet been able satisfactorily to ascertain the truth of  the reported depression of  the level of  the Dead Sea below the Mediterranean, and we still hope for the account of  some careful observer, who may carry thither a good mountain barometer.” By the following year, Mr. Hamilton did have news to report to the Society. Because of  the enormous discrepancies that arose with temperature and barometrical readings, it seemed, as it had been suggested the previous year, that what was required was a detailed survey of  the country so that the relative levels of  the two seas (the Sea of  Galilee and the Dead Sea) could be trigonometrically ascertained. In 1841, Lt. J. F. A. Symonds of  the Royal Engineers set out to accomplish that task. Working alone for ten weeks, he “carried a line of  levels across from Jaffa to the Dead Sea by two different routes,” and obtained nearly the same results for the Dead Sea’s level, approximately minus 1,311 feet, as de Bertou’s calculation three years earlier. His method of  triangulation, with “an ex-

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cellent seven-inch theodolite,” was reported in detail in the Journal, and it seemed quite beyond reproach. (Yet his calculation for the Sea of  Galilee by the same method was about minus 330 feet—an error of  some 300 feet, the significance of  which would soon become apparent.) Lt. Symond’s work was obviously well-appreciated, for the following year his father accepted on his behalf  (he was still abroad) the Society’s Gold Medal, awarded annually “to those who have distinguished themselves in advancing the cause of  geographical science.” In thanking the Society, the elder Symonds acknowledged that his son’s success was made possible by his devotion to his profession, and by his having been entrusted with so fine an instrument as he was able to use—the last comment again emphasizing to the modern reader the limitations imposed when sturdy and accurate equipment was not available. Mr. Hamilton, pronouncing Symond’s findings as “the final settlement of  the long-disputed point” regarding the comparative levels of  the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea, and the Sea of  Galilee, then asked geographers to turn their attention to the next pressing question: how to account for the alleged 1,000 foot difference in depth between the Sea of  Galilee and the Dead Sea—a difference that means the Jordan River, “not being a meandering stream,” falls more than sixteen feet every mile of  its course. Drawn into the exchange was one of  t he most eminent explorers of the Holy Land, the American Edward Robinson, whose 1841 Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Petræa is regarded as a cornerstone of  Biblical geography and as one of  t he nineteenth century’s most significant works on Palestine. In 1847 he read a paper to the Royal Geographic Society in which he expressed his amazement not so much at the depth of  t he depression but at what it meant about the Jordan River, which figured as large in the mythology of  t he Holy Land as did the Dead Sea, and whose influence upon man’s imagination, according to the Biblical geographer George Adam Smith, was matched only by the Nile. The Jordan was the river of  quintessential purity, made holy by John and Jesus and further glorified for its location next to the lake which abided no life and guarded the ruins of  t he cities that loved and practiced evil, while the Dead Sea was vilified for receiving into its “greedy

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bosom” the “whole body” of  t he Jordan River—the suggestion of carnivorousness no doubt intentional. It might have been Pliny who first expressed what was taken to be the natural antipathy between the river and the lake: “With the greatest reluctance, as it were,” the Jordan “moves onward towards Asphaltites [the Dead Sea], a lake of  gloomy and unpropitious nature, by which it is at last swallowed up, and its bepraised waters are lost sight of  on being mingled with the pestilential streams of  t he lake.” His theme was sounded for the next eighteen centuries by generations of  believers whose sensibilities were offended by the Dead Sea. Early in the 1800s, it took a rare and generous mind to proclaim that in fact the contamination worked the other way—that the yellow-brown Jordan dumped its muddy water into the clear blue of  t he lake, discoloring it in an unsightly stream. It is unfortunate that George Adam Smith’s counsel came too late in the century to help disillusioned travelers, for it might have spared them some heartache: “Remember that [the Jordan] is . . . [in] a ditch as deep below the level of  t he ocean as some of  our coal-mines, and you will be prepared for the uncouthness of  t he scene.” For centuries Christian pilgrims braved the desert in order to immerse themselves in the water where their savior had been baptized— though if  the medieval Russian pilgrim Daniel is to be believed, the site was not exactly the same. According to him, the precise place where Jesus had been baptized was a stone’s throw from where the river ran in Daniel’s time. The Jordan, he explained, “seeing its Creator approach for baptism . . . left its bed, and then affrighted turned back. Formerly the Sea of  Sodom [the Dead Sea] came right up to the place of  baptism. . . . It was then that the sea, seeing the Deity naked in the midst of  the waters of  the Jordan, fled in terror, and the Jordan turned back, as the prophet saith, ‘Why, O sea! have you fled? and you, O Jordan! why have you turned back?’” (Psalm cxiv. 5). One nineteenth-century explorer observed about the place where the pilgrims gathered, “If  not the true spot connected with reminiscences of high religious import, it is well chosen for the devout observance of the crowds of  pilgrims who flock here to bathe, though sometimes the incautious or the over-faithful are carried away by the stream.” Indeed, the over-zealous had been carried away for as long as pilgrims had jour-

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Pilgrims at the Jordan River, from Landscape Illustrations of  the Bible by T. H. Horne, 1836. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem

neyed to the Jordan. The fifteenth-century Felix Fabri described in detail the travails of  his companions as they attempted to swim across the river, and another pilgrim speculated about the cause of  so great a danger, surmising that “unnatural and hellish beasts” from the Dead Sea snatched their victims from below, or that the poison of  the Dead Sea itself  caused swimmers to be dragged down, while admitting also that “strong imagination” might have a part in it. Drownings were actually rare, but a nineteenth-century explorer-turned-lifeguard stopped by the river until a group of  pilgrims had safely left the water in case any needed rescuing. Others, like the Irishman Elliot Warburton, had no worry of  drowning because they could not even enter. Warburton was hopeful on approaching the river, “but sank up to my knees in its tenacious mud, and with great difficulty extricated myself.”

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As this suggests, the Jordan’s character depended on the season. One March, a traveler found it “deep and rapid, rolling a considerable volume of  waters,” but in October, another found it decidedly sluggish. A much chagrined Mark Twain explained his disappointment in the reality of  the Holy Land’s lakes and rivers: “When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety miles long . . . [and] not any wider than Broadway in New York. There is the Sea of  Galilee and this Dead Sea—neither of  them twenty miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in Sunday School I thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter. “Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of  the most cherished traditions of  our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already seen the Empire of  K ing Solomon diminish to the size of  the State of  Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of  the seas and the river.” As we saw earlier, the river’s mystery arose in part from the question of  what happened to it after it entered the Dead Sea. In an authoritative voice summoned to persuade, the fourteenth-century Maundeville had declared: “And you shall understand that the river Jordan runs into the Dead Sea, and there it dies, for it runs no further.” A Frenchman visiting Palestine three hundred years later was more corrective of  nature in his explanation, describing “this beautiful Jordan, which becomes lost in the Dead Sea and after passing underground flows out into the Red Sea and thence into the Great Sea. This was proved by an incident which happened to a pilgrim who dropped a curiously wrought wooden cup into the Jordan River. He arrived at Messina [in Sicily], having completely forgotten the cup, and discovered it in the hands of  those who had found it on the seashore.” The old opinion, which persisted through approximately the first third of  t he nineteenth century, was that the Jordan River had once passed through the valley of  the Dead Sea. The esteemed Burckhardt, who would be admired as “one of  the most careful of  travelers,” surmised that in ancient days the river continued to the Gulf  of  Eilat (Aqaba) until the catastrophe that simultaneously destroyed the Cities of  the Plain and plugged up the valley created for it a new terminus, the Dead

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Sea. That view, that the Dead Sea was only as old as the Biblical cataclysm, was widely held. One writer was hard-pressed to account for the incredible difference between Jordan River and Dead Sea waters “on any other principle than that which refers the origin of  the lake to the convulsion recorded in the Scripture narrative.” And as late as 1848, the respected William Lynch, describing his difficult survey of  the Dead Sea, exclaimed: “At times it seemed as if  the Dread Almighty frowned upon our efforts to navigate a sea, the creation of  his wrath.” The creation of  h is wrath it may have been, but to Robinson at least it was very clear that “a lake must have existed in this place, into which the Jordan poured its waters, long before the catastrophe of  Sodom.” And in a provocatively titled book, The Dead Sea: A New Route to India, William Allen commented on what he perceived to be a general reluctance to address the question of  how the Dead Sea came to be so low, and speculated that many people were hesitant because they felt they had to connect the phenomenon with the disaster recorded in Genesis, in keeping with Jewish, Christian, and Moslem tradition. Allen himself  insisted on the importance of  unlinking the two, not because he doubted the Biblical account, but because he was interested in both scientific and Biblical veracity, and was convinced that the two events had occurred independently of  one another. (Allen was not the first who presented the view. Aside from Robinson, Chateaubriand had mentioned a certain Professor Michaelis and “the learned Busching,” who half  a century before proposed that “physics may be admitted in the catastrophe of  the guilty cities, without offence to religion.”) Allen opposed the view that fire, followed by an inundation of  the plain, destroyed the cities and led to the creation of  t he lake. The destruction of  Sodom and Gomorrah was “the swift and sudden effect of  t he wrath of  God upon the depraved nations seated in [the] neighborhood,” he asserted, advising that we not look in that event for ordinary natural causes which, in the case of  t he Dead Sea, probably had been going on for many ages before the historical period. It was also believed that despite the stopping up of  the valley, the incline itself  continued to the open sea. It had escaped Burckhardt that the Aravah Valley tilted upwards from the southern tip of  the Dead Sea nearly to the Gulf  of  Eilat, but he was far from alone in supposing that

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the slope that began at the very source of  the Jordan should naturally continue to the sea. The progress made regarding this problem constitutes yet another fascinating moment in the history of  science. One of  t hose who stand out with respect to the problem was the Frenchman Jules de Bertou. Of  the Wadi Arabah (the explorers used the Arabic) de Bertou wrote: “We entered this celebrated valley, which at first had the appearance of  the bed of  a great river; and, if  its slope were not visible towards the Dead Sea, one would exclaim on seeing it, ‘this is really the bed of  the Jordan;’ it is, however, the bed of  a torrent which flows in an opposite direction, viz., from S. to N., and falls into El Ghór.” De Bertou was the first European in modern times to travel its whole length, from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, and he demonstrated (though the instruments with which he made his elevation readings were unreliable) that “in the present state of  things, the river Jordan never could have flowed into the. Atlantic Gulf  [i.e., the Red Sea].” De Bertou pre-empted Robinson, who had long planned to follow that very route in the hope of  answering the same question. He had wanted to be the first, but even as he was preparing to leave Jerusalem, he met de Bertou, who had just returned. Robinson would soon write, in concurrence: “The nature of  the country shows, without measurement, that the surface of  the Dead Sea must be lower than that of  the Red Sea or the Mediterranean.” (For Robinson to agree with anything de Bertou claimed is noteworthy, since he criticized the Frenchman mercilessly for errors, carelessness, and downright ignorance.) The issue would appear to have been resolved, but in 1849, a senior officer of  the Royal Geographic Society warned that the question whether the Jordan ever flowed to the Red Sea was not closed, for, as the wellrespected Russegger suggested, the depression of  the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley may have been caused by volcanic action that opened up the fissure, stopped the Jordan’s course, and altered the topography of  the Wadi Arabah. This cautionary note notwithstanding, it does appear that investigators pretty much agreed by then that the Jordan never did flow to the Red Sea. (The actual configuration of  the Aravah Valley is as follows: It extends for 103 miles from the Gulf  of  Eilat to the Dead Sea and is divided into three major sections. Its first part, forty-eight miles long, rises from Eilat and Aqaba to 755 feet above sea level at the

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watershed between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. The forty-six mile long central portion slopes towards the Dead Sea, and the nine-mile long northern section, the salt swamps, drops precipitously—460 feet in two miles—to the Dead Sea.) As for the possibility of  volcanic action, mentioned by several researchers, it seems to have been thought a possibility that at some time not so very long before the events recorded in Genesis took place (i.e., the second millennium bce)—or coinciding with those events—the region did experience eruptions. One of  t he principal questions Lynch directed his geologist to look into was the “volcanic phenomena of  t he Dead Sea.” And to Lynch, the evidence of  such activity was so clear that he assumed Mt. Sedom consisted “entirely of  a volcanic product.” He also noted characteristics of  volcanic action in the Jordan Valley and on the Dead Sea’s eastern shore, and what he hoped to do was gather specimens so as to compare that ancient volcanic evidence with specimens from Vesuvius or “some modern active volcano.” Robinson was more skeptical, inquiring of  a certain distinguished geologist if  he thought, given Robinson’s observations, that either a conflagration or volcanic action could have been the agent of  particular alterations in the region. Today it is known with virtual certainty that there has been no volcanic action in the Dead Sea valley for many millennia (though there was in the northern Jordan Valley), and, as we will see in a later chapter, speculation as to the cause and nature of  the massive destruction visited on the Cities of  the Plain has developed over the past century along different lines. Back to 1847, then, and Robinson’s paper, which stands as a marvelous document of  incredulity, and reflects the persisting misconception about the river. It was almost universally agreed that the Jordan’s course was straight, with perhaps a curve here or there. Pliny had described it as “a delightful stream, and, so far as the situation of  the localities will allow of, winds along its course and lingers among the dwellers upon its banks,” but a nineteenth-century editor contradicted him in a patient footnote: “On the contrary . . . the Jordan runs in a straight line almost into the Dead Sea.” Oddly enough, in his 1745 account, Pococke had referred to what he called the little turns of  the Jordan; Seetzen’s early map showed the river as twisting a bit as it flowed down the valley, and

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Irby and Mangles had noted that it “winds extremely” (at least just south of  Tiberias). But for some reason, by the 1830s or so, it had come to be taken for granted that the river was more or less straight. Robinson recalled that since the lineal distance from the Sea of  Galilee to the Dead Sea was sixty miles, and the difference in depth between the two lakes had been given as roughly 1,000 feet, the river dropped sixteen feet every mile. It has, he continued, neither cataracts nor rapids, and he doubted that any would be discovered in the uncharted sections. “Yet in the 984 feet of  its descent in 60 geographical miles, there is room for thr ee catar acts, each equal in height to niagar a, and still to leave to the river an average fall equal to the swiftest portion of  t he Rhine, including the cataract of  Schaffhausen!” Pronouncing such a rate to be “a very remarkable phenomenon,” he went on to chastise “scholars and learned societies” of  Western Europe—that the Holy Land was but a few days journey and no effort had been made to arrive at a solution to this impossible problem since attention was called to it four years earlier. With all due respect, he wondered if  Lieutenant Symonds might not have erred, for the information was inadequate to account for the depression of  the Dead Sea, and, further, did little to shed light on “the great descent of  the Jordan.” Recapping Symonds’ method, he doubted its reliability and suggested that the task of  checking his figures would be a worthy one. It would be quite a small thing, he concluded, for England, France, or Prussia to send out an expedition to address the problem, “and it may be hoped that the Geographic Societies, which adorn the capitals of  those countries, will not let the matter rest until it shall be fully accomplished.” Such fervor would not go unnoticed. Picking up the gauntlet that Robinson in his zeal had flung on the floor of  the Royal Geographic Society, the now little known Augustus Petermann, reading his own paper before the assembly three months later, advised Robinson, in not so many words, to calm down. He himself  was unruffled by Symonds’ figure for the Sea of  Galilee, and simply assumed that the generally reliable trigonometrical procedure had failed him there, so far out of  l ine was his reading with barometrical ones. He also questioned Robinson’s calculations and suggested that the rate of  fall was not as great as his

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colleague determined, while also assuring him that such a phenomenon was not the anomaly Robinson took it to be anyway, even if  the Jordan were shown to have no cataracts. Petermann agreed that the river was straight, except for a few bends; but those bends, he suggested, were sufficient to lengthen its course from sixty to eighty miles, thus reducing the rate of  fall. And he insightfully added that he had no doubt that once the course was more fully explored, the rate of  fall would be found to be even less. The drama was fast approaching a climax. Even as Robinson and Petermann were going at it in London, an English sailor named Thomas Molyneux had already flushed out the river’s great secret (though his findings had not yet been made public). Molyneux, whose name has come to be associated, along with Costigan’s, with the perils of  the Dead Sea valley, was serving aboard Symonds’ ship docked at Beirut and in the summer of  1847 volunteered to head a small mission to the Dead Sea with the purpose of  examining the course of  the Jordan and the valley through which it runs, and to sound the lake. Taking with him three seamen and a dinghy, Molyneux sailed to Acre, where they acquired four good camels for boat and baggage and set out the last week in August. Two days later, from Tiberias, they entered the Jordan River. At first they found the river to be about a hundred feet across and four or five feet deep, but the water soon became so shallow that they were unable to keep the dinghy afloat, and from that point their difficulties multiplied. Molyneux’s account of  the journey, though often preoccupied with details of  their troubles, is filled with careful observations about the Jordan River Valley. We read that the river in many places was subdivided into a number of  small streams, each one unnavigable; that the valley is actually quite hilly, and can only properly be called a valley when compared with the mountains that enclose it; that the river usually passes between cliffs, but when the valley widens, and the plain becomes two miles broad, it is “so full of  the most rank and luxuriant vegetation, like a jungle, that in a few spots only can anything approach its banks.” And in the observation that was most pertinent to the day’s wranglings, Molyneux described the river as winding in the most tortuous manner, adding: “It would be quite impossible to give any account of  the various turnings of  the Jordan in its way from the Lake of  Tiberias to the Dead

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Sea.” (Mark Twain would describe the Jordan’s course more than thirty years later as “so crooked that a man does not know which side of  it he is on half  the time.”) Molyneux delighted in the magnificent scenery, but was also plagued by threats of  skirmishes with tribes in whose territory he trespassed, and he, lacking the diplomatic touch of  some of  his successors, antagonized the Bedouin by scoffing at their offers to protect him. At the very outset of  their trip on the river, they were stopped and tribute was demanded. Displaying their impressive array of  weapons, Molyneux offered the sheikh a fraction of  what he had demanded and continued on his way. But it soon became clear to the stubborn Englishman that it would be impossible to protect both their land-conveyed baggage and the boat, and he increased his offer to an acceptable figure. When the river became impassable—looking “like a giant serpent twisting down the valley”— and the boat could no longer bear the punishment of  being flung over rocks, they abandoned it temporarily and went as a single group overland. Observing how populated the valley was, Molyneux realized that he could never have succeeded in making the trip without the bargain he struck with the local sheikh. But authority was not constant, nor were the pacts recognized by each tribe, and he found himself  w ithout the patience to bargain anew at every juncture. The tribute was exorbitant, but the naive lieutenant courted disaster with his arrogance, always brandishing his weapons and choosing to go it alone. The trip was beginning to wear him down and he complained for the first time of  the heat. He had hoped to reach the Dead Sea in four or five days, but this part of  the journey, he wrote, was similar to advancing an army through enemy territory—one had not only to look out for food, but also to find defensible positions each time the party stopped. His nerves were strained; every time they spotted a band of  men they were forced to prepare for battle, and though most of  the alarms were false, they were taxing. Finally, he pushed his luck too far, and tried to avoid another payment by hiring extra guards. They were by then in extremely hostile territory, and refusing to pay was foolhardy and provocative. With the dinghy once more afloat and frequently out of  sight in the water below the high banks, self-protection was all the more impossible.

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When the boat failed to appear for a rendezvous, Molyneux sent out men to search for it. But meanwhile, they themselves were being reconnoitered, and they settled into position for an attack that never materialized. Finally, one of  the scouts, having made his way upstream, returned to the anxious lieutenant with the news that he had found the boat, empty, their two Arab guides half-naked but unharmed—victims of  what Stephens had called the “Arab mode of  robbery”—and no sign of  the English crew. Apparently forty or fifty men had gathered at the river’s edge and begun pelting the boat with stones and firing near it into the water, until the crew were thoroughly frightened and easily subdued. The Arabs robbed the men of  their arms and ammunition and let them go, in a “battle” that could have been bloody, considering the insult Molyneux had inflicted by refusing to pay tribute. Molyneux turned his efforts towards searching for the missing men. In the jungle by the river, beating the bushes under cover of  the dark as yet moonless night, he called out in loud whispers for his comrades, all along suffering greatly in the sweltering heat and fearful of  being discovered. When the moon rose, Molyneux reluctantly gave up the search and began the thirty-mile trek to Jericho, hoping to find safety and assistance there. He arrived ten hours later, half  dead with thirst, exhaustion, and anxiety. He persuaded the governor to send out a search party, pessimistic about ever being able to carry on his project. From Jericho he made his way up to Jerusalem, where he assembled an armed guard and another search party and set out immediately to continue the vain hunt for the lost sailors. Feeling defeated, he went down to the Dead Sea and at long last the boat was put in place at the water’s edge, Molyneux prodding himself  on, despite the loss of  a ll three sailors, only because he knew he would never forgive himself  for the wasted opportunity. Assembling his “crew”—a guide from Tiberias and the Greek whom he had brought from Jerusalem—he shoved off  f rom the “vile place, just as it was falling dark, with only two oars, and with no one who had much idea of  using them, except myself, or any notion of  boat-sailing.” The enervated Molyneux was without heart, and he could not help but feel that he was embarking “in a silly if  not a perilous undertaking.” Exhaustion and strain undoubtedly played on Molyneux’s nerves, for his description of  the Dead Sea is ill-tempered and impatient. No

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one would disagree that the water produces a greasy feeling on the skin, and that it is destructive to everything it touches, especially metals. But his assertion that the water throughout the lake was a dirty, sandy color, like the Jordan, and moreover that it had a disagreeable smell, would find little agreement among even the most prejudiced travelers. In all fairness, though, the claim concerning the foul odor of  the Dead Sea may have been derived from an old bias that originated in classical writings. Diodorus described the region surrounding the Dead Sea as “very torrid and ill smelling, which makes the inhabitants sickly in body and exceedingly short-lived.” Much later, Yakût was even more explicit: “The foul odor of  the lake is extremely noxious, and in certain years the miasma is blown across the land, and causes destruction to all living creatures, human and others. By this all the neighborhood villages are depopulated for a time; then other people come there who do not have a care for their lives, and these settle in the lands once more.” Five hundred years later, the monks at Mar Saba pleaded with Pococke not to risk asphyxiation by going down to the lake, swearing to him that the air below was poisonous. Characteristically circumspect, Pococke allowed that it was possible, but doubted it could be so at all seasons. The modern traveler recognizes that the sulphur springs which encircle the lake do emit a strong and unpleasant odor, but unless one is in their immediate vicinity, the smell is not noticeable. No odor at all comes from the sea itself, not even the salt air smell we associate with the ocean. After just two nights at sea, Molyneux concluded that he would be unable to reach the Lisan Peninsula, and he started to return to their embarkation point. But it was no easy task for men who could barely pull an oar and whose time was spent bailing out their severely leaking boat. He despaired of  reaching safety, as he doled out brandy to treat his guide’s chills. One wonders why they did not row to the nearest shore to rest, especially since Molyneux assumed he could find fresh water at Ein Gedi. All he says about it is that they made no attempt at landing because the heat was intolerable and they had been strongly recommended not to, for reasons of  safety. They began rowing straight for the northern coast at three in the afternoon, and arrived at noon the next day. Molyneux’s account ends with their landing and learning of  the safe arrival of  their lost comrades at the mother ship, where Molyneux joined

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them the following week. The task of  fi lling in the missing details was again left to Edward Masterman, who passed on the report of  James Finn, the British consul who had helped Molyneux get down to the lake. Finn wrote this eerie description of  the Englishman’s embarkation: “There was a strong misty steam over the water concealing distant objects, well according with the uncertainty always connected with the place, and with the approaching events.” Where Molyneux was reticent about his suffering, Finn was not; he recalled that on his return to meet Molyneux after the voyage, just three days later, he found him near Jericho “in an atmosphere of  steam, producing drowsiness and depression of  spirits.” Molyneux went on to the coast for a reunion with his ship. The crew were sobbing and shouting joyously at the return of  their officer, “skipping round the dingey and vowing she should never be washed from the slime of  the Dead Sea.” But Molyneux had suffered irremediably since leaving Tiberias just three weeks before, and he soon exhibited symptoms of  the dreaded fever that had vanquished Costigan. He died, either in Tripoli or Beirut, in November of  1847. There is no mention of  Costigan’s boat since John Stephens saw it in Jericho, but Molyneux’s craft had a story longer than its captain’s, one that was also brought to light by Ze’ev Vilnay. Molyneux’s commander, later Captain Symonds, became a distinguished officer in the Royal Navy, and on his retirement was awarded an estate in the English countryside. For reasons unknown—guilt perhaps, or remorse over his lieutenant’s death years before—he requested the boat as a keepsake. Vilnay began to track it down and was led to Symonds’ estate in Devonshire by a non-Jewish Zionist whose aid he had enlisted. There they met an elderly woman who had been a maid on the estate, and she conveyed her vague recollection of  something called a boat-house. Tramping through the woods, Vilnay and his companion discovered a little house overgrown with vines, its roof  a n overturned dinghy. They cut away the tangle that hid it, and exposed the clear lettering on the boat’s side: “This boat was built in 1836, visited Acre, Cana of  Galilee, Lake of  Tiberias, Jordan, Dead Sea, Jerusalem Joppa—1847.” Vilnay bought the craft for eighty English pounds and brought it back to Israel, where it was put on display at the Dead Sea museum at Shefekh Zohar, on the southwest shore of the lake.

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Though Molyneux is remembered as one of  the early and important explorers of  the Dead Sea, his most distinct contribution was to the solution of  the mystery of  the Jordan River. His observations about its meandering course, which would be confirmed and elaborated on just a year later, were a fulfillment of  Petermann’s expectations—that the rate of  fall of  the Jordan would be reduced considerably once its course was fully explored. We now know that the Jordan, between the Sea of  Galilee and the Dead Sea, covers a linear distance of  about sixty-five miles—but winds through more than 130 to do so. This doubling of  its length occurs while it is dropping precipitously—but not the 1,000 feet Symonds’ figures suggested; for the Sea of  Galilee is not 330 feet below sea level, but twice that, hence the Jordan falls from minus 660 feet to minus 1,300 feet at the Dead Sea. What Robinson figured to be a fall of  over 980 feet in sixty miles is actually one of  about 640 feet in 130 miles—or approximately five feet per mile, not sixteen. All the confusion meant, however, that there was still a need for an expedition whose results could be taken as definitive. Circumstance and force of  personality created a small place in history for the American who would spend a full year providing the world with those conclusions. Both Costigan and Molyneux were seriously thwarted in their efforts at doing an extensive survey of  the Dead Sea by three things. They chose to travel at the worst time of  year, when the temperature can be over a hundred and the river is at its lowest point; they failed to secure adequate guards, and they either had no knowledge of  f reshwater springs at various places around the lake or chose not to take advantage of  them. But their attempts paved the way for the most ambitious and famous expedition, led by the American William Francis Lynch in 1848. Born in 1801, “a motherless child” whose father was occupied by property management, Lynch left school at age sixteen and, as he described it, “embraced the roving, stirring, homeless, comfortless, but attractive life of  a sailor.” He sailed around the world, was engaged in the suppression of  the slave trade on the African coast (about which he later wrote a brief  but moving account), and hunted pirates in the West Indies. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1828 and fought in the Mexican– American War in 1846, after which he received permission to undertake

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an expedition to the Holy Land. On his return a year later he was promoted to Commander. A few years afterwards he requested leave to explore the West African coast, but he failed to win the necessary backing, though not on the grounds of  personal merit, we can suppose, since by 1856 he had been promoted once again, to Captain. At the outbreak of  the American Civil War, Lynch, a Virginian, resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy and was appointed Captain, first in the Virginia Navy, and later in the Confederate States Navy. He was described then as a cultivated man who showed special regard for the well-being of  his officers and crew—traits that are clearly manifested in his book about the Dead Sea expedition. He was on active duty throughout the Civil War, and died six months after its conclusion, in October of  1865. Lynch was a fervent Christian, at once humble and arrogant in his devotion, and a lover of  adventure. He was capable of  passion and eloquence, but more commonly practiced the reserve befitting his station. Care, patience, and diplomacy—these seemed to be the cornerstones in the nineteenth century on which successful journeys were built, and Lynch had the good fortune to possess all three. He was familiar with the trials endured by both Costigan and Molyneux (though he could not have known of  Molyneux’s death in November of  1847, the very month he himself  was setting out), and he methodically arranged not to commit any obvious errors in planning, timing, or judgment. Through the U.S. Resident Minister at Constantinople, Lynch applied for permission from the Turkish government to explore the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. He then ordered two boats, a copper and an iron one, to be constructed, and selected ten seamen for his crew, being “very particular in selecting young, muscular, native-born Americans, of  sober habits.” Finally, he assembled his instruments, gear, and arms and awaited orders to proceed with his ship, the Supply, to the Mediterranean. He followed up his application for a firman with a request for an audience with the Sultan, Abdul-Medjid I, in Constantinople. Not that he believed the Sultan could really help him—“for Eastern travelers well know that, ten miles east of  a line drawn from Jerusalem to Nablus, the tribes roam uncontrolled”—but because not to have done so would

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have been a breach of  good manners. So it comes as a surprise, until one realizes that above all Lynch was an intensely principled man, that he was willing to be denied the audience over what seems a trifling bit of  protocol. Court etiquette required that Lynch remove his sword in the presence of  the Sultan, but the American firmly declined, proclaiming it part of  his uniform and deciding privately: “no sword, no audience.” The requirement was suspended, and the audience, a brief  exchange of  pleasantries, was held without further delay. By the end of  March, Lynch was in Beirut to see the Pasha, who confessed with some embarrassment that he did not know if  the east side of  the Jordan River was within his jurisdiction or within that of  the Pasha of  Damascus. While in Beirut, he met with the Reverend Eli Smith, Edward Robinson’s companion, who arranged an interpreter for Lynch. He also engaged a New Yorker, a Dr. Henry Anderson, as geologist and physician. Reluctant though he was to leave the lovely city, Lynch deemed it “indispensably necessary” to reach the Jordan before its seasonal flood subsided. Sailing south, he anchored at the foot of  Mount Carmel, “before the walled village of  Haifa.” Over the next several days he sent to Acre for horses, launched his two “Fannies”—the Fanny Mason and the Fanny Skinner, as he had named the metal vessels—for a trial run, and raised the American flag—perhaps the first time it had been raised outside the consul walls, he noted. (“May it be the harbinger of  regeneration to a now hapless people!”) On the first of  April, the much anticipated horses arrived, but the sight of  them hardly cheered Lynch, for “our Arab steeds were most miserable galled jades . . . It was ludicrous to see how loosely the harness we had brought hung about their meagre frames.” Later, at his meeting with the Governor of  Acre, he complained and requested oxen instead, but when it became apparent to him that the Governor expected to be bribed, Lynch backed off, “determined to disappoint him.” Finally Lynch proposed the novelty of  attempting to harness camels to pull the trailers on which the boats were mounted, for unless they could be pulled by animals, they would have to be taken apart. (The boats had been built in sections to make transport more convenient, and Lynch had engaged a trained mechanic as part of  his crew to oversee their assembly, but

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dismantling them was still an operation he hoped to avoid.) To his inexpressible delight, the experiment was a complete success, and his “heart throbbed with gratitude as the huge animals, three to each, marched off  w ith the trucks, the boats upon them, with perfect ease”—a spectacle witnessed by a large and appreciative crowd, for whom the camel had always carried, never pulled, its load. Also while in Acre, a town that had been bombarded by the English not many years before, Lynch had the unpleasant task of  securing adequate guards and guides for his voyage down the Jordan River. He had little taste, again, for what he perceived to be intimidation in the hope of  a bribe. The Governor had possession of  “the most alarming intelligence” that the tribes of  the Jordan Valley, or Ghor, were at war with one another and that Lynch’s safety could not be guaranteed for less than about eight hundred dollars, which would secure the services of  a hundred of  the Governor’s soldiers. In support, the Governor had brought a Bedouin sheikh up from the region in question to testify as to the dangers. And testify he did. He warned Lynch that the Bedouin would “eat . . . [him] up.” Undaunted, Lynch responded that “they would find us difficult of  d igestion.” But in truth Lynch was not a provocateur, and he quickly added that though he would travel despite their efforts to dissuade him, he much preferred to go in peace, paying a fair price for services and provisions, but relying on his own arms to protect his party. Finally, the Sheikh, ’Akĭl Aga el Hasseé, “a distinguished sheikh of  the Bedawin,” whom Lynch had described on first meeting as “a magnificent savage, . . . the handsomest, and I soon thought also, the most graceful being I had ever seen,” joined Lynch’s party, having confided that the Governor was a “humbug,” as Lynch put it, and had been trying to frighten him away. The last addition to his party was the Sherîf  Hazzâ of  Mecca, not governor himself, but from a family who had been governors until deposed, and who claimed lineal descent from the Prophet Mohammad. The Sherîf  was persuaded by Lynch to join the expedition of  “a far distant but powerful country” to solve a scientific problem and “to convince the incredulous that Moses was a true prophet.” At long last, on April 5, 1848, the incongruous band was on the move, setting out inland to Tiberias. “The metal boats, with the flags flying,

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American caravan to the Sea of  Galilee, from Narrative of  the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea by William F. Lynch, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

mounted on carriages drawn by huge camels, ourselves, the mounted sailors in single file, the loaded camels, the sherîf  a nd the sheikh, with their tufted spears and followers, presented a glorious sight. It looked like a triumphal march.” The march was rough, but the mule track that joined Acre and Tiberias was a boulevard compared with what they encountered when they reached the high ridge overlooking the Sea of Galilee. “How in the world are the boats ever to be got down this rocky and precipitous path, when we are compelled to alight and lead our horses? . . . We will . . . have to brace ourselves to a desperate effort.” But they managed, as Molyneux had a year before on the same ridge, and Lynch’s two “Fannies” were finally in the water, joined by an old wooden boat, the Uncle Sam, which he added to the flotilla to relieve the burden. It was an unhappy Tiberias that Lynch found on reaching the lake; the city had been devastated by an earthquake ten years earlier, and

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Tiberias and the Sea of  Galilee after the 1837 earthquake, from The Holy Land by David Roberts, vol. 1, 1842. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

Lynch described it as “a walled town of  some magnitude, but in ruins.” He would have liked to survey the Sea of  Galilee, but the season was advancing, so he did little more than take barometrical measurements (arriving at a reading of  about minus 653 feet—nearly twice Symonds’ figure) before setting his long-conceived plan in motion. His assignments to each crew member were precise: the land party consisted of Dr. Anderson, who would make geological observations; a Mr. Henry Bedlow, who had joined them in Constantinople, would “note the incidents” that occurred; his trusted Lt. John Dale would sketch the countryside; and his own son, Francis Lynch, would manage the herbarium. From the iron boat, Passed-Midshipman R. Aulick would sketch the river and the banks, while Lynch himself  would lead in the copper boat and take notes on the course, rapidity, color, and depth of  the river and its tributaries, the

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nature of  the banks and the countryside, the plants, animals, and birds, and of  course keep a journal of  events. Finally, four Arabs manned the wooden boat, which carried the party’s tents. The greater danger of  attack was to the river party, and everyone was armed except the Sherîf, whose priestly lineage proscribed the carrying of  weapons. Lynch was boyish in his exuberance; the mood would later fade, but for the first part of  the trip he was effervescent. “Bright was the day, gay our spirits, verdant the hills, and unruffled the lake,” as they pushed off  and headed for the exit of  the Jordan. Lynch’s long account of  his trip down the Jordan is fastidious, and though he claimed to be “wholly unskilled in author-craft,” it makes for compelling reading. The hour and minute of  each movement of  the party was regularly recorded, as well as estimates of  current speed, compass bearings, points of  latitude and longitude, and air and water temperatures. The configuration of  the countryside was observed in detail, every botanical and ornithological specimen noted, and each geographical landmark named by the devout Christian who was on intimate terms with the Bible. Lynch’s motivation was twofold: his purpose was principally scientific, and he relied on the goodwill of  the American public to encourage him: “I felt that a liberal and enlightened community would not long condemn an attempt to explore a distant river, and its wondrous reservoir,—the first, teeming with sacred associations, and the last, enveloped in a mystery, which had defied all previous attempts to penetrate it.” But he did not conceal his fervid wish to visit the Holy Land for very different reasons: “The yearnings of  t wenty years were about to be gratified . . . My previous desire to visit the land of  the Iliad . . . became merged with an insatiate yearning to look upon the country which was the cradle of  the human race, and the theatre of  the accomplishment of  that race’s mysterious destiny; the soil hallowed by the footsteps, fertilized by the blood, and consecrated by the tomb, of  the Savior.” Lynch’s trip down the river was trying beyond his expectations. Their hours were spent plunging down one rapid, finding shelter from the torrent in a bay, praying that the other boats would make it, and setting out again for the next plunge. The rapids were so tortuous that at times the men had to swim beside the boats in order to guide them; at other times they had to create artificial channels—at times working hours in

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waist-deep water—that would permit passage. To give the reader a sense of  what the river journey was like from a less precarious standpoint, Lynch included in his account the observations made from the shore as his boats shot down a rapid: “‘Soon after we halted [at the ruins of  an old bridge], the boats hove in sight around a bend of  the river. See! the Fanny Mason attempts to shoot between two old piers! she strikes upon a rock! she broaches to! she is in imminent danger! down comes the Uncle Sam upon her! now they are free! the Fanny Skinner follows safely, and all are moored in the cave below!’” (The Uncle Sam’s luck would run out the next day, when it was shattered against the rocks, while the two metal boats showed only dents for the poundings they took. Disappointed to lose the Uncle Sam, Lynch nonetheless found solace in “this conclusive proof  of  the superior qualities of  metallic boats for such service.” A decade later, an editor of  the Journal of  the Royal Geographic Society would suggest that explorers enlarge on Lynch’s experience and switch to metallic boats for general use.) Reading Lynch’s Narrative, one cannot help but feel he was blessed with a good deal of  luck, all his precautions notwithstanding. For one thing, neither the land nor the river party was ever attacked, and that was against the odds. He felt the state of  readiness he maintained— the mounted blunderbuss looking formidable, “with its gaping mouth, pointed down stream, and threatening slugs and bullets to all opponents”—was an important deterrent. No doubt he was right, but to what degree is impossible to know; periodic Bedouin raids on Arab farmers indicated at least that potential adversaries were about. Whatever the reason, they were not attacked, and this pleased Lynch greatly, for it was “the dearest wish of  my heart to carry through this enterprise without bloodshed, or loss of  life.” And, as he himself  acknowledged, some luck, too, permitted him to manage the rapids—the fearful and the lesser ones, twenty-seven in all, he would soon report to the Navy from Jericho—with neither injury nor further loss of  a vessel. At one point he described a kind of  slingshot ordeal by which each boat was held by a rope and eased into place near the head of  a 150 yard long rapid, “where she fairly trembled and bent in the fierce strength of  t he sweeping current. It was a moment of  intense anxiety . . . The Fanny Mason . . . swayed from side to side of  t he mad

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torrent, like a frightened steed, straining the line which held her. Watching the moment when her bows were brought in the right direction, I gave the signal to let go the rope. There was a rush, a plunge, an upward leap, and the rock was cleared, the pool was passed, and, half  f ull of  water, with breathless velocity, we were swept safely down the rapid.” In the week that Lynch was on the river, he assembled a large number of  details that would give a much fuller picture of  the Jordan River and the Ghor than had previously been available. The river was strewn with large rocks, dotted with unnamed islands, and fed by various tributaries, each one named by the Arabs. It sometimes flowed between low banks, and was usually lined by trees. Birds were all about, the tracks of  tigers were often to be seen, and the mountains were sometimes visible. The river was falling rapidly, and the elevated terrace could be seen intermittently on either side. In one of  h is most important observations, a verification that was awaited by interested parties on more than one continent, Lynch noted that the course of  the river “formed a never-ending series of  serpentine curves,” and that in doing so it lengthened the sixty miles from Tiberias to the Dead Sea to 200. (There is a substantial difference between the length Lynch determined and the one given today, which is about seventy miles less. Former bends in the frequently diverted river’s course are deep and numerous, and it is possible that they may account for some of  the discrepancy. Lynch himself  on one occasion discovered a dry bed spanned by a Roman bridge, and he assumed that in Roman days it was the main channel. Further, one has to assume that his method for measuring was not as accurate as today’s.) So serpentine was its course that only after three days out did Lynch note “a long reach in the river; the first straight line we have seen in its entire course, thus far.” The river “curved and twisted north, south, east, and west, turning, in the short space of  half  an hour, to every quarter of  the compass.” After two days they were but twelve miles on a direct line from Tiberias. That fact, “the tortuous course of  the Jordan,” held, in Lynch’s estimation, “the great secret of  the depression between Lake Tiberias and the Dead Sea.” Lynch had a literary sensibility, displaying in his writing a love of poetry equal to his love of  science, and an appreciation for literary expression that we today do not associate with career military men: “At in-

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tervals I caught a glimpse of  the river in its graceful meanderings, sometimes glittering like a spear-head through an opening in the foliage of  its banks, and again, clasping some little island with its shining arms.” His intimacy with the river was manifested in his personification of  it, as for instance when it seemed “desirous to prolong its luxuriant meanderings in the calm and silent valley, and reluctant to pour its sweet and sacred waters into the accursed bosom of  the bitter sea.” In his susceptibility to the landscape, Lynch may have written the most impressionistic scientific account of  t he century: “The scenery became . . . more wild as we advanced; and as night, like a gloomy Rem­ brandt, came throwing her dark shadows through the mountain gorges, sobering down the bright tints upon their summits, the whole scene assumed a strange and savage aspect, as if  to harmonize with the dreary sea it held within its midst, madly toward which the river now hurried on.” Though he may have been given to overexpression, Lynch was also a sharp observer, and his account of  a pilgrims’ procession to their traditional bathing place on the Jordan River, where the Israelites were said to have crossed and Jesus baptized, is singular in both detail and the effect of  a dream-like visitation that it produces. Awakened at 3:00 am by a report that “the pilgrims were coming,” he hastened to gather up his tents lest they be trampled by the approaching throng, whose torch­ lights could be seen “moving rapidly over the hills.” Those pilgrims he initially spotted, mounted on camels, horses, mules, and donkeys, were but the advance-guard of  a much larger assembly that took until dawn to show its entire self  on the crest of  t he ridge: “Copts and Russians, Poles, Armenians, Greeks and Syrians, from all parts of  A sia, from Europe, from Africa and from far-distant America, on they came; men, women, and children, of  every age and hue, and in every variety of  costume; talking, screaming, shouting, in almost every known language under the sun. Mounted as variously as those who had preceded them, many of  t he women and children were suspended in baskets or confined in cages; and, with their eyes strained towards the river, heedless of  a ll intervening obstacles, they hurried eagerly forward, and dismounting in haste, and disrobing with precipitation, rushed down the bank and threw themselves into the stream . . . In an hour, they began to disappear; and in less than three hours the trodden surface of  t he lately

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Immersion of  pilgrims in the Jordan River, from The Holy Land by David Roberts, vol. 2, 1843. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

crowded bank reflected no human shadow. The pageant disappeared as rapidly as it had approached, and left to us once more the silence and the solitude of  t he wilderness. It was like a dream. An immense crowd of  human beings, said to be 8,000 . . . had passed and repassed before our tents and left not a vestige behind them.” A suitably surreal occurrence, for with it Lynch’s trip down the Jordan was virtually concluded and his voyage on the Dead Sea about to begin. Appropriate especially because the next weeks would be characterized by similarly unreal moments—moments that at times contradicted all his experience, and at other times reassured him as to his purpose in life. So, for example, one midnight, when “shadows of  the clouds were reflected wild and fantastically upon the surface of  the somber sea; and

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everything . . . seemed specter-like and unnatural, the sound of  the convent-bell of  Mar Saba struck gratefully upon the ear; for it was the Christian call to prayer.” Such reassurance would come later; at this time, his emotions were as stark as the landscape, as they entered the Dead Sea. Later that same day, “awe-struck, but not terrified, fearing the worst, yet hoping for the best,” Lynch’s party prepared “to spend a dreary night upon the dreariest waste” they had ever seen. Lynch intended an ambitious program of  exploration on and around the Dead Sea, and he would spend the next three weeks at work there. For a few days the party bivouacked at Ein Fashkhah, from where he sent a boat to sound diagonally across the lake, and where he himself  was occupied in a shore survey. Nothing lay outside his scope of  interest (he observed for example that his boats’ draught was one inch less on the Dead Sea than on the Jordan), and if  he later felt that certain items were too technical to be included in his Narrative, he simply placed them instead in his Official Report, published almost simultaneously. It is useful to remember that Lynch’s was not a mission mounted by the U.S. Navy but one he personally requested permission to organize and lead. Reading his account, one feels, despite the hardships, that perfect compatibility encountered in some of  t he best travel books between an individual’s sensibility and the geographical region he or she is exploring. In the case of  Lynch, that compatibility arose from his intensely religious nature, his devotion to science, his pre-eminent awareness of  h is obligations to his flag, and—tying those together—his extravagantly romantic inclinations, which found full expression in the Holy Land. As this might suggest, Lynch is revealed in his book as a man with a two-sided nature. The somber naval officer fulfilled his duty to science and country, reporting changes in scenery sometimes as frequently as every few minutes, and measuring, collecting, assessing along the way, while the poetry-lover reacted on a different level, describing the sea, for instance, as “a huge cauldron, before us—its surface shrouded in a leadcolored mist.” If  such a description seems out of  place in the account of  a naval officer, it may be well to remember that the lake’s associations lay heavily on even the most rational minds of  that century, and escaping its sway was like breaking loose from a strong magnetic field. Yet what

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makes Lynch’s Narrative most memorable is that he made no attempt, not even in the name of  science, to free himself  f rom that influence, but provided ample room for the various voices within him. Thus such disparate juxtapositions as the following one, the mind attending to the task at hand, then drifting to less palpable territory, where we see his sensitivity to rhythm and image: At 4.15, half  a mile from the shore, threw over the drag in ten fathoms water. It brought up nothing but mud. 4.30, a perfect calm. The clouds hung motionless in the still air, and their shadows chequered the rugged surface of  t he mountains of  A rabia. It was the grandeur of  desolation; no being seen—all sound unheard—we were in the midst of  a profound and awful solitude.

Arriving at Ein Gedi, halfway down the western coast, Lynch set up his more permanent camp and prepared for his real work—to continue sounding, make topographical sketches of  the shore, and take astronomical, barometrical, and temperature readings. From his so-named Camp Washington (“in honour of  the greatest man the world has yet produced”), Lynch sent a small party once more across the lake to sound, while he himself  advanced to explore the Lisan Peninsula. “The mind cannot conceive a more dreary scene,” he wrote, “or an atmosphere more stifling and oppressive. The reverberation of  heat and light from the chalk-like hills and the salt beach was almost insupportable.” The day’s excursion entailed sailing nearly five hours there and five back, with two for exploration, all in ninety degree heat. One can understand, then, what would cause Lynch to exclaim, “The curse of  God is surely upon this unhallowed sea!” It was not merely the view of  an outsider; one of  the Arabs accompanying Lynch commented that “he had often heard of  the tyranny of  the Franks [i.e. Europeans] towards each other, but never thought they would have sent their countrymen to so desolate a place as this.” (This may explain why it was often assumed by the Arabs that travelers from the West were secretly searching for gold and treasure. The constant hammering at the rocks by Lynch’s geologist did nothing to persuade them otherwise.) For the next three days they explored the southern portion of  the lake, the first travelers to sail south of  the Lisan Peninsula. Camping near Mt. Sedom, Lynch somehow recognized the ruins that Costigan had suppos-

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William F. Lynch’s “Camp Washington,” from Narrative of  the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

edly identified as Gomorrah. As they later approached the mountain, in barely enough water to keep afloat, they spotted an immense lofty pillar standing detached from the mass of  the mountain about fifty feet above the sea and waded ashore to examine it. Contrary to a later report, Lynch did not claim it to be Lot’s Wife; in fact he commented in his Official Report that it was “with the harmless levity of  sailors” that his men called it thus. (His draughtsman certainly embellished the scene, however, for the pillar appears cross-like, set majestically atop a cylindrical outcrop.) This tour of  the lake’s southern basin was probably the most difficult part—physically and psychologically—of  the entire journey, and it sometimes seems that Lynch’s spirits were flagging beyond the point where he would be able to arouse himself. To him the scene was one of  “unmitigated desolation,” where “the thought of  death harmonized with the atmosphere and the scenery,” and where “it was hard to divest ourselves of  the idea that there was nothing but death in the world, and we the only living.” Indeed, it is this feeling of  disbelief  that comes across

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most strongly as he toured the Dead Sea’s southern basin—as though he could not quite get used to the idea of  where he was. We can see him standing at the prow of  his small copper boat, in military dress, staring without comprehension at the water that surrounded him: “The glare of  light was blinding to the eye, and the atmosphere difficult of  respiration. No bird fanned with its wing the attenuated air through which the sun poured his scorching rays upon the mysterious element on which we floated, and which, alone, of  a ll the works of  its Maker, contains no living thing within it.” Then, while in full view of  the broad, two-caped Lisan Peninsula, he exercised the prerogative of  Western explorers, naming the northern extremity Point Costigan and the southern one Point Molyneux, names by which the two points are known to this day. He thus fulfilled the promise he had made to himself  while still in Tiberias—to commemorate, if  spared himself, “their gallantry and their devotion to the cause of  science.” It was during this time that Lynch and his men suffered most, and he wrote in moving detail about what they endured as they attempted to land on the eastern shore: “A hot, blistering hurricane struck us . . . and for some moments we feared being driven out to sea. The thermometer rose immediately to 102°. The men, closing their eyes to shield them from the fiery blast, were obliged to pull with all their might to stem the rising waves. . . . My own eye-lids were blistered by the hot wind, being unable to protect them, from the necessity of  steering the boat.” Seeking relief  once they gained the shore, some of  the men scattered to the shelter of  a ravine, others remained crouching in the boats under awnings. One put on glasses to protect his eyes, but had immediately to remove them, for the metal frames burned the skin, as did their coat buttons. The heat increased with nightfall, and they flung themselves on the ground where, even at 104 degrees, it was two degrees cooler. The parched and suffocating crew, encumbered by their weapons and tormented “almost to madness” by the mosquitoes, and fearing an attack in that dangerous territory, slept feverishly while taunted by dreams of  f resh fountains. At daybreak the sirocco broke. For Lynch the torment was exacerbated by the signs of  i llness which he read in his men’s faces on their return to camp: “The figure of  each one had assumed a dropsical appearance. The lean had become stout,

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and the stout almost corpulent; the pale faces had become florid, and those which were florid, ruddy, . . . the slightest scratch festered, and the bodies of  many of  us were covered with small pustules.” Though none had yet contracted the fever, the dread of  t hat possibility nearly overwhelmed him, and he considered forgoing an extended excursion across the lake. Like Molyneux before him, he pressed on. Lynch’s mood would revive sufficiently for him to express appreciation for the “wondrous” sea, whose changes are so sudden “as to make it seem as if  we were in a world of  enchantment.” But for most of  this part of  h is journey he was given more to darker feelings, and the Inferno became the poetic representation of  his travails. A breeze had enabled Lynch to raise sail, and, while not rowing, the men, overcome by lassitude, had dozed. He alone remained awake, and we can picture him studying their faces as the boat made its slow way, his imagination running wild: “The fierce angel of  d isease seemed hovering over them, and I read the forerunner of  his presence in their flushed and feverish sleep.” Some of  them were bent forward, arms dangling; others were with heads thrown back, cheeks flushed, lips cracked. “The solitude, the scene, my own thoughts, were too much; I felt, as I sat thus, steering the drowsily-moving boat, as if  I were a Chăron, ferrying, not the souls, but the bodies, of  the departed and the damned, over some infernal lake, and could endure it no longer.” On the verge of  utter distraction, Lynch shook himself, then woke them all sternly, ordering the sail lowered and rowing resumed. Anything so as not to be left alone to confront their “unnatural stupor.” Ten days still remained of  Lynch’s sojourn at the Dead Sea, and he would fill his hours on the eastern side continuing their topographical sketch of  the shore, verifying positions, and sounding the lake. He visited the site that Irby and Mangles had believed was the remains of  Zoar, but was hesitant to confirm their identification. He prepared botanical specimens for preservation and refurbished the much corroded copper boat, to the entertainment of  the local Arabs, who had never seen a sailing vessel (according to Lynch, some assumed it had legs). The Arabs believed that “the sea accursed of  God” was noxious, and on leaving the beach they stuffed their noses with onions to counteract the malaria they may have contracted in their brief  v isit to the water.

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William F. Lynch’s guide, Sheikh ’Akıˇl Aga el Hasseé, from Narrative of   the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

Lynch was dismayed and enraged to hear from the Christians of nearby Kerak, 3,000 feet above the Dead Sea, of  t he persecution they suffered at the hands of  their Moslem neighbors, and he later took a letter from them to present to the American people for aid in building a church. Lynch had few kind words for the Moslems there but found the

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Christians hospitable and intelligent, an opinion reinforced by obvious bias. He requested that a trip to the southern tip of  the lake and the esSafieh oasis be organized, but his companion ’Akil warned him of  unrest among the tribes, perhaps because the farmers’ wheat was soon to be harvested. Lynch’s relationship with ’Akil merits a comment, for he freely stated that but for him there might have been a “collision” with some of  the tribes on at least one occasion, yet more particularly because of  the high regard Lynch had for him. Earlier he had described ’Akil as brave and intelligent, “and although a barbarian, he had much of  the manners and the feelings of  a gentleman.” Known for his prowess in battle, he had recently rebelled against the Turks, who had had to settle with him privately to end the uprising. But here, shortly afterwards, ’Akil was intimating to Lynch that he was prepared to rebel again if  the American would support him. Lynch could not even entertain such a notion, and suspected that what ’Akil really wanted was to rid the tribes entirely of  Turkish rule and establish a sovereignty for himself. Lynch not only knew that in his position it would be impossible to aid a rebellion, but believed also that the tribes, accustomed as they were to internecine hostilities, could never be persuaded to fight for a common cause. His comment that “fifty wellarmed, resolute Franks, with a large sum of  money, could revolutionize the whole country” has a prescient ring to it, given the events in Arabia seventy years later. ’Akil’s intent, if  Lynch read him accurately, was a few decades too far ahead of  its time to be taken seriously. Lynch was the first undisguised Westerner (except for Irby and Mangles) to visit Kerak since the time of  the Crusaders. But he did not stay long, as it seemed trouble was imminent. Descending once more to the Dead Sea, the expedition proceeded north to explore the Wadi Mojib, the Biblical River Arnon, a portion of  his journey that will be taken up in a later chapter. On May 10, having arrived back at Ein Gedi the previous night, they broke camp and began the return journey, up the Wadi Kidron to the convent of  Mar Saba, whose bell had offered Lynch incongruous solace three weeks before. He and his men had explored the lake and its environs for twentytwo days and nights, and all but one of  them would survive. The young draughtsman Dale contracted “a low, nervous fever, the same which had

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carried off  Costigan and Molyneaux,” and he died a month later while they were near Damascus. Sorrowful though he was, Lynch was pleased that they had been able to accomplish so much: details of  topography, atmospheric conditions, winds, and currents, as well as extensive soundings of  the lake and samplings from its floor. Their journey proved to Lynch, and persuaded the skeptical among them as well as the professed unbeliever, “of  the truth of  the Scriptural account of  the destruction of  the cities of  the plain.” His scientific findings, particularly his work on the lake’s depth, were the basis for much research done on the Dead Sea well into the twentieth century. His observations have been adjusted and extensively elaborated on, but not in any major respect discredited. With the Lynch expedition, the first phase of  Dead Sea exploration came to an end. The next decade and a half  marked a kind of  intermediary period, during which the important work of  sifting through the information thus far accumulated was continued, thereby preparing the ground for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Its founding in 1865 marked a turning point, as the transition from individual travels to organized expeditions was completed. If  the first half  of  the century was devoted, generally speaking, to pursuing myths and discovering phenomena, the second half  concentrated on answering old questions and formulating new ones. It also witnessed an enlargement of  interest, so that Dead Sea exploration came more and more to mean exploration of  the lake’s shores as well, and that in turn meant deeper involvement with the region’s natural and human history. There is no doubt that some of  the explorers at the beginning of  the century were scientifically sophisticated. Many, though, were eager but untrained, and others were romantic adventurers. The second half  of  the century belongs to scientists, and a different, widespread sophistication marks these years. While a Seetzen or a Robinson or a Lynch may have appeared in each of  the century’s early decades, from the 1860s on they would become more the norm. Most of  the explorers who came down to the lake were trained in certain disciplines and were prepared to address themselves to specific questions. In general, the travel accounts of  the latter part of  the century (with certain notable and important exceptions) are less exciting than those of  the first part. A certain

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displacement seems to have occurred—wonder made way for veracity, naiveté for credibility. Not that the narratives reveal less appreciation, just a bit more control and a little less passion, as though their authors were aware that a scientific community was waiting out there, and that professionalism had to be served. This is not to place relative value on the earlier and later literature. The comparison is strictly from a reader’s point of  v iew. For the scientist, there is no question that the refinement in the methods of  inquiry which the second half  of  the century saw, and the accompanying categorization of  information, mark the real entrance into the modern period.

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• In 1800, when exploration of  the Dead Sea was in its tentative early stage, there was no central source of  information to which a potential traveler could refer in preparing for his trip. Hardly anything had been written about the region, and much of  what had been written was so distorted by individual and religious bias that it was of  l ittle use to serious explorers. But by the middle of  the century, things were considerably different, and by the third quarter, it has been noted, several thousand books and articles had been published about Palestine in general, many of  them containing at least some reference to the Dead Sea or its environs. Explorers of  the second half  of  the nineteenth century inherited from those of  the first half  a dogged enthusiasm and a wealth of  information about this previously little known, much misunderstood lake, and a good part of  their time was devoted to sifting through the material, distilling questions and looking for leads. Given the remoteness of  the Dead Sea valley and the diversity of  the travelers, the constant exchange of  information throughout those decades was remarkable. Some reports were admired, some criticized, and some even mocked. But if  one thing can be said, it is that there was an eager audience, both lay and professional, for all that was written, and no explorer set out ignorant of  the findings and opinions of  those who had preceded him. The second half  of  the nineteenth century witnessed an enlargement of  scope, as interest grew in the cliffs that enclose the Dead Sea. So it should come as no surprise that these explorers concentrated their efforts in the fields of  archaeology and human history, zoology and bot78

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any, chemistry and geology. And as they immersed themselves in these subjects, they naturally narrowed their focus once again, turning their instruments and eyes to carefully defined questions and honing their skills in service of  them. Thus research was broadened in two ways, as expansion of  interest and narrowing of  observation followed one another in measured breaths. If  one name stands out in the third quarter of  the century both for his contributions as an individual and for his role in effecting the transition to organized exploration, it is that of  the Englishman Henry Baker Tristram. Surprised at how little had been written about the wildlife of  Palestine, Tristram set his sights on doing full-scale zoological research. But he was also convinced that group efforts could accomplish a great deal more than individual exploration. Along with others who were similarly inclined, he took the steps that in 1865 would result in the founding of  the Palestine Exploration Fund, a society devoted to investigating all the physical aspects of  the Holy Land. Backed by Queen Victoria, the Fund immediately received widespread recognition and support from important figures in all the sciences, many of  whom were already active in the field. The PEF soon became one of  the most prestigious scientific organizations of  the day. Tristram himself  would become known as the father of  Palestine zoology, and his efforts nowhere yielded more exciting results than at the Dead Sea. Early on in his field work he identified a black grackle with orange wings that is not found anywhere else in the world. The handsome bird (“the wildest and shyest of  the denizens of  these desolate gorges”) flits in and out of  the wadis, whistling a threenote song (“a rich musical roll . . . of  amazing power and sweetness”) as his orange wings flash across the cliffs. It soon became known as Tristram’s grackle. Tristram prepared for his major trip of  1863—an undertaking that would result in his landmark work, The Land of  Israel—by assembling a caravan of  t hirty-two pack animals and arranging for protection with various sheikhs. He criticized de Saulcy for having paid too much bak­ shish in 1850, setting a precedent that other Europeans were forced to comply with and rendering it “simply . . . impossible for ordinary trav­ elers to follow him.” The system of  bakshish, which allowed for and

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Palestine Exploration Fund logo: a surveying party at work. From Tent Work in Palestine by Claude Conder, vol. 1, 1878. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

at times encouraged greed, was foreign to western perceptions; but those explorers who could disengage themselves from occidental attitudes and submit were secure in their travels—and allowing for the luck of  t he draw, came to respect and even enjoy their escorts. It was a point of honor among the Bedouin that once arrangements were agreed upon, the safety and well-being of  t he foreigners were of  paramount importance.

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Those who intended to stay on well-worn tracks had no need of  assistance but were forced to comply anyway. Molyneux was impatient with a system he viewed as corrupt, and he suffered for his intolerance. Tristram, on the other hand, was an observer of  people as well as of  landscape; if  he thought the practice venal, he found something to be learned as well, and he cultivated a certain detachment so as not to feel personally victimized: “They were kindly, good-natured, and obliging fellows, those Ghawarineh. £30 seemed a heavy price to pay simply as a fee for not being robbed for a fortnight, and that to the very men who would have robbed us had we not paid it, for no one else could have done so in their territory. Yet the system is recognized and legalised by what pretends to be the government of  the country. . . . We became acquainted with their [the Arabs’] habits, we could study their customs, and improved ourselves in their language, while every ruin, cave, and fountain in the district were pointed out to us as they never could have been by any other than the tribe in possession.” Winter found Tristram traveling through the mountains of  the Judean Desert en route from Jerusalem to Jericho. The sand-colored mountains are stone-strewn and barren, yet for a brief  spell after the winter rains they belie the word desert, as they open into a spread of  g reen thickly speckled with red anemones. The hills, creased and folded into one another, roll toward the valley, while Jericho, below in the distance, is a patch of  brightness resting on the plain. From Jericho Tristram backtracked in order to explore Wadi Kelt, the northernmost wadi on the west side of  the Dead Sea. The water of Wadi Kelt slips out of  three springs in the hills near Jerusalem and flows through the desert, eventually passing through Jericho and feeding the Jordan River. In the first century bce, Herod had built aqueducts for irrigating his expansive groves and supplying his fortresses and palaces, but by Tristram’s day they had long been in disrepair, and the water rushed undiverted through the canyon, nourishing the oasis as it went on to join the Jordan. Today one can follow the wadi’s course on foot for a few miles before it reaches Jericho. From a mountain ridge above the stream, the hiker sees canyon ledges dotted with caves and small hollows. So high is the ridge and so sheer the canyon walls that one looks down to watch birds

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soaring below, an oddly disorienting posture. The path turns and dips, as if  seeking a place to unwind on the unaccommodating cliff. Long, deep curves obstruct the view, so it is suddenly that one comes upon the monastery of  St. George, a startling and awesome sight, held as though magnetically to the ledge. The stream of  Kelt is a silver ribbon far below. The remote wadis of  the Judean Desert were sought out by monks of  the Byzantine period for their tranquility and inaccessibility. Under Justinian, the monastic movement flourished, and by the sixth century ce thousands of  monks lived in the hundreds of  monasteries scattered throughout the desert. At the beginning of  the seventh century Palestine was conquered by the Persians, and the monasteries were decimated. A few years later the Byzantines recouped and expelled the Persians, but the monastic movement never recovered, for in just a few years, the Byzantines were once and for all defeated by the nascent Muslim movement which had swelled out of  A rabia. Today, only a few desert monasteries remain, clinging, like St. George, to remote cliffs, their precarious beauty challenging any would-be conqueror to defy God’s hand. Jericho, wrote Tristram, has “a radiancy of  atmosphere which converted the eastern mountains of  Moab and the Dead Sea into a fairy land of  glowing softness.” Called a city of  date-palms in the Bible, Jericho is the jewel of  the Judean Desert, fed not only by Wadi Kelt but also by the more renowned Ein es-Sultan, or Elisha’s spring. According to the Book of  K ings (II, 2:19–22), the sweet water of  the spring was foul “and the land miscarrieth.” But Elisha, successor of  the prophet Elijah, rewarded the townspeople for their kindness: going to the water’s source, he threw in some salt and in the name of  the Lord he transformed the spring into the freshwater that has since made the oasis famous. During his strife-filled reign, Herod turned the area into an even more prosperous agricultural center that he could observe from his luxurious winter retreat (ruins of  which have been uncovered and recently excavated). So coveted was the town that Antony, to Herod’s great dismay, sliced off  “the palm-grove . . . in which the balsam is produced” and gave it as a gift to Cleopatra, who had longed for it. Josephus related the episode in his Antiquities of  the Jews: “Now at this time the affairs of  Syria were in confusion by Cleopatra’s constant persuasions to Antony to make an attempt upon every body’s dominions . . . and she had

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Elisha’s Spring, at Jericho, from Landscape Illustrations of  the Bible by T. H. Horne, 1836. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

a mighty influence upon him, by reason of  his being enslaved to her by his affections. She was also by nature very covetous, and stuck at no wickedness. . . . She . . . petitioned Antony to give her Judea and Arabia; and, in order thereto, desired him to take these countries away from their present governors. . . . Yet did the grossest parts of  her injustice make him so ashamed, that he would not always hearken to her to do those flagrant enormities she would have persuaded him to. That therefore he might not totally deny her, nor by doing everything which she enjoined him, appear openly to be an ill man, he took some parts of  each of  those countries away from their former governors, and gave them to her.” In that way Cleopatra came to be mistress of  many of  the cities west of  the Euphrates, forcing Herod and the Nabatean King Malichus to lease from her their most fertile districts, including Jericho and its environs, where

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the balsam was grown and “which is the most precious drug that is there, and grown there alone.” This balsam (Commiphora gileadensis) was the true prize of  Jericho and the other oases on the Dead Sea’s western shore. The small, whiteflowered desert tree is a native of  southwest Arabia and Somaliland, and the origin of  its appearance in the Dead Sea region is not precisely known. Some have long thought it was brought from Arabia in seedling form by the Queen of  Sheba to King Solomon—a view Thomas Fuller summarily dismissed in 1650, insisting that would have been like carrying water to the fountain. Others agreed that it was in fact indigenous to the Dead Sea region, but only in a wild form from which superior strains were derived. (It is no longer found in any variety in the area, but does still grow in Arabia under similar climatic conditions.) “I have gathered my myrrh with my spice [lit. balsam],” we read in The Song of  Songs (5:1), suggesting that its value was long recognized. Balsam was used medicinally and in the preservation of  t he dead, but it gained its fame as an ingredient in perfume. So treasured were the balsam groves that ownership of  t hem was a national priority. During the war against the Romans, the Jews tried to destroy their groves to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. The balsam survived, however, and also found its way to Egypt. According to legend, Cleopatra had cuttings taken and brought to be planted in the gardens of  Heliopolis, where the balsam flourished for a number of  centuries before disappearing, as it did from the Dead Sea valley. But before the plant vanished, balsam perfume was a major industry. Not long ago, a perfume factory dating to Herod’s time was discovered at Ein Bokek, on the southwest side of  t he lake, and its several rooms (for crushing and grinding), stove, and plaster-coated pool indicate that the process was a multi-stepped one that ended in the oil being skimmed off  t he top of  t he boiled, paste-like resin. The manufacture of  perfume was a state secret for many centuries. In the 1400s the pilgrim Felix Fabri visited Egypt, where the balsam groves were tended as the private property of  t he Sultan and the resinextraction process was carefully guarded. Treated to a small demonstration, Felix watched as a cut was made in a branch, whereby thick oil oozed out. Each pilgrim was permitted a dab on the hand, and Felix was

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Jericho, from Liber Cronicarum by Hartmann Schedel (Nürnberg: Anton Koberger), 1493. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

delighted that for several days he could smell nothing but the wonderful balm. This method of  extraction had not altered in some fifteen centuries. In describing the Jews for his Roman readers, Tacitus wrote that the Jews’ products “are of  t he same kind as ours, but they possess in addition the balsam and the palm. Their palm-groves are lofty and elegant, the balsam is a tree of  moderate height: as each of  its branches swells up with the sap, if  you cut it with steel, the sap-vessels shrink up, and accordingly they are opened with a broken stone or a potsherd; the extract is used medicinally.” Josephus called the balsam “the most valuable local crop” and described the same process whereby their stems were slashed with sharp stones and the resin collected where it was exuded from the cuts. Josephus described Jericho as “the most fertile spot in Judea,” boasting many varieties of  palm, differing in taste and name, some of  which, when trodden underfoot, even produced a substance like honey. The always curious historian speculated about Jericho’s fertility and suggested it was due to the warmth of  the air and the power of  the water, by means of  which plants are able to conserve strength for summer, “when the dis-

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trict is so burnt up that no one goes out if  he can help it.” He concludes his paean to the ancient town by saying it would be no exaggeration to call the place divine, “a place where the rarest and loveliest things are found in such abundance.” Medieval sources indicate that the palm groves still flourished in the seventh century, but by the nineteenth they were long gone, along with the sugarcane, henna, sycamore, and honey. Still, Tristram found ample reason to be delighted with the oasis: “In zoology, Jericho surpassed our most sanguine expectations. It added twenty-five species to our list of  birds collected in the tour, and nearly every one of  them rare and valuable kinds.” What a stunning array it must have been: the “sociable and noisy” Hopping Thrush, in Palestine found only in the Dead Sea oases; the singular Palestine Sun-Bird, “perhaps the most interesting species of  the whole Palestinian Avifauna,” belonging to a tropical family and confined to a narrow strip of  the Holy Land, where it maintains headquarters at the oases of  the Dead Sea’s corners; and the Collared Turtle Dove, three species of  which meet in Palestine, just to name a few. Exploring the region, Tristram noted the abundant tracks of  w ild boar, leopards, wolves, jackals, hyenas, and fox, and he was occupied for the next months identifying and cataloguing everything that crossed his path, while the Arabs in his company carted in a never-ending supply of  new specimens—plants, birds, shells—to spread on the table for examination. There sat the bearded English gentleman in his cumbersome tropical dress, spending days on end poring over his notes and planning hikes. Tristram stands out among the explorers of  t he day for his uncomplaining good humor and his habit of  expressing pleasure rather than chagrin when confronted with the unexpected or the untoward. Most travelers had little favorable to say, for example, of  t he oasis Ein Fashkhah, today a nature reserve not far down the western side of  t he lake, other than that the hunting was good. But to Tristram it was much more than a convenient sporting ground: “Our prospects at Ain Fesh­ khah seemed as bright as at Jericho, and we were already prepared to pronounce the Dead Sea shore to be the shore of  charmed life. Water, vegetation, birds and beasts, geology, and hot baths—everything

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was in abundance. The poor fountain has had, methinks, rather scurvy treatment at the hands of  its biographers. . . . Perhaps our tastes were vitiated, or perhaps after the recent rains the mineral element was unusually diluted; but . . . we found it tolerable. It made good tea and coffee, though with a slight flavor of  soda.” So content was he that his expedition spent two days at work, someone with a camera, another with watercolors, a third collecting specimens, and Tristram himself exploring the shore. For many years an interesting debate had centered on Ein Fashkhah. Certain explorers reported seeing small fish swimming in the Dead Sea in the vicinity of  the oasis. Others were quick to call those reports wishful thinking, for everyone by then knew that no fish could live in the lake. The respected biologist von Schubert had, it was thought, laid the matter to rest by explaining that the small fish which are brought down by the Jordan “or accompany voluntarily his flood . . . soon pay for this lovely wandering with their lives.” Yet as it turned out, the reports were more than mere fancy. The water of  Ein Fashkhah, much lighter than that of  the Dead Sea, periodically overflowed its pools and spilled into the lake, sometimes carrying small fish with it. It did not mix immediately with the lake water, but floated on top, conveying its little passengers on a short-lived journey. Although those fish sighted were actually swimming on the lake, not in it, it has been known for half  a century that the Dead Sea does contain life—microorganic life. The finding in the 1920s that certain microorganisms were not only capable of  enduring a saline environment, but actually required salt for their survival prompted microbiologist Benyamin Elazari-Volcani to test Dead Sea water and sediment, and indeed he found an assortment of  halophilic algae and bacteria. In what quantities, however, he did not ascertain; that question was first addressed in the 1960s, then more fully so in 1980, when a team of  m icrobiologists from the Hebrew University began an extensive quantitative study. Only in retrospect did these researchers realize how fortunate their timing was. In July they found a very large concentration of  Dunaliella, an alga which is commonly found in most saline bodies of  water. Organic material leaking out of  t he Dunaliella provided fertile feeding grounds for halobacteria, which were found in even greater concentrations, and which,

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because of  t heir carotenoids, the red pigments that characterize them, gave the Dead Sea a distinctly reddish tint through the fall of  t hat year. Impressive findings; yet even as they watched and measured, both populations began to decrease, and by 1982 had virtually disappeared. The winter of  1979–80 had been an exceptionally rainy one; apparently the floods had been so great as to dilute the Dead Sea’s surface water from a life-prohibiting thirty-five percent to about thirty percent—optimal conditions, it turned out, for the “blooming” of  t he Dead Sea. After that, drought year followed drought year, the surface water remained too salty, and the microorganisms, though they undoubtedly still exist in small, latent populations, have yet to reassert themselves. The story of  the Dead Sea’s microorganisms extends beyond the confines of  t he Dead Sea. From the beginning, certain investigators had high hopes for the Dunaliella. The alga copes with its saline environment and compensates for the water loss it experiences by accumulating glycerol, an oily substance used, for example, in hand creams. It was thought by some that perhaps the oil could be extracted and converted to a petroleum product. Who knew if  one day Dunaliella farms, maybe even consisting of  t he Dead Sea variety, might not dot the Negev Desert, where Israel would finally have “struck oil”? Though experiments were successfully conducted, the project never got off  t he ground, perhaps because the world drop in oil prices rendered it economically unfeasible. Other researchers concluded after ten years’ work that the production of  glycerol alone was in any case economically unsound. Yet their interest in Dunaliella persisted. They found that the alga also contains beta-carotene, the reddish pigment that is chemically related to vitamin A. In the green strain that is found in the Dead Sea, this pigment only exists in small quantities and is masked by chlorophyll. Moving to the northern coast of  the Sinai, they discovered another strain—a red one where the reverse was true, the green was masked by the red. The unusual phenomenon enabled them to think seriously about extracting both glycerol and the vitamin A-related pigment. The scientists who began their work at the Dead Sea in 1980 regard their timing as a stroke of  serendipity, for had they waited even another year, the knowledge they possess of  the lifecycle of  microorganisms in

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the Dead Sea would have been withheld from them for an indeterminable amount of  time. It was the good fortune of  science that research and nature were synchronized that year. Lynch had explored the region from Ein Fashkhah to Ein Gedi by boat, and others had made their way along the high ridge. But no one had ever surveyed the shore, for the pathless way was most intimidating. Always game, Tristram had his heart set on exploring the twenty miles that separated the two oases. When told by the sheikh who was accompanying him that it was quite impossible, he replied that the English for “impossible” was “we will try,” and with that he was off, the duty-bound sheikh’s brother following. Today the route to Ein Gedi is decidedly different, for a road was built in 1969. Earlier in the century, it would have been impossible for either the Turks or the British to build a road, for until recent decades, when the recession of  the lake exposed shore flats, the cliffs plunged almost perpendicularly to the water, leaving no room even for men and horses, let alone vehicles. Only on his 1863 trip did Tristram venture by the shore route. On his other trips, he, like most others, approached the oasis of  Ein Gedi from above, reaching the edge of  the cliff  a fter a strenuous two-day trek from Hebron, south of  Jerusalem. This way was obviously less convenient than today’s—but they were amply rewarded: “The clouds lifted just as we reached the crest,” Tristram would write a decade later, “and we looked down on the grand panorama of  the sea, and the line of  the Moab Mountains beyond. . . . At the risk of  being accused of  suffering from ‘Holy Land on the brain,’ by those who can only measure grandeur by bigness, and who can see nothing to enjoy in Hermon or Lebanon because they are only 10,000 feet high and do not reach the Alps or the Himalayas, I must confess that few landscapes have impressed me more than the sudden unfolding of  the Dead Sea basin and its eastern wall from the top of  this pass.” Today, unless one is hearty enough to cross the Judean Desert on foot in order to arrive at the point Tristram described, the only way to recreate his experience is to climb high in the cliffs above the waterfall of  Nahal David, one of  the two wadis that form the oasis. From that vantage point, the hiker has the same impressive view of  the sea, a

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Ein Gedi, from Picturesque Palestine, vol. 2, edited by Charles Wilson, 1881. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

blue triangle wedged between the cliffs, with the mountains, obscure but distinctly purplish, beyond. The largest oasis on the western shore of  the Dead Sea and now an extensive nature reserve, Ein Gedi owes its existence to the four prolific freshwater springs that nourish it. The rain that falls high in the Judean Hills collects as ground water and trickles through the rock layers, bursting forth as springs in the cliffs of  t he oasis. “He who has been to

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Engedi,” wrote George Adam Smith, “will always fear lest he exaggerate its fertility to those who have not.” Tristram especially loved the northern of  the two wadis, Nahal David (Wadi Sudeir), and he admired its fine caves “with their stalagmites and luxuriant tresses of  maiden-hair fern.” The wadi’s waterfall, slender but forceful, splashes into a small pool. The wadi is characterized by thick reeds and rushes, and the cliffs take on the faint bluish tint of  the eucalyptus-like adiantum that pours out of  the crevices. By the pools are huge-leaved elephant’s ears, over which hover small sun-birds that beat the air with rapidly fluttering wings as they probe the plants’ flowers with their long, curved beaks. Nahal Arugot (Wadi Areyeh) is half  a mile south and is the southern border of  the oasis. It was much less remarked on by travelers of  Tristram’s day but to this hiker’s mind is more special than Nahal David, more wild and forested. Its waterfall crashes into a deep pool, and below, there are numerous small hollows where the water that has fallen is collected. In places it seems to leak from the solid rock layers of  the river bed, where uncounted years of  r ushing streams have left their mark engraved in swirling patterns. The pools themselves, shallow and clear as light, are pebble-lined and motionless. The water passes through without creating a stir. The wadi walls rise brown and steep, and watermarks testify to the height of  the winter floods. Even in summer one can sense the presence of  the awesome torrents that tear down the canyon each year; the wadi course above the waterfall is strewn with immense, sun-bleached boulders that look to have been cast about as stones by a child. Other boulders have been only partly dislodged and are still balanced on the ledges, waiting to be taken down by next season’s floods. Some have recently fallen to the bottom of  the gorge; still others are rooted in place by trees that sprout from between them. Once they were saplings squirming their way to light; now they are full-grown, and their trunks have conformed to the contours of  the boulders that encase them. The stream twists its slow and gentle way, but no one doubts that it is master of  the wadi. In the distant past, radical climatic changes in the world prompted animals to migrate to the Dead Sea region, a location central to three continents, and the area evolved into a kind of  zoological and botani-

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cal crossroads, a fact recognized by Tristram over a hundred years ago. “In our first day’s expedition,” he wrote, “we had abundant illustration of  what to the field naturalist is the most marked peculiarity of  Palestine, the juxtaposition of  northern and southern forms of  life, animal and vegetable, within the narrowest limits.” Relatively few species adapted to the region, but before wanton hunting depleted the populations, the small valley abounded in all the animals that Tristram catalogued at Jericho. Animals can only survive in the desert by escaping the heat or adapting to it. Small animals are at a greater disadvantage than large ones, because their relatively large surface-area-to-weight ratio causes them to heat up more quickly and lose water at a faster rate. Rodents, for example, cannot afford to waste water on heat regulation and so do not even have sweat glands. Like reptiles, they come out of  their burrows only at night. The rabbit-sized coney, or hyrax (the smallest hoofed animal in the world and an unlikely relative of  the elephant), behaves similarly, remaining at home in the cracks of  rocks while the sun is high. Large animals, the most popular of  which in the Dead Sea region is the Nubian ibex, cool themselves through a process of  evaporation and cut down on their water loss by producing only small quantities of  concentrated urine while also raising their body temperatures. Unlike most desert mammals, the ibex is active during the day. Known for its nimbleness and surefootedness, it has long fascinated observers with its acrobatics. Tristram was spellbound as he watched a herd through field glasses “as they gamboled, unconscious of  our proximity, from point to point . . . on the heights above us. One fellow I could see, as he leaped from needle to needle, tossing back his enormous curved horns till they seemed to strike behind his tail, and then, in his bound, gathering all his four feet and lighting with them all close together on a little point of  rock on the face of  what seemed a smooth wall of  cliff, followed by the rest of  the herd in a single file. Once I saw him make a drop, and break the force of  the fall by lighting on the front of  his horns.” Insects and birds have an easier time than animals in withstanding the extreme heat of  the desert. Insects have developed a number of  ways of  conserving water, one of  which is by exuding a wax that coats their bodies and prevents the loss of  moisture. Birds, whose normal body temperature is in any case higher than other animals’, have the additional

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advantage of  mobility. The larger birds seek higher altitudes, where the temperature is lower; birds that cannot adjust to the summer heat simply migrate. Small birds are often found in the shade of  tree branches, mouths open and wings slightly raised—an avian version of  panting by which excess heat is released. Ein Gedi’s abundant water and tropical climate are responsible for a particularly wide variety of  plant life. Such variety usually occurs only over large areas, but in the concentrated region between the Judean Hills and the Dead Sea there are several distinct regions, each having its own collection of  plants. The relative concentrations of  salt, moisture, and air in the soil determine which plants will thrive, and the topographical differences in the terrain mean that the ratio of  those ingredients changes with some frequency. In places where the soil is leached, there is one set of  plants; where drainage is poor there is a distinctly different set. Ein Gedi itself  is a botanical meeting place where certain plants reach the northern or southern limit of  their distribution. The problems of  survival that face plants in the desert are just as complex as those faced by animals, and their ways of  coping with the climate just as varied. They have to adapt to a combination of  inhospitable conditions—scarce water, high temperatures, and saline soil. Annuals have a wonderfully simple way of  reacting: their seeds remain dormant—for a long period of  time if  necessary—until a winter produces favorable conditions. Then they germinate quickly, bursting into color and carpeting the desert for a short but intense time. Other plants, having developed means of  keeping their water loss to a minimum, have no need to escape the summer. Certain desert plants have fewer leaves than is normal, others have smaller leaves; either means a reduction in the surface area from which water is lost. Some plants have cork around their water-storing parts, others have more roots in relation to shoots and leaves, and still others undergo a subdivision of  their main stem into smaller ones, only some of  which survive. The salt-secreting system of  the tamarisk permits it to thrive in the salt marshes of  the southern Dead Sea region, where several different species have been identified. Naturalists have long delighted in the variety of  flora found at Ein Gedi. (Tristram was especially appreciative for another, more mundane, reason. The aridity of  the region is such, he observed, that plants dried

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in paper in a single day.) The plant which was of  greatest interest to most of  those who explored the Dead Sea region was the legendary osher, or Apple of  Sodom, a tree bearing large, smooth fruits which when opened are found to be virtually empty. Probably few plants in the world have been the cause of  as much speculation and debate. Recalling the destruction of  Sodom and Gomorrah, Josephus reflected that “indeed, there are still marks of  the fire from heaven and the outlines of  five cities to be seen, and ashes still form part of  the growing fruits, which have all the appearance of  eatable fruit, but when plucked with the hand dissolve into smoke and ashes.” Tacitus took the catastrophe to have been more far-reaching in its effects, saying that “all natural growths, as well as what is sown by hand . . . become black and hollow and moulder as it were into ashes.” The medieval belief  was similarly Scripture-related. Maundeville described trees “that bear apples very fair in color to behold; but when we break or cut them in two we find within ashes and cinders, which is a token that by the wrath of  God the cities and the land were sunk into hell.” With time came skepticism, and Maundrell explained the phenomenon differently: “As for the apples of  Sodom, so much talk’d of, I neither saw, nor heard of  any hereabouts: nor was there any tree to be seen near the lake, from which one might expect such a kind of  f ruit; which induces me to believe that there may be a greater deceit in this fruit, than that which is usually reported of  it; and that its very being, as well as its beauty is a fiction, only kept up, as my Lord Bacon observes many other false notions are, because it serves for a good illusion, and helps the poets to a similitude.” One poet so helped was John Milton, who in Paradise Lost wrote of  a fruit “ . . . like that which grew / Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed.” Others agreed that the fruit was an invention, and some considered it an allegorical representation of  the illusory pleasures of  the world. Most, however, at least by the nineteenth century, were certain of  its reality and were eager to identify the elusive tree and explain the oddity of  its hollowness. Maybe it was actually a dried-up pomegranate, said one. Most probably a large apple whose interior had been attacked by worms and turned to dust, asserted another. “Who would not imagine,” wondered Chateaubriand, “that the question had been set completely at rest,

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by the authority of  Hasselquist, and the still greater authority of  Linnaeus, in his Flora Palæstina? No such thing. M. Seetzen, also a man of  science and the most modern of  travelers . . . does not agree.” Seetzen had been shown a silk-like material used by the Arabs in matchlocks for their guns and told it came from a fig-like tree called the aoeschaer that grew in the Dead Sea valley. The cotton-like substance, which was not suitable for weaving, was contained in its pomegranate-like fruit, and Seetzen went on to say that “by making incisions at the root of  t he tree, a sort of  m ilk is procured, which is recommended to barren women.” In short, Seetzen’s report confused matters, and Josiah Conder exhorted travelers in the 1830s that it would be “inexcusable if  t hey leave this question undecided.” Edward Robinson soon after untangled the knot by observing that actually the odd fruit, though filled mostly with air, also contains a slender pod in which may be found the silky material used for tinder by the Arabs, who preferred it to regular matches because it required no sulphur “to render it combustible.” So it is likely, after all, that all the references were in fact to the same plant, the Apple of  Sodom (Calotropis procera). The small tree, found in the Dead Sea, Jordan, and Aravah valleys, is a tropical shrub that grows to not more than fifteen or eighteen feet. Its leaf  is thick and ovular, its star-like flower white and purple, and its grapefruit-size fruit smooth and green. Although the plant has been used in traditional medicine, it has a fairly high level of  toxicity. When opened, the fruit is often found to contain a cotton-like substance; at other times, depending on its maturity, its interior is more accurately described as dust-like or powdery. Such conditions as are found at Ein Gedi were bound to attract settlers from earliest times. The remains of  a temple which served a community around 3000 bce are still standing, and cult objects fashioned from copper and found in a nearby cave are thought to have belonged to the Bronze Age community. Ein Gedi figured in the Biblical story of  David’s flight from Saul, when he hid in the wilderness there. A camp at the top of  the cliffs was called in the Book of  Samuel the stronghold of  Ein Gedi, and the town was mentioned in the Book of  Joshua as one of  the wilderness cities given to the tribe of  Judah. In the Song of  Songs

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it was praised for its vineyards, the source of  the town’s fame in ancient days: “My beloved is unto me as a cluster of  henna / In the vineyards of En-gedi.” (1:14) Several factors ensured that Ein Gedi would be an agricultural center. Climatic conditions were ideal, and there was no shortage of  space for groves and vineyards, since the population was fairly small. It was secure, being protected by mountains on the west and the Dead Sea on the east. And it came to be on an important trade route. When King Solomon fortified the Red Sea port of  Eilat many years before, during his reign in the tenth century bce, he also established posts in the Negev Desert, in the southern half  of  Israel, to protect the caravans that crossed the Negev on their way from Arabia to the Mediterranean ports with their valuable cargoes of  incense, perfume, and spices. But Solomon’s control could not be maintained by his successors after the kingdom divided: by the seventh century bce, the central government of  Judea had become too weak to protect its desert outposts, and the Negev trade route was gradually abandoned. It was then that Ein Gedi assumed importance; its first agricultural settlement dates to this time, when all the oases from Jericho to the southern end of  the Dead Sea were used for the cultivation of  rare Arabian plants, eliminating the need for a long, trans-desert route. Date palms were grown for fruit and their leaves woven into baskets; grapes for wine, henna for cosmetics, and the secret balsam—all made the town famous. It was part of  the royal estate, and its famed industries were run in the service of  the king. Ein Gedi as a Jewish town flourished from the seventh century until 582 bce, when Nebuchadnezzar, having sacked Jerusalem and sent the Jews to their Babylonian exile, destroyed it. It was then rebuilt as a Persian town that lasted about a century. During those years the settled area was expanded and the buildings themselves enlarged. After a lull, the Hellenistic period saw a revitalization of  the settlement under the Hasmonean kings, until the line was expelled from the throne by Herod, who seized power with the help of  h is Roman patrons in 40 bce. The town’s history continues through Herod’s rule, as well as through his sons’, until the country was overrun by the Romans. In 68 ce, the town was burned, only to be rebuilt by the Romans themselves, and it flourished again. By the time another half  century had passed, it was once

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more inhabited by Jews, though it was assigned as the personal property of  the emperor to serve as a base for a Roman garrison. The area deteriorated after the Romans put down the Jewish revolt of  135, but from the third to the sixth centuries Ein Gedi was revived. The Writings of  the Church Fathers attest to the fact that in those days it was home to a sizeable Jewish community, and Eusebius described it as being well-known, once again, for its dates and balsam. One of  the most important and beautiful finds in the excavations at Ein Gedi was a mosaic floor from a Byzantine synagogue. Part of  it is an inscription that has puzzled scholars; it calls down a curse on “anyone causing a controversy between a man and his fellows or who slanders his friends before the gentiles or steals the property of  his friends, or anyone revealing the secret of  the town to the gentiles . . .”—the last curious phrase aimed, it is thought, at those who would divulge the secret of  the balsam industry. Even in Tristram’s day, before anyone thought to undertake excavations, it was obvious to the discerning observer that Ein Gedi had once been the site of  a complex agricultural center. That the hills had once been extensively terraced was clear to anyone whose eye scanned the rocky slopes. “Everywhere through this barren wilderness,” Tristram noted, “were the traces of  the old terraces where once grew the vines of  Engedi.” According to pilgrims, the groves were neglected but nonetheless still impressive well into the fourteenth century. Burchard claimed that even in his day there were “some exceeding noble vinestocks on Engaddi; but Saracens do not tend them, and no Christian, who would tend them, live there.” Von Suchern declared that comparable vineyards are not found elsewhere in the world, and he wrote that in his time, 1350, they belonged to the brethren of  the Hospital of  St. John at Rhodes. Once before they had been the property of  the Templars and had been tended by Saracen prisoners, an interesting detail that can be assigned to Crusader times. The vineyards’ reputation evidently lasted into the nineteenth century, for one of  Lynch’s stated goals in exploring the region of  t he Dead Sea was to examine the “soil in which grapes of  such extraordinary size are said to grow . . . to ascertain if  t he chemical composition has any influence on the size of  t he fruit.” It was hard not to be impressed by the terraces’ crumbling, vestigial beauty, and one explorer would even

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suggest repairing them and resuming cultivation, though the land had not been farmed in some twelve centuries. Although the signs of  extensive agriculture were apparent to Tristram and to others, they had no idea of  the extent to which the reluctant earth had been coaxed to produce. The entire eastern slope below the springs was at one time cultivated, and plaster-coated irrigation pools are evidence of  the sophisticated techniques employed. Farmers were not the only ones whose skills were essential; engineers were brought in to work out methods for harnessing the spring water and guiding it down to the terraces in open channels. As long as there were no obstructions, the channels were dug; if  a cross-stream interrupted the flow, a bridge was built; if  bedrock impeded the way, the channel was quarried. The channels flowed into pools that were strategically located where they could provide water for large areas. Their walls were of  double thickness, plastered to prevent leakage, and supplied with stoppers. With the water carefully parceled out to selected terraces, about five hundred acres were cultivated. Ein Gedi was and would remain one of  t he major attractions at the Dead Sea and maybe the major one of  t he western shore. Not long after Tristram was there, one of  t he leading figures in the Palestine Exploration Fund’s survey of  western Palestine explored Ein Gedi with a peculiar purpose—to identify the cave in which David hid from Saul nearly 3,000 years before. It was an unlikely mission (though half  a century earlier John Stephens had described what he took to be the famous hideout) for two reasons. There were no artifacts by which to identify the cave, and one of  t he distinguishing features of  t he wadis on the lake’s western shore is the numerous caves that were created by the same forces of  erosion that produced the canyons themselves. William Allen described “the precipitous cliffs [which were] hollowed into numberless caves, [and] were formerly inhabited by men, whose hearts and minds, scathed by wild passions, found congenial responses in the horrors of the glen.” Allen may have gotten a little carried away, but he was not wrong. For many centuries people had either made the caves of  the Dead Sea valley their homes, or had sought sanctuary in them. Perhaps the best known were the settlers of  Qumran, about whose origins there is no unanim-

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ity. Often called the Qumran or Dead Sea sect, the settlers are thought by some to have been the Essenes, and by others to have been a sect with Saduccean origins. Still others discount any religious identification, and regard the settlement as having had only secular significance. Like the farmers at Ein Gedi, the settlers at Qumran were plagued by one practical worry that overshadowed all others—the acquisition and storage of  water. Wadi Qumran has no springs, which made the problem even more acute. They had no choice but to rely on the winter floods; patience, persistence, and no small amount of  engineering brilliance enabled them, by means of  a channel, part of  which had to be chiseled through a hundred feet of  solid rock high in the cliff, to trap and guide the precious seasonal water to the cisterns. Part of  the controversy revolving around Qumran and the scrolls has to do with the Dead Sea sect’s supposed identification as the Essenes by both Pliny and Josephus. The Essenes were described by Pliny with a mixture of  fact and exaggeration as “a people that live apart from the world, and marvelous beyond all others throughout the whole earth, for they have no women among them; to sexual desire they are strangers; money they have none; the palm-trees are their only companions. Day after day, however, their numbers are fully recruited by multitudes of  strangers that resort to them, driven thither to adopt their usages by the tempests of  fortune, and wearied with the miseries of  l ife. Thus it is, that through thousands of  ages, incredible to relate, this people eternally prolongs its existence, without a single birth taking place there; so fruitful a source of  population to it is that weariness of  l ife which is felt by others.” Josephus, who was born in Jerusalem, had more direct experience than Pliny, and his description goes on for several pages: “They eschew pleasure-seeking as a vice and regard temperance and mastery of  the passions as a virtue. Scorning wedlock, they select other men’s children while still pliable and teachable, and fashion them after their own pattern—not that they wish to do away with marriage as a means of  continuing the race, but they are afraid of  the promiscuity of  women and convinced that none of  the sex remains faithful to one man.” Whatever the identity of  the Qumran settlers, the manuscript collection found in the caves is recognized as one of  the crucial archaeological

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finds of  the twentieth century. The Dead Sea Scrolls—some 900 when all the thousands of  f ragments are pieced together—include non-Biblical sacred literature, sectarian texts, and copies of  every book of  the Hebrew Bible, except for the Book of  Esther, predating by nearly a thousand years the oldest previously known Hebrew text of  the Bible. While the caves may have been home to some, they served as sanctuary for others, most notably the followers of  Bar Kokhba during the second, ill-fated revolt against the Romans in 132 ce. The war became localized in the Judean Desert two years after it broke out. There the rebels banded together, striking at Hadrian’s army, then retreating to the caves of  Nahal Hever and Wadi Muraba’at, on either side of  Ein Gedi. The incensed Romans laid siege to the caves, as the remains of  their military camps high in the wadi attest, cutting off  food until the rebels and their families died of  starvation. Letters and documents found in the caves (along with cloth, vessels, date pits, and the remains of  human plaits) illuminate the life the Jews led during the three years of  the tragic revolt. In the early Christian centuries, the caves were inhabited by the most devout and reclusive solitaries. The nineteenth-century editor of  one of  t he collective biographies of  t he fathers of  t he desert pointed out that certain regions of  the Holy Land were composed of  l imestone from which the elements had carved out caves, which had then been enlarged by human hands and occupied. Because in the pre-Christian era they were used as graves, it was sometimes related in the lives of  the anchorites that the desert fathers lived in tombs. From Ein Gedi, Tristram traveled south fifteen miles to Masada, the 1,500 feet high rock set in stark desert relief  by deeply incised canyons. The way there is bland; the shores spread out and the white hills left from the prehistoric lake that occupied the Dead Sea valley become the landscape’s dominant feature. Carved by thousands of  years of  rains into a maze of  badlands, the hills reflect the sharp sun in a piercing glare. Even the easy-going Tristram felt a want of  life: “It was a dreary, desolate, hungry ride, more truly reaching the popular notions of  the Dead Sea than anything we had yet met with. All around us was utterly lifeless and brown, with the cliffs and mountains glaring red in the sunshine, and the soft alluvium below dazzling our eyes by its whiteness.”

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View of  Masada, from Narrative of  the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea by William F. Lynch, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

Edward Robinson, “the prince of  Palestine geographers,” was given credit for identifying Masada thirty years before Tristram’s time, but Robinson acknowledged that it was his companion, Eli Smith, who first suggested that the rock the Arabs called Sebbeh might actually be the famous site. Another century would pass before it was excavated, but though the crumbling walls told hardly a thing about what had gone on there eighteen hundred years before, nearly every explorer was familiar with Josephus’ graphic account. Situated just inland from the Dead Sea, Masada was long recognized as a natural fortress. It is an isolated plateau whose eastern side, facing the Dead Sea, plunges almost vertically to the shore, and whose three other sides are all protected by canyons. Josephus pointed out that the

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cliffs were so sheer that no animal could get a footing except in two places where with great difficulty the rock could be climbed. De Saulcy described his ordeal attempting the ascent: “After some minutes’ progress, the path becomes more difficult, and goats alone might be content with it, supposing they were not over-difficult to please.” Van de Velde, who characterized de Saulcy’s account as so filled with contradictions, erroneous quotations, and false hypotheses “that to refute them all would require a book as large as that of  M. de Saulcy himself,” had a moment of  rare agreement as he struggled up the rock: “Previous experience had led me to put a little bottle of  eau-de-cologne [smelling salts] in my pocket, and I was thereby preserved from a fall that would infallibly have killed me.” Tristram, on the other hand, claimed that the difficulty had been exaggerated, asserting that “an English lady could accomplish it easily.” But what he neglected to say, and probably didn’t realize, was that he climbed the ancient Roman ramp behind the rock, while all the others seem to have made the ascent by the tortuous so-called snake path that was described by Josephus, and which was not outfitted with the stairs that aid the modern hiker. The Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus, descendant of  the Maccabees, probably fortified Masada in the first century bce. But it was Herod who made it famous, and the Jewish zealots who insured that its name would never be forgotten. After Herod was placed on the throne of  Judea by the Romans, he refortified Masada, storing enough weapons there to stave off  an army, cultivating the flat top in case he should ever be cut off  f rom a food line, and constructing cisterns that a single hard rain could fill with a year’s supply of  water. His ambitious precautions were not the result of  idle paranoia. “It is believed,” wrote Josephus, “that Herod equipped this fortress as a refuge for himself, suspecting a double danger—the danger from the Jewish masses, who might push him off  his throne and restore to power the royal house that preceded him, and the greater and more terrible danger from the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. For she did not conceal her intentions but constantly appealed to Antony, begging him to destroy Herod and requesting the transfer to herself  of  the kingdom of  Judea. . . . Such were the fears that made Herod fortify Masada, little dreaming that he was to leave it to the Romans as the very last task in the war against the Jews.”

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Soon after Herod’s death in 4 bce, a Roman garrison took up position at Masada and remained there until 66 ce when, with the outbreak of  the Jewish war, the fortress was captured in a daring surprise attack by a band of  Jewish zealots who held it for the next seven years. When Jerusalem fell in 70, the Roman commander Titus, convinced that it would be dangerously imprudent to allow any Jews to remain unsubdued, even in isolated desert pockets, ordered the elimination of  a ll resistance. Conquered first was Machaerus, the Herodian mountain-top fortress on the northeast side of  the lake where John the Baptist had been beheaded. Then the Romans moved on to Masada, which was not to fall so readily. It took Flavius Silva nearly a year to overpower this final stronghold. The siege ended with the mass suicide of  960 men, women, and children who preferred death at their own hands to capture and enslavement by the Romans. Tristram’s observations give a sense of  what it must have been like to endure the Roman siege: “As I sat astride a projecting rock on the north peak, I could look down from my giddy height, 1,500 feet, on both sides and in front; and yet so clear was the atmosphere, and so extraordinary its power of  conveying sound, that I could carry on conversation with my friends in the camp below, and compare barometers and observations.” It is one thing to be surrounded by eight enemy camps, and for months to contemplate defeat and enslavement, all the while watching the Romans at work on their battering rams and assault ramp. But it is quite another to hear them as well; how much closer the Roman legion must have seemed, how much more imminent vanquishment. “Looking down from the top,” Tristram wrote, “the whole of  t he Dead Sea was spread out as in a map. . . . It was a picture of  stern grandeur and desolate magnificence, perhaps unequalled in the world. All round at our feet we could trace the wall of  circumvallation by which the Romans hopelessly enclosed the devoted garrison. In the plain to the east beneath us, and on the opposite slopes to the west were the Roman camps, with their outlines and walls as distinct as on the day when they were left.” Tristram traveled on down the coast to Mt. Sedom, the six-mile long jagged mound of  salt that is the only topographical feature on the lake’s southern shore. Because the salt is highly erodable, the mountain is

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punctured with caves that at places permit entry deep inside. The air is still, the way dark, but then a sharp breeze signals an opening. Soon light from the sky pours through, and one finds oneself  i n a cathedral-like chamber. Stepping into this so-called chimney is like entering a finely fluted column of  salt and viewing it from the inside. It was formed as millennia of  a nnual rains splattered down on the mountain, wearing it away until a hollow was reached and the chimney opened up. The erosion has also created pinnacles on the mountain’s flank, and they stand out as pillars until eventually washed away and replaced by others. Tradition has it that the most prominent pillar is the petrified remains of  Lot’s wife. “And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said: ‘Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the Plain’. . . . But . . . [Lot’s] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of  salt” (Gen. 19:17, 26). Josephus retold the event in the Antiquities, adding about the pillar, “I have seen it, and it remains at this day.” Unsettled by the claim, which was confirmed by travelers much later, Josephus’ eighteenth-century translator William Whiston admonished sternly in his 1737 edition: “Whether the account that some modern travelers give be true, that it is still standing, I do not know. Its remote situation, at the utmost southern point of  t he Sea of  Sodom, in the wild and dangerous deserts of  A rabia, makes it exceedingly difficult for inquisitive travelers to examine the place. . . . When Christian princes, so called, lay aside their foolish and unchristian wars and quarrels, and send a body of  fit persons to travel over the East . . . we may hope for full satisfaction in such inquiries, but hardly before.” At the beginning of  the nineteenth century, travelers did not doubt that the pillar existed, and they occupied themselves trying to explain it. “There is surely nothing irrational in the idea,” wrote Jolliffe in the 1820s, “that a human creature, when struck by lightning and reduced to a state of  torpor, might be so completely encrusted and wrapped around with the sulphureous matter, as to be indurated into a substance as hard as stone, and assume the appearance of  a pillar or statue.” A few decades later, de Saulcy offered a completely different explanation, a strikingly modest one considering it was he who had claimed to identify Sodom and Gomorrah: “At the moment when the huge mountain was heaved

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Lot’s Wife, overlooking the Dead Sea, from Desert of  the Exodus, part 1, by E. H. Palmer, 1871. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

up volcanically, there must have been throughout its whole extent tremendous falls of  detached masses. . . . Lot’s wife having loitered behind, either through fright or curiosity, was most likely crushed by one of  these descending fragments, and when Lot and his children turned around to look towards the place where she had stopped, they saw nothing but the salt rock which covered her body.” Researchers even well into the twentieth century were interested in the larger question suggested by this particular phenomenon—namely, the origins of  the story that made its way into Genesis. It is generally believed that some kind of  cataclysm may actually have taken place nearly 4,000 years ago, well before the Bible was written, but that so awful was the destruction of  the Cities of  the Plain that memory of  it was retained as part of  oral tradition until it was recorded. Most investigators finally ruled out the possibility of  volcanic destruction (William Albright called

Lot’s Wife, viewed from the Dead Sea, from Narrative of  the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea by William F. Lynch, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

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Destruction of  Sodom, with Lot’s wife looking back. From Liber Cronicarum by Hartmann Schedel (Nürnberg: Anton Koberger), 1493. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

that theory “thoroughly obsolete” in 1924), and the theory developed that the real agent of  devastation was earthquake-provoked explosions of  natural gases that had been seeping out of  the earth under the plain that would become the Dead Sea’s shallow southern basin. Sporadically, over the last half  century or so, a kind of  debate has taken shape concerning the exact location of  the Cities of  the Plain. For a number of  years some investigators had favored the north end of  the Dead Sea as the place they likely occupied, but by the first third of  the twentieth century, opinion was more or less unanimous that the towns probably sat at the southern end. Exactly where, though, was the question; and would remains ever be found? Albright is credited with the 1924 discovery of  Bab edh-Dhra (though he himself  credited Père Mallon), an Early Bronze Age site situated about five hundred feet above the southeast shore of  the lake. To him it was clear, in the absence of  appropriate debris, that Bab edh-Dhra was not a town but had been a place of  summer retreat and that the cities

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themselves had been located on the plain below. He felt that remains would never be found, since the shallowness of  the southern basin meant they would have been leveled by storms or currents. Approximate locations, which he suggested, were the most that could be hoped for. About a decade later, Nelson Glueck expressed agreement with Albright. He assumed that Bab edh-Dhra was abandoned after the cataclysm that wiped out the Cities of  the Plain early in the second millennium bce. Glueck went on to surmise, after an aerial survey of  the region in the mid-1930s revealed no traces of  r uins in the shallow southern basin, that millennia of  saline deposits covered whatever remains there might be. Nothing is quite neat in the field of  archaeology, so it may only have been a matter of  time before Albright and Glueck’s findings were questioned. Some years later, archaeologists Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub were asked to publish the results of  the excavations done in the 1960s by a student of  A lbright, Paul Lapp, who died before completing his work. Examining the nearly empty southern basin in 1973, Rast and Schaub found no remains of  any town—in itself  not a contradiction of  what Glueck had suggested. Yet they had a different idea altogether of  the siting of  Early Bronze Age towns. Their experience had taught them that cities of  that era were generally located at higher elevations, as Bab edh-Dhra was. Surveying the surrounding area, they located four more apparent towns, one of  which, Numeira, they began excavating. Bab edh-Dhra dates back at least to the Early Bronze Age, around 3300 bce. By around 2750 bce, it had grown into a prosperous city of perhaps six hundred inhabitants within ten walled acres, and that many again living outside, which probably resulted in the fortification of  a second city, Numeira. The two towns lasted for around four hundred years, but the last century or so was very unstable. Both sites show partial ruin, rebuilding, then final devastation, with Numeira especially revealing evidence of  swift destruction by fire. One can guess what the tempting conclusion was, and indeed in the more popular Biblical archaeology journals, eager parties leapt to suggest that the Cities of  the Plain had been found. Rast, however, was circumspect, offering the view that the fate of  these towns may be reflected in the Sodom and Gomorrah story, but that their identification as such was a distraction.

December 2014 satellite view, showing the Dead Sea, Jordan River, and Sea of  Galilee. Courtesy of  NASA/Astronaut Barry Wilmore.

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Aerial view of  t he Jordan River twisting its way through lush banks to the Dead Sea, 1929. Courtesy of  Keren Kayemet.

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Tourists crossing the Jordan River in 1894, in From Vermont to Damascus by Adna Brown, Boston, 1895.

Man standing on enormous chunk of  a sphalt cast up from the bottom of  t he Dead Sea. From the Archaeological Institute of  A merica and American Journal of  A rchaeology, early 1930s. Photograph by George S. Blake.

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The American explorer William Francis Lynch, who explored the Jordan River and Dead Sea in 1847–1848. Eleanor S. Brockenborough Library, The Museum of  the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.

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The Dead Sea with Turkish sailing vessel and caravan passing along the shore, circa 1915. Central Zionist Archive.

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Arabs harvesting salt at the Dead Sea, 1917. Central Zionist Archive.

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Mt. Sedom, the six-mile-long salt mountain on the Dead Sea’s southwestern shore. Courtesy of  Keren Kayemet.

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Salt formations in the Dead Sea, formed as the water evaporates in shallow areas. Courtesy of  Keren Kayemet.

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Recent view of  t he much diminished Jordan River. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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Recent aerial view of  t he Dead Sea shore, showing recession and sinkholes. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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Sinkhole threatening a Jordanian farm. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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Recent view of  t he Dead Sea shore, showing vast recession. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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In his journey of  1863, Tristram was prevented by the complications of  tribal territorial control from going around the Dead Sea as he wished. It would be another decade before his dream of  exploring the eastern side, the Biblical land of  Moab, would be realized. Tristram was the last major explorer to work alone at the Dead Sea, and his later work, The Fauna and Flora of  Palestine, was done in conjunction with the Palestine Exploration Fund’s survey of  Palestine. The PEF came into the fore by the late 1860s, and from then on, most of  the names associated with Dead Sea research were connected to it. Tristram’s travels marked the end of  the transition period and inaugurated the very sophisticated era of  the Fund, whose story continues, for our purposes, through 1913, a year that can be said to mark the close of  the nineteenth century. The outbreak of  the First World War resulted in a suspension of  scientific activity in the Holy Land, and the war, bringing the dissolution of  the Ottoman Empire, marked the beginning of  a new, different era under the British. There are reasons why the second half  of  the nineteenth century saw a shift from the Dead Sea itself  to its surroundings. Just so much could be accomplished with the tools available in those days; after Lynch did his thorough soundings, there was not much to add until new equipment was developed. Further, the curiosity of  explorers was insatiable; once access to the region was offered, travelers ardently pursued routes into every hidden corner, detective-like seeking their past. Yet the lake was a powerful magnet, and gradually attention was once again turned to it, as a new project that promised to yield further clues to the mysterious life of  the sea caught the imagination of  explorers. It was no secret that the Dead Sea did not maintain a constant level but rose and fell, sometimes sharply, from season to season as well as from year to year. In 1855, William Allen proposed a systematic study of  the lake’s level in connection with his idea of  a Mediterranean–Jordan River–Dead Sea–Red Sea canal. Evidence suggested that the lake was in a state of  equilibrium, but Allen was worried it might be slowly falling. As we will see, in his day and for the next half  century, the opposite was the case. A year after Allen’s proposal, a member of  Britain’s Royal Geographic Society recommended that the Society undertake to determine the relation of  inflow to evaporation, but again, no project was initiated.

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For years, travelers had traded stories about certain landmarks being submerged or reemerging, and in an effort to prevent the exchange from being wasted, a member of  the Palestine Exploration Fund went down to the Dead Sea in 1874, fixed piles for measuring, and in the next issue of  the Fund’s Quarterly Statement requested that travelers report any observations made with regard to them. Though not very reliable an approach, it did mark the first attempt to devise a system for measurement. At the same time, another member of  the PEF set graduated poles by the lake’s edge, but they were stolen before anyone could report on the extent of  their submersion. Such was the state of  a ffairs at the turn of  t he century, when someone suggested that a rock in the vicinity of  Ein Fashkhah be designated for long-term observation. Taking up the idea, a PEF scientist went down in 1900 in search of  something suitable. At the only break in the thick reeds between Ein Fashkhah and Ras Fashkhah, a promontory two miles south of  t he oasis, he chose what is still known as the PEF rock, a huge boulder at that time protruding twenty feet out of  t he water, next to which was a smaller rock convenient for standing on. The rock, rediscovered by Ze’ev Vilnay shortly after the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, was slightly sloped, which meant that the tape could not be dropped exactly perpendicularly, but it was as good and near a one as they could find, and they turned back to Jericho to find a stone mason. The nineinch line he cut was fourteen feet above the lake’s surface, and under it the letters PEF were carved, the mason having been successful on his second attempt, as one can still see. From that point, Edward Masterman—he who told parts of  Costigan’s and Molyneux’s stories—took over, and his name became synonymous with observation of  the lake’s level. For the next thirteen years he came down twice annually to read and report on the sea’s seasonal and annual variations. Masterman turned the sea-gazing that had been practiced in an interested but haphazard way for decades into a matter of  serious scientific inquiry which has been carried out intermittently to this day. There were three points of  reference by which European travelers, with the help of  their Arab guides—who had lived all their lives in the region and knew the Dead Sea most intimately—could gauge its fluctua-

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tions, and it was to these that most of  them referred in their accounts. The first, at the northern end of  the sea, is today a barely recognizable heap of  stones lying at least a quarter of  a mile from the water’s edge. Called by the Arabs Rujm el-Bahr—castings of  the sea (Maganit HaMelah in Hebrew)—the mound of  rocks, originally assembled as a port probably in the eighth or seventh century bce, was either a peninsula or an island throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, though at times it was completely submerged and at other times sat on the beach. The incidental notes kept by travelers become of  g reat use in tracing the vicissitudes of  Rujm el-Bahr. In 1807, Seetzen noted that it was a peninsula connected to the shore by a narrow strip of  land, but his Bedouin guides told him that just ten years earlier it had been an island, the neck of  land submerged. If  his guides were correct, and they generally were, then it would seem that the level of  the lake was falling in the early part of  the nineteenth century. Other travelers confirmed that the point remained a peninsula for a few decades; Lynch saw it as such in 1848, as did de Saulcy two years later. But de Saulcy also noted that the isthmus connecting it to the mainland was covered with shallow water. Apparently he was the last European to see Rujm el-Bahr as a peninsula; by the mid-1850s the connecting strip was no longer visible, though the water could still be forded. For the next several years the isthmus was alternately visible and not, until the slow rise gained force. Tristram had easily forded the water in 1858, but in 1864 he was not able to. Arabs guiding a PEF party assured them that the isthmus had been submerged for twelve to fifteen years. Into the 1880s a hearty few swam out to the island, but in 1892, after several successive years of  heavy rains, it disappeared altogether. Just after the turn of  the century, the island was apparently so far underwater that Masterman could find no evidence of  it whatsoever. It could not be denied that the level seemed to have risen considerably, at least at the northern end of  the lake. But there were always the skeptical few who clung to the possibility that the lake’s bottom had risen or that the island had sunk, giving the appearance of  a rise. Unlikely as it may seem, the notion could not be automatically ruled out, for there was enough seismic activity in the valley to lend some credence to their hypothesis. It happens not to have been the case, as most were convinced

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early on, but the suggestion made for a stimulating exchange in the pages of  the PEF journal. The second landmark by which the rise or fall of  the sea could be watched was the causeway that had existed at certain times throughout history between the Lisan Peninsula and the western shore of  the Dead Sea. The lake consists of  t wo basins that were almost completely separated by the broad peninsula, the straits separating it from the western shore named after Lynch by a nineteenth-century German geographer. The straits were at times shallow enough to be forded, and there were also times when the very shallow southern basin probably did not exist; indeed, as scholars have pointed out, there is a good deal of  historical evidence to suggest that well beyond Biblical times the Dead Sea was limited to its northern basin. In the Book of  Joshua, the territory of  Judah is said to extend from the “tongue” (i.e., peninsula) southwards; the valley of  salt referred to in both Samuel and Kings is probably the empty southern basin; and the sixth-century Madaba map shows only one basin. Seetzen was prevented by high water from crossing the straits in 1807, but five years later, Burckhardt learned that a drop in the level made it possible—a sequence in accordance with what had been reported about the northern end of  the lake. Irby and Mangles’ famous reference to a caravan crossing means it was still possible to ford in 1818, but since then no one seems to have been able to. Tristram’s guide on his trip in the mid1870s pointed out the place where he used to ford as a youth, sixty years before. And though by 1910 there was no trace at all of  any way across, a Bedouin guiding one explorer assured him of  the same thing, “that when the hair first appeared on his face, it was so narrow that the people of  his tribe used to sit on the edge of  the Lisan and parley with Arabs from the west as to the return of  cattle that had been stolen by one or other of  the parties,” and that in his youth, large caravans of  camels and mules used to be driven across. The third geographical touchstone was a path that ran in front of Mt. Sedom and which was used by all those who wished to avoid climbing or circling the mountain. Between 1838 and 1855, all the maps drawn by various explorers showed a wide beach running between the mountain and the sea. It now seems inconceivable that there were also times when no path existed, for today a paved road runs the same route, with

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plenty of  room to spare on either side. In 1890, it was still possible to squeeze in front of  the mountain, but in the next decade the water crept up so close that passage was cut off. If  we recall that 1892 is given as the year of  Rujm el-Bahr’s disappearance, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the lake experienced a considerable rise in the last two thirds of  the nineteenth century. Those who had entertained the notion that the lake’s bottom might have been thrust upwards were slowly silenced, their views gradually fading from the pages of  the Fund’s journal. The discussion of  the lake’s level, carried on each quarter in the PEF’s journal, lasted many years and drew numerous speculators and scientists. But no participant had as much authority as Masterman, who filed his first lengthy report a year and a half  a fter the rock was chosen and engraved. In light of  where it now sits—about twenty feet above the far side of  the road that runs parallel to the Dead Sea—it is odd to read his description of  the difficulties his party had merely in reaching the site. Forced to leave their horses at Ein Fashkhah, they proceeded part of  the way along a trail, skipping the rest of  the way rock-to-rock. All westerly breezes were shut off  by the mountains, he wrote, making that part of  the trip, in the sweltering heat, extremely taxing. A truly perpendicular rock might have been found a little further south, but he confessed it would not be worth it, for any longer a hike would have been unendurable. To compensate for the imperfection, he vowed to take extra care with his measurements and to drop the weighted tape several times to be sure of  his readings. Though the rise in his first year of  observation was smaller than many had supposed it would be, it was indisputable that there had been a general rise of  about twenty feet in the last decades. Further, the rise toward the end of  that period must have been sudden as well as substantial; on the southeast shore, trees, hunting grounds, and farmland had all been inundated, suggesting that the lake rose to a height not achieved in many decades. In 1913, having completed more than a decade of  observation, Masterman drew his project to a close and filed a final report with the PEF. Correlating his readings with a record of  rainfall that had been kept in Jerusalem since 1861, he concluded that the overall rise of  the last decades did have to do with increased rainfall. But he quickly added that even all of  his findings together could not relate the whole story. He assumed that

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the influence of  snow on Mt. Hermon, at whose base the Jordan River originates, must also be great. (One cannot help but recall Burchard, who in the year 1280 or so had written, “At times this sea overflows, owing to the melting of  the snow on Lebanon and the other mountains,” as well as the flooding of  tributary rivers and rain.) Not only was volume an important factor, Masterman suggested, but so was melting time. That is, a cold spring would delay the melting of  the snow, so that the amount of  water pouring into the Jordan and finally into the Dead Sea late in the season would be much greater than when the snow melted early. Obviously a late flooding of  the Jordan would also delay the onset of  the lake’s annual shrinkage by some weeks. These circumstances (or their reverse) would of  course have affected Masterman’s readings, but his measurements were taken at the same time every year regardless of  climatic conditions in the north. Masterman’s speculation was wellfounded, and the variables he named, as well as temperature and winds, are important to anyone drawing conclusions about the lake’s fluctuations. But nuances aside, the foremost fact is that the lake experienced a very considerable rise in the last part of  the nineteenth century, a rise that held until the 1930s, when the lake’s fortunes were reversed and the recession that continues to this day began. Trees that were lost under the encroaching water finally reappeared in the 1960s, and their salt-encased trunks and branches told the graphic story of  where they had been. After 1913, no regular measurements were taken until 1927. In the early 1960s, the level was estimated, based on new readings, to be more than seventeen feet lower than when Masterman began his observations, which meant a drop of  about thirty-seven feet from its high point near the turn of  the century. The PEF rock had been unusable—stranded too far from the water’s edge—since 1935. A relic of  the lake’s recent history, it is also a kind of  modest monument to those whose energies were spent writing that history. The second half  century of  exploration ended quietly, not with the immediate resonance of  the first half, but with a subtle, prolonged echo of  its own. It was a less spectacular half  than the first, but not less fruitful; and tedious though some of  the work might have been, the results were every bit as exciting as the century’s early years had forecast. The

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time had been devoted to exploring the ancient sites around the Dead Sea and studying the flora and fauna of  the valley; then attention shifted back to the lake itself, as Masterman, and others less remembered but not less dedicated, strove to understand the life of  this slowly revealed body of  water. Some of  the PEF explorers, those connected to research at the Dead Sea and those who pursued their work elsewhere in Palestine, went on to greater dramas. Kitchener appeared in Khartoum; Lawrence went on to Arabia. Many others would never be known beyond the pages of  the geographic journals to which they contributed. But together, over the course of  the century, the adventurers and eccentrics, explorers and scientists, illuminated one of  the world’s darkest bodies of  water, lifting from it the shroud of  superstition that had consigned it to a place in pilgrims’ texts and exposing its beauty and wonder.

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Part thr e e

Origins and Evolution In all my wanderings I have never seen anything so likely, on a cursory view, to create belief  in preternatural agency. Yet by degrees, and most involuntarily . . . impressions and features seemed forced upon me, as bearing the indubitable stamp of  natural and progressive action.

William Allen The Dead Sea: A New Route to India 1855

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fou r

The Life of  a Lake

• Only with great effort can we project ourselves far enough back in

time to reconstruct the earlier years of  our planet. Few are supplied with such natural elasticity of  imagination, and the mind resists the elaborate stretching exercises it is called on to undertake. Yet geological history requires this extension, for only when we are thinking comfortably in terms of  millions of  years can we begin to visualize how the configurations of  the earth came to be. What we may customarily refer to as sudden and dramatic upheavals that altered the earth’s surface forever were indeed dramatic, but sudden only in the way that a few hundred thousand years in the course of  several billion may be considered so. Our sense of  time is gradually altered as we stand by the shore of  the Dead Sea and consider the creation and evolution of  this comparatively young lake, one of  the youngest important bodies of  water on earth. Eons of  geological history are exposed in the sharp cliffs that tower over it, and we are asked to imagine figures such as a hundred million years as we extend back to its ancestry. We work our way slowly from there into the more manageable five million year range. Before we know it we have arrived at the era of  its immediate predecessor, a mere 60,000 years ago, a figure with which we can feel quite at home. The Dead Sea itself  is probably only about 12,000 years old, and so expanded has our sense of  time become that its birth seems now to crowd the history of  human civilization, which began roughly around the same time at, from all indications, nearby Jericho. Abraham’s migration somewhere in the second millennium bce, marking the advent of  western religions, seems within this context as accessible as our own childhoods, and the Byzantine period, 131

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which saw the last extensive settlement at the Dead Sea until this past century, strikes us as not just recent, but virtually contemporary. The alteration in our perception of  time is startling. As the antique becomes familiar and ancient civilizations merge with our own, the brevity of  human history is emphasized and the unity of  our species seems attainable. Pinpointing the origins of  the present day Dead Sea is to some extent arbitrary. Every process that might be identified as the beginning was caused by something else, and at some point we have to cast aside the past and define a place as broadly acceptable as possible. The time most often chosen as having seen the beginnings of  the processes that would prepare the way for the Dead Sea millions of  years later is in the Cretaceous period, which ended 65 million years ago, following the extinction of  the dinosaur and the division of  the earth’s land mass into continents. Over the course of  many millions of  years, the single mass that made up the earth’s land surface was redistributed, as the plates that modern geology has learned make up the earth’s crust began moving. The earth experienced severe seismic disturbances, and the period was characterized by the leveling of  old mountains and the raising of  new ones, as well as by the inundation of  vast tracts of  land by the sea. It is the events that make up this scenario that ultimately led to the birth of  the Dead Sea. The movement of  land masses and their flooding by the ocean, processes that would determine both the configuration and composition of  the region for eons to come, were not isolated phenomena but were in keeping with world-wide geological events of  the age. It was probably then, in the late Cretaceous, that the Arabian land mass began to move northward away from Africa, splitting the earth in a hairline fracture that ran from Africa to Turkey, eventually opening up the Red Sea, and passing between today’s Israel and Jordan from the Gulf  of  Eilat north through the Aravah Valley and the Dead Sea, continuing up the Jordan Valley, through the Sea of  Galilee and the Huleh Valley. In its early stages, this part of  the tear in the earth’s surface was a shallow depression that was periodically filled in. But gradually, with the continued slow movement north of  the Arabian block—about sixty miles in all by our day—a modest trench became outlined. That trench became substantial enough to hold a lake only around three mil-

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lion years ago, when the northward movement of  the Arabian Peninsula shifted to the east, pulling open the valley. By that time, the earth had matured through eons of  adolescence and had experienced many of  the serious traumas that would make of  it the planet we know today. The valley, though not as deep as it would become, had pretty much acquired its present shape. Slow then was the creation of  the Great Rift Valley, or Syrian–African Rift, a valley stretching 3,700 miles from eastern Africa’s Zambezi Valley to the Taurus Mountains of  Turkey. The Great Rift, which looks in satellite photographs like nothing more than a slight scar, is not one continuous valley but rather a chain of  basins loosely strung together and of  varying depths and ages. When it initially opened, it was as though a wedge were being driven slowly up the plain, the force of  it opening one gap after another, some of  the earlier ones being filled in as new ones came into being. The long narrow fissure that cuts through what are now mountains, crosses stretches of  land that have become deserts, and passes through the open sea, and whose deepest inland section contains the Dead Sea, reveals the stele-like engraved evidence of  the processes that have marked the maturation of  our planet in the last few million years. To the observant non-scientist, the lines of  the tablet are as distinguishable as to the scientist, though the language is beyond his grasp. “To one traveling along that dreary road [south of  the Dead Sea],” wrote John Stephens, “every step opens a new page in the great book of  Nature.” A decade later, Lynch would scan the same pages and write: “All our observations have impressed me forcibly with the conviction that the mountains are older than the sea.” All the major expeditions included a geologist, but it was not until late in the nineteenth century that a specifically geological mission was undertaken. The foremost geologist of  the time was the PEF’s Edward Hull, whose 1883 journey resulted in two major works, one of  which concentrated on the geology of  Palestine. Though much of  his reasoning was later proven faulty, Hull’s work is important to anyone wishing to trace the evolution of  geological theory concerning the Dead Sea valley and the Aravah. The east and west sides of  t he Dead Sea valley differ surprisingly given the fact that they are only six to twelve miles apart. The exposures

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—that is the visible rock formations—are much older on the east. The igneous rocks, one of  t he main components of  the earth’s surface, are covered with the 400 million year old red Nubian sandstone that has made the mountains of  Moab famous for their beauty. The western cliffs are not as high as the eastern ones, and their brown exposures of chalk, limestone, and dolomite date back only to the initial opening of  the Rift. The visual discrepancy is unavoidable, and so impressive that one of  t he first questions a traveler is likely to ask is how it came to be. The answer lies in the very forces that created the Rift Valley; if  we look on the west side for a match of  the reddish sandstone mountains of  the east, we do find it—but not directly across the lake. Rather, the mate is to be found sixty miles south, the distance being evidence of  the movement of  the Arabian Peninsula, movement that continues at its slow but inexorable pace. The last important movement in the Rift Valley took place in the geological period immediately preceding ours, during which time the valley continued to sink. Familiarly called the Great Ice Age, the Pleistocene was an epoch of  glacial periods and interglacial thaws alternating over a large part of  the earth. Every time the ice melted, perhaps four times in all, soil would reappear on the cold planet, bringing with it vegetation in these interim periods, each of  which lasted around 200,000 years. Areas south of  where the ice sheets spread reveal traces of  lakes where today there are none, as well as evidence that certain extant lakes were once much larger. All of  this suggests that those regions experienced periods of  intense precipitation and a low rate of  evaporation; it is believed that these pluvials coincided with the ice ages of  colder regions, and that the lakes shrank during the interglacials, when the climate turned dry. This cycle of  the expansion and contraction of  lakes characterized the Pleistocene in warm regions and is important in the evolution of  the lakes in the valley. Before any lake existed there, another process was taking place that would have the most pronounced effect on the composition of  the Dead Sea valley. As the rift opened around three million years ago, the Mediterranean washed inland down to the Jordan Valley in a bay-like extension. The bay’s story is one of  a lternating penetration and recession that lasted hundreds of  thousands of  years. The climate was dry and the rate

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of  evaporation high, ideal conditions for the precipitation of  salt, which sank to the lowest point in the basin, the part that would one day be occupied by the Dead Sea. Eventually, probably around two million years ago, the connection with the sea came to an end, perhaps because the valley’s further subsidence left high land as interference. From then on, both the level and salinity of  whatever lake occupied the closed depression would be determined by the relationship between inflow and evaporation. But though the link to the ocean was a thing of  the past, a permanent mark on the Dead Sea valley remained—a bed of  salt that drilling has established to be almost two miles thick, and which could be twice that. The story of  this salt deposit continued as the dry period during which it was accumulated turned humid. When flooding began, enormous quantities of  rock and sand were washed down into the basin, where they settled on the salt bed. As the floods continued, the new layer—at least a mile deep—grew thicker and heavier, until the rock salt was softened by the great pressure. Squeezed against the sides of  the basin, it sought an escape through faults and began to seep upwards, eventually floating all the way to the surface of  the lake under which it had lain. Geologists explain the effect in terms of  a bucket of  mud into which a large flat stone is placed, forcing the mud to creep up the sides of  the pail. In this case, the “mud” became on one side the Lisan Peninsula, whose cliffs may rise as much as 150 feet, and on the other side Mt. Sedom, later thrust up to 600 feet high. The mountain is composed of  a core of  solid rock salt, and its nearly vertical stratifications—very different from the horizontal ones found in most mountains—attest to this origin of  intense pressure. But we are now somewhat ahead of  the story of  the Dead Sea itself, as the raising of  Mt. Sedom came late, coinciding with the last important movement in the depression. There have been a number of  lakes to occupy the deepest section of  t he Great Rift, but little is known of  t he very early ones. Investigators believe that they ran the whole spectrum from fresh to hyper-saline, and they think that in the not too distant past, around 100,000 years ago, the lake that was formed by a return to a humid period was a freshwater one. Whether it was a single lake or a system of  smaller ones is not clear, but this so-called Samra extended the length of  t he Jordan Valley. When the rains that created it stopped, it became increasingly

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saline and was converted, by virtue of  this change in composition, into the important Lisan Lake, the immediate precursor of  the Dead Sea. The rains returned, and the young Lisan grew enormously, stretching far beyond the territory that would be covered by its successor. Extending at its maximum from beyond Tiberias in the north to Hatseva in the south (further than the southern limit of  the Dead Sea), the Lisan was six times as long as the Dead Sea and, though it was probably not as deep, had a volume of  water four to five times as great. During the first part of  the lake’s existence, torrents of  water raged down the mountains, joining the rains that poured into it. The low rate of  evaporation was nowhere equal to the task of  countering the inflow, and the lake rose to a height of  660 feet higher than the Dead Sea is today. The evidence of  this may be found in the cliffs. In the long ago postpluvial summers, when evaporation was very high, aragonite, a white mineral, precipitated to the lake’s bottom in a thin layer. In the winters, floods washed down clay and small fragments of  stones that also settled to the bottom in a thin brownish layer. After thousands of  years of  seasonal cycles that must have been much more extreme than today’s, the bottom of  the lake had come to consist of  a thick bed of  this thinly laminated marl, its white layers clearly distinguishable from the brown. As the lake shrank, its floor was exposed, and the laminated deposits left by its recession have been found in the cliffs as high up as 660 feet. Spread from the Sea of  Galilee in the north to Hatseva in the south in the shape of  flat-topped hills as much as 100 feet high or more, this so-called Lisan Formation may be the single most distinguishing feature of  the Jordan Valley. It is proof  of  the great length of  the Lisan Lake and is accepted as irrefutable evidence that it once swept the shores at extraordinary heights. The Lisan Lake reached this high level about 23,000 years ago, after which an arid period caused it to plunge to a level well beneath the current level of  the Dead Sea. Although some of  t he lowering was caused by subsidence rather than actual shrinkage, dramatic changes in the climate had unmistakably taken place. The reduction in inflow and escalation of  the evaporation rate were such that the mammoth prehistoric phenomenon came close to disappearing about 18,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that at one time it was as low as 2,100 feet below sea

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level, more than one and a half  times lower than the Dead Sea. Exploration of  the Dead Sea floor has revealed valleys cut into the sediment. These valleys were once the wadis that carried whatever flood water there was down the slopes and into the sea. The only way they could have been cut was if  t he lake had been for a period of  time as low as the now submerged river beds. During this severe recession of  the Lisan, its two major basins were exposed. The northern Beit Shean basin today contains the Sea of  Galilee, and from the end of  the Lisan period ceased to be connected with the evolution of  the Dead Sea. The other basin would come to hold the Dead Sea, a lake differing greatly both in size and composition from its predecessor. As the composition of  the Lisan distinguished it from its freshwater parent, so the slow development of  the Dead Sea’s singular composition would mark another turning of  the generations. The approximate age of  12,000 years that has been assigned to the Dead Sea roughly coincides with these two foremost factors—the confinement of  the post-Lisan Lake to a vastly smaller area, and the markedly different composition once that basin refilled. In addition, its great depth (some 1,000 feet) may be attributed to further tearing of  the valley’s floor, a process that filled those interim millennia. Like the Lisan Lake, the Dead Sea has been prone to quick and severe level changes. (On both the east and west sides of  the lake, one can see the horizontal lines that mark prehistoric shorelines.) But although its level varied considerably over the years, the lake was in a relative state of  equilibrium, for the huge water loss it experienced through evaporation was compensated for by inflow from various sources. The primary source, contributing sixty percent of  a ll the replacement water, was until the 1960s the Jordan River. But the largest contributor now (taking into account annual variations) is winter flooding, and we should perhaps look at the Dead Sea environment in order to understand its phenomenal influence. The lake lies in a desert that occupies the eastern flank of  the Judean Mountains, which run north and south through the central portion of Israel. The Judean Desert is not part of  the belt that includes the Sahara, Sinai, Negev, and Arabian deserts. Rather, it is a rainshadow desert;

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its situation on the lee side of  the mountains, where it is shielded from most of  the moisture-bearing winds that come off  the Mediterranean, is responsible for its aridity. Jerusalem, some 3,000 feet above sea level, receives an average of  t wenty-five inches of  precipitation annually, but when the rain clouds descend into the valley, they are warmed and in effect dehydrated; thus the northern end of  the Dead Sea receives only four inches. Once the clouds reform and scale the Moab Mountains, they are cooled, showering the eastern range as they had showered the west. Only the Dead Sea basin itself  remains dry. The rain that falls on Jerusalem and the surrounding hills runs a slippery course down to the valley. The Judean Mountains, composed of  limestone, are fairly impervious to water. Most of  the rain is not absorbed but slides down the slopes and pours into the lake in a quantity that long accounted for more than half  its replacement water. Jerusalem may be only nineteen miles away from the Dead Sea, but its 3,000 foot elevation, coupled with the near 1,400 foot depth of  the Dead Sea depression, means that the winter floods are plunging well over 4,000 feet in the space of  those nineteen miles. It is not hard to imagine what has been happening in the region for thousands of  years. The erosion of  the eastern slopes of  the Judean Hills has produced a network of  canyons that laces the mountains’ flank. If  the Judean Desert is characterized by anything, it is by these deeply incised canyons that have been carved as the seasonal floods pound their way down to the lake. “The mind is lost in the bewildering extent of  past geological eras,” wrote Tristram as he studied one gorge, “when we try to conceive the length of  time that must have elapsed since the furious torrents of  the once watered hills tore down that ravine, and ploughed through the flinty rocks.” The dry river beds (wadi in Arabic, nahal in Hebrew) provide the most striking contrasts with the desert. The same floods that have engraved them into the hills support a vast array of  plant and animal life, and the rainy season brings on a short-lived but brilliant burst of  color that extends, scrappy but distinct, well into the long dry summer. Only those wadis that are spring-fed retain their streams throughout the year. The rest run dry by early summer, but lone bushes scattered in uneven rows across the desert persist to mark their courses, stubborn evidence of  the will to exist.

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Winter is another matter. It is too easy to be deceived by the gentle brooks. The weather is perfect for hiking, and nothing could be more pleasant than wading in the streams rather than walking the tentative route along the cliffs. Yet it is a temptation that should be resisted, for the desert is prone to flash floods of  stunning and sudden power. If  it rains in the Judean Mountains, a flood can materialize with no advance warning, crashing through the wadis with a force that rips boulders from the hillsides and slices chunks from the asphalt road below. The tell-tale rumble often comes too late for any possible escape, and nearly every year a hiker is carried away by the unpredictable and unforgiving torrent. The force of  the torrent is greatest toward the mouth of  the wadi, not only because of  the obvious accumulation in volume and increase in speed, but also because of  a particular feature that characterizes all the ten to fifteen wadis on the Dead Sea’s western shore. Each wadi typically has what is called a dry waterfall, a formation that looks exactly as its name suggests. About a mile in from its mouth the river course is interrupted by a severe break. (The few wadis on the west side that have springs have actual waterfalls, but most of  them are only seasonal and are thus called dry.) The dry waterfalls were all created by erosion, and although they vary in age, they have a common origin; their creation was made possible by the subsidence of  the basin when the valley snapped off  at a point of  weakness and sank further down. Most of  the wadis have one or two sheer breaks of  this sort. It is not known why, but the dry waterfall of  Wadi Daraja, north of  Ein Gedi, is broken into fifteen or twenty smaller but formidable steps that make for an exciting—but difficult and dangerous—hiker’s descent. Although the wadis have been created by water flowing down the channels for thousands of  years, their mouths have changed since the Dead Sea basin began to subside. They were initially sketched in preLisan days, so that when the Lisan came into being and rose nearly 700 feet higher than the present-day Dead Sea, the channels were already actual river beds. A constant flow of  water passed through them, carrying large amounts of  sediment that accumulated on the lake floor. As the Lisan shrank, the deltas that had been underwater were exposed, and the broad mounds of  sediment obstructed the courses, forcing the streams to find new routes to the lake. As the desiccation continued, the ancient

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deltas were left stranded; they can still be discerned as high as 600 feet above the Dead Sea (Kibbutz Ein Gedi, situated part way up the cliff, may actually be sitting on one of  them). Deltas can be found at the mouth of  every wadi, where the stoneladen floods fanned out just as they reached the sea and deposited the broad mounds of  sediment. To be exact, those mounds are usually not deltas, but alluvial fans, a close relative. Both are formed when a wadi course levels off  and the energy of  the water flow is diffused, causing the stream and its sediment to spread out. They differ from one another not in appearance but in origin; a delta is built up gradually by a perennial flow of  water, while a fan accumulates only seasonally. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a modern delta on the west side of  the Dead Sea, for none of  the major streams is perennial. On the eastern side there are actual deltas, but they are less pronounced because of  the much greater water depth there (a consequence of  the rift’s main fault line being off  center). The relationship of  the wadis to the cliffs is most apparent from a boat. One can see the fans extending into the lake, each raised, green-flecked promontory resembling a spread freckled hand. The wadis themselves look like notches that have been chiseled into stone, and they are generally distinct enough to be easily counted; if  a break in the cliff  is not apparent, a sprinkling of  g reen is unmistakable. One’s sense of  proportion is altered by this vantage point. Despite the marked recession of  the sea in recent decades, the cliffs seem to meet the water in a perpendicular line. One has no impression at all of  shore flats, though they are ample; the primary impression is that of  being at the bottom of  a deep, steepsided basin, and the feeling of  its immutability is powerful. Although the wadis along the western side of  the Dead Sea were much frequented and fully appreciated by travelers of  the nineteenth century, long-standing, if  tacit, consensus had it that the two most magnificent gorges were to be found on the east. Few explorers actually entered the Wadi Mojib, directly across from Ein Gedi, but several described it from a distance. Those who went close were awed by its perpendicular walls of  red sandstone, a mere hundred feet apart at 1,600 feet up, with palm trees growing from cracks overhead.

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Lynch was one of  the first to sail between the towering cliffs, noting that the chasm ran in a straight line for 150 yards, then bent gracefully to the southeast. The water was not very deep—between four and ten feet—and they remarked, from having seen traces of  an Arab camp, that there must be some way down to the ravine. He spent only one evening examining the canyon, perhaps because one crew member’s health signaled a possible outbreak of  the fever that had “heretofore attacked all who had ventured upon this sea.” Still, when his troubled eye scanned the Mojib, it was arrested in spite of  itself. In the single page he devoted to the canyon he managed at least to hint at its splendor, observing that the cliffs were “all worn by the winter rains into the most fantastic forms, not unlike Egyptian architecture. It was difficult to realize that some were not the work of  art.” Twenty-five years later, in his careful exploration of  the eastern side of  the Dead Sea, Tristram described his approach from the plain above: “The rolling slopes come close to the precipitous descent, the plain being perfectly level on either side, breaking away abruptly in limestone precipices to a great depth. No idea of  the rift can be formed till the very edge is reached. . . . The boulders have rolled down the slopes in wild, fantastic confusion, and add much to the effect and grandeur. . . . An almond-tree was in full blossom near the top; tufts of  asphodel and gorgeous scarlet anemones [pushed] out among the stones.” Tristram made the difficult descent to the mouth of  the river, probably the first European to do so, and he planned to return to follow its course back between the narrow canyon walls. To his regret he was never able to. North of  the Mojib is the Wadi Zerka Ma’in, the outlet of  the famed hot springs of  Callirhoe. At the beginning of  the nineteenth century, a traveling companion of  I rby and Mangles watched in amazement as their Arab guide took “a vapour-bath” above the water, which itself  was too hot to touch: “Over a crevice, whence issued one of  the springs, a bed of  t wigs and broom was laid, at a distance of  about a foot from the water, upon which he placed himself  . . . and remained . . . for several minutes.” Pliny described the Greek-named spring as “remarkable for its medicinal qualities, and which, by its name (i.e., fine stream or fairflowing), indicates the celebrity its waters have gained.” Indeed, the hot baths had been attracting a hopeful clientele for centuries, none more

Wadi Mojib, from Narrative of  the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea by William F. Lynch, 1849. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  Israel, Jerusalem.

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famous than King Herod, who made the pilgrimage just before his death in 4 bce, counting on the therapeutic waters to cure him of  h is agony. The irrepressibly moralistic Thomas Fuller would recall Herod’s futile effort when he described “two springs of  contrary natures. One hot and sweet, the other cold and bitter. Both which meeting together make a most excellent Bath, cordiall for several diseases. As if  nature would thereby lesson us, that moderation, wherein extremities agree, is the best cure for all distempers. These waters are approved excellent for the contraction of  the nerves, either inwardly taken, or outwardly applied. Herod the king being sick . . . was hither directed in vain by his physitians, the water refusing to be guilty of  such a Tyrants recovery. . . . And now what pity is it that such precious water should presently be spilt into the Dead Sea! But what remedy? Fair and foul faces must meet together in the grave.” For Tristram, the Zerka Ma’in rivaled the Mojib in grandeur. As he descended near the famous baths, he was enchanted by the gnarled and contorted iron-red rock, the tall palms and dense undergrowth, the hidden stream given away only by “the bright cascades leaping down the rocks.” In the three-mile wide plain, Tristram counted ten springs ranging in temperature from ambient to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and from mildly to hyper-sulphurous. Once he reached the bottom, Tristram stood at the mouth of  the gorge and looked back: “Picture a wild ravine,” he recommended, and went on to describe the six hundred foot high rugged red cliffs, the water rushing to the sea, its course fringed by emerald maiden-hair fern all the way. The consummate scientist, Tristram was by his own admission susceptible to seduction by “less scientific propensities.” What a scene he paints as he and his companions try to make their way back up the gorge: “Now leaping, with guns slung on our shoulders, from rock to rock; now stumbling among boulders, up to the hips in the warm water of  t he dashing stream; now struggling through tangled jungle; now climbing slopes of  rotten debris that looked impassable a few minutes before; now crawling up a jagged rock on hands and feet; at length we reached a point, on a shelf  at a dizzy height above the stream, where we had just room to stand. . . . A short rest, and another tremendous climb was before us. Alas! the folly of  attempting such a feat as heavily weighted as an

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unfortunate British soldier on a march, with gun, pistol-belt, compasscase, field-glass, powder, two shot-belts, bowie knife and cartridge case, flask, and other impedimenta on one’s person.” His hiking was apparently not nearly as nimble as his prose, as he recounts his travails negotiating the terrain: “Now, to have one’s head-gear repeatedly abstracted by some thorny creeper, and to be in danger of  plunging headlong into a lake the temperature of  120° Fahr., as you clutch convulsively at the excrescences of  a n overhanging rock, which are provokingly rounded and smooth, is somewhat trying at the end of  a day of  eleven hours under an eastern sun.” The wadis of  the eastern side of  the Dead Sea are not only less accessible than those of  the west, since the broad headlands with coves and beaches soon give way to the sheer cliffs, they are also more fertile than those across the lake, and Tristram was perpetually thrilled with what he found. “We pass the crest,” he wrote from his vantage point high in the cliff, “and are treated with another series of  landscapes of  bewildering grandeur; while at our feet every black [i.e., basalt] boulder is framed in the loveliest flowers—a setting, springing one can hardly see whence, and living one can hardly think how. Geraniums, iris, ranunculus, red poppy, and composite plants of  endless variety . . . delight us all, and glut Haynes’ collecting cases.” As we saw, the lives of  Costigan and Molyneux might have been saved by the drinkable, if  not tasty, water they could have found at any of  the springs along the lakeshore. Perhaps they underestimated the danger of  going without water. We know that Molyneux was reluctant to land on hostile shores, but Costigan, according to his servant, slept on the beach nearly every night and could not have avoided spotting some tell-tale verdure. For the springs are not hidden, and it is their very accessibility that provokes puzzlement over what seems to have been the explorers’ unnecessary misery. Most of  the numerous springs of  the Dead Sea valley are located at low points, at the bottom of  wadis or along the shore, and all of  them are connected to the fault line of  the Rift. The springs on the western shore range in temperature from cool to very warm; those on the east, being much closer to the main fault line, are generally a good deal hotter. There is also considerable variation in the nature of  the spring water. The

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Eastern shore of  t he Dead Sea, from The Land of  Moab by Henry Baker Tristram, 1874. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

chemical composition of  each is determined by several factors: how long the water has been trapped underground; how deep its point of  issue; the type of  rock over which the water passes as it rises; and whether or not it is diluted by freshwater on its way up. For these reasons, springs that are close in proximity may be different in make-up. Those springs that are hottest and highest in mineral content and radioactivity are the ones that have been most prized since antiquity for their therapeutic qualities. The Callirhoe probably ranked first, but others, on both sides of  t he lake, were also highly valued. There is, for example, archaeological evidence of  a kind of  health resort on the southwest side near Ein Bokek, which is thought to have been popular in the Herodian period. Together, the springs contribute about ten percent of  t he Dead Sea’s replacement water, their contribution being greater when the lake is low because then the water table is higher in relation to it.

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Tristram’s desire to follow the Mojib upstream was fulfilled instead by the little known Rev. Putnam Cady in the winter of  1898. Responding to a PEF call for new photographs of  t he east coast, Cady took a twelve-foot flat-bottomed boat large enough for three and set out from the mouth of  t he Jordan in order to survey the northern third of  t he east coast. At first he found the shore to be marked by broad beaches that made landing easy, and the many large trees standing in the water sixty feet from shore indicated that the lake had risen in recent decades. The trees were encrusted with salt, Cady noted, “and looked ghastly in the early light.” To Irby and Mangles eighty years before, they had seemed like “fine white coral”—yet another instance of  simple descriptions revealing the mood of  a n expedition. Indeed, alluding to illness and fear, Cady called the lake a sea of  death and expressed the hope that it would be kinder to future travelers than it was to him. So was the entire coast of  t he Dead Sea surveyed by the turn of  t he century. Yet while one acknowledges Cady’s service to the PEF, it is a small detail of  h is experience that stays in the mind—his collecting lumps of  asphalt along the shore. The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites, after the asphalt that periodically came to its surface. The substance was prized for its water-proofing and medicinal applications and was bought by the ancient Egyptians for use in embalming. The Dead Sea was the region’s primary source of the substance, and whoever controlled the lake became wealthy from the lucrative trade with Egypt. None were more successful in mining and marketing the asphalt than the Nabateans, who possessed most of  the lake’s east side by the second century bce. According to Diodorus, the barbarians, as he called the sophisticated Nabateans, “take the asphalt to Egypt and sell it for the embalming of  the dead; for unless this is mixed with the other aromatic ingredients, the preservation of  the bodies cannot be permanent.” (During his trip through Egypt in 1836, John Stephens inadvertently corroborated the ancient use when he commented on the fact that many of  the tombs had been robbed of  their mummies, which had been sold to travelers. Momentarily irreverent, he went on, “The Arabs use the mummy-cases for firewood, the bituminous matters [i.e., asphalt] used in the embalment being well adapted to ignition: and the epicurean traveller may cook his breakfast with the coffin of a king.”)

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It is not completely clear how the asphalt is formed, but it is probably related to the remains of  oil deposits that have shifted elsewhere. Lumps of  t he substance, some weighing as much as several tons, still rise very occasionally to the surface of  t he lake, generally at the same places close to the Rift’s main fault. Its release is thought to be connected to movement in the earth’s crust; Arabs guiding Europeans in the nineteenth century assured them that chunks of  t he substance are only found in the lake following earthquakes, as in 1834 and again after the severe quake of  January 1837, when a house-size mass was supposed to have been discovered on the sea. (According to the report available a few years later, the Arabs swam out to it, cut it up with axes, and brought it to shore, from where they conveyed it up the pass at Ein Gedi on camels. In all, that one harvest brought them several thousand dollars in sales.) So unusual a phenomenon was the asphalt, and so important a commercial product, that it was widely discussed by the Greeks and Romans. The Dead Sea, explained Strabo, “abounds with asphaltus, which rises, not however at any regular season, in bubbles, like boiling water, from the middle of  the deepest part. The surface is convex, and presents the appearance of  a hillock. Together with the asphaltus, there ascends a great quantity of  sooty vapour, not perceptible to the eye, which tarnishes copper, silver, and everything bright—even gold. The neighboring people know by the tarnishing of  their vessels that the asphaltus is beginning to rise, and they prepare to collect it by means of  rafts composed of  reeds. The asphaltus is a clod of  earth, liquefied by heat; the air forces it to the surface, where it spreads itself. It is again changed into so firm and solid a mass by cold water, such as water of  the lake, that it requires cutting or chopping (for use). It floats upon the water, which, as I have described, does not admit of  d iving or immersion, but lifts the person who goes into it. Those who go on rafts for the asphaltus cut it in pieces, and take away as much as they are able to carry. “Such are the phenomena. Posidonius says, that the people being addicted to magic, and practising incantations, (by these means) consolidate the asphaltus, pouring upon it urine and other fetid fluids, and then cut it into pieces. (Incantations cannot be the cause), but perhaps urine may have some peculiar power (in effecting the consolidation) . . .

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“It is natural for these phenomena to take place in the middle of  the lake, because the source of  the fire is in the center, and the greater part of  the asphaltus comes from thence. The bubbling up, however, of  the asphaltus is irregular, because the motion of  fi re, like that of  many other vapours, has no order perceptible to observers.” Modern geology’s explanation, though more sophisticated than Stra­ bo’s, is not radically different. Geologists believe that the substance, partly liquefied by the heat of  the inner earth, seeps up to the bottom of  the lake and, being lighter than the dense water, rises to the surface, cooled and solidified. Strabo’s description of  the gathering of  the asphalt found support in Josephus: The lumps of  asphalt “are in shape and size like headless bulls. The lakeside workers row to the spot, seize the lumps one by one and haul them into their boats. When these are full, it is not easy to get the asphalt away, as the boats stick to the glutinous mass until they loose it with a woman’s menstruous blood and urine, to which alone it yields.” Tacitus called the purported use of  menstrual blood the story of  ancient writers, and it is odd that he would know more about it than Josephus. Myth or not, the belief  survived into the medieval period, Burchard explaining that bitumen, also called Jews’ pitch, is brought up from the bottom of  the lake “when wind stirs the sea.” Then the asphalt “clings together and is cast up on shore in great quantities. It is strong and medicinal, [and] cannot be melted save with menstruous blood.” From these various descriptions, one can easily understand the popular medieval view that the Dead Sea “casteth up clots of  glue.” Today there are enough sources of  asphalt so that the Dead Sea is of  v irtually no importance, and far too little rises to make an industry feasible anyway. That which does surface is hauled to shore as a curiosity. Though the substance may be rendered soft by the desert sun—as an asphalt road in summer—it is not nearly as sticky as the ancient writers had it to be, nor does it require any unusual means of  detaching. Given the uniqueness of  the Dead Sea’s more than thirty percent salt content, one can imagine that the question of  the salts’ origin must have provoked the interest of  many investigators. Indeed, though the question would remain unanswered well into the twentieth century, theories

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had been put forth since early in the 1800s. It was known that all lakes receive a certain amount of  minerals from incoming rivers and that they are carried out again by exiting streams, of  which the Dead Sea has none. It was also known that the rate of  evaporation is a factor in the concentration of  salts in any body of  water, and that the rate in the Dead Sea valley was obviously very high. But while such knowledge helped explain why the accumulation increased, it did not explain how the large quantity of  minerals came to be there in the first place. Seetzen surmised in 1810 that the Dead Sea owed its saltiness to the salt mountain by its shore, which presumably was being slowly dissolved, but hardly anyone else took up that erroneous line of  thought. As time went by, different theories were put forward. At the beginning of  the twentieth century it was suggested that the salts came via the atmosphere from the Mediterranean. (Farfetched as it sounds, some salts are in fact transported by wind and rain from the sea, though that study greatly overestimated their impact on the total accumulation in the Dead Sea.) Some researchers suggested that the salts were brought down by the Jordan River, and others regarded them as having flowed in from the hypersaline springs (which, because they are often saltier than the lake, contribute an amount disproportionate to their water contribution). In the late 1920s, a marine origin for the salts was suggested, a hypothesis that would find support in the work of  later researchers. The 1950s and ’60s were decades of  revelation. Not only did the sophistication of  the tools catch up with that of  the investigators, but the simple development of  the Dead Sea valley—construction of  roads, for example—made the lake more accessible. In 1959, the American / Israeli team of  K . O. Emery and David Neev began a systematic study of  the physical, chemical, and geological aspects of  the Dead Sea. The study, which they published in 1967, was the most comprehensive since Lynch’s 120 years earlier, and it quickly became a cornerstone of  modern Dead Sea scientific exploration. One of  t he difficulties in establishing the source of  t he Dead Sea’s salts was determining their age. At around the time that Neev and Emery were working, test borings at Mt. Sedom were made in connection with oil exploration. The deep salt the drills penetrated was analyzed and found to contain ordinary pollen that had been carried by some

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prehistoric wind and had settled on and been preserved in the salt mound. Coincidentally, a method for dating pollen had recently been developed, and when the Mt. Sedom pollen was dated at three million years old, Neev and Emery could conclude that the salts of  the Dead Sea were also that old—a far cry from the age of  as much as 500 million years that scientists early in the century had estimated. Dating the salts was the single most important event in verifying their source. Not everyone agreed, but it is widely accepted today that the Dead Sea derives its salinity from the same source as the Lisan Lake. This answer calls upon us to return to the valley’s early history, and recall that the Mediterranean had at one time washed into the rift, depositing, after hundreds of  thousands of  years, a salt bed more than two miles thick. Though the bulk of  the salt had collected at the basin’s lowest point, large quantities were also stranded throughout the valley. The Lisan Lake, as we saw, dates to the time when it came to encompass enough of  those salts to turn its freshwater forerunner saline. By virtue of  its size alone, it dissolved a vast quantity, and as it dried up, it left them behind, the bulk gathering once again in the depression’s deepest section. When the basin began to refill—this long geological moment that saw the birth of  the Dead Sea—the water mixed with the residual brine of  the Lisan Lake, but in a much smaller area than that which the Lisan had covered, making the mineral concentration much higher. If  the source of  the Dead Sea’s salts is the ocean, one would expect the lake’s mineral content to correspond with that of  the ocean; yet it does not. The ocean contains primarily sodium chloride, the Dead Sea a very large quantity of  magnesium and calcium chloride. The discrepancy is based partly on the different precipitation tendencies of  minerals. As water becomes saturated, sodium chloride falls out of  solution much before magnesium chloride, which is among the last compounds to crystallize. So though the Dead Sea itself  is high in magnesium, examination of  its sediment reveals, as expected, a very high sodium content. As the Jordan River flowed to the Dead Sea, it washed over the Lisan marl that coated most of  its course and brought down additional salts. The early scientists who suggested that the lake’s salts must have originated in the Jordan were at least partially right in a sense. The Jordan did bring down minerals, though not a major portion by any means. What

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they of  course did not know was that those salts were not the Jordan’s own, but those of  an earlier era reactivated by the washing action of  the river. Recycled, as it is, the salt of  the Dead Sea is much older than the lake itself, dating back to the penetration of  the valley by the open sea three million years ago. Early studies of  the Dead Sea took in every phenomenon that could in any way be seen, felt, or measured. Once an explorer made an observation, the next decades might be filled with conjectures about it, or denials of  it. The question of  currents, one of  the most complex of  Dead Sea phenomena, was no exception. When Lynch experienced currents in 1848, he conjectured that the tons of  water flowing from the Jordan River every day were pumped with such force that a strong southward current was created down the center of  the lake. The jet of  water struck the Lisan Peninsula and bounced off  northward, generating currents along the east and west coasts. Lynch, it seems, was wrong, but then it would have been most remarkable had he been right. There are many factors involved in creating currents, some only dimly understood to this day. Because currents may be detected on windless as well as on windy days, there must be invisible forces at work that greatly complicate matters. Nonetheless, two major ones were identified by Neev and Emery as a result of  modern analytical methods. Their role in the Dead Sea drama goes back to the lake’s early years. When the long flat-bottomed dish that is the Dead Sea depression cracked several million years ago, its two basins were created, evolving from that point on as independent units. Any subsequent movement in the valley did not affect them equally, and the difference in their respective depths became more and more pronounced. The last major movement left between them a raised rim (which eventually cracked) that separated the two basins so effectively that the lake was probably confined, as we have seen, to its northern basin until well into historical times. So great is the difference in the depths of  the two basins that it seems at first improbable: the northern basin is as much as a thousand feet deep: the southern averaged around fifteen. Because of  its shallowness, the southern basin more immediately responded to atmospheric conditions than did the northern one. It was more prone to temperature changes and experienced an even greater rate of  evaporation, meaning

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that the salt concentration increased more rapidly than in the north. (De Saulcy, for one, had first-hand knowledge of  that peculiarity: “The water of  the Dead Sea, at the northern point, is atrociously bitter and salt,” he complained, “but it is lemonade in comparison with what we so rashly tasted [in the south].” The southern basin is about five percent saltier than the northern, a variation far greater than that found within other bodies of  water.) The discovery of  this difference by Neev and Emery turned out to be a key to understanding the currents. The southern basin’s greater density had created, in effect, a slope; magnet-like, it pulled the water from the north, producing the southerly current that had been observed by early explorers, and sending back a northerly stream in return. Through isotopic analysis, modern investigators were able to “see” the different composition of  the currents much as early observers could see the muddy Jordan flow into the lake. The Coriolis effect produced by the rotation of  the earth determined that the southward flow would shift to the west coast and the northward one to the east. As the shallowness of  the southern basin yielded some explanation of  the currents, so the currents partially explained yet another tendency. Many travelers to the Dead Sea described strange lines of  foam that ran across the lake, sometimes in apparent patterns and at other times randomly. Having seen them near the shore, one explorer wondered if  they were not caused by the lapping of  waves, but that did not explain their occurrence in the middle of  the lake. In the mid-nineteenth century, an American visitor noticed that the sea was bordered “by a line of  white, thick, creamy foam, though there was scarce a ripple on the lake, and several streaks of  a similar appearance lay upon the green and purple waters far away.” Several decades later, Masterman suggested a correlation between their direction and changes in wind direction, an observation that would prove to be important. For similar foam lines, or slicks, are found in the ocean, and like those, the ones in the Dead Sea are caused by friction, whether within one current divided by the wind, or by the rubbing of  a current against a shallow bottom. They can also be seen where springs, floods, or streams enter the lake. From early in the twentieth century, individuals with practical interest in the nature of  the Dead Sea had noticed that the lake’s salinity was

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View of  t he Dead Sea, from Picturesque Palestine, vol. 3, edited by Charles Wilson, 1881. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, the National Library of  I srael, Jerusalem.

not constant at various depths and that in fact the sea appeared to be quite sharply stratified. Neev and Emery noted that the northern basin of  the Dead Sea consisted of  distinct layers of  water that differed sharply in temperature, density, and salinity. There were two major layers, sandwiching a middle one. The so-called upper water mass extended from the surface down 120 feet, and the lower mass down to the bottom. So

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extreme was their difference that simultaneous evolution was thought to be out of  the question. The lower layer might be characterized as a fossil water body—one that has been completely sealed off  for so long that it has ceased to interact in any way with the atmosphere. The upper layer must have accumulated relatively quickly for this to have happened. The question was what sequence of  events brought it about. This question brings us into thorny territory, for in order to identify such events, the upper water mass had first to be dated, and that was a most complicated and uncertain task. Neev and Emery determined an approximate age of  1,500 years, and looked to the end of  the Byzantine period for an explanation. For many centuries the region had been intensively farmed, and water conservation had been a major enterprise; the torrents that today rush unchecked down the wadis were once corralled instead into reservoirs. The Arab conquest of  the 630s ce brought a rapid disintegration of  agriculture, for the Moslem conquerors were not farmers. The aqueducts fell into disrepair, and all the water that had been trapped annually by a thousand years of  Jewish, Roman, and Byzantine efforts flowed undisciplined into the Dead Sea, raising it, Neev and Emery believed, by 120 feet, the volume of  the upper water mass. To say that there is no unanimity of  opinion on this question is an understatement. Other researchers did a calculation based on the age of  radioactive isotopes and arrived at an age of  only about 300 years—a discrepancy so great as to remind one of  the discussion of  the depth of  the Dead Sea depression nearly a century and a half  earlier. Still others looked for a climatic context. The seventeenth century was fairly wet in this region, and the eighteenth dry. Beginning around 1820, another wet period, as we saw, began raising the level of  the lake for the next century. Some researchers, their argument bolstered by specific gravity measurements, believe that the upper water mass could only have been as old as that recent accumulation, namely, 150 years. The Dead Sea itself  can no longer divulge the answer to this question. Since 1975, it had been clear that the surface layer of  the lake was becoming increasingly saline, probably because of  the tapping of  the Jordan River system. By 1976, the difference between the layers was negligible, and by mid-1978, the upper layer was actually saltier than the lower. Stratification, however, was maintained because of  the temperature dif-

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ference between them. That winter, with the cooling of  the upper water mass, a dramatic event took place: the lake “overturned,” its water becoming more or less homogenized for the first time in at least 150 years. The question of  the age of  the fossil water body and the origin of  the upper water mass may never be answered because of  the “overturning.” Yet it seems that if  human intervention may be recognized even as a possible element, then it is useful to consider the implications of  human activity in general. Factors have been introduced in the last decades that have already had a pronounced impact on the lake, and as we approach the third decade of the new millenium, human beings continue to exert a major influence on it. For better or worse has yet to be seen.

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Part fou r

Further Exploration I never felt so unwilling to leave any place. I was unsatisfied. I had a longing desire to explore every part of that unknown water; to spend days upon its surface; to coast along its shores; to sound its mysterious depths.

John Lloyd Stephens Incidents of  Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land 1837

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fi v e

A Gentleman from Siberia

• Long before scientists and engineers turned their thoughts to the

multiple potential of  the Dead Sea, those who lived by its shores were finding a livelihood in its unusual treasures. Asphalt, though the most prized, was also the least predictable. A much more mundane substance was harvested with absolute reliability. After visiting the Dead Sea in the early 1740s, Pococke described the Arab practice of  digging small pits on the beach. With the melting of  the snow in the north, he explained, the Jordan River would swell, causing the lake to rise and overflow into the pits. When the water evaporated, the hollows would be left filled with inch-thick cakes of  salt that were then collected. In this way, the tables of  the surrounding countryside were supplied. In subsequent years, a number of  travelers mentioned meeting salt-laden caravans en route to Gaza, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. At mid-century, an Englishman spoke of  camels being brought to Mt. Sedom, rather than the Dead Sea, to be loaded with salt. The Arabs received ten shillings per load of  five hundred pounds on their arrival in Jerusalem, he noted, in addition to which the purchaser was required to pay a duty to the Turkish Government. Evidently this commerce was eventually made illegal, and much of  the contraband was transported during the night. One unhappy explorer, camping at Ein Gedi in the 1870s, complained about being kept awake all night by the running conversation his sentries carried on with the Arabs of  a caravan as they led their camels up the narrow pass. Less than half  a century later, the extraction of  m inerals from the Dead Sea would far surpass this long-practiced salt-farming, and the combined efforts of  idealists and pragmatists would result in achieve159

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ments that probably few had ever dreamed of. The development of  the Dead Sea valley in the last decades has been extensive—so much so that there are those who are fearful lest radical and irrevocable changes, whose consequences cannot be foreseen, be wrought on the landscape, and permanent harm done to the lake and its fragile environment. It is difficult not to admire the imagination and energy of  those who took on the desert and conceived of  ways to make it not only accommodate, but also yield, life. Yet the fear that the Dead Sea will be overwhelmed in a flood of  technology and the increasing needs of  the two countries that share it is a well-founded one, and in these years of  extraordinary inventiveness and ambition, excitement over man-made marvels need be tempered by anxiety for the natural one. In 1831, a Jew named Novomeysky from the Russian town of  Novo Miasto near what was then the Prussian border was arrested on the charge of  having aided rebels of  the Polish uprising the previous year. Sentenced to exile, he and his fellow prisoners set out for Siberia on foot, the 4,000 mile forced march almost to the Chinese border taking them four years. Novomeysky’s wife had been allowed to accompany him, and once there, they settled in and raised a family. By the time their grandson Mikhail, later to be called Moshe, was born in 1873, the village of  Barzugin, on the shores of  Lake Baikal, had become the family’s home. Like his father, Mikhail had an inclination for mining, and after studying mining engineering in Germany, he returned to Siberia and threw himself  into his work. His fellow scientists were occupied for the most part in mining copper and gold, but Mikhail’s active imagination was already focusing on something quite different. Even at that young age he had large projects in mind, projects that would revolutionize the mining industry in Siberia and energize the economic life of  the region. One such idea was to develop a method for extracting minerals from the nearby lakes, and by 1900, when he was just twenty-seven, he had built the necessary chemical factory and was supplying the local glass-works with the refined salts, a great improvement on what had been available to them. Novomeysky had the rare gift for turning imagination into realities, and by the time he emigrated, after more than twenty years of  work in Siberia, he had become a pioneer in Russia’s exploitation of  natural resources.

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Novomeysky was the third generation of  a family with distinct radical propensities, and his activism was as evident as his grandfather’s had been. For a time he was an adherent of  the Social Revolutionary Party, and when he became disillusioned with it, he began to lean towards the Social Democrats. But he could never align himself  w ith them unequivocally, mainly because of  their stand on the question of  nationalities. Although he had not been especially moved by the First Zionist Congress in 1897, he did have a definite feeling for Jewish nationalism. In 1903, when the Social Democrats split, he was put off  by the debates on the Jewish question. That same year he attended the Zionist Congress in Basel, where the contact he had with young Russian Zionists spurred him in their direction. In 1905, when he was imprisoned for revolutionary activity, he spent seven months reading Zionist literature. Novomeysky’s early commitments were strong, and he was still far from emigration, but the year’s two conferences seem to have been responsible for the change in direction his life would later take. One of  Novomeysky’s jobs in his radical circle had been to forge identity papers and passports, and he eventually found himself  doing that very thing for himself  in 1906. Released from prison, he had no assurance that he would not be arrested again, and he thought it wise to leave the country for the time being. His trip to Germany, where he had been a student, was the final element in his conversion to Zionism—though he confessed that his involvement with the Zionist circles in Germany was more or less compensatory: “Divorced suddenly from active engineering and social work,” he wrote, “I was momentarily without anything to do.” He had been introduced to a fellow scientist, the botanist Otto Warburg, who had been recruited to the Zionist cause, and their association, which was both scientific and political, served as a stimulus for Novomeysky. When he expressed his long-standing interest in studying the natural wealth of  undeveloped nations, Warburg allowed him to read an unpublished report on Palestine’s natural resources, prepared by the geologist Max Blanckenhorn at Herzl’s request. The paper included a detailed description of  the Dead Sea, and Novomeysky was excited by the similarity between its chemical composition and that of  his Siberian lakes. By 1907, he had already inquired about the possibility of  obtaining permission from the Turks to extract salts.

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Yet he was very much a political man, and despite his enthusiasm and desire to conduct experiments, he remained committed to affairs in Russia. Returning that summer, he once again became involved in the struggle. “During the punitive expeditions’ work,” he would write of  events that took place during his absence, “the gallows and firing squads had been constantly busy without waiting for any trial, and the bloodthirstiness of  the happenings, of  which I only learned when I returned, so affected me that all I had learned in the Warburg Institute about Palestine and about the Dead Sea and its waters ceased to have any real interest for me. For months I was restless and simply could not work. My only feeling, and one which never left me, was that those crimes of  the Cossack general could not be forgotten, and should not remain unpunished.” He became involved in an assassination plot, and it was only the sudden reassignment of  the general responsible for the atrocities that prevented its being attempted. Five years later, in 1911, Novomeysky finally arranged the trip that had been conceived of  in Germany. “My eye was certainly inured to deserted, uninhabited places,” he would write of  his first view of  the Dead Sea valley, “but this was something of  quite a different order from anything I had known.” No two climates could be more dissimilar than those of  the Siberian taiga, the dense forest where the very subsoil is permanently frozen, and the barren, hot Dead Sea basin. Obviously his process of  extracting minerals from Siberian lakes, which entailed freezing them out of  solution, was impossible at the Dead Sea. But Novomeysky had a suspicion from the start that his already proven technique would provide him with the key to devising a method adapted to extreme heat. He measured the water’s specific gravity, took numerous readings of  air and water temperatures, and investigated the practicality of  constructing the evaporation pans he envisioned. Taking ample specimens with him, he returned to Siberia and began his experiments. It would be a number of  years before he returned to Palestine. The First World War, the Russian Revolution, his mining projects, and, not least, his deep attachment to Siberia all prevented him from going back. But his thoughts turned increasingly towards Palestine. A country with only 700,000 inhabitants (“a population much less,” according to a report in 1921 of  the British High Commissioner, “than that of  the province

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of  Galilee alone in the time of  Christ”), it was as devoid of  industry as Siberia had been when he began mining there twenty-three years before, and he longed to play a part in the country’s economic development. His love for his native country was great, but not great enough to keep him there after the Revolution. “After a period of  great perturbation in Russia, living through revolution and civil war and the loss of  a ll our property, I had made up my mind that there was no other course for my family . . . but to begin a new life, and that this should be on new soil.” Making his way back to Siberia to say a temporary goodbye to his family, he left by the eastern route, legally but none too soon, as he was soon after denounced by an acquaintance who turned against him. The following year he sent for his family and settled them in the small village of  Gedera, near Tel Aviv. “My whole training and philosophy of  l ife had taught me and experience had shown me that there was no more satisfactory way to [secure the family against misfortune] than the fundamental way of  establishing them as tillers of  the soil. Industries and towns may rise and fall, but basic agriculture must always remain.” Nine years earlier, when he had conducted his first tests on the Dead Sea water, he had been encouraged by the results. “At last my early hunch about the feasibility of  exploiting the salts of  the Dead Sea had taken new shape. The idea now seemed much nearer to realisation.” But as he had had no way of  k nowing that nearly a decade would pass before he would resume his work in Palestine, so he had no way of  k nowing that yet another would be spent obtaining permission to undertake his project. On his return in 1920, he immediately began what would be a long, frustrating procedure of  negotiating with the British for the rights to construct a potash plant on the northern shore of  the Dead Sea. Why potash? In 1840, a German scientist had made the connection between potash (potassium chloride) and plant growth, and for twenty years before Novomeysky’s time it had been considered essential to healthy crops. Plants draw potash out of  t he soil for various uses: it prevents stems from breaking, regulates the flow of  water, protects the plant against cold, and increases the starch in grain and the protein in other plants. By 1900, scientists recognized that overworked soil needed its supply of  potash replenished. A mine containing a large quantity was found in Germany, which became the world’s sole producer. With

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World War I, the price per ton increased almost tenfold, and England began searching for another source. Their need was all the more acute because of  a much less benign application of  t he substance: it happened to be an ingredient in explosives. England’s desire to break the German monopoly would figure in the Dead Sea concession battle. The story of  how this slender, rather formal gentleman from Siberia, his straight nose and firm lips set under a resolute, even stern, gaze, was able to obtain the coveted concession is one of  extraordinary determination, impressive ingenuity, and no small degree of  diplomatic skill. The odds were against him, and his perseverance and resilience make for an exciting chapter in Dead Sea history—one that could serve as a useful prototype. Novomeysky was not alone in recognizing the Dead Sea’s potential, and the struggle for the concession was an arduous and sometimes unpleasant one. At first his rivals were individuals like himself  (his primary competitor, the Scotsman Major Thomas Tulloch, soon became his partner), and it looked as though he would achieve an early victory, after just four years’ labor. But the inquiry that he thought was the last step in the negotiations (an inquiry in which his British examiner expressed doubts that any white man could live at the Dead Sea) proved far from that, though not because he failed to answer any question to the committee’s satisfaction. Sir Herbert Samuel was just ending his term as High Commissioner in 1924, and, suddenly fearful of  a Novomeysky monopoly, he made the abrupt decision to throw the whole matter of  the concession open to public bidding. Novomeysky was perturbed, but sympathetic. Samuel, a Jew, had not long before been the target of  criticism from Parliament for granting a concession to another Russian Jew—“a very dangerous kind of  animal!” quipped Novomeysky. “Thus I had no more grudges against Samuel, and my reason approved of  action which was causing me great hardship and strain. It remained for me to be patient. I had now no other course than to write off  the first chapter in my battle for the concession, a fouryear chapter, and wait for the Press advertisements which would throw everything open to tender.” In Mandate Palestine, one had to cultivate patience or accept defeat; the previous year, when Novomeysky had thought he should not be able to bear any more postponements, he had

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discovered that he was “getting a little inured to unexpected delays, and to the leisurely beat of  the pulse of  the official world.” The irony, however, in Novomeysky’s being treated as if  he were a powerful corporation intent on gaining a monopoly of  the Dead Sea’s resources was that when the advertisement was read in America, applications for the concession were submitted by none other than General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard Oil. The lake contains a billion tons of  bromine, which had recently been discovered to be an octane booster and anti-knock agent in gasoline, and with the automobile industry burgeoning in America, they all had their eye on the lake’s store. “I was now very alarmed indeed,” wrote the troubled Novomeysky. “Idle to say that this Goliath of  a combined competitor did not want potash as well . . . If, dazzled by their greatness, the British authorities conceded the Americans what they wanted, would they bother very much about me and my proposals?” A period of  either confusion or double-dealing—probably fair measures of  both—ensued. The spokesman for the corporations insisted to Novomeysky that because they were not interested in the potash they might consider a joint venture, since the two chemicals were related in the extraction process. But their British attorney made it clear to him that sharing was out of  the question. He did not know whom to believe, and the whole affair was very disconcerting to a man well-accustomed to adversity, even pettiness, but unfamiliar with prevarication. “In the limited Dead Sea area,” he paraphrased a friend’s explanation, “a concession to the Americans would amount to a monopoly, and although there had been talks about joining forces with my group, the impression was that these talks were not serious, merely intended to keep me quiet while the Americans walked away with the concession.” Informed that the British had decided to award the Americans the bromine concession, Novomeysky contemplated defeat: “It would be of  poor advantage to the Palestine in which I believed, and of  which I was now a citizen, to allow foreign capitalists to have a controlling interest and to exploit the Dead Sea, having only commercial profits in mind.” But he had not spent all those years struggling for nothing, and Novomeysky would not be intimidated. Instructing his attorneys to write a strong letter of  protest to the British Colonial Office, he assured them

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that he was able to produce evidence of  fi nancial resources great enough to put him on an equal footing with the Americans. The letter had a persuasive effect, the Office replying noncommittally but positively enough for Novomeysky to feel that “the American danger had been baulked.” From there, maybe it was a matter of  his passion simply being greater than theirs, or his will more resolute. His application was finally accepted, in principle, in 1927—seven years after he first submitted it. Novomeysky was not the only party who felt abused by the unpredictable decision-making machinery of  t he British Government. As early as 1918, and unknown for some time to Novomeysky, a chemist named Dr. Annie Homer had submitted an application for a Dead Sea concession, also for potash. Since a source had been sought by Great Britain for two years, it is difficult to understand the Government’s long delay in coming to a decision. In any case, when the matter was opened to public bidding several years after Dr. Homer first inquired, her group, referred to as the British Group, was not a little surprised and distressed; obviously she had expected to win the concession, and to discover some seven years later that the Government was advertising for additional applications was a major blow. A year later, in 1926, there was a possibility of  a merger between the British Group and Novomeysky and his partner, but it did not materialize, apparently because Novomeysky wanted control. Soon after, the Government determined that the British Group had the best proposal after all, yet as a result of  “certain financial intrigues,” as one finds it called in a memorandum, they lost their backing. In the meantime, the Colonial Office offered the concession “in principle” to Novomeysky, requiring from him that he produce in the whole seventyfive years of  the concession an amount of  potash less than the amount produced world-wide that year. The British Group was understandably angry, charging that Novomeysky was given “undue preference” in the form of  a lmost unlimited time to provide financial guarantees (it took him sixteen months), while their 1925–26 application was turned down because financial support was for the moment withdrawn. At the end of  1929, the British Group submitted yet a fifth formal application, claiming there was no binding agreement with Novomeysky, and charging that the Novomeysky scheme involved “a negligible out-

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put” in comparison with theirs. But they were informed that a preliminary agreement had been signed, and that negotiations with other parties was ruled out. Two and a half  more years of  strife were still before Novomeysky. For one thing, the arrangement was contingent on his raising a large sum of  money. That meant persuading backers that the project was not a pipe dream, but grounded, as his own faith was, in years of  technical experience in a part of  the world no more congenial to human occupation than this. Wrote the forty-seven year-old engineer, “I was not a youngster, stirred by momentary enthusiasm, and my determination was based on much practical work in Siberia in hard and trying circumstances.” But by far the most unsettling part of  his battle to gain the concession (“the worst obstacle I had so far known”) was against those parties who were “bitterly opposed to the Jewish national idea in Palestine.” His vanquished rivals from various countries (there were French and Australian claims as well) sang a litany of  criticism, but the objections that were hardest to bear came from both Houses of  the British Parliament. The protests at first concerned technicalities such as ultimate ownership of  the plant when the concession ran out, and what to do in the eventuality that Novomeysky devised a way to extract the small amount of  gold contained in the lake. But the decision to award Novomeysky the concession led to a concerted effort to dissuade the Government. In the two major debates that took place in the House of  Lords, in May 1928 and March 1929, discussion at times degenerated, revealing not only anti-Zionism, as might be expected, but not so skillfully disguised antiSemitism. (“I do not know whether he is a Russian Jew or what he is,” said one. “I have noticed that a certain number of  people seem to think that Jews have a historical right to Palestine.”) The inquisition into Novomeysky’s suitability was at times crass, but it is difficult to untangle the unremitting anti-Zionism of  some of  the Parliamentarians—even their anti-Semitism and their innuendoes that he was a German agent of  some sort—from their real fear of  the German monopoly, as well as their concern about serving the majority, i.e., Arab, population of  Palestine and Transjordan. It was urgent that the monopoly be broken, and here was an opportunity for Britain to do it. If  a concession were to be awarded, argued one, surely it must be to a

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group that was known to be entirely free of  the existing monopoly and that had no inclination to work even indirectly with it. It seems that the names of  Novomeysky’s backers had been withheld, and his antagonists in the House of  Lords demanded to know why the Government was concealing their identity, since this group would be operating an undertaking of  “first-class national and Imperial importance.” The speaker, Lord Islington, had opposed “the unfortunate experiment which is known as the Zionist Home in Palestine,” and he worried that the future company would “be tied up in the meshes of  the Zionist organisation,” or that it would be so international in its make-up as to conform to the existing monopoly. He recommended that the Government look favorably instead upon the application of  the other group, the British Group. With the realization that the British Parliament attached such value to the concession, and worried, for reasons that were tantamount to national security, that the concession may not serve British interests, one is increasingly astonished that Novomeysky did prevail, even if  not so easily. By early 1929, opposition to him was so strong that he had lost almost all hope, once again, of  attaining his goal. Moving quickly, he managed to satisfy the Government that he had £100,000 beyond the figure he had submitted. More important, he was able to assemble a Board of  wellknown Londoners and a British chairman; he firmly believed that had it not been for that, he would not have been granted the concession. At last, in August 1929, a seventy-five year concession was awarded to him and his British partner. On the first of  January 1930, it was transferred to Palestine Potash, Ltd., a further victory for which Novomeysky credited a New York Jew named Israel Brodie. Novomeysky had been sufficiently optimistic for a long enough time to turn his attention to the project itself. He had actually begun the practical work several years earlier, before the League of  Nations Mandate was even conferred on Great Britain. At that time, the British, though they were administering Palestine, had no authority, not even to grant Novomeysky a lease of  a few acres of  land by the Dead Sea where he could set up an experimental station. Novomeysky did a little investigating and discovered that there was a small port on the lake already, equipped even with a motor boat, and a few huts nearby. It all belonged to an Arab who during the war had supplied the Turks with wheat from

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Transjordan, and Novomeysky arranged to buy the equipment and take over the lease to the land. He planned to set up a modest import–export business, bringing wool and wheat from across the lake in exchange for consumer goods from Palestine. That project never got off  the ground, but at least he managed to establish himself  on the lake and secure a place to construct experimental evaporation pans. It was in 1925 that Novomeysky set into motion the project’s next phase, a phase that owed its success to his young assistant, Moshe Langotzki. A fellow Siberian, also a scion of  Jews exiled early in the nineteenth century, Langotzki was born around 1900. He got caught up in the civil war, and in 1918 escaped the fighting by fleeing east. After two years wandering in Mongolia, China, and Manchuria, he encountered a Zionist youth organization and made his way to Palestine, where he obtained work at Novomeysky’s family’s agricultural community. A few years later, he became a victim of  a Novomeysky ruse—one for which he would be grateful all his life. In April of  1923 there was to be a ceremony to open the Hebrew University, and Novomeysky pretended it was very important that Langotzki travel with him to Jerusalem. Afterwards, Lan­gotzki prepared to return to Gedera, at which point Novomeysky stopped him and asked where he was going. Back to the farm, the puzzled man replied. No you’re not, Novomeysky informed him; you’re coming with me. Where to? To the Dead Sea. One can imagine the slight, balding boss, perhaps dressed in the khaki shorts and safari hat of  later photographs, accompanied by his tall, strong, curly-haired charge who was wondering where they were headed and for what. They rented a car and started down. Now of  course Novomeysky had been to the Dead Sea before, but never unguided. The Siberians drove, and searched, and wandered, and searched some more, and couldn’t find the lake. Ending up in Jericho, they went to the police station to ask directions. They would not find it alone, they were advised; they could spend the night there and a guide would be provided the next day. An inauspicious beginning, one might say, but the pair seems to have been undaunted. They arrived the next day at the two-room earthen-floored hut that would serve as both living quarters and laboratory and settled down to work, subsisting on canned food and water carted several miles from Jericho.

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They took water samples from various locations and learned that the concentration of  salt increased enormously with depth: precipitation required twenty-six days in the surface samples but just two days in those taken from further down. Because of  these experiments, they decided early on that should they win the concession, they would use water pumped from the lower stratum for the production of  potash. Seven years later, they would lay the pipe—thirty inches in diameter and half  a mile long—at a depth of  175 feet. When Novomeysky brought Langotzki down to the Dead Sea, it was not his intention to remain with the young man, though Langotzki hardly had a notion of  what the place was. Friends advised them that Langotzki would not be safe there alone, that he would surely be killed. So they concocted a plan, and when Novomeysky left shortly after their arrival, it was not a farmer or even a chemist he was leaving behind, but a doctor. Langotzki had donned a white coat, wore a stethoscope, and, armed only with medical booklets of  the most elementary kind, he set up in his hut a little “pharmacy”—a row of  bottles filled with water of  different colors. Before long, as he told it, word spread on the other side of  the Jordan that a new doctor had arrived, and patients began coming to him. Considerably chagrined—he had expected the disguise to remove anxiety, not provide it—he had no choice but to “treat” the Arabs crossing the river to obtain medical aid. He would ask each patient to choose from among the colored-water bottles, and he would prepare an injection accordingly. He had no intention of  r isking injury to anyone by injecting him with water, so he would tell each to lie on his stomach, warning him not to turn over lest he die, on which he gave him a poke with the needle and squirted the water onto the floor. Somehow, to his dismay perhaps, his rate of  cure was very high, and he earned a reputation as the best doctor at the Dead Sea, his patients bringing him many gifts, and of  course more patients. Meanwhile, Novomeysky was in England fighting for the concession, and he wired his assistant to ask how things were going with the experimental evaporation pan, and did he perhaps need the help of  a chemist? No, Langotzki hastily replied, but please, send another doctor. Langotzki originally thought he would spend two weeks at the Dead Sea. He spent over forty years. In those decades he never had anything

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but good relations with the Arabs; to them later on he was Abu Yusef  (father of  Yosef), and Novomeysky would single him out as being “the principal protector and patron of  the Arabs.” Writing much later, Novomeysky declared that in all his years watching Langotzki deal with the plant’s mixed staff  (mixed in accordance with the terms of  the concession as well as with Novomeysky’s ideals), he never saw him make a distinction between Jew and Arab, and his fluent Arabic, which had seen him through his early career as regional “doctor,” always served him well. One might ask what motivated Langotzki to stay; after all, the heat, the isolation, the danger, and the uncertainty would have been enough to conquer even a brave heart. A close friend of  his tried to explain: for one thing he was instructed to stay, and he revered Novomeysky. For another, he was not a man to desert a cause, and he possessed great physical courage in addition. Finally, he loved his new country and was perhaps looking for a task to which he could devote his life. Whatever the reason, Novomeysky knew that in the project’s early days especially, it was Langotzki who was responsible for the realization of  his dream. Novomeysky was in the meantime traveling to various places, honing his skills in preparation for the challenge of  actual production. He went to Egypt to watch production of  table salt at Port Said, to America to see the salt works in Los Angeles and San Francisco and to visit the saltextracting operation at the Great Salt Lake. Most of  h is education, however, came from Germany. Novomeysky was instructed by some of  t hat country’s most prominent mining engineers, and though the Germans mined potash from the ground, he was helped considerably by studying their methods. He returned to Palestine secure in what he was planning and more confident than ever that his enterprise was technically feasible. But Novomeysky prepared for the years ahead in other ways as well. He considered it his responsibility to have good relations with the Arab population in general and with the administration of  Transjordan in particular. In the spring of  1921, Mandate Palestine had been partitioned into Palestine and Transjordan, and soon after, Novomeysky met with Abdullah, then emir of  Transjordan. Abdullah had been born in Mecca into the Hashemites, a prominent family claiming descent from Mohammad. He joined the British to defeat the Turks in 1917 and was rewarded,

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after England received the League of  Nations Mandate, with the territory east of  the Jordan River. Novomeysky’s concession included the entire lake, but because half of  it lay in Transjordan, the profits would be shared. According to Novomeysky, Abdullah was convinced that Transjordan could become a state and develop only by means of  a joint effort with the other Mandate territory, and he was just as interested in cooperating as Novomeysky was, for they both saw the Dead Sea as being central to the economic growth of  their shared region. Their political roles in their respective countries were vastly dissimilar, for Novomeysky wielded no power at all. But in Novomeysky’s view they were of  the same mind on more than one issue, perceiving the conflict between their two peoples as based on a misunderstanding rather than on anything truly substantial. Although Abdullah would invade the new Jewish state along with the other Arab armies in 1948, Novomeysky did not believe that he was a hater of  Jews nor even fearful of  Zionism. He and Novomeysky became friends, and to the extent that was possible, given the pressures exerted on the one and the constraints imposed on the other, they labored for the mutual benefit of  both territories until Abdullah’s death in 1951. Work on the potash plant at Qalya—from the word kalium, meaning potash in German, but also a Hebrew acronym for Qum l’ha’im, yam ha-mavet (Rise Up to Life, Sea of  Death)—began when the concession was awarded. As soon as the malarial swamps were drained and turned into a system of  evaporation pans, the construction crew set to work. Trucks streamed in from Jerusalem loaded with lumber, cement, iron piping, and assorted other equipment and provisions. Before long workers’ huts had been raised and the first pipes were laid—some to convey Dead Sea water to the evaporation pans, others to bring water from the Jordan River. A small harbor was built, with a fleet of  barges, one specially equipped to transport drinking water from the Wadi Zerka Ma’in. “And the finest feature of  a ll in this work,” Novomeysky beamed, “was the unhindered enthusiasm of  a ll the men engaged there, as they saw industrial life developing in this waste corner of  the desert of  Judaea.” Just one year later, the first fruits of  their labor, a quantity of  bromine, was on the market in England, and the following year they began production of  potash, the first shipment arriving soon after in Baltimore.

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The terrain at the northern end of  the lake did not permit unlimited expansion for evaporation pans, so in 1934 Novomeysky opened a second plant, at the southern end of  the lake by the foot of  Mt. Sedom. The climate there was even more forbidding than in the north; it received half  the rainfall (two inches annually) and was a good deal hotter as well as far more isolated. There was, however, topographical compensation; the shore was broad, flat, and less subject to seepage than the north, and the es-Safieh oasis, the same as had revived and delighted so many travelers of  the previous century with the sweetest water in the region, was just across the way. Before long, Novomeysky had arranged to buy water from Abdullah, and it was piped into the southern camp. The attraction of  the Dead Sea valley went beyond its industrial potential. In 1938, the confluence of  three factors was responsible for the founding of  K ibbutz Beit Ha-Aravah, the first agricultural settlement at the Dead Sea. First, one of  the best-known pioneers of  Dead Sea development, Yehuda Almog, persuaded the members of  a youth group to come down to the Dead Sea. Around the same time, a certain Moshe Isakevitch, from a kibbutz near Jerusalem, concluded successful experiments raising crops in hypersaline soil. And finally, in 1938 the British issued the White Paper that restricted Jewish settlement in Palestine and forced Almog to find a way of  circumventing the law in order to establish a kibbutz. Almog recognized that any kibbutz at the Dead Sea would have to be legally tied to the potash works because Novomeysky had an unretractable lease to the land surrounding the lake. Almog persuaded Novomeysky (who did not need much persuading) to turn over part of  h is land to the still unborn kibbutz. And so in September of  1939, a group of  some forty boys and girls, all of  t hem eighteen or nineteen years old, arrived at the Dead Sea. They worked in potash production to support themselves, but their sights were set on the ambitious goal of  t urning an area whose soil contained a prohibitive seventeen percent salt into a full-scale farm. (Nearby, the salt content was only five percent, which is what today’s kibbutzim have to contend with, but they had no choice about their location and had to accept the much higher concentration.)

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The process of  washing the soil of  salt was long and painstaking. First the designated plots of  land had to be leveled so that when they were covered with water, the pressure down on the soil would be constant. The kibbutzniks worked with plots roughly 150 feet square that they kept submerged by means of  a pipe about a mile and a half  long which flowed from the Jordan River. The continual water pressure caused the salt to sink to lower levels, and when tests showed the salt had been carried down the required twenty or so inches (a process that took up to six months), they then fertilized the soil and prepared to plant. They were successful beyond their most sanguine expectations. In two years they were producing tomatoes, a winter crop unheard of  in the region, and one that made them famous in tomato-loving Jerusalem. By 1943, they were known throughout the country, and their 100-family kibbutz was the most successful of  its age group—so much so that the anxious English authorities tried to persuade them to leave, offering to pay off  a ll their debts and compensate them as well. The kibbutzniks declined, and since the farm was legally tied to the potash company, the British were powerless. By 1944 or ’45, the scene must have been striking. The kibbutz’s eight acres of  l iving area were surrounded by a mixture of  lawns and palm, tamarisk, cypress, pine, and eucalyptus trees, not to mention flowers that they raised for sale in Jerusalem. These grounds were in turn encircled by 250 acres either under cultivation or serving as fishponds constructed from land that could not be leveled for agriculture. By the time the Israeli War of  Independence broke out, most of  the members of  the kibbutz had left the mining industry and were being supported by agriculture. About their relationship with the Arabs, suffice it to say that in the days when Jews were not allowed to cross the Jordan, those from Beit Ha-Aravah were permitted to; and in all the years of  animosity between Arabs and Jews, no violence was ever done to the kibbutz until the actual outbreak of  the war. The farm was destroyed after the Jews evacuated, but the name has not been forgotten; it remains associated with physical and social challenge and with achievement amidst natural conditions as unwelcoming as any on earth. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of  the Palestine Potash Company to the Dead Sea region and beyond. From the late 1930s un-

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til the war broke out, the potash works employed an Arab and Jewish staff  of  2,000 workers. The southern plant was by far the largest industry in the region stretching across the desert to Saudi Arabia, and it attracted laborers not only from nearby villages but from as far away as Yemen, from where Arabs would come to work a three-year stint and go back with enough money to support a family. About 100 Jewish families lived at Qalya, which also employed Arabs from Jericho, but most of  the Jews commuted weekly from Jerusalem and the nearby kibbutz, Ramat Rahel. The two plants, separated by forty-eight miles of  water, were linked by telegraph. In addition to the potash plants and living quarters, there were recreational and cultural facilities at both ends of  the lake, and a kindergarten and grade school for the Jewish families of  Qalya. The northern plant had the advantage of  proximity to Jerusalem, and occasional lecturers would come down from the university. Movies were shown, concerts offered, and athletic events arranged. Qalya became a tourist center as well, and by the mid-1930s, a privately owned hotel (with its invitingly named Sodom and Gomorrah golf  club—a British contribution) attracted foreigners and locals alike. By 1947, the two plants were producing 100,000 tons of  potash a year, worth seven million dollars and second only to citrus, and Novomeysky claimed that the industry was responsible for the livelihoods of  ten to 15,000 people. Novomeysky’s fleet numbered thirty vessels, including the passenger boat M.S. Lieutenant Lynch, which ran the route from north to south—the first trading vessels on the lake since the time of  the Crusaders. Novomeysky looked back on those years with pride and pleasure in both the industrial and social achievements, and he stated that his most cherished memory was that of  A rab and Jew working together. “There were incidents of  f riction among the Jewish workers, and also among the Arabs, but I cannot recall a single case of  Jewish–Arab hostility.” Novomeysky has been described as an Anglophile, perhaps even a colonialist, who sat in the director’s chair and oversaw operations below. According to a long-time associate, he had an old-fashioned notion of  the division between management and labor, but he believed in the education of  the workers and was responsible for turning the Dead Sea industry into an important place of  learning. His early belief  in a binational solution for Palestine may have colored to some extent his depic-

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tion of  the relations between Jews and Arabs. But from all accounts, he was accurate in his basic declaration that there was harmony. To say, as those from Beit Ha-Aravah were able, that no shot was fired between them in all those angry years is to indicate something of  the mutual need and respect that existed. The Arab employees of  the Palestine Potash Company took no part in the anti-Jewish riots of  1936–39, nor was there any fighting between them until the war began. Novomeysky claimed that even on the eve of  the Arab invasion in May of  1948, the Arabs of  the potash works asked for protection from militant Arabs trying to instigate them to violence. When the British Mandate was about to end, there was still hope among the Jews that Abdullah could be persuaded to stay out of  the war. In his famous secret meeting with Golda Meir, who crossed the Jordan in disguise to implore the king not to attack, he had given his word that he would not, but it was a word he would have to retract under pressure from the other Arab armies. Novomeysky approached him in those tense days, too, trying to strike a deal that would at least spare the potash works that were so valuable to both sides. Abdullah was receptive, and in the first week of  May, just ten days or so before Israel would proclaim its independence, a delegation of  t wo Arabs and an Englishman from the Arab Legion came down to the Dead Sea to discuss with Novomeysky the possibility of  neutralizing the Qalya plant. They proposed an agreement according to which the plant would be signed over to Jordan, in whose territory the United Nations partition plan placed it, while maintaining relations with Israel. Novomeysky had also been interested in arranging a way by which the potash of  t he southern plant, which would remain Jewish, could be transported through Arab territory—north on the sea and then up to Jerusalem—as it had been for fourteen years. It seems he would have liked Jews to remain in the north, helping the Arabs in production, in return for transportation rights. But John Glubb, commander of  t he Arab Legion, made the deal contingent on the Arab Legion’s presence at both plants. Novomeysky does not say whether or not he was willing to accept this extraordinary condition; there are those who remember him as being ready to pay just about any price to save the major work of  h is life, and perhaps he would have agreed even to this. In any case,

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a second meeting was arranged with the Arab/British delegation for the following week. But before the meeting took place, Novomeysky had to be in Tel Aviv, and while he was there, there was a blackout during which he was struck by a car or a motorcycle. His leg broken (no slight injury for a man nearly seventy-five years old), he was placed in a hospital and effectively removed from the negotiations that were fast reaching a climax. To replace him at the second meeting, he sent someone who represented the American interest in the potash company, and on May 17, two days after fighting broke out in the rest of  t he country, the American, accompanied by an officer from the Haganah, the Israeli defense force, met again with the Jordanians. Meanwhile, that morning an Arab informer had come to the Jews at Qalya and told them that contrary to what the Arab Legion wanted them to believe, they had no military presence in Jericho, as they were engaged in fighting in the rest of  the West Bank, and that the Jews should not give in so quickly to a deal that would neutralize them. On the basis of  this information, and with seven or eight hundred men and women ready to defend Qalya, the leaders of  the kibbutz came out against the proposed deal. But the American, acting on his own initiative, signed the agreement anyway. Agreements are not abided by so easily in times of  war, and at least three factors worked against the implementation of  this one. First, the Jewish settlement at Kfar Etzion, south of  Jerusalem, had been wiped out just a few days before, and mistrust was in the air at Qalya. Even more important, a similar agreement had been signed the previous week at the Rutenberg electric plant at Naharai’im, up the Jordan River, but the agreement had been violated by the Arabs, who took the Jews as prisoners of  war for exhibition in Amman. In light of  that violation, it became difficult to argue in favor of  neutrality. Yet the decisive factor was the Jewish leader, David Ben Gurion, and his aversion to the pact. Those were precarious days for the Jews of  Palestine, and they had no way of  k nowing what the outcome of  the war would be. Ben Gurion reasoned that the northern end of  the lake was going to Jordan in any case, but how could he be sure that the southern end could be held? Fearing that they might lose everything, he was unwilling to agree to the neutralization of  eight hundred potential soldiers then sitting and

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waiting at Qalya and Beit Ha-Aravah (which had also been a clandestine Haganah training center), and he decided to make a concerted stand at the southern end of  the lake with the combined forces. Against the wishes of  the men and women (mothers and children had already been evacuated) who wanted to defend the settlement, he ordered evacuation. It was planned for May 20, when boats and launches would take them and whatever they could load on the seven-hour trip south, scheduled for midnight to minimize the risk of  being detected and bombed. Working as quietly as possible that evening, they either destroyed or incapacitated whatever machinery they could not take. They drove tractors into the sea, removed pistons from the giant diesels (a few months later, they were supplying power in Amman), and in various ways made certain the plant could not be re-opened. The site was nevertheless filled with millions of  dollars of  valuable machinery and piping, and the next day the plant was totally dismantled and destroyed by looters. Novomeysky maintained secret contact with Abdullah even after the war, when he still had hopes that production at the southern end of  the lake could be resumed. The pipeline from the es-Safieh oasis had been sabotaged, and he met with Abdullah, by then king of  what had become the independent Hashemite Kingdom of  Jordan, to see about repairing it. According to Novomeysky, Abdullah had other things on his mind as well—he was interested in talking about real peace. What happened subsequently Novomeysky does not say, but all hope for a future of  coexistence came to an end with Abdullah’s assassination two years later, at the hands of  A rab extremists, some believe, because of  his desire to make peace with the Jews. Novomeysky was not a utopian but a practical visionary who had an abundant faith in his ability to turn ideas into fact. A chemist who worked beside him for many years made a telling comparison between him and Pinhas Rutenberg, the recipient of  the other major concession under the British. Rutenberg received the concession for the electric works by persuading people that using the Jordan River in this way was a great pioneering effort, though he later produced electricity conventionally. Novomeysky, on the other hand, won the backing he needed by understating from the start the project’s complexities and convinc-

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ing people that what was actually a preposterous scheme was not in the least out of  the ordinary, though it had never been done anywhere else in the world; and that his experience in Siberia, of  a ll places, gave him the necessary credentials. Modest to such an extent that one has often to fill in between the lines of  his memoirs in order to get an idea of  his achievements, he reserved his energies for the important work in which he believed. Ironically, that very lack of  flamboyance may be the reason that he is hardly known in Israel today. Very few people have heard the name or can place it, let alone know anything substantial about the man or his accomplishments. Novomeysky’s rivals for the Dead Sea concession were numerous and at times formidable. But in the final analysis, it does not seem that any of  them had a fraction of  his drive. He wanted the concession, he knew he was the one who should be granted it, and he proceeded as if  shielded by blinders from the obstacles on all sides. A man with better peripheral vision might have been utterly discouraged long before Novomeysky evinced even the slightest disappointment; but he drove on, shuttling for nine years between Palestine and Paris, London and New York, raising money, garnering support, and facing criticism. And what did he achieve by all this? Practically speaking, he laid the foundation for one of  Israel’s major industries. And his moral achievement, if  one may speak of  that, was at least as impressive. During years of  bitter hostility between Jews and Arabs, he created a little island of  cooperation in the Dead Sea valley, turning that part of  the desert into an outpost of  mutual regard that one only hopes could be emulated.

si x

A Lake Divided

• After their evacuation from Qalya, the potash workers and kibbutz­ niks remained for months under siege at Sedom. On their release from the army a year later, the kibbutzniks split for ideological reasons into two groups and went north to found two new kibbutzim in the Galilee. Left at the plant was a group of  six men: an Egyptian, a Turk, a Druse, and three Jews, one of  whom was Langotzki. And there they stayed, isolated and idle, for four years, until the road from Beersheba was completed and contact with the rest of  the country restored. Then they hauled in sup­ plies, drilled for water, and prepared to resume production. The scientists at the potash works also contrived to make use of  the surface water of  the Dead Sea. At that time the influx from the Jordan River was still so great that it could be skimmed off  the top of  the lake and used for washing the evaporation pans of  their salt residue. Novomeysky suffered bitterly in those days. It was not only war, parti­ tion, destruction, and the ruin of  everything he had spent a quarter of  a century building that he had to bear, but, he felt, the betrayal of  his own people, as well. No help, no sympathy was offered from official quarters for his loss. Not one expression of  understanding did he hear for the fact that his company was struck down in its prime through no fault of  his own; instead, he claims, only slanderous words came his way. The situ­ ation was complicated and unpleasant. The Government had no inter­ est in the business; after all, the plant was entirely cut off  f rom the rest of  the country, besides which the machinery had rusted. But there were those who were convinced anyway of  the importance of  a Government takeover, and they persuaded Ben Gurion to form a Dead Sea commit­ 180

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tee to investigate. Such a committee was appointed in November 1949, purportedly to examine the problems connected with exploitation of  the Dead Sea. Yet its real purpose, Novomeysky accused in an angry pam­ phlet published in 1950, was to fabricate an excuse for nationalizing his industry by discrediting management so thoroughly as to sway the pub­ lic and leave the Government no alternative but to take over. Novomeysky quoted from two newspapers, one left-wing, the other centrist, and summarized the charges against him: negligence, incom­ petence, and a willingness to surrender the country’s resources to “im­ perialist monopolist capital.” (Insinuations about the surrender of  the northern plant, its “destruction in mysterious circumstances,” and pay­ ment to Transjordan, “are so beneath contempt that they can be ignored as a whole.”) Further, he was accused of  not having recognized national authority in matters of  security (perhaps this had to do with his continu­ ing relationship with Abdullah, which alienated him from the Zionist establishment and may have earned for him the ill-will of  Ben Gurion). Finally, he was criticized for not having paid adequate workers’ com­ pensation. About the latter charge, he repeated that it was the war, not his own caprice, that resulted in the workers’ dismissal; that in fact he had spent £70,000 on assistance; and that no agreement on compensa­ tion could be reached until he was able to raise new funds. Twenty years earlier, he recalled, such calumny came from “some British Antisemites”; now it came from his fellow Jews. He concluded by noting scathingly that surely a case could be made for nationalizing his industry without “slav­ ishly copying the cheap methods used by the gutter press in countries which have brought civilisation into disrepute.” The government’s desire to nationalize the industry was at the heart of  the matter, and antipathy to private ownership was a factor in the hostility that Novomeysky felt. After the war, a committee gave him six months to raise money to reopen. Not surprisingly, considering the plant’s unpropitious location and its total isolation, he failed to find in­ vestors. Given another half  year, he failed again. In the end the dispir­ ited Novomeysky gave up and the government assumed control in 1952. One long-time associate of  the Dead Sea Works, as the company was called after the war, carried in his mind a sad picture of  the once dy­ namic man—small, fragile, quiet, and unsmiling, sitting down for a big

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midday meal at Sedom and eating only mashed potatoes and yogurt. But for Mordechai Makleff, the new managing director, Novomeysky was no outcast but a hero, and he kept him on as advisor, not merely out of  k indness, but common sense as well. Nonetheless, Novomeysky eventually moved to Paris, where it could perhaps be easier to bear age, defeat, and bitterness. He died in 1961 and was brought back to Jerusalem to be buried. Until his own death, Novomeysky’s faithful ally Moshe Langotzki made a lone pilgrimage to the grave every year on the anni­ versary of  Novomeysky’s death. Times would remain hard, even under the leadership of  the much admired Makleff. Between 1952 and ’56, the Dead Sea Works suffered severe setbacks and nearly folded. The name itself  was synonymous with failure, and it was said that nothing could sink in the Dead Sea except money. Only utter idealists or those enticed by the relatively high wages would come to work in the desert; one of  the former, who went down in the ’50s and would devote his entire adult life to the region, claims that his family hid the news of  his whereabouts from relatives, so great was the shame. Sedom, ironically, would be plagued by social problems that demanded a radical change in approach. In 1957, Makleff  took the drastic step of  closing down the workers’ camp there and insisted that from then on no transient labor would be hired. He encouraged and persuaded families to move to Beersheba and the new development town of  Dimona, from which they could commute. Seeking to reverse the fortunes of  t he company, the management initiated a new program in the early 1960s. A Dutch company designed a system of  d ikes, construction of  which was begun by an American firm. But that company took huge losses and backed out. Following a complicated legal battle, Israel finished the project—without any prior experience—and the entire western side of  t he southern basin was turned into an evaporation pan. Another American company built a new refinery, and once it was adapted to the special conditions of  t he Dead Sea Works, the experience of  t he company has been more in keep­ ing with the promise it showed in its early years under Novomeysky. The Dead Sea Works projected a figure of  t wo million tons of  potash for 1985, a goal that was met. (To put this figure into perspective, it might be noted that Canada, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and the United

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States produced eighty percent of  t he 45 million tons mined worldwide in 1980.) Production will eventually level off, because the amount of  pot­ ash that can be extracted depends on the size of  t he evaporation area, which can be enlarged no further. For some years, the Dead Sea Works was the only company in the world (except for a small American firm working at Utah’s Great Salt Lake, whose process is very different) that mined potash from a body of  water, a distinction it now shares with its Jordanian counterpart, the Arab Potash Company. The advantage in mining from a lake, rather than from an exhaustible vein, is that a large part of  t he initial phase is done passively, by the sun and the force of  g ravity alone. The principle involved is easy enough: at various degrees of  saturation, certain salts fall out of  solution in crystalline form. But the process itself  is far more difficult, mainly because the concentration of  potassium chloride in the lake is comparatively small. Of  the 44 billion tons of  salts in the sea, only two billion are potash. There is no way that the mineral can be ex­ tracted unless its concentration can be greatly increased, to twenty-five percent. The key to the process Novomeysky invented (which remains essen­ tially sound even today) is twofold: the ability to bring the water to the saturation point, and the more critical ability to control precipitation. The process begins in an enormous evaporation pan in which the water is reduced in volume by one half. The first mineral to precipitate is sodium chloride, and while that is happening, the potash is doubling in concen­ tration. When most of  the common salt has precipitated, and the water has turned into a heavy brine, it is channeled elsewhere, where con­ tinued evaporation turns it into a thick white foam. By this time a new compound has begun to precipitate, and it is this carnallite that contains the potash. But it also contains magnesium chloride as well as the rest of  the sodium chloride, and the remainder of  the process is devoted to separating the potash. The frothy mixture is scooped up from the bottom of  the pans by large tractor-like dredgers and is sent for washing, passed through vibrating screens—like panning for gold—spin-dried, refined, and sorted. The rate of  attrition for the machinery is high because of  the salts’ corrosiveness, and an on-site repair plant, operating night and day, turns out 30,000 different replacement parts.

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The magnitude of  the industrial achievement becomes clearer when one realizes that an enormous amount of  f resh water is needed to pro­ duce the potash. Not for washing the salts—that water comes from the brackish wells—but for energy. The plant runs on electricity produced from steam generators that require huge quantities of  f resh water every day. If  the well water were used, the generators would be ruined in a matter of  weeks. There is no alternative but desalination, by far the most expensive part of  the process. The story of  Jordan’s potash plant is decidedly different. There is no sin­ gle, driving figure at the center, no Siberian-like connection, no intrigue or struggle with a foreign power. But drama, while useful to a story­teller, is hardly the only or even the best measure of  historical significance. The Arab Potash Company was established in 1956 as the first-ever pan-Arab project. The objective was to construct a mineral-extracting operation like that of  the Israelis; but various difficulties, political and technical, delayed it for nearly twenty years. In 1975 the Company was resurrected and a feasibility study was carried out by an American firm. The study concluded that the 420 million dollar plan was sound, and efforts were directed at preparing the way for large-scale production of  potash. Over 200 million dollars was borrowed from an array of  government and in­ ternational agencies, and planners set to work awarding contracts. It has been an international venture. The American firm was overall supervi­ sor; a British company constructed the dikes and evaporation pans; an Austrian firm built the processing plant, and Germans the power sta­ tion. Living quarters for the construction workers were built near the Lisan Peninsula. The so-called “township” has evolved into a sizeable and pleasant community of  Jordanian families who all have a connection to the potash industry. The project was placed high on Jordan’s list of  national priorities, as spelled out in its five-year plan for 1976–80. With the most modern technology, the most efficient equipment, great financial resources, and the vital es-Safieh oasis nearby, the Jordanians opened on schedule in September of  1982. The Arab Potash Company planned to produce its full capacity of  around 1.2 million tons in 1985, but as of  1984, the Com­ pany had taken a loss. International competition, lower prices, and the difficulty of  perfecting the extraction process meant that production

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had to be drastically curtailed. Obviously management expected to see better times, and indeed they soon did. By 1987 the optimal production level had been achieved. Jordan is one of  the few countries in the world that possesses huge quantities of  both phosphate and potassium, which along with nitrogen are the essential ingredients in fertilizers. If  a nitro­ gen source were available, and it is not beyond the range of  what is pos­ sible that a natural gas line might one day be that very source, the Arab Potash Company could become the largest producer of  fertilizers in the Arab world. Then Crown Prince Hassan once noted that the Dead Sea industries could develop into the backbone of  Jordan’s economy, and his optimism seems to have been entirely warranted, as the company grew to account for a substantial portion of  the Kingdom’s exports. Although it seemed in the last few decades that the Israeli Dead Sea Works had taken a permanent turn for the better, and that the Arab Pot­ ash Company could look forward to a secure future, something else was happening that produced still another challenge. Until the mid-1960s, the seasonal rises and falls of  the Dead Sea had been largely dependent on natural factors. The Jordan River was responsible for about two thirds of  the annual replacement water, and as long as the snow on the Hermon melted and rain fell each year—a kind of  Birnam Wood prophecy—the annual cycle of  the lake would be roughly the one it had obeyed for mil­ lennia. But both Israel and Jordan are water-poor countries and have had to turn to the Jordan River system. Since the Jordan is part of  their common border, one can imagine that the issue of  water-sharing has for decades been endlessly complicated and has thus far eluded solution on a unified regional level. In 1944, the American land conservationist and hydrologist Walter C. Lowdermilk advised in Palestine, Land of  Promise that so far as the uti­ lization of  water resources was concerned, there was no doubt that a regional approach based on the agreement of  a ll parties would greatly benefit all concerned. In 1953 the United States sought to initiate a pro­ gram by which Israel and the Arab nations would share their combined water resources. This so-called Johnston Plan (named after President Eisenhower’s envoy and worked out by the Tennessee Valley Authority) allocated certain amounts of  water to Syria, Jordan, and Israel. But the Arab states objected that Israel’s share was too large, and they spent a

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year negotiating with Johnston over proposed allotments. Israel, on the other hand, had hoped for a greater share and also submitted counterproposals. Johnston tried to put it all together, and in 1955 presented his Unified Plan. But though it had at first been endorsed by both sides, it was rejected that year by the Arab League, perhaps because acceptance meant tacit recognition of  Israel. Israel never ratified it either, and from that point on both sides proceeded unilaterally. Israel proceeded quickly in implementing a comprehensive waterdiversion program. Development of  the Negev Desert had already begun, and Israel had started work on its National Water Carrier, which would use the Sea of  Galilee as a reservoir and convey water (about the amount stipulated in the Johnston Plan) southward. The Arabs were provoked, and in 1960, four years before Israel’s National Water Carrier would even open, they proposed to divert the Jordan before it reached the Sea of Galilee, thus derailing the Israeli irrigation project. The proposal was ap­ proved, but never implemented, perhaps because of  inter-Arab disagree­ ment about water-allocation. But the issue remained a contentious one, and in 1964 they met again. Rejecting the idea of  immediate war, they proposed a second time to divert the Jordan’s sources. That alone, had the plan ever been put into motion, might have been enough to provoke a confrontation; but the summit conference also took the step of  recog­ nizing the newly formed Palestine Liberation Organization, which in the next few years initiated terrorist raids in Israel and prompted repri­ sals. Hostilities increased in all directions, not just between Israel and Jordan and Syria, but among the Arabs as well. Within a few years the 1967 Arab–Israeli war broke out, and with the capture by Israel of  the Golan Heights, the question of  A rab diversion of  the Jordan’s sources was resolved, for they lay in the conquered territory. Jordan did not lag far behind in irrigation projects. The East Ghor Canal, for irrigating the Jordan Valley, was conceived in the late 1950s. Extending from the Yarmuk River (the Jordan’s main tributary and once accounting for half  its volume), its first section was opened as early as 1961. The Yarmuk is Jordan’s most important source of  water, and its conservation has long been considered vital. The United States aided Jordan in the construction of  a dam. Initially considered in the ’50s but postponed for various reasons, the dam was to increase the capacity of

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the East Ghor Canal and become a vital part of  Jordan’s water system. Both sides have been industriously pursuing water projects on their own, but in such a way, it has been noted, that should peace between them ever come about, they could be integrated into a central system. To some ob­ servers, early participation in the Johnston discussions suggests mutual recognition that a single unified plan is ultimately the best solution for the region. As one can see, great demands have been placed on the Jordan River in the last decades, and so severely reduced had its flow become by the mid-1970s that its contribution to the Dead Sea had been cut in half. By around 1980 it was contributing less than the winter flooding and less too than Wadi Mojib, and by the mid-1980s, the Jordan had to a large extent ceased its year-round flow. (Winter produces a river, but in the summer the flow is reduced to a trickle.) It is an ironic—and pyrrhic—victory for those nineteenth-century travelers who complained, in the words of  one, that “the abounding waters of  the Jordan are at present wasted on the thankless corpse of  the Dead Sea.” Ironic because the Dead Sea never was a corpse except in their projections, and its lifecycle was always intertwined with the Jordan’s. There are various opinions about what the essential loss of  the Jordan ultimately means to the Dead Sea. Climatic changes have been inducing a recession of  the lake since around 1930, and it was shrinking percepti­ bly year by year. The northern basin has shown the effects, as the water backed away from the cliffs. But the shrinkage was experienced much more critically by the southern basin, whose shallowness meant it would absorb the brunt of  the recession. As Irby and Mangles noted more than a century and a half  ago, a reduction in inflow means not merely a lower­ ing of  the level, but a shortening of  the lake; sure enough, year by year the Dead Sea’s southernmost point was creeping further and further north—around eighteen miles in half  a century. It did not take unusual imagination to see that the Dead Sea was dis­ appearing, and not so slowly, from its southern basin, and that by the end of  the 1970s it would be gone. The loss would be bad enough from a conservationist point of  v iew, but the practical consequences would also be serious. The recession of  the lake was leaving the Dead Sea Works stranded at the far end of  a muddy, salt-encrusted plain. Half  a century

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of  painstaking labor was at stake, as well as an expensive system of  dikes. To counter the recession, Israeli engineers built a channel leading to the southern basin from the northern one, and a pumping station to supply it as needed with water. Today the southern basin no longer exists as a natural phenomenon; though it is not generally recognized, what is there is a large artificial pool. The Lisan Peninsula is no longer a penin­ sula but a land bridge, a broad salt plain extending the full width of  the lake; for the first time since the Byzantine era, the Dead Sea once again occupies, strictly speaking, only its northern basin. The Jordanian side of  the southern basin was dry in 1981, but a year later, construction on their dikes was completed, and their pumping station was ready to fill the pool. As long as the northern basin exists, both countries can chan­ nel water south and maintain a level compatible with that of  their dikes. Although the amount of  potash that can be mined from the Dead Sea is ultimately limited by the area of  the evaporation pans, the Dead Sea Works and the Arab Potash Company have so far continued their expan­ sion, extracting other minerals as well. Magnesium chloride accounts for roughly half  the minerals in the Dead Sea, making the lake one of the largest magnesium mines in the world. But a prohibitive amount of  energy is needed in its production, and so the Israeli company began by extracting only a small quantity, for use in bricks that line the kilns of  steel mills. Since Novomeysky’s days, a subsidiary of  the Dead Sea Works has been extracting magnesium bromide, which has had a kind of  roller coaster career. Because a bromine derivative was used as an additive in leaded gasoline, the burgeoning automobile industry seemed to en­ sure long demand—until the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency banned leaded gasoline in the 1970s. Demand was restored when two new compounds thought to have great potential were developed. One was used in pesticides, where it was hoped that its toxicity to hu­ mans and animals would be less than that of  conventional pesticides. By the mid-1980s, however, that hope was proven vain, and the EPA banned the compound for agricultural use. The other newly developed use was as a fire retardant, and this derivative seems to have assumed a solid place in the manufacture of  computer and television parts. The billion tons

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of  bromine in the Dead Sea make Israel and Jordan the world’s largest possessors of  it. The key to industrial expansion is inexpensive energy, which Israel has no means of  producing; and Jordan, though it receives money from OPEC, is itself  oil-poor. As long as seventy years ago, Novomeysky rec­ ognized that the long-range success of  his project would depend on an energy source. The geological report he read before coming to Palestine indicated that there were oil shale deposits not far from the Dead Sea, and he thought the shale might solve what he termed his “power diffi­ culties.” He journeyed to Nebi Musa to gather samples and sent them to Berlin for tests by a leading authority on mineral fuels. There is enough of  the chalk-like rock in Israel to satisfy energy needs for decades, but only in the mid-1980s, after years of  research, was the first oil produced at an experimental plant. The major question determining long-range possibilities was whether shale, like coal, could be burned directly. And the search for oil went on for most of  the twentieth century. We read in the PEF’s Quarterly Statement of  1914 that two companies were engaged in oil-prospecting at the Dead Sea. The American Standard Oil Company was in the midst of  constructing a road fifty miles long from Hebron to the lake, at great expense and with 2,000 men at work. “They are evidently quite satisfied that oil will be found,” wrote the correspon­ dent, “and are bringing out by special steamer a great quantity of  ma­ chinery and eight motor trucks and automobiles.” An English company was similarly employed on the east side and appeared “equally hopeful of  success.” For many years, Leo Picard, who conducted a geological sur­ vey of  the entire country, worked both in association with Novomeysky and alone, searching for oil, as well as doing mineral research. In 1967, Israel’s oil needs were partially satisfied when after the Arab–Israeli war it found itself  in possession of  the oil-rich Sinai. But the peace agreement with Egypt and the return of  t he Sinai stipulated the relinquishment of  a ll the oil wells, pre- and post-’67, and since then Israel has been drill­ ing in its own desert, just south of  t he Dead Sea, and near Masada and Mt. Sedom. In 1980 a substantial oil deposit was discovered. The ques­ tion, however, is not simply whether oil exists at a given location, but whether it can be reached, and at what expense. That there were at one time oil deposits beneath the Dead Sea is almost beyond a doubt, the

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evidence being the asphalt that periodically rises and the petroleum that leaks out of  certain rocks on both sides of  t he lake. Several explorers referred to the latter phenomenon in the region of  Wadi Mojib; and a wadi on the southwest side of  the lake—where an important Neolithic discovery was recently made—is called Nahal Hemar, or asphalt, in recognition of  t he phenomenon. But so extensive is the seismic activity in the Rift, and so fluid the oil, that it is assumed those deposits have long shifted elsewhere. In the 1950s, David Ben Gurion expressed faith in the future of  solar energy, and he pressed for research and whatever application was pos­ sible. Indeed for years now Israeli homes have been characterized by water drums sitting on their roofs with adjacent solar collectors. But the emphasis Ben Gurion placed on the development of  solar energy was not extended by his successors, and as long as oil was inexpensive and plentiful, the call for alternatives had no ring of  urgency. Still there were always those few whose foresight or plain curiosity prodded them onwards, and over the years they stubbornly persisted in looking to the sun for a solution to Israel’s needs. The sun shines on the Dead Sea all but a handful of  days every year. If  those rays could be collected and stored, then why not converted to electricity? The story behind this question goes back several decades. In 1935, Novomeysky, dissatisfied with the rate of  evaporation in the pans of  h is potash works, sought the advice of  a physical chemist named Rudolph Bloch, a Czech Jew then living in Paris. Novomeysky invited Bloch to come to London, where the Palestine Potash Company had its offices (impressive ones near the royal palace), and showed him aerial photographs of  t he evaporation pans on the northern shore of  t he Dead Sea. Now Bloch was one of  those responsible for discovering the cause of  an ailment, the so-called glassblower’s cataract that was commonly found among glassblowers because of  their long hours in front of  the intense light of  open furnaces. It had been thought that their cataracts were caused by infrared light, but Bloch had learned this was not so, that it was the visible light which was at fault. His studies had made him aware of  the different properties of  l ight, and as he looked at Novomeysky’s photographs, he was struck by what now seems an obvious detail. The

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evaporation pans, he saw, were white, which meant that while the infra­ red rays were being absorbed by the water, the visible light was being reflected back off  the pans. In short, Novomeysky was losing much of  the light that could have been absorbed. At that time, the engineers of  the potash works thought that wind, not light, was the cause of  evaporation, and Novomeysky himself, as outstanding a chemical engineer as he was, was not familiar with the subject of  l ight absorption. This was the late 1930s, and Bloch, not allowed to take his money out of  Czechoslovakia, invested it instead in experiments; in his words, if  he was not permitted to take money out of  Europe, he would take out knowledge in its place. The point of  t he experiments he requisi­ tioned was to determine what dyestuff  would be suited to the evapora­ tion pans—which, in other words, would be both resistant to sunlight and soluble in a concentrated salt solution, not common characteristics of  dyestuffs. After having two hundred substances tested, he discov­ ered an appropriate one (it happened to be green), filed for a patent, and notified Novomeysky. Strangely enough, Novomeysky took Bloch’s discovery rather casually and resisted paying him for the patent, and the two men, who would ultimately become friends and work together in the potash industry, ended up in litigation. All the more strange because the litigation was being played out even as Bloch’s experiments over the next two years were increasing the rate of  evaporation by twenty-five percent, and by 1939 had increased potash production by forty percent. Resented by some of  the company’s engineers as an outsider, Bloch gained credibility by teaming up with a Hebrew University scientist, Laszlo Farkas (who was killed in a plane crash in 1948) and Farkas’s student, Zvi Littman. The main problem with which they had to con­ tend was that of  washing the evaporation pans. In producing one ton of  potash, eight tons of  salt were produced and remained in the pans, which every winter had to be washed out with water from the Jordan. The engineers of  the potash works had resisted Bloch’s idea of  dyeing the water only partly out of  resentment at being taught their trade by a stranger. Their practical reason was that the dye would increase the amount of  residual salt in the pans. But Bloch felt that in any case there must be a more efficient way of  going about the washing. In the course of  their investigation, Bloch, Farkas, and Littman noticed that for a while

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the fresh water that was poured into the evaporation pans did dissolve the salt deposits, but that before long it became much less effective in doing so. What was happening, they realized, was that a layer of  brine ac­ cumulated underneath the fresh water, serving as a kind of  seal that the water could not penetrate. In order to wash the salt away, they saw that they would have to dig trenches by which this brine could be pumped out from underneath so that the fresh water could settle directly on the salt. This new method proved to be a much improved way of  washing the pans, but Bloch and his associates learned something else along the way. The brine that they were pumping out from the bottom of the pans was very hot, as much as 160° F when the air temperature was 80° F. Bloch remembered that his father used to take him to a certain lake in Czechoslovakia where the water was noticeably warmer at some depth than at the surface, but that the warm water rose, eventually mixing with the cool. Here, however, that homogenizing process did not take place, because the brine at the bottom of  t he evaporation pans was so heavy with dissolved salts that it could not rise. It was an exciting discovery, that one could pump out the hot brine without disturbing the layer of  f reshwater above. Why waste all that hot water, they asked themselves in 1943, when it could perhaps be converted to electricity? They applied to the Mandate government for research funds, but never received a reply. Other crucial projects at the Dead Sea potash industry kept Bloch occupied, and little was done in relation to what had already come to be called the solar pond. In 1959, because of  his work with dyestuffs he was invited by the Ford Foundation to a conference in Arizona on solar energy, and there he gave his lecture on the solar pond. Hardly any inter­ est was expressed, and Bloch turned to Harry (Zvi) Tabor, who had also been invited from Israel because of  his invention of  a solar absorption heater, and tried to persuade him to join him on the project. Tabor (a leading figure in solar energy in Israel) was involved in other things, and again the development of  the solar pond was delayed. Four years later, however, he was ready, and by 1966 a small test pond had been built at the potash plant. Pools of  water, even the ocean itself, had long been thought of  as po­ tential solar collectors. A body of  water absorbs the greatest amount of

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the sun’s radiation approximately five feet below its surface, but, as Bloch recalled of  his boyhood lake, the heated water, like heated air, rises, and once it comes to the surface, the heat is diffused. That initial problem had been solved more than two decades before, when Bloch realized that saltsaturated hot water, because of  its weight, did not behave in this way. The design that was worked out by Tabor, with Bloch (then head of  research and development for the Dead Sea Works) serving as advisor, called for a shallow pool lined with black plastic to maximize absorption of  the sun’s radiation. Because the pool was not to be more than six feet deep, it would collect the radiation not at its surface, but near the bottom. A layer of  lighter water (ordinary sea water could be used) would be spilled into the pool, where it would rest on top and serve as a kind of  insulat­ ing gasket, a lid to keep the heated water from being exposed to the air. In this way, convection—the transference, or in effect loss, of  heat by means of  circulation of  the heated liquid—could be prevented. The sun would continually penetrate the top layer, which would be replenished as it evaporated. The next problem was how to maintain the distinction between the layers, an important matter because the greater the distinction the easier it would be to prevent convection. As Bloch recognized forty years ago, the layers would not of  themselves mix, but they would be subject to stir­ ring by wind and waves and would eventually be rendered homogeneous. The problem was dealt with in what now seems quite simple a manner. Strips of  plastic netting would be laid on top of  the pool; criss-crossed, they would act as a floating windbreak while at the same time minimiz­ ing the formation of  waves. In this way the necessary stratification of  the pool could be preserved. Thus the non-convecting solar pond came into existence. Heat, however, even the near boiling point temperature that could be achieved in the pool, is not electricity. In 1968, Tabor approached Yehuda Bronitzki, an engineer long interested in solar energy, and asked him to design a low temperature turbine to convert the heat created by the pool into electricity. Bronitzki developed what would be the mate to the pond, a heat converter that operated with temperatures considerably lower than those required by conventional generators. Based on the two designs, the first experimental solar pond and power station were built

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on the shore of  the Dead Sea in 1977. Because a liquid collector can hold heat for a relatively long period of  time, electricity can be generated at night as well as during the day. To demonstrate the point, the switch was first thrown, in December of  1979, at night, lighting up the shore of  the Dead Sea by means, one could say, of  a sun that was then shining half  a world away. The power station worked in a beautifully simple way. The sun’s radia­ tion was absorbed by the lower layer of  water, which got increasingly hot until a temperature near the boiling point was reached. The hot brine was transferred through insulated pipes to a chamber in which it heated a more volatile liquid that turned to vapor, expanding and turning the wheels of  the turbine, producing electricity. From there the vapor was forced into a condenser, where circulating water from the top layer of  the pond cooled it and returned it to a liquid state, after which it was con­ veyed back to the pond, where the cycle began again. The solar pond had several advantages over conventional glass collec­ tors. Bodies of  water offer the large flat surfaces required for solar col­ lection; heavy brine has proved more effective than glass for long-term storage of  radiation; and there are no glass surfaces to keep clean. But there are drawbacks, as well. The ponds cannot be tilted and are thus suitable only within a latitude of  plus or minus forty degrees, and the immense area needed for production of  electricity might be prohibitive. Further, one has to consider the price of  salt, the availability of  a water source, and the threat of  contamination of  f reshwater aquifers. Many underdeveloped regions of  the world do meet the requirements. As of recent times, however, the only serious work conducted has been by Israel and the United States. The 150 kilowatt test pond was so successful that plans for further development leapt forward. In the early 1980s the Israeli government invested in a new facility then under construction at the northern end of  the Dead Sea; the sixty acre pond was to power a three megawatt plant, the electricity to be fed into the national grid. Experiments were also conducted with “floating ponds,” which were thought to be more efficient than the original ones and which could make the deep northern basin usable. Researchers were initially confident that by the turn of  the century the ponds could supply around a fifth of  Israel’s energy needs.

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But broad application of  the solar electric pond may not be feasible, for their ultimate viability is linked to water, whether fresh or brackish, with which to replenish the top layer of  the pool as it evaporates. There is only enough water in the available wells and springs to convert about a fifth of  the lake into a floating pond, and though fossil water sources could double that, they will have been exhausted after around twenty years. If  work on the solar ponds were to proceed, water would have to be brought from elsewhere. Israel’s only lake other than the Dead Sea is the Sea of  Galilee, and that supply cannot be spared. For this reason, among others, sights turned, not surprisingly, to the Mediterranean. In 1902, Theodore Herzl’s utopian novel Altneuland (Old-New Land) offered a vision of  a reconstituted and revitalized Jewish people at home in Palestine. Jews would farm the land and run the mills, and the yoke of  European oppression would be lifted. Central in his conception of  this progressive society was its ability to provide for its own energy needs, which Herzl believed would be satisfied in large part by the Dead Sea. The key to all the industrial efforts that would be concentrated there was, according to this vision, a canal that would link the lake with the Mediterranean, forever replenishing it and supplying the country with unlimited hydroelectric power. The idea of  d igging a canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea did not originate with Herzl. Earlier proponents had military matters on their minds and saw a canal as part of  a global strategy. William Al­ len’s 1855 proposal came out of  concern for England’s continuance as a maritime power, and he viewed a canal as a shortcut to its Indian Ocean possessions. “Providence,” he explained, “has here almost furnished in­ dustrious nations, at a time when growing intercourse is seeking for improved channels of  communication, with the means of  constructing a noble canal between the two seas.” Allen was confident that his plan, which called for a canal to run inland to the Sea of  Galilee, down the Jordan Valley, through the Dead Sea, and south to the Red Sea, was, despite its greater length, better than the French plan to dig at Suez. One of  his main reasons was that the slope from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea would supposedly create a current that “would carry off  a ll the earth (previously loosened by blasting), whereas the canal of  the

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isthmus would have to be wholly dug out and carried away.” (He was not wrong, though the procedure would have been somewhat messy.) Allen conceded that there would be some sacrifices, but he insisted they would be trifling compared with the advantages of  his scheme. One of  the sacrifices would be the inundation of  2,000 square miles “of  the territories belonging to our faithful and gallant ally, His Highness the Sultan.” Another would be the submersion of  some Arab villages, along with the city of  Tiberias, which had been severely damaged in the earth­ quake of  1837 and had not been rebuilt. Without a historical feeling for the town, Allen saw no reason to preserve what he described as a “filthy heap of  r uined buildings.” His only slight misgiving was his consider­ ation for Jewish reaction, but he was able to rationalize that: “The Jews would possibly object strongly to the loss of  Tiberias, which is one of  the four holy cities; but they are strangers, from Russia, Poland, & c., who have no property in it, and come there in the hope of  seeing the Messiah rise out of  the lake, which is a general expectation among them, though on what authority it is not known . . . If  such is really the general be­ lief  of  the Jews, they must consider it as a miracle, and of  course it could not be impeded by a few fathoms more or less in the depth of  the sea.” Little more was heard about a canal for the next few decades. Mean­ while, the French did open the Suez Canal, which took care of  the West’s communication and transportation needs. When Charles Gordon, of Khartoum fame, proposed his canal scheme in the early 1880s, he was motivated by something else. He feared Russian advances in the East and was certain the Russians had their eye on Afghanistan. A canal through Palestine would serve as an eastern defense line for the Suez, which by then had become vital to England as well as to France. It was only later, when a similar plan was considered by the early Zi­ onists, that the focus shifted. Far from conceiving of  the canal as vital to international strategy, they were thinking in terms of  the needs of  their future state. In 1899, Max Bourcart, a Swiss engineer, proposed to Herzl a canal system that would address the dual needs of  electricity and water. As he saw it, a waterway would run from the Sea of  Galilee parallel to the Jordan River; that part of  the proposal was more or less adopted in the Israeli National Water Carrier, though the fields it irrigates extend much further south than Bourcart imagined. The second part of  t he

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plan had a canal running from the Mediterranean inland to the Jordan River, on the way to which the difference in elevation would provide hydroelectric power. Nothing was heard in relation to a Mediterranean–Dead Sea canal for a number of  years. In the early 1940s, when Lowdermilk proposed a comprehensive program for meeting the problem of  water resources in Palestine and Transjordan, he included in his plan a canal extending from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River to replace the water lost through the projected tapping of  the river and to provide hydroelectric power to the region. His proposal generated a good deal of  interest, but the Mandate Government made no effort to act on it. Only thirty years later, when the price of  oil shot up after the 1973 October War, did Is­ raeli engineers resurrect the idea. Aside from the hydroelectric energy it would provide, the canal water could also be used to cool power plants and supply the solar ponds with the unlimited water that is essential to their operation. A further objective was the replenishment of  the lake itself; water was to flow into the Dead Sea until the optimum level was reached, that level defined by the dikes and coinciding roughly with the 1950s shoreline. Afterwards the level was to be controlled so that the amount of  inflow from the canal would counter evaporation. The plan was approved in principle in 1980, and a steering committee chose a route that would go from the Gaza Strip to Ein Bokek. To the dismay of  even some of  those who favored the controversial project, a groundbreaking ceremony was held a year later. The motivation of  the Likud government was obviously political, and many felt that the en­ meshment of  politics in a scientific endeavor of  this magnitude did not bode well, for there were complicated issues still to be addressed. For one thing, the final cost would probably be a good deal higher than the one and a half  billion dollars projected. Perhaps more important, there was disagreement about what energy advantages it would finally yield. The hydroelectric plant—the canal’s raison d’etre—would provide, ac­ cording to the canal committee, around twenty percent of  Israel’s energy needs. But some scientists disagreed, asserting that if  the canal were be­ ing done for the purpose of  hydro power, it was not worth it. The problems were not confined to the canal itself; there was the Dead Sea Works, for example, to consider, not to mention the Arab Potash

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Company. The water from the canal would not mix with the deep water of  the Dead Sea because of  their different densities, so neither company would be affected by the dilution of  the lake’s surface—at least not at first. After some years, however, the lake would become homogenized, with an overall decrease in its salinity. From then on, each step in the mineral-extracting process would be protracted. The political issues were at least as complicated as the technical. The Dead Sea is a lake owned jointly by two countries who were in a formal state of  war. If  there are no international laws governing the use of  a shared natural resource, there are international conventions, according to which unilateral tampering with the lake would have been a violation. Around the same time, Jordan submitted a report on various projects for development of  energy sources. The report outlined a plan for a similar canal, a Red Sea–Dead Sea waterway by which water would be conveyed from Aqaba for the generation of  hydroelectricity. One can say obvious things about mutual provocation. But perhaps the parties were testing each other, and in a way trying to calculate the other’s interest in what would have to be a joint project. It is far beyond the range of  probability that two canals would ever be constructed, for the lake can only accept a finite amount of  water with­ out both potash works being flooded. Furthermore, though some plan­ ners even from Israel favored a Red Sea connection over a Mediterranean one, the route appears to be less inviting, for the distance is greater and the descent much less dramatic, not to mention the risk for either coun­ try of  sabotage, since the canals would be on the border. Nonetheless one can see the potential danger of  prolonged unilateral activity. There remained those in both Israel and Jordan who still hoped that one day a canal would be constructed, but wished for it only as a project that would serve both nations. Eventual contact between the two countries may one day be dictated by that most compelling of  political motivations, self-interest. Whether or not they like it, Israel and Jordan are linked by the natural forces of  their shared region. The same process of  evaporation on which their industries rely is raising the bottom of  the Dead Sea’s southern basin— because of  the precipitated salts—by around three feet every ten years or so. To maintain a constant depth, the level of  the lake has to be raised

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in accordance. Obviously this means that the dikes also have to be ad­ justed; but at least no one is caught unaware by that predictable sequence of  events. Other events, while awaited anxiously, are not subject to fore­ cast. Both industries are extremely vulnerable to the winter floods that surge through the wadis from east, west, and south, at great risk to the dikes. On both sides of  the Dead Sea, engineers devise ways to divert the floods, dam the wadis, create new channels—anything to spare the dikes from an onslaught that could destroy decades of  labor in an instant. This challenge is met separately by each side. But if  a wadi in one country extended at such an angle that its torrent were a threat to the other’s industry, could that be seen as nature’s way of  prodding the participants to a shared response? For a while, a project much less grandiose than a canal was being planned in Israel. A pumping station was being constructed on the southwest shore of  t he lake with the idea of  r unning Dead Sea water through a tunnel and up the cliff  at night, when electricity is least ex­ pensive, and allowing it to pour back down during the day, producing hydroelectricity at peak hours. But that too was abandoned early in 1986 out of  fi nancial considerations and amidst disagreement about Israel’s energy future. The postponement or cancelling of  the canal meant that the solar pond project could not proceed much further. That was unfortunate, for the ponds might one day have produced something like ten times the power that could be generated from the canal’s hydroelectric sta­ tions. Yet despite the fact that Israel’s distinct worldwide advantage in the development of  l iquid solar collectors could be lost for lack of  water, certain researchers devoted to the ponds nevertheless applauded the shelving of  the canal. Their reason was environmental; some feared the inadvertent poisoning with salt of  Israel’s coastal aquifer, and in general felt that far more study had to be conducted on the potential effects of  major development. The ecological system of  the Dead Sea valley is fragile enough so that the consequences of  the encroachment of  the technological world can­ not be fully predicted now. There is, for instance, the question of the region’s fauna. The diverse and prolific wildlife that roamed the Judean Hills in Biblical days had been disappearing since the time of  the Ro­

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mans. Some species are gone forever, but others, under a careful pro­ gram of conservation and restoration, have been placed under protection and even reintroduced to their natural setting. Israel and Jordan have very active nature protection networks. One of  Israel’s most remarkable achievements was the restoration of  the leopard, which was thought to have vanished in the region. Rare sightings indicated otherwise, and an intensive effort resulted in a slight but significant increase in its numbers at various locations, including Ein Gedi. By the mid-1980s two dozen leopards could be counted, and with the maturation of  the young, the population was spreading out and seemed to be taking root. The leop­ ards’ future remained uncertain, but even this tentative accomplishment was cause for hope and had implications for the entire valley, for it signi­ fied a healthy ecosystem, with food enough to sustain the large predator. Once too the magnificent ibex was rare; these days it springs from rock to rock with all the agility of  its ancestors, protected both at Ein Gedi and in the Jordanian wildlife reserve at Wadi Mojib. Because ibex, especially the weak, are the prey of  the leopard, the herd has been kept strong. As the valley’s ecological system links these two animals, it joins them also with numerous other known and unknown factors. Any drastic changes in the environment could upset the delicate balance of  nature that alone insures the survival of  endangered species. Tourism also is a mixed blessing at a time when more and more visi­ tors are attracted to the valley. In the early 1980s, a tourist town was be­ ing considered for the vicinity of  Masada, and environmentalists were gearing up to challenge the project. With Israel’s relinquishment of  the Sinai and the relocation of  its air bases to the Negev Desert, the Israeli wilderness has dwindled. And while the vast majority of  Israelis take their security needs with utmost seriousness, environmentalists fear that the country’s empty desert regions will become filled in with concrete and studded with iron. To their relief, the tourist town seems to have died a natural death. Tourism is expanding as news of  the therapeutic qualities of  the val­ ley’s mineral springs and of  the lake itself  spreads. As we have seen, such recognition is not new. Pliny recounted the habit of  some rich men of Rome who had water from the Dead Sea conveyed to them for their baths. A thousand years later, the Arab geographer Mukaddasi related

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that the water of  the Dead Sea is a cure for many disorders, so much so that “they have a feast-day for the purpose of  thus taking the waters, and it occurs in the middle of  the month of  Ab (August), when the people with those who are afflicted with sickness assemble thereto.” Among the Jews, bathing in the lake for therapeutic reasons was permitted even on the Sabbath, when water could also be drawn and carried off  (a practice normally proscribed by law) for medical purposes. Throughout most of  his trip in 1835, John Stephens was either mildly or severely ill. Fearing for his health, he was hesitant to bathe in the Dead Sea. But curiosity was stronger than caution in the young American, and he gave in to his impulse. Afterwards, to his surprise and delight, he felt oddly and remarkably refreshed. Half  a century later, Tristram was effusive: “What a sanatorium Engedi might be made, if  it were only accessible, and some enterprising speculator were to set up a hydro­ pathic establishment! Hot water, cold water, and decidedly saltwater baths, all supplied by nature on the spot, the hot sulphur springs only three miles off, and some of  the grandest scenery man ever enjoyed, in an atmosphere where half  a lung is sufficient for respiration!”—the last comment an exaggeration, but a reference to the increased air pressure at the Dead Sea, whereby the very sensitive hiker might feel less winded after a strenuous walk. And later he bid a reluctant “Farewell for the present to the Dead Sea, and the balmy climate of  its shores! A winter sanatorium at Engedi would surpass all that the Nile, Madeira, or Algiers can promise.” Finally, near the turn of  the century, a PEF associate went a step further. Predicting that one day the value of  the Dead Sea’s water would make the lake a resort in the winter months for curative purposes, he went on to say that he himself  found the water most invigorating: “I get a supply at my house [in Jerusalem] brought in old petroleum tins on donkey back, and use it somewhat diluted for my morning tub.” One’s morning tub is somewhat easier to prepare today, as Dead Sea salts are sold in Israel and Jordan. There is a substantial cluster of  hotels along the southern shore of the Israeli side of  the Dead Sea. Across the way, Jordan expanded its tourist capacity at Suweimeh, in the north, and focused on the develop­ ment of  a health spa and hotel at the highly valued Wadi Zerka Ma’in, where there are over fifty hot springs. Many of  the clientele are seeking

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a cure for skin and rheumatic diseases and respiratory ailments. Some European and Scandinavian doctors prescribe treatment at the Dead Sea for certain skin conditions, notably psoriasis; and in Denmark, a stay at this modern-day magic mountain is considered a form of  hospitaliza­ tion for insurance purposes: The most effective treatment for psoriasis is prolonged exposure to sunlight—generally a very dangerous practice. At the Dead Sea, the danger from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays is reduced and, with careful monitoring, patients can sit outside for longer periods of  time than at sea level. The magnesium from the lake water also nourishes the patients’ skin. One is struck by the incongruity of  modern hotels sitting on the bar­ ren shore where as little as half  a century ago no building stood, or had stood, in well over a thousand years. There is something surreal about the scene. The air is still, even stiller it seems than on the northern shore; but looking out at the intensely turquoise water, one is startled, then puzzled, to see whitecaps, as if  this motionless lake were a windswept sea. Is it hal­ lucination? The effect of  the relentless sun? But as one stares, wondering, one notices that these whitecaps are motionless, as inert as the desert air. Slowly the scene becomes real, as one’s perceptions adjust—like shifting for a comfortable position in a lumpy chair—and one realizes that the snow white points, frozen on the aqua sea, are not whitecaps at all but mounds of  salt exposed in the shallow water. For a moment one can stand outside time, then a bather paddling his or her body out to one of  these salt islands, or another already lying on a small mound of  white crystals, suddenly comes into view and draws one back. Every thread of  geological and human history is gathered as perceptions millennia apart accumulate. And the fabric that is woven reveals a pattern of  time and change, and challenge. For finally we return to the Dead Sea itself. The popular view—that its eventual disappearance is inevitable because of  t he loss of  its his­ toric lifeline, the Jordan River—is probably erroneous. For a time in the 1990s it seemed the lake had more or less stabilized, even if  at a level a good deal lower than many would have liked. While the southern basin had a disproportionately large surface area (it accounted for more than one quarter of  t he lake’s total surface, though only five percent of  its

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volume), the northern basin has a surface that is small relative to its great depth. The water lost through evaporation was experienced dispropor­ tionately by the two basins, so that when the southern basin dried up, the relative evaporation decreased substantially. The northern basin, adversely affected as it was by the loss of  the Jordan River, no longer had to “share” whatever inflow it received. It reached a certain level and at least temporarily seemed to stabilize, a condition, interestingly enough, predicted by Lynch in 1848. Like animal life, a lake can exhibit tenden­ cies to adapt to new circumstances. It seems that the Dead Sea had in recent years been successful in responding to changes occurring not over millennia, as associated with natural cycles, but over the course of  what is, in geo-historical terms, a handful of  years. Indeed most investigators agreed that a forty-five foot drop in water level, such as the Dead Sea exhibited in the latter part of  the twentieth century, was neither anomalous nor in itself  particular cause for con­ cern. The consensus was that climate, not human intervention, had at least until quite recently been the primary cause of  fluctuations. Cip­ pora Klein studied the changes in levels of  the Dead Sea for over thirty years; she first established the pattern of  fluctuations over the last two centuries and then tried to determine the reasons for them. The lake is at the bottom of  a drainage basin that extends north to Mt. Hermon and south into parts of  the Sinai. While Klein did not discount the influ­ ence of  the Jordan River, she became convinced that variations in the amount of  rainfall in the catchment area, which reaches the Dead Sea also by subterranean channels, was the major factor in determining its level. If  not, she asked, why was the level stable for six years after Israel’s National Water Carrier opened, and why did the seven years of  drought that followed see a parallel seven-year recession? It is a difficult enough subject, but since the end of  the 1990s it has been further complicated, to the extent that it is almost impossible to study the lake’s level as it is related to climate. As we saw, both Israel and Jordan are pumping water from the northern basin to the southern for their mineral works, and the Dead Sea has reacted with a drop in level that has caused many to fear it may never be able to overcome these great and recently redoubled demands. For the time being, it was observed, the Dead Sea seems to have given up. On the other hand, sometimes

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winters are dry, yet when the rains return, not only does inflow increase, but irrigation needs diminish. The Dead Sea’s rhythms may not be com­ pletely understood, but it seems to be a resilient body of  water, capable of  discovering an equilibrium level for a variety of  climatic situations. The relationship of  rainfall to lake level may now be permanently dis­ rupted, but there are those who still believe that climate is the most significant influence and feel—and hope—that with a substantial wet period, the lake will at least partially recover. The debate over construction of  an inter-seas canal receded for a time, but its echo resounds, for the issues it raises persist. There are practical questions that become increasingly more complex. There is the question of  preserving the Dead Sea’s unique environment and there is the politi­ cal issue of  unilateral versus bilateral regional activity. In all, that echo comes as a reminder that development is a two-edged sword, that what may be good in one arena may be harmful in another, and that Israel’s and Jordan’s long-range vitality will at least in part be determined by how they address the political and environmental threats begotten by development. There is also another view, one that sees the development of  the val­ ley not as something to fear, but as a cause for hope. The location of  the Dead Sea between Israel and Jordan might one day turn it into an instru­ ment of  peace, as cooperation such as there once was under Novomeysky could be fostered by the two countries’ reliance on and faith in the same lake. The Dead Sea has always been a border, first separating tribes, then nations, the groove in which it lies once described as extending like a fragile backbone between the mountains of  Judea and Moab. But why divide? If  a backbone, why not extend the metaphor and let the lake serve as a true backbone—of  peace. As Jordan’s industry develops, the interests of  the two countries become identical. The incentives are very clear, and of  a practical nature. There is already respect for one another, even if  it is unpublicized; that becomes apparent when one talks with representatives of  the two potash industries. Respect has a way of  lead­ ing to cooperation under the right conditions. Clandestine associations have long marked affairs in the Middle East, and the silent relationship that already exists between the two industries could be the backdoor to more extensive discussions. As unlikely as this scenario may appear, that

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very thing might have come about in the early days of  Israel’s and Jor­ dan’s existence as independent states, before Abdullah’s assassination. “I have often been a guest of  his,” recalled Novomeysky, “either at Amman or his winter residence at Shuni near the River Jordan, and he was more than once my guest at the Dead Sea. In welcome distinction from other Arab leaders, he was hostile neither to the Jews as a people nor to Zion­ ism, that is, to the Jewish national idea. . . . He often told me that he had inherited this attitude of  f riendliness from his father. It was clear to him that respect for Zionism was no derogation of  Islam.” Their meetings continued even after Israel’s War of  Independence, and one cannot help but imagine that their relationship might serve as a paradigm for future ones. In November 1949, the war over, Novomeysky requested an interview with the king to discuss the acquisition of  water for his beleaguered southern plant and was invited to Shuni for dinner. “The journey there was made with careful precautions. One of  his adju­ tants met me at night with a car on the demarcation line between New and Old Jerusalem. The passage through hostile Jericho was particularly difficult. Our talk was a very long one, and it was only in the small hours that I returned home. The principal subject of  Abdullah’s interest had not been water, but the possibility of  real peace and the conditions on which this might be concluded.” Since then, strong feelings congealed, and circumstances became less malleable than they were in those days; and it must also be borne in mind that Novomeysky was powerless and Abdullah was not a Palestinian. Nevertheless, with this precedent, there may be room for optimism. Skeptics might be startled by a report that in the early 1980s Israel and Jordan did in fact talk about a common con­ cern—the infestation of  mosquitoes in the Aqaba–Eilat area. No joint project to control them was launched, and the meeting was between only low level officials; yet according to an Israeli source the talks extended beyond the mosquito problem and touched on the question of  mineral extraction from the Dead Sea. It is hard to resist the temptation of  development when all the ingre­ dients are there and the alternatives seem so meager—harder still when the potential gains are so great. But caution seems essential until the risks can be completely evaluated. What the ultimate correspondence will be between the benefits and detriments of  development is a matter

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of  w idely divergent and adamantly held opinion. One thing, however, is clear: the Dead Sea valley has a purely physical limitation. The lake is small and its shores narrow, and there is simply not room enough for everything without causing some disturbance, whether to the lake, its coasts and springs, or the wadis. How much disturbance can be toler­ ated—and what “toleration” means—is a key question, and one that is constantly being debated. On both sides are people who have devoted years to the Dead Sea, whether studying it or guiding development. One can only hope that their devotion is not manifested in ways finally ir­ reconcilable; that they can come together to formulate a program which will foster international cooperation and protect the Dead Sea environ­ ment, and in which the word sacrifice, as it pertains to the lake, is used minimally. Centuries ago people began falling under the spell of  what was con­ sidered an inscrutable and forbidding sea. Once they discovered that its uncongeniality was largely the product of  over-indulged imaginations, they ventured nearer, asking questions, weighing, measuring, testing, and learning to appreciate. Hardly the miasma it was made out to be, the Dead Sea was found not to contain much life, but to hold a store of  information about life. Exploration led to research that branched out to include all fields of  study, and as each new answer suggested another question, research possibilities seemed inexhaustible. By the first third of  the twentieth century investigation had turned more utilitarian, and those who were actively involved at the lake were determined to prove false its western name. By now, enough life has been derived from the Dead Sea to expose forever the fallacy of  that name. But only human beings can insure that the lifecycle so recently discovered will be prolonged. Pinned like a help­ less giant in its deep, closed basin, the Dead Sea is more subject to the vagaries of  human activity than those lakes whose mere location—and ordinariness—frees them from human whim and gives them indepen­ dence from human history. The powerful sense of  permanence that one has when standing in the Dead Sea basin and looking up at the surrounding cliffs does not extend to the lake itself. Perhaps it once did; but now, given civilization’s

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encroachment, one is struck not by the sea’s immutability but by its vul­ nerability. And it is not just an impression. As a natural phenomenon, the lake is fragile, and decisions made in the next years could determine, possibly once and for all, its fate. At stake is the Dead Sea as we know it and as it has been known through all recorded history. Will it continue to live, or will it follow its predecessors, receding, changing, and finally vanishing into the cracks of  geological history?

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Part fi v e

The Twenty-First Century I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness . . . to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of  Nature, rather than a member of  society.

Henry David Thoreau “Walking” 1851 (lecture), 1862 (print)

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sev en

The River and Lake in Distress

• Every time I visit Israel, Jordan, or the West Bank, I feel compelled

to go to the Dead Sea, if  for no other reason than to see it, maybe to reassure myself  it is still there. For me, the Dead Sea is like a creature in distress: a living organism ensnared by human need, or greed, depending on one’s vantage point, but in any case subject to the consequences of  regional and local decisions that seem often to be based on short-term or parochial objectives. For millennia nature ran the show, and the Dead Sea’s vicissitudes were part of  an exquisite ecological web. Only in recent times, indeed for hardly more than half  a century, has its destiny been isolated from its environment, and to see it now is to have one’s capacity for empathy tested. The view is of  a bruised landscape, and the situation challenges us to redefine our relationship with the natural world. Caged, the Dead Sea is at our mercy, as politically and environmentally charged debates and initiatives thunder from all corners of  the region. Yet the lake itself  is only half  the picture. The Dead Sea is the terminus of  the Jordan River, the other half  of  this environmental tragedy. The two are historically, religiously, and culturally coupled, their destinies intertwined by natural law. The situation today is dire, because the Jordan River, which figures so large in historical and religious memory, is threatened with extinction. Imagine a river, modest in proportions when compared to the earth’s grandest waterways, 220 miles long and hardly more than a stone’s throw from bank to bank, but with an associated human history perhaps unrivaled by any body of  water on earth. Imagine it once wending its way 211

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through a verdant plain, home to a vast array of  flora and fauna, which spread for miles before yielding to a network of  thinly layered mesas. The human history associated with the Jordan River, one of  the most sacred rivers in the world, goes back to the story of  Abraham, the father of  the Jewish and Arab peoples, who left his home in Mesopotamia and journeyed with his nephew Lot to the Dead Sea region, where Lot settled in Sodom. In Genesis 13:10 we read of  the beauty of  the Jordan Valley: “And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of  the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere . . . like the garden of  the Lord, like the land of  Egypt.” For Jews, the Jordan is a major signpost in the historical narrative, marking the end of  Moses’ epic journey and the start of  Joshua’s. In Deuteronomy 34:1–3, before Joshua crosses the river with the Israelites, we read of  the death of  Moses: “And Moses went up from the plains of  Moab unto Mount Nebo, to the top of  Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land . . . all the land of  Judah as far as the western sea, and the Negev, and the Plain, even the valley of  Jericho, the city of  palm trees.” In 2 Kings 5:9–14 we hear the story of  Naaman, a Syrian commander, who appealed to the prophet Elisha to heal his leprosy: “So Naaman came with his horses and his chariots and stood at the door of  the house of  Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, ‘Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will come back to thee, and thou shalt be clean.’ . . . Then he went down and dipped himself  seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of  the man of  God; and his flesh came back like unto the flesh of  a little child, and he was clean.” The Jordan is obviously paramount in Christianity. Jesus was baptized there by John, and centuries ago churches and monasteries were built on the riverbanks to commemorate the event. The river also has a role in the chronicle of  Islam, as tradition has it that Mohammed crossed the Jordan on his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and several of  his companions are said to be buried on the banks. This shared connection to the Jordan River is not just a matter of  nostalgia but one of  birthright, and concerned parties hope that common sentiment can be translated into effective restoration programs. The Jordan River is the progeny of  three major sources. The Hasbani River in Lebanon and the springs of  Banias in the Golan Heights each

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contributes about a quarter of  the influx, and the Dan River in Israel provides the other half. On its course to the Sea of  Galilee (Lake Kinneret), it is further nourished by runoff  f rom Mount Hermon, the dominant mountain of  the Golan Heights. From the river’s exit at the southern tip of  the lake, the waterway is known as the Lower Jordan River. Its major additional tributary is the Yarmuk River, which joins the journey a little further south as the Jordan rolls to the Dead Sea. As part of  the ecological junction of  three continents, the Lower Jordan encompasses diverse biological and zoological regions and is home to a striking array of  habitats in a very compressed area, making it unequivocally one of  the earth’s truly unique natural sites. Flora and fauna vary significantly depending on the specific location, as climate, elevation, water, and salinity vary widely. Furthermore, the world’s most dramatic avian migrations converge in the region, with several hundred million birds passing bi­ annually through this section of  the Great Rift Valley. The legitimate thirst of  Israel, Syria, and the Kingdom of  Jordan is the overarching cause of  the demise of  the Jordan River; the one word that summarizes the damage is diversion. Historically the Jordan experienced a torrent of  well over a billion cubic meters per year. For millennia, all those tons of  f resh water cascaded from mountain origins, through the Sea of  Galilee, down the Jordan River, and into the Dead Sea. If  that figure, a billion, doesn’t elicit comprehension, one has only to know that in the last half  century the figure has dwindled to less than one tenth that amount—100 million cubic meters—a hard-to-conceive-of  reduction of  nearly ninety-five percent. And as if  that weren’t catastrophic enough, until recently twenty percent of  its flow was partially treated or untreated sewage. If  the Dead Sea is dying, the Jordan River is moribund, too, insofar as we understand the word river to refer to a perennial flow of  water that runs through a landscape until it reaches a lake or ocean. It is no longer perennial, nor indeed even seasonal, if  natural flow is the measure. And it hardly even reaches its millennia-long terminus on its twisting 130-mile odyssey from the Sea of  Galilee to the Dead Sea, just sixty-five miles south. Lassoed and corralled by water diversion systems on both its shores, the once vigorous river is conducted away from its bed to serve the region’s demands for water.

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Dying, but not yet dead, the Jordan River may still be resuscitated, but only with the most painstaking efforts. Reflecting an approach that’s both radical and realistic, regional activists are creating a new environmental consciousness regarding water allocation, irrigation, and wastewater treatment. They are confident that heightened awareness will eventually result in a transnational consensus that will restore the Jordan as a true river and not a mere echo or memory of  one. Yet it’s difficult to achieve broad environmental consciousness when the political identity of  the entire Jordan River is so complex, and part of the problem in creating awareness is that political forces have rendered the Jordan all but invisible to residents and tourists. Calling the obstacles overwhelming seems a great understatement, for the river is tangled in a skein of  intricacies that needs a Solomon to unravel it. From the Sea of  Galilee to the Yarmuk River, it flows through Israel. From there to the 1967 Green Line, it serves as the border between Israel and Jordan. The portion that ends in the Dead Sea is the border between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This means that from the Yarmuk southwards, both its banks are military zones, making virtually the entire lower Jordan River off  l imits except to farmers and military personnel. Jordanians’ only access is at their baptism site, and Palestinians’ sole access is at the Israeli-controlled West Bank baptism site. Israelis also have minimal access. With the river virtually unseen, most people are unaware of  its vitiation and the astonishing fact that until recently just about the only things keeping it from drying up completely were saline springs that were diverted from the Sea of  Galilee and the sewage that all three riparian participants had contributed in one form or another. I recently visited the western shore baptism site at Kasr el-Yahud. The cordoned off  immersion area was crowded with pilgrims who patiently waited their turn to splash themselves with the holy, if  unsanitary, water. I could have swum the distance to the opposite bank, the Jordanian baptism site, with a few strokes. Over there it was vacant at the time of  my visit except for a guard, and I wondered if  the two nations coordinated

(facing) View of  t he diminished Jordan River moving slowly to the Dead Sea. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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the arrival of  the devout. The mirrored sites were long ago associated with the baptism of  Jesus, which, similarly, was associated with the crossing of  the Israelites after the death of  Moses. The juxtaposition of  the two immersion pools was so neighborly that I was hard pressed to identify this area as an international border. Most of  t he pilgrims, arriving in tourist buses, were content with wading in the knee-deep stream. A few brave ones asked their pastor to splash water on their heads, and some filled a bottle with the revered liquid. Then two women dressed in white baptismal attire stepped pensively to the water’s edge somewhat apart from the large groups and held hands as they waded in, deeper than the others. It was September, and the water was still warm, but they stepped tentatively. Speaking quietly, they seemed to be savoring the experience and were in no rush to acclimatize. They were beautiful to watch, their dark skin and white cotton gowns shining under the morning sun as they stepped deeper, up to their knees, hips, chest, shoulders. I wondered if  they would dunk themselves entirely, or if  they’d been warned not to. In the end they didn’t, but they remained as though suspended in the murky liquid, bobbing easily as they bent and straightened with quiet pleasure, smiling all the while. I recalled the famous lithograph by Scottish painter David Roberts, who in the 1830s depicted a throng of  pilgrims casually sitting on the banks of  the Jordan, probably close to this place. I can picture the scene he portrayed: The colorfully robed men are gathered in groups, chatting more than watching the scene. Some of  the languid women are naked, suggesting the artist’s romantic inclination to stir the beholder’s eye when presenting the Holy Land to a sedentary European audience content with vicarious experience. A scenario of  impoverishment and pollution would have been beyond the imagination of  travelers to the region at that time. One of  the most engaging nineteenth-century narratives of  travel to the Dead Sea and Jordan River is an obscure but lovely book called From Vermont to Damascus, in which Adna Brown expresses a justification for travel that anyone familiar with long winters can appreciate: “The bleak, rugged winter of  1895 in Vermont, when Jack Frost held nightly carnivals and mercury was found in the lower regions, the snow was scurrying from hill-top to vale to find a resting place,—such environments caused the

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author of  this little volume to dream of  fairer skies and warmer climes.” Brown goes on to explain how a trip to Italy became a longer journey to Egypt and the Holy Land. He exhibits refreshing unflappability, commenting about barking dogs and jackals that kept his party awake a good part of  the night in Jericho: “I am rather a friend of  the canines, and these troubles rest very lightly on my shoulders.” Traveling on horseback, Brown’s party took lunch along the banks of  the Jordan River. It was mid-April, when the river was the beneficiary of  the snowmelt from the Hermon and the water was fresh and tasty. Some of  his party crossed the river in boats; it was about 100 feet wide and with a strong current. Nothing could have suggested to him the degraded sight that just six decades later would replace that idyllic scene. Earlier in the nineteenth century, Sarah Barclay Johnson lived in Jerusalem with her father, missionary doctor James Barclay. Her book, Hadji in Syria, Or Three Years in Jerusalem, was published in 1858, after her marriage to American consul-general in Syria, J. Augustus Johnson. It may be an irrelevant but worthwhile aside to add that Sarah Barclay Johnson’s life ended tragically some years later when her son, a recent Yale graduate, in “a fit of  insanity brought upon him apparently by illness and over-study at college,” shot his mother and sister and then himself. The bereaved Johnson could barely write of  t he matricide, fratricide, and suicide, which he discovered on his return to Connecticut, reflecting in his posthumously published memoir only that: “Blizzards, cataclysms and earthquakes in nature have their parallels in the moral world in which men’s souls and bodies sometimes go down in chaotic confusion.” But in Jerusalem, Sarah Barclay was still young and curious, and even with her misgivings because of  t he purported dangers of  “merciless Bedawin,” she traveled to the Dead Sea and Jordan River under the protection of  g uards whose “sufficiently warlike . . . appearance . . . [would] quell the fears of  the most timid.” Her excursion was at the unpropitious end of  t he summer, and may have been responsible for her indifference to the scene. Devout Christian though she was, she had little to say after observing the “narrow muddy stream.” She recalled the baptism of  Jesus and bemoaned the view: “Hard, indeed, do we find it to realize that we are standing on ground memorized [sic] by so glorious a spectacle!”

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Exiting abruptly, she shifted her attention back to Jerusalem, where, with the approach of  t he rainy season, Americans and Europeans were leaving their tent dwellings outside the walls and moving inside for the winter. Sarah Barclay’s bleak report described the Jordan when it was at its seasonal low point. Yet hydrological records show that despite annual fluctuations, the level of  the Dead Sea was rising in those years, suggesting that the river must have been if  not robust, at least recognizable, and perhaps it was. For beyond climate, one has to remember that travelers’ descriptions, particularly those of  Christian travelers, often cast light on their spiritual expectations. As the daughter of  a missionary and one whose view of  the Holy Land was at the same time both nourished and confined by years of  Bible study, she was prone to disappointment. It would have made no difference had she understood that such things as deforestation and overgrazing might have altered a once lush landscape. Oddly enough, she was an artist and drew lovely, detailed scenes for her book. A reader of  her narrative can only wish she had applied her pencil to the Jordan River banks to offer an illustration of  what she saw. Sarah Barclay wasn’t the only one who was unaffected and missed an opportunity to leave us with a richer visual and literary record of  a visit to the Jordan. A decade later, Ellen Clare Miller, companion of  Quaker missionaries, made her own trip, as recorded in Eastern Sketches: Notes of  Scenery, Schools, and Tent Life in Syria and Palestine, published in 1871. In her lively account, she described in some detail the landscape surrounding “the wild, solitary road from Jerusalem to Jericho” but had hardly a word for the Jordan River, saying only that its banks were marked by fresh green, the ground was heavily trampled, and trees and brush had been burned by the vast numbers of  pilgrims who had recently gone down to bathe in the river. We know from numerous travelers’ accounts as well as the lithographs of  David Roberts that Ellen Miller’s aside about large gatherings of  pilgrims immersing themselves in the river, sometimes at great peril, meshed with actual circumstances. But her excursion didn’t elicit further narration, and the reader can’t help but recall with a touch of  disappointment that earlier in her book she had expressed her longing to cast onto paper “the innumerable plates in the camera of memory.”

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The century was like a seesaw in terms of  the progression of  reports and impressions. Swinging back a few decades, we come to a description of  the Jordan River by Alexander Kinglake, whose marvelous book, Eothen, a classic of  nineteenth-century travel literature, appeared a decade after his 1834 trip. He arrived from the less common eastern shore in what must have been spring because he refers to the late rains that had swollen the river as he explored its banks looking for a way across. He noted that the Jordan carried an amount of  water equal to the Thames but in so narrow a channel that it surged forbiddingly, making passage on horseback impossible. Frustrated in his attempt to find a ford, and anyway being the only one in his party who could swim, Kinglake came upon a Bedouin encampment. After lengthy negotiations, a number of the men jury-rigged a clumsy but serviceable raft buoyed by inflated goatskins, and they strapped Kinglake’s gear to it. Triumphant as he himself  was ferried across, he emerged delighted on the western bank, but with no further depiction of  the river. •

Those were the Jordan River’s halcyon days, when its flow was subject to nothing more mysterious than the changing seasons or climatic shifts. Its past was written in its deep river bed, and its future seemed assured by another Birnam Wood–like prophecy: As long as snow melted and water ran, the Jordan would flow. Yet ironically it was the very abundance of  f resh water carried by the river that spelled its demise, as it increasingly attracted the attention of  the parched riparians who shared it. Modern times altered the terms, as populations expanded and ambitions swelled. Water flowing into the Dead Sea was regarded as water wasted, and perhaps it was in a way predictable that the whole Jordan River system would come to be treated as a convenient reservoir—a contested one at times, to the point at which it was even a quasi or proxy battlefield—that could quench the domestic and agricultural thirst of  whoever was bold enough to claim the right to it. Indeed that scenario came about, and the competition, aside from draining the Jordan River, eventually brought to a virtual end its historical relationship with the Dead Sea. In the early 1960s, the sluices of Israel’s long-planned National Water Carrier and Jordan’s East Ghor (later renamed King Abdullah) Canal opened, drawing water from the

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Sea of  Galilee and the Yarmuk River respectively and initiating a series of  gambits whose only saving grace may be that the contestants, having exhausted their cash cow, if  not themselves, have finally been forced to look on one another as partners. Syria, meanwhile, has also been a key contributor to the sapping of  the Jordan, having built over forty dams on the Yarmuk River and tributaries. In all, about half  the Jordan River water is taken by Israel, and the other half  equally by Syria and Jordan. Since 1967, Palestinians have had no direct access to the river, and even if  they did, the water was too polluted and saline in their area to be used for agriculture, much less human consumption. As everyone repeats, water knows no borders. It doesn’t take a visionary to realize that a zerosum game spells collective defeat. Everyone wins, or everyone loses; the rules are written by nature, and it has only to be seen whether or not the players can read. Imagining scenarios for a rehabilitated Jordan River requires a reassessment of  those dam and diversion projects that emptied it in the first place, with an understanding of  the complex environmental and political problems of  water conservation and allocation in the region. Until very recently, as we’ll see, much of  Israel’s and Jordan’s water came from the Jordan River system, and the situation is even more complicated because of  Palestinian water rights and the unavoidable involvement of  Syria and Lebanon. It has long been the assertion of  numerous environmentalists that reestablishing the natural river as a water carrier and replacing the manmade pipes, canals, and dams is the only approach that can even begin to address the impoverishment of  the entire river system. Multilateral commitment requires that self-interests be merged—not a probable scenario but one that at least some of the participants, it seems from all evidence, are slowly accepting. In the 1950s and ’60s, the stakes were much different and the implications less bleak. Israel’s construction of  the National Water Carrier and Jordan and Syria’s Yarmuk River dams and King Abdullah Canal were all sources of  discomfort across the river and even potential hostility. But no one foresaw the eventual vanishing of  the Jordan River, or if  someone did, the prediction didn’t enter public consciousness. (More recently, in 2007, Syria and Jordan revamped their joint dam, called the Unity Dam, though the fairness of  t he water sharing has been disputed by

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Jordan.) With eighty years of  hindsight, all the unilateral and bilateral activity now seems like wanton selfishness. By now, the three nations have dammed and diverted nearly all the tributaries that once fed the Jordan, leaving a miniscule portion of  the water that so recently defined the river. Aside from the water rights issue, the diversion projects have had a devastating impact on the river’s biodiversity, reducing it by at least half. Increased salinity has laid out the welcome mat for invasive species, turning the banks into a salt-tolerant morass debased further by the inadequately treated sewage that was dumped directly into the river for half  a century. In short, the lower Jordan River has been reduced from a vibrant and vital natural phenomenon to a mere trickle or muddy puddle. I visited the Jordan River in September 2014, and for the first time was able to touch it at the point where it entered the Dead Sea. The hike down the steep eastern embankment was my first experience of  t he depth of  the riverbed. Every level down presented another descent, and when I finally reached the water I sank in mud so tenacious I could only pull my leg out by bracing my other foot on a secure stone while leaning on a companion who was similarly supported. I looked up behind me but couldn’t see the surface where we had parked the car. Tracing with my eye the course of  the river as it flowed toward me, I saw a beleaguered stream dragging itself  between the cliffs that towered above it. Recalling all the visual images I knew from nineteenth-century accounts and remembering the explorers’ descriptions of  being heaved along by the force of  the flood, I knew that even allowing for the season, this was a conspicuous and shocking contrast. There has been talk of  rehabilitation, and activists have been promoting programs that would point in that direction. Yet any remedy requires, first of  a ll, an agreement to decrease irrigation and return huge quantities of  f resh water to the river. This hardly seems plausible, as it gets to the very need that caused the depletion in the first place. Further, a pact would have to involve Syria as well as Israel and Jordan, a configuration that borders on the delusional. And yet the alternative is so unnerving as to be in itself  an inducement to action. I believe it is the opinion of  some hydrologists that if  water management practices for

View of  t he Jordan River passing through cliffs en route to the Dead Sea. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

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both agricultural and domestic use are not put in place on a transnational basis, the Lower Jordan River, the part that is connected to the religious and historical traditions of  the three Abrahamic religions, will cease to exist in the lifetime of  the region’s children. •

The descent to the Jordan Valley from Amman is as powerful as from Jerusalem; both routes take your breath away, and the unlikely beauty of  the barren landscape is seared into the visual memory. The dizzying perspective from 4,000 feet high emphasizes the depth of  the Jordan Valley, seen as though from an aerial view. The hills along the road are stony and irregular, even lopsided, but a thin grass cover masks the effects of  the overgrazing that has allowed much of  the exposed topsoil to be swept away. Soon the spring grass will turn yellow and then fall off  in brown wisps, but for the moment green splashes of  pine and evergreen oak streak the barren landscape. Far below, farms are shadows in the morning light. The meandering road unwinds slowly as it twists around steep hills. The mountain range is not a spine; rather, the hills are assembled in a somewhat random cupped formation. We pull over for a view of  the mountains on the opposite side, and I’m struck by the difference in the two ranges. The vista to the west is muted by the shadow of  the morning clouds; the creased and wrinkled mountains are gathered into one another in deep folds, partly obscured in this vague morning light. When I think about the visual contrast between the two lateral rims of  the lower Jordan basin, I’m reminded of  the sensational forces that created this fissure, the narrowest part of  the Great Rift, and I try to imagine the cleaving wedge that split and twisted the earth’s crust. We get back in the jeep and resume our descent. The Jordan Valley comes closer, and I make out a broad swath of  farmland. The Jordan River is of  course nowhere in sight, but I see the Lisan formation, the remains of  the prehistoric lake that filled the basin, and I know that the tired river seeks its way between the buttes. The landscape levels out toward the town of  Salt, then plummets again, another 3,000 feet to the Jordan Valley floor. Now we’re driving north along the Valley, where miles of  plastic greenhouses sustained by the drip irrigation system follow the international border in a broad band. The farms that sit snugly between the frontier and the stony hills

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that rise abruptly to my right offer a near mirror image of  the Israeli side, reminding me once again that the lower Jordan River Valley is a potential seam stitching together Jordan, Palestine, and Israel, the three national entities that, from a geographical point of  v iew, are a unit. We’re on our way up the Jordan Valley to visit Sharhabil Bin Hass­ neh Ecopark, the first such park in Jordan, a pilot project created to address the threat to the Ziglag Dam Lake. I’m with EcoPeace Middle East, whose three directors have arranged an ecotour for tour guides from Israel, Palestine, and Jordan in order to promote “green” tourism on both sides of  the Jordan Valley. Under the auspices of  EcoPeace, the prototype park will be replicated throughout the region. Ecotourism is a major part of  the ambitious goal of  halting and reversing the environmental destruction of  the region and rehabilitating the Jordan River. National educational campaigns to promote region-wide water conservation methods are already being conducted, and though one cannot claim any meaningful restoration of  the environment, only a hopeless cynic would scorn the efforts of  hundreds of  residents on all sides. No one is fantasizing a precious utopia, unattainable perhaps even in dreams; rather, participants are engaged in an urgent rescue endeavor to preserve not only the river but also the region’s cultural and religious heritage. We’ve pulled into the parking lot of  the ecopark. The manmade lake’s smooth, green-blue surface is a striking contrast to the rough, scoured, brown slopes that sweep upward, and the shades of  green that dominate the landscape as we walk into the park are proof  that rejuvenation of  the barren expanse is underway. Schoolchildren participated in construction, assisting EcoPeace staff  and other volunteers. Educational programs are intertwined with recreation; hiking and biking paths, picnic areas, and overnight lodges draw visitors from Jordan and abroad. The park has quickly become a model for instilling an appreciation for a rescued landscape. Its counterpart in Palestine, the Auja Environmental Center near Jericho, was similarly developed as a recreational and environmental education facility and has had immense success in drawing participants. As I mentioned, travelers’ accounts are often less a matter of  experience than association. I’m thinking of  A lexander Kinglake again, this

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time as he visited the Dead Sea. His 1844 book weaves close observation with humor, irony, and at times poignant reflections about his childhood. Kinglake is sensitive to “the natural inclination to silence which one feels in the early morning,” but is at times insensate when it comes to the nuances of  the natural world. It seems that for some early travelers, experience was so strongly overlaid with religious associations that sensory participation was curtailed. I know that in late afternoon the setting sun casts a lovely dim glow over the Dead Sea; the wind grows calm and the hazy air is clear. Yet to Kinglake the Dead Sea bore a “dismal face,” as he contemplated “those waters of  Death.” His visual apathy was translated into an inflated meditation: “There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deep stillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand, but, in mockery of  a ll life, there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of  the long, silent years.” A reader can’t help but be struck by how his rhetoric bound him so inescapably that it recast the visual reality. Abruptly, as though waking from this inner utterance, Kinglake turned his horse in the direction of  the Jordan, with not another word spent on the scene he so readily aspersed but forgot to describe. On a trip not long ago to the area, a friend cautioned me about a visit to the Dead Sea. Trained as a geologist, Yisrael is a hiking enthusiast who used to walk across the desert from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, a place he had been drawn to as a youth and whose work in solar energy had made the lake and its environs his base for several years. I had been to the Dead Sea many times, but he warned me I’d be depressed this time and offered to go with me. Once we escaped from the Jerusalem suburbs, the drive was familiar. I recognized the landscape as we began the descent: The creases where the smooth hills met were like the folds of  skin between human limbs, Bedouin encampments were spread out as they had always been, with their black tents and flocks of  goats; only the corrugated metal roofs gave away the era. We passed the sea level post well before the valley floor even came into view and continued, deeper into the earth’s crust, it seemed.

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So many early travelers left us beautiful images of  t he Dead Sea, and I thought again about those artists who didn’t regard it as fit for their palette. Some eyes were simply resistant, and I shouldn’t fault them for not sketching what I wish they had drawn. Yet I can’t help but think they lost out, for even now, despite the severe damage to the shore, the Dead Sea is a stunning visual phenomenon, the colors—azure, aqua, deep royal blue—all shifting with the light and the play of  a breeze. Yisrael and I kept stopping to gaze, continually struck by the impossible juxtaposition of  g randeur and injury. I remembered that odd little book, From Vermont to Damascus, glad for Adna Brown’s description of  the Dead Sea as “a beautiful sheet of  water, clear as crystal.” The very contour of  the shoreline, though farther away now than it used to be, remains familiar; recession hadn’t altered the lake’s profile. Aged and worn, it still knew itself. Yisrael pulled the jeep to the side of  the road so we could look for the rock of  the Palestine Exploration Fund. I had a sentimental attachment to it because it was where I started my research years ago. The marker announcing its location was hard to find, hidden behind a bush at knee level. Looking up, we could see the rock itself, incised with a horizontal line and the initials PEF. For more than a century it has stolidly announced the place where explorers, after a precarious hike along the rock face that met the water nearly perpendicularly, dropped a plumb line to record their measurements. By the time I started coming to the Dead Sea, the road had already been laid, so I never saw the wilderness it once was. But I do remember the water lapping the shore at the edge of  the road, the stony beach salt-encrusted where puddles had evaporated, the surface sparkling as salt crystals caught the light. We drove on, looking for a place to pull off  t he road. I knew about the recession, had observed a gradual decline, and tried to stay up to date by reading. Yet all the information in the world couldn’t have prepared me for what I saw: the startling view of  a lake in retreat from its own shore, a shore gouged by alarming craters, the infamous sinkholes that seemed to spread like an epidemic over the ever-expanding beach. With questionable judgment, given the well-publicized stories of  how suddenly the ground gave way, we circumvented the danger signs that were posted and tentatively inched along the beach. The lake itself  was far off,

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Dangerous sinkholes along the Dead Sea shore. Photo by EcoPeace Middle East.

and the fragile, crusty shore, which for centuries had been underwater, struck me as vulnerable, unused to this strange element called air. And though it did not give way, I had the feeling it could at any moment. I trod very lightly, not only for my safety but also for the fragile surface on which I walked, lest my footsteps perforate the coarse but paper-thin epidermis. We never reached the water, it was so far off, and returned silently to the car. Driving further, we stopped at the spa belonging to Kibbutz Ein Gedi. The spa is situated conveniently by the road, and entrance into the water used to be a matter of  a few steps from the changing rooms. Now, the eye strains to see actual lake frontage, and when it comes into view,

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it seems a mirage undulating in the waves of  heat. We walked a quarter of  a mile along a specially constructed boardwalk and arrived at the water’s edge. A trolley takes bathers who can’t make it on foot. When I looked across to Jordan, the distance seemed negligible, yet when I turned around, our jeep was a faraway speck, a mere red dot. I looked across again, then back to the road: The “other” was so near, “ourselves” so distant. The odd reversal in perspective clarified how insufficient is the word “border” to describe this environment. •

The facts are stark and seemingly unalterable: In the past half  century, the Dead Sea’s surface area has shrunk by one third. It is nearly a hundred feet lower than it was a century ago, first because of  climatic conditions, then diversion, and is dropping around three feet per year. According to projections, this diminishment will continue for up to two more centuries, when the lake will stabilize at minus 1800 feet, 400 feet lower than the current measurement. With a reduced surface area, the rate of  evaporation will also have declined, enabling the lake to find a new equilibrium. The fact that it probably will not dry up may sound encouraging, and perhaps profound alteration is inevitable, given that this deep, nearly sealed basin has always been subject to forces far beyond our experience. The generations will have rolled over, and a new Dead Sea, or whatever it will come to be called, will be as much kin to what we see now as this Dead Sea is to the Lisan Lake that preceded it millennia ago. It will be a different phenomenon in the future, but a shriveled version of  its historic self  to those who lament it. I’m struck by the word stabilize, which is often used in discussions about the Dead Sea’s deterioration. Stabilization of  t he Dead Sea, a powerful and sincere motivator, is an obscure aspiration. It’s used as a word that counters a scenario of  f urther recession, not as a process of  reversal, and in that sense it’s disappointing, even if  realistic. Recently I visited Ein Fashkhah, a freshwater nature reserve in the West Bank at the northern section of  the west coast of  the Dead Sea, where I saw plainly how vague the term is. I recalled how explorers of  the nineteenth century hunted there and described the oasis, with its abundant animal and plant life, springs, and pools of  f resh water. The situation today at Ein Fashkhah dramatizes as clearly as the sinkholes that puncture the

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shores the degree of  stress the environment has endured and what the results have been. Before late summer 2014, I had last visited the nature reserve twenty years ago. Today, far from the water’s edge, the point at which I entered the water back then is marked by a sign: “Here was the shoreline, 1990.” And far behind me, another sign identifies a set of  stairs that looks gratuitously placed as “stairs to the sea, 1984.” Abandoned benches are still set there in a semicircle, lonely sentries waiting for something to do. Stairs and benches: like shards of  pottery representing something that was. I looked east to the beach. There’s water out there somewhere, I said to myself, squinting to locate it as I walked down a recently constructed ramp. It was shocking evidence of  t he unchecked recession, but it was a comparatively benign sight next to what the park rangers revealed next. We got back into the jeep and drove over a stony road toward the shore, an area fenced off  f rom visitors both for their own safety and that of  t he fragile landscape. Walking closer to the shore, we saw mind-boggling destruction, natural destruction brought about by springs that were not meant to see the light of  day. Tucked beneath the stony shore, they had worked their subterranean way to the Dead Sea for millennia and discharged fresh water without fanfare. Now, newly exposed on the eroded beach, they have carved canyons as deep as thirty feet into the frail landscape, creating a scene both alien and for­bidding. So what does stabilizing the Dead Sea mean? One can only wonder at what point the environmental disintegration will be halted; the pace of  decline is so rapid that even if  a decision were taken today, amelioration would require a substantial amount of  time. As for any hope of  refilling the basin, that’s probably a nostalgic dream. If  you look high in the cliffs, hundreds of  feet up, you see the etched evidence of  the prehistoric lake that overflowed this valley from the southern Dead Sea north to the Sea of  Galilee. The horizontal lines mark the shorelines of  that colossal inland sea, and to us they seem a relic whose meaning we can hardly fathom. Then you turn and look down from the road to the exposed shore of  the Dead Sea, and there you see similar grooves incised into the slope leading to the water. Only then do you have an idea of  what

Recently constructed ramp at Ein Fashkhah leading closer to the Dead Sea. Photo by Barbara Kreiger.

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recession means, and the question of how far down it will go has sudden poignancy, as you realize that for whatever reasons, good or bad, we are complicit in the destruction. •

Along the shores, the sinkholes that are such an insidious phenomenon started to appear as early as the 1980s, but without a confirmed diagnosis. By around 2000, it was pretty clear that they were connected to the rapid recession of  the Dead Sea, whereby salt deposits suddenly exposed to ground water dissolved, creating these cavities. So sturdy had the deposits been that it’s as though cement supports were pulled out from under the shore and road. Today there are thousands of  sinkholes ranging in size from small to immense, some eighty feet deep and more than a hundred feet across. They can appear overnight, which means that anyone who treads on the shore is at risk of  falling into an unseen cavern. On the eastern side, a camel disappeared into one; on the western side, a tractor. An Israeli scientist who fell in when the ground gave way was fortunately rescued after a long ordeal. The situation is anything but static. In January 2015, sinkholes that had been under surveillance for several years near Ein Gedi spread ominously along the main road that continues to Eilat. A bypass road had been planned anyway, but the sudden collapse of  the road required a detour into the nature reserve. Traffic was restricted and the speed limit set very low, but still the Israel Nature and Parks Authority was justifiably concerned about the threat to wildlife, especially the large population of  ibex and other animals that are active at night. •

Conscientious travelers to the Dead Sea region are dismayed by the number of  luxury hotels awkwardly clustered at various points on both sides of  the lake, on Israel’s side colonizing the southern shore like giant Lego blocks gone rampant. The Dead Sea’s therapeutic water has long been a draw, and there’s no indication the attraction will diminish, especially because its curative properties for various afflictions have gained worldwide recognition. But the hotels, a collective disfigurement of  the landscape, are themselves in danger, not as much from the sinkholes, as of  inundation, surely a counterintuitive notion when all the talk is of  a shrinking Dead Sea.

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The hotels crowd the lake’s manmade, or man-sustained, southern basin that is in fact an arrangement of  evaporation ponds for the chemical extraction industries. The problem is that the precipitated salts have thickened the beds of  the pools, thus elevating the water level and threatening to flood the hotels. Until a solution is found for removing the salt, the danger will persist. I watched heavy machinery at work literally day and night raising the road and beaches, wondering what the outcome will be. The hotels’ disproportionate use of  f resh water suggests that environmentalists would oppose tourism, and indeed they would like to see the eventual abandonment of  the luxury hotels. Yet they recognize that tourism is essential to the economies of  the Dead Sea, and as an alternative to five star resorts they’re hoping that ecotourism, which would rely on three-star hotels, takes greater hold. Their vision doesn’t address the dozens of  hotels in full operation today, but while they don’t propose dismantling them, they’re clearly hoping for a limit to new construction, which has gone pretty much unchecked for decades. Maybe the power of  salt will discourage further unsustainable development. In addition to ecotourism, there is an ever-growing clientele on both sides of  the Dead Sea for what may be called therapeutic tourism, and the hotels serve a population in need of  treatment for an array of  skin and joint conditions. The medical clinics pride themselves on serving a population whose options for treatment of  their ailments are very limited. The Dead Sea offers an opportunity to combine therapy and ecotourism in a way that will benefit all those who rely on this unique environment for physical and spiritual sustenance. •

Thirty years ago when I walked across the Jordan River via the Allenby Bridge, I crossed a placid but still lovely stream, a modest version of  its historic self, but a version nonetheless. The gray-green water ran between banks so narrow one would hardly guess the river was an international border, and at that time a border between enemies, no less. Today one has to look for movement of  water that could rightly be called “flow.” The river trails listlessly except around the carefully tended baptismal sites, a trickling reminder of  what has been lost. And yet this is not the last chapter to be written in the saga of  the Jordan River.

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As we saw, nineteenth-century explorers described the river as seventy-five feet across, with a depth up to twelve feet, interrupted by rapids, and with water so clear they could see fish. Imagine if  the communities along the river read such accounts. The scenario is probably not reenactable, but enlisting the desire and the will that could be translated into a commitment toward restoration may be linked to a visual image of  the not so recent past. The challenge, then, is a dual imperative: to save the Dead Sea and to reclaim the Jordan River as an essential part of  human heritage. How simple in its essence. If  only it were so straightforward. For one thing, the very word “save” is subject to multiple definitions, even more so than the word “stabilize.” But beyond the crucial issue of  semantics is the daily reality that in this region any rehabilitation effort is bound to be pitted against the cry for fresh water. Without shielding themselves from reality, environmentalists refuse to accept current circumstances as immutable. They possess a kind of  moral stubbornness: their commitment is not diminished by the odds against them, and though they wish the field were a bit more level, they adhere tenaciously to their principles. Teaching respect for and love of  the environment on the local level is the necessary first step. Anyone who has seen the ugly littering that afflicts the region understands that a visual appreciation of  beauty has to precede regeneration, human as well as environmental. At the ecoparks and elsewhere, visitors are handed trash bags and asked to return them full after their picnics or hikes. There is already a good deal of  cross-border cooperation, and there is no reason to doubt it will expand as more communities begin to experience what must feel like a fresh breeze wafting from the other side and opening new vistas.

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Reclamation and a Vision of the Future

• The complex and disturbing conflicts that have spread in the Middle

East are identified by obvious issues of  intransigence and militancy. Like a plague or a recurrent nightmare, hostility rules the land. In the Lower Jordan River Valley, where Israel, the Palestinian people, and the King­ dom of  Jordan come together, the dispute has been sadly resistant to solutions for decades, and yet at that very geographical junction there are developments that may alleviate the despair. This is not to minimize intricacies and intractability: the situation is anything but simple, any­ thing but static, and has several dimensions to it, some of  which are at odds. Still, the very volatility of  the circumstances, as well as the com­ mon threat that everyone recognizes, may encourage unparalleled pro­ ductive responses. Unlike the solution, the problem is straightforward: There is sim­ ply not enough fresh, potable water to sustain the growing populations of  the Kingdom of  Jordan, Palestine, and Israel; and the strain on Jordan has been magnified in the last few years by the arrival of  t wo million refugees from Syria and Iraq. Aquifers are stressed, the Jordan River system is defunct, and the need keeps growing. The insufficient quantity of  f resh water is at issue, but fair proportioning is also a key element. Is­ rael controls the major aquifer that runs under the occupied West Bank, which means that Palestinians are dependent on Israel’s will. The Joint Water Committee, the water sharing mechanism formed under the Oslo Agreement, governs apportionment but is insubstantial. Palestinians do not receive a share commensurate with their needs, even though Israel has recently become virtually water independent. Desalination of Medi­ 235

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terranean water was long thought of  as the panacea, but the cost had been prohibitive. In recent years the technology has improved to such a degree that Israel now runs five desalination plants on the Mediter­ ranean coast and produces more fresh water than it needs, highlighting the question of  reasonable distribution. In March 2015, Israel doubled its allocation of  potable water to Gaza, from five to ten million cubic meters per year. The increase was much more than a mere gesture, but the need in Gaza may be double that again. Supplying adequate quantities of  water is, however, not the only issue; there’s also an urgent need to protect groundwater from un­t reat­ ed sewage and over pumping. The latter is a particular peril for the Coastal Aquifer, the one shared by Israel and Gaza, because over pump­ ing invites the intrusion of  saline pollution from the nearby seawater. The Israeli Water Authority is keenly aware of  t he crisis; quite apart from the humanitarian aspect, the danger to the aquifer is obviously a shared one. Damage to the Jordan River can be easily traced to diversion com­ pounded by pollution. Of  the 1.3 billion cubic meters of  water that his­ torically flowed from the Sea of  Galilee to the Dead Sea, some 95 percent has been diverted by Israel, Jordan, and Syria. The situation has been changing in recent years, but for half  a century, inadequately treated sewage water was dumped directly into the river. It’s clear that the Lower Jordan River can only be renewed if  a ll the riparian participants agree to cooperate. This does not entail starting from scratch: the 1994 Peace Accord between Jordan and Israel called for the river’s rehabilitation, along with the development of  nature reserves to promote tourism. Regarding the agreements that were not fulfilled under the auspices of  the Joint Water Commission, one can say that at least a template was put in place. Perhaps in the near future the term “ri­ parian antagonists” may be conclusively revised to “riparian neighbors.” For the fact is that they all live along the riverbanks, depend on the river system whether for environmental or spiritual sustenance, and have a profound stake in its preservation. It seems that any effort at rehabilitation requires a decrease in irriga­ tion, a shift to less water-intensive crops, the return of  huge quantities of  f resh water by Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and a ceiling on salinity. As a

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start, in the summer of  2013 Israel’s Water Authority began to release a small amount of  water from the Sea of  Galilee back to the Jordan, a quan­ tity that amounted to some six to nine million cubic meters per year. Negligible though it was, it was a step that at least acknowledged not only Israel’s responsibility but also its intention, and as such has hopeful implications. Israel’s goal is thirty to forty million cubic meters, still a very small part when one considers, based on the research of  EcoPeace, that 400 million per year is the amount needed to revive the Jordan into a functioning river; but with the total exclusion of  sewage, the river will see some benefit. Israel is an acknowledged world leader in the reclamation of  waste­ water and has been recycling a huge amount for agricultural use since the 1990s. Two of  the newest treatment plants in Israel are in the Jordan Valley near the Sea of  Galilee. Jordan is also committed to adopting such practices; the first plant was recently completed with the help of  USAID, and a Palestinian plant near Jericho was built under the auspices of  a Japanese agency. In the near future, sewage in the Jordan River will be remembered as a blight that belongs to the past. The Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian ministries of  environment and tourism have also committed themselves to participate in renewal of  the river, a good deal of  this progress being due to the perseverance of  Eco­ Peace. Obviously, peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the end of  Israel’s occupation of  the West Bank, would accelerate the process. In recent years, the Jordan River’s deplor­ able state has been recognized by the international community, which has taken steps to assist in its rehabilitation. Back in 2007, the U.S. Senate urged Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority to work together to protect the Dead Sea and Jordan River, and in 2010, the European Union called upon the regional leaders to act. The United Nations, too, has been encouraging the three parties to cooperate on their shared water problems. International declarations may sound like well-meaning but ineffective dabbling, but they carry with them the promise of  fi nancial support. It is well known that the failing health of  the Jordan River has had a major impact on the state of  the Dead Sea. Going back to 1900, system­ atic monitoring of  its water level was carried out by individuals inspired

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by scientific and geographical inquisitiveness. It turns out that in those early decades of  the twentieth century, the water level was actually ris­ ing, as it had been for around half  a century. But in the 1930s, some thirty years before diversion of  the Jordan River system was begun, climatic changes were reversing the fortunes of  the lake. The ensuing dry period, coupled with the eventual tapping of  the river, has resulted, as we saw, in a hard to comprehend sixty-five foot drop in the level of  the Dead Sea, while in surface area it has shrunk by more than a third. The decline that the Dead Sea has experienced is not necessarily in­ consistent with historical patterns, whereby a significant rise is followed by a dramatic fall. But until the mid-twentieth century, such variations were natural, controlled by climate and weather patterns that resulted in normal, periodic increases or decreases of volume in the Jordan River. Evaporation from the Dead Sea was more or less constant, so the rela­ tionship between the Jordan River and the Dead Sea was as straight­ forward as nature would have it. Rough equilibrium was maintained, as inflow from the river and evaporation from the lake were symbiotic factors that determined its level. Perhaps it was inevitable that the early nineteenth-century discovery of  the immense depth of  the Dead Sea would fire the imagination, as investigators strove to fathom the forces that had cleaved this valley and filled it with a lake so salty that one could float “with a log of  wood for a pillow” while reading a newspaper, as an American woman wrote in the 1850s. The human mind is prone to awe as it explores natural phe­ nomena, and brilliance seeks expression. Eventually and unavoidably wonder enlists the pragmatic instinct as we discover ways to make use of  natural phenomena. No doubt this is as it should be, though it’s clear we need greater awareness that we’re both part of  and custodian of  the natural world, and not simply self-interested or indeed even grateful beneficiaries. When it comes to the Jordan River, we remember back to 1930 when it was powerful enough to drive Pinhas Rutenberg’s hydroelectric sta­ tion and provide power to thousands of  residents on both sides of  the river. Around the same time, Moshe Novomeysky founded the Palestine Potash Company to extract minerals from the Dead Sea. Both projects served the region in a way that belies its fraught history, and from an

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environmental point of  v iew, the Jordan River and Dead Sea seemed permanent features on a timeless landscape. In the 1930s, when the Dead Sea began to fall, no one with a histori­ cal view was concerned that its existence was threatened. Despite even extreme variations, the lake seemed to stabilize itself  over time within recognizable boundaries. But the situation changed in the 1960s with the intense tapping of  the Jordan River system by Israel, Syria, and Jordan. The decline that began around eighty-five years ago accelerated in the last half-century, and the acceleration continues unabated, as though the plug had been pulled from a tub. Now there is urgency, as everyone agrees, no matter what the indi­ vidual’s political or environmental leanings. But there unanimity ends, and the crisis, along with the discrepancy in opinion, is more extreme than anyone imagined just two decades ago. It may be an exaggeration to say that the Dead Sea faces extinction, though there are those who make such a claim, but the ramifications of  its plight for the entire region can’t be overstated. First, if  not foremost, is the vanishing of  a unique natural phenomenon that has defined this region and a good part of  the world for millennia. To gain a sense of  the enormity of  the loss, imagine if  the Grand Canyon were filled in or Niagara Falls were to turn back. And chillingly, from the point of  v iew of  safety, the entire infrastruc­ ture around the lake is in danger of  collapsing, as the sinkholes that have been undermining the shore, hotels, and roads for some years are spreading spore-like across the terrain, particularly but not by any means exclusively on the broader, shallower western shore. Residents of  Jerusa­ lem and Jericho who can remember their excitement as they approached the Dead Sea for their weekly swim or picnic describe horror at what now resembles an alien landscape more than a beach, and they lament the dispossession for the sake of  f uture generations. •

The seemingly Sisyphean task of  supplying water to a growing popu­ lation at the same time that sources are running dry can only be ad­ dressed by turning to a new supply altogether—that is, the open sea. On that, most concerned parties are more or less in agreement, but there is no accord when it comes to application. Desalination, with nearly uni­ versal approval, is currently being practiced; the other option is more

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fraught, and that is the decades old vision of  a sea-to-sea canal. Origi­ nally, as we saw, the subject of  a canal or pipeline to the Dead Sea was limited to a connection with the Mediterranean. As I wrote earlier in this book, the aim was the creation of  hydroelectric power, though the earli­ est mid-nineteenth century British proponents had military strategy in mind. Only much later did investigators consider a Red Sea–Dead Sea option, even though the Mediterranean route made sense given that the distance from there to the Dead Sea is about half  what it is from the Red Sea. But that option was abandoned, not just because the entire cost of  the project would fall on Israel, but because a unilateral undertaking misses the benefit of  what would be a transnational project if  the Red Sea were chosen as the initiation point. In 2002, after decades of  engaging and then fading from public discus­ sion, the idea of  a restorative waterway was presented at the World Sum­ mit on Sustainable Development. A few years later, in 2008, Jordan and Israel initiated a feasibility study of  the “Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance Project.” Guided by the World Bank, it sought to address regional envi­ ronmental, social, and economic issues. The Palestinian Authority was later included as one of  the participants, based on the shared assumption or hope that one day the State of  Palestine will manage the northwest shore of  the Dead Sea. The attraction of  the project was understandably irresistible, particularly when it could be presented as trilateral and be­ cause of  the emphasis on regional cooperation. The study’s recommen­ dations were eventually pared down, but the essential goals remained, though they too would be later modified. At that time, the plan called for a pipeline on the Jordanian side of  the border to transfer water from the Gulf  of  Aqaba, the desalination of  seawater at a plant near the Dead Sea, and the creation of  hydroelectric energy. According to this projection, the Dead Sea would eventually be stabilized by means of  the residual brine that would be channeled into the northern basin. Israeli water expert Dr. Doron Markel expressed strong support for the Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance. Markel, head of  the Israel Water Authority’s Sea of  Galilee Monitoring and Management Unit, was also part of  the World Bank feasibility study and is convinced that the project is by far the best way to serve regional interests significantly. In “The Red Sea–Dead Sea Conveyance Feasibility Study, 2008–2012,” he and

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his colleagues explained their position. They and other supporters of  the project are confident that the Red Sea–Dead Sea conveyance, especially in a staged construction approach, is no futuristic fantasy but a linchpin of  f uture political and social relations in the Middle East and the Dead Sea region. They are not insensitive to the fragility of  the environment and are not advocating a headlong dash, but Markel thinks the environ­ mental risks have been addressed and that the plan is technologically sound. Nonetheless, on the side of  caution, they propose careful moni­ toring and recommend starting with a small pilot project that would minimize the possibility of  environmental peril. Evaluating the effect of  seawater on the hypersaline Dead Sea, whose salt content is different from that of  the ocean, is also crucial. The 2008 World Bank study initially expressed confidence that the effects of  re­ sidual brine had been taken into account but as a precaution advised that the amount discharged be held, at least at first, to 400 million cubic meters per year. This recommendation emerged from a 2003 study, “The Expected Impact of  the Peace Conduit Project [i.e., The Red Sea–Dead Sea Pipeline] on the Dead Sea,” in which Dr. Ittai Gavrieli and colleagues expressed their view that an inflow of  seawater greater than 400 mil­ lion cubic meters per year could have a major impact on the chemistry of  the Dead Sea, possibly resulting in stratification or dilution of  surface water and a so-called algae bloom. They also considered the possibility of  “whitening,” that is, the rapid precipitation of  g ypsum, but concluded that because the mixing would be with the entire water body, gypsum precipitation, if  it occurred, would be minor, at least so far as the pilot project is concerned. Opponents see it from another angle. The Dead Sea would not be ap­ preciably helped by a cautious influx, and therefore the pilot project is not an accurate indicator of  the potential threat to the Dead Sea’s com­ position. No matter what the amount, they contend, deleterious effects on the lake are either inevitable or likely. They are not persuaded that the possibility of  a lgae bloom or whitening is remote, but even if  the Dead Sea absorbed the influx, eventually the water would be homogenized, changing the lake’s chemical composition and therefore its character. Further, environmentalists have pronounced concerns about the risk of leakage and damage to the Arava/Araba, the valley that stretches from

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the Red Sea to the Dead Sea between Israel and Jordan, through which the pipeline would run on its more than 100-mile journey north. The scientists employed in the World Bank study were obviously aware that the aquifer flowing beneath the Arava would be in danger of  con­ tamination if  the pipes leaked, and they recommended special measures to embed them securely. There did seem to be some concern among pro­ ponents about the impact of  the construction itself  on the Arava, and the authors acknowledged that the environment would have to be shielded from the abuse that such massive excavation would inflict. But among opponents, assurance that the risk would be minimal did not satisfy deep misgivings about the safety of  the underground water supply. They maintain that the concept “minimal” when used to predict risk is insufficient in a seismically active region, it being simply impos­ sible to account fully for unknowable environmental factors. One can’t help but think also about the possibility of  sabotage, as water supply projects have been strategic targets going back to ancient days. To EcoPeace, the causes of  the Dead Sea’s demise are clear: diver­ sion of  the Jordan River and excessive pumping from the Dead Sea by the mineral extraction industries who profit from the water they draw, free of  charge, for their evaporation pools. The lines in this debate have been drawn in odd ways, and strange bedfellows have materialized. A lot of  apprehensive observers feel that two companies, the Israeli Dead Sea Works, especially, and the Jordanian Arab Potash Company, are to­ gether clearly the most culpable agents in the decline of  the Dead Sea and the corrosion of  its shore. Their withdrawal of  600 million cubic meters of  water per year from the northern basin accounts for close to half  the lake’s annual loss. The industries strongly oppose the pipeline, a position rooted in the possibility of  “whitening,” which would cause a major dis­ ruption to their multi-billion dollar businesses. They already face a co­ lossal expenditure: some twenty million tons of  salt deposits have raised the level of  the evaporation pools and need to be removed. The mineral extraction industry is in the midst of  intense research to determine how that will be accomplished. In the meantime, the salt deposits continue to accumulate in the evaporation ponds, the water level continues to rise in the southern basin as pumping from the northern basin continues, and the hotels have no respite from the threat of  flooding.

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Although it’s hard to turn away from any program that seems to offer a salubrious answer to the perennial riddle of  how available water can be increased while its desiccated sources are restored, it has often seemed that the pipeline project has seen its last days. If  so, a major factor would be that the amount of  hydroelectric power produced would be insuffi­ cient to accomplish its dual purpose: desalinating water and pumping it more than 3,000 feet up to Amman. Such a calculation probably renders that project unviable. Coupled with the potential negative environmen­ tal contingencies that the World Bank study notes, it seems doubtful at this time that the project as it was originally put forth will be embarked on. As I mentioned, it’s evident that part of  the supporters’ motivation has to do with the very concept of  a trilateral project. For three Middle East parties to cooperate on an undertaking of  that magnitude would be unprecedented, and one can easily understand how it became a sym­ bol that generated optimism perhaps exceeding its capacity to justify confidence. Yet the debate over construction of  the pipeline has continued. If the struggle were between naïveté and arrogance or inexperience and sophistication, the discussion would be much less complex. How easy it would be to judge if  one side could be dismissed as insensitive to the environment, greedy, ill-informed, or self-serving. But that’s not the case. Both camps consist of  an array of  highly knowledgeable and care­ ful investigators who are certain the other position is quite simply wrong. The pipeline issue has been a prime topic on the agenda of  EcoPeace Middle East, an organization whose very reason for being is the indis­ putable concurrence of  environmental rehabilitation and peacemaking. Founded in 1994, EcoPeace Middle East is a trilateral organization that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists and is at the forefront of  t he environmental peacemaking movement. Committed to demonstrating that it’s possible to look beyond the larger political differences that dominate the daily news in order to focus on critical, shared regional water and environmental problems, the coexecutive directors, Munqeth Mehyar (Jordanian director), Nader Kha­teb (Palestinian director), and Gidon Bromberg (Israeli director), and their staffs in Amman, Bethlehem, and Tel Aviv, promote a vision of  ecologically wise development that they and many others regard as

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a prerequisite for a durable peace. Their principal goal is to establish significant cooperative efforts to protect their communal environment. They aren’t a band of  quixotic romantics who naively nurture a utopian vision, but rather engineers, scientists, economists, and entrepreneurs grounded in reality. Their understanding is that despite pressures on each of  t he three participating entities, there is no solution other than a regional one to the problems that afflict all of  t hem in their tight quar­ ters. The days of  “ it’s us or them” are long gone, flushed away by the perennial challenge of  water allocation. And while ultimately the is­ sues also require the participation of  Syria and Lebanon, these three partners are not willing to wait. Their record of  accomplishments is already significant and expand­ ing. For over a decade, EcoPeace has been creating programs focused on the crucial regional spine, the Jordan River system, and any attempt to assemble a complete list of  their programs and initiatives is obsolete as soon as it’s compiled. They’ve launched cross-border water-sharing programs, worked out of  doors to create ecoparks, initiated ecotourism in Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, developed curricula and envi­ ronmental programs for children and youth, and monitored the health of  the Jordan River. At the same time, they’ve been enlisting the sup­ port of  highly placed political figures who also regard cooperation as the key to sustainable growth and regional stability. From a purely political angle, progress has been meager. But if  environmental activism is a bell­ wether, it could be that grassroots petitions will eventually lead to the collaboration that has been so elusive on a governmental level. The scenario that EcoPeace presents in order to achieve a rehabili­ tated Jordan River, an end to the devastation of  the environment, and a responsible approach to water resources requires a different political and social configuration from that which exists now, midway through the century’s second decade. And whether future generations will have the opportunity and privilege to participate in the protection of  the delicate landscape is also dependent on an embrace of  the principle of  “water justice,” which refers both to humans and the ecosystem. The Jordan River’s well-being requires the participation of  an array of  activists, not least among them residents of  the very communities for whom water management is of  foremost importance. EcoPeace has

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invested enormous energy in “transboundary” initiatives. In their Good Water Neighbors project, partners in a few dozen communities and vil­ lages in Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza work together on waterrelated issues. The aim is to create partnerships between towns whose proximity to one another, despite a political border, unifies them. The project has also created opportunities for young people to be instructed and trained in environmental issues: currently more than a thousand students from the area are engaged in fieldwork. Combining education with religious sentiment has also proved valuable in creating a shared commitment. In conjunction with interfaith centers, EcoPeace sponsors faith-based seminars on the Jordan River where Muslims, Christians, and Jews discuss ways in which their concern for the river can be chan­ neled into ecological programs. Education is the key, alerting people to what’s at stake and how a restored environment could improve their lives in concrete ways. Cam­ paigns to promote regional water conservation methods are already be­ ing conducted, and though one can’t claim any measurable restoration of  the environment, only a cynic would scorn the efforts of  hundreds of  residents on all sides of  the borders. Others also dream of  a rescue endeavor no less urgent than the preservation of  their history: the pro­ tection of  the cultural and religious monuments and artifacts constantly jeopardized by the ubiquitous wars that alarm the region. In 2010, while the World Bank was conducting its feasibility study of  the Red Sea–Dead Sea pipeline, EcoPeace was conducting its own study to evaluate the quantity and quality of  water required for rehabili­ tation of  the Lower Jordan River. The report concluded that the health of  the river and its ecosystem required the return of  400 million cu­ bic meters of  f resh water. The figure is extremely small when compared to the quantity that once belonged to the Jordan, but advocates would rather be modest than unrealistic. The report went on to recommend the contribution that would be asked of  each participant: Israel would be responsible for returning about half  of  the total, Syria and Jordan about a quarter each. The Palestinians would not be asked to contribute, as they currently do not receive a fair share. The report also recommended a ceil­ ing on salinity and, in conjunction with a Yale University study, urged that at least one flood each year be permitted to surge unchecked into

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the river. Currently, all floodwaters during the rainy season are caught and stored, but an annual flood would flush the river and renew its nu­ trients as well as help defend against invasive species, increase biological diversity, and restore breeding habitat for native wildlife. One proposal suggests an experimental twenty-four hour flood, taking into account the changing level of  the Sea of  Galilee. Within ten years of  a multilat­ eral shift in practices, there should be a decided change for the better in the health of  the river. To evaluate options for returning water to the Jordan, EcoPeace en­ listed Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli economists. Three national re­ ports emerged, all identifying practical measures for water reduction, from simple domestic practices (double flush toilets, rooftop rainwater collection, and water-conserving gardens) to more complex municipal procedures. These measures may sound inconsequential, but the reports identified over a billion cubic meters of  water that could be saved each year. If  such water-saving measures are called sacrifice, the cause they serve is worth it to many residents. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits, optimists believe there would be economic advantages because of  the wide-ranging attraction of  the Jordan River–Dead Sea region. A revived river would reestablish a major regional attraction for religious, historical, recreational, and environmental tourists. There’s unanimity on at least one score: everyone agrees that crossborder cooperation is a requirement for the success of  any rehabilitation effort, and that coordination of  water authorities in Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority has to be the foundation for that effort. Here too there has been a start. In 2012 EcoPeace received funding from the European Union to develop an NGO master plan that, among other things, set water quality standards and initiated preservation programs for the Israeli section of  the Jordan River. That was the first step in a pro­ gram to rehabilitate the river. The goal, under the combined sponsorship of  EcoPeace, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), and the Germany-based Global Nature Fund is to develop by 2015–16 three independent master plans—Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian—that would then be unified into an integrated transboundary plan for the Lower Jordan River, the first-ever regional plan of  this sort. The hope, of  course, is that the three governments will approve it. EcoPeace is also

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studying “basin commissions” around the world in order to develop a Jordan River Model Basin Commission that will assist the three riparian partners in coordinating environmental, economic, and social activity. Specifically, the aim is to create a structure for governing the Lower Jordan River based on existing transboundary basin agreements. The key words are cooperative, sustainable, and legal; that is, international law will be upheld and management of  water will adhere to the principle of  mutual benefit. Progress comes in small steps, but each is significant. As we saw in 2013, Israel’s Water Authority committed Israel to allow water to flow from the Sea of  Galilee into the Jordan River, and though the amount was small, the decision was more than symbolic. In addition, waste is being removed from the river, with over 100 million dollars invested in sewage treatment infrastructure. In March 2015, Israel’s Water Author­ ity announced the opening of  a new wastewater treatment plant at the southern tip of  the Sea of  Galilee. It will be in full operation by 2016, serving Tiberias and bringing to an end the contamination of  the Jordan River by inadequately treated sewage. Starting with ten, then twenty, and eventually thirty million cubic meters of  water—a combination of  treated wastewater, brackish water, and Sea of  Galilee water—will be directed annually to the Jordan River. Environmentalists laud the commitment to return water to the Jordan River and hope this shift continues and will bring an even greater amount of  water that will truly make an appreciable difference. EcoPeace’s response to the World Bank feasibility study of  the Red Sea–Dead Sea pipeline was perhaps unavoidably negative. They believed it was fundamentally flawed, and they felt furthermore that it was essen­ tially a red herring, drawing attention away from the root cause of  the problem, that is, the diversion of  the Jordan River. In their view, the pipeline would be the death knell of  any attempt to revitalize the river, despite all good intentions. Further, even if  the pipeline were approved by Jordan, many informed people have long believed it would not be approved by Israel. With desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast, Israel has already realized the dream of  water self-sufficiency, and feels no need to participate in an expensive and questionable proj­ ect with reduced relevance to Israelis’ daily lives. For the Kingdom of

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Jordan, in whose territory the pipeline would be excavated, the project means a great deal more, as Jordan is in dire need of  potable water. But the world economic situation and the range of  regional hostilities mean that the estimated ten billion dollars, itself  a lready twice the cost that was originally envisioned, and perhaps twice that again by the time the work is completed, would be very hard to come by. In response to the urgency of  the water shortages in the region, in December 2013 in Washington, DC, a Memorandum of  Understanding was signed by the Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian water authority min­ isters—an occasion of  great import that took place in a climate of  cel­ ebration. This major environmental and social development was widely misrepresented in the world press as approval of  the Red Sea–Dead Sea pipeline. In actuality it was a much less complex, yet not less significant, three-party water exchange that also was unprecedented and offered the promise of  comparatively rapid realization. The document was indebted to a decade of  cooperation on the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance Study Program, but it was much more limited and far more achievable, having been designed specifically to provide water to a region in critical need. The Memorandum identified three major water-sharing innovations by which there would be a somewhat circular exchange. A desalination plant would be built in Aqaba, from which Jordan would take a share and sell a certain amount of  water to Israel for use in Eilat, a stone’s throw away. Israel, meanwhile, would sell more water to Amman via the Sea of  Galilee to the King Abdullah Canal, while desalinated water from Israeli plants on the Mediterranean would be sold to the Palestinian Authority. Another aspect of  the program that was debated over the fol­ lowing months had to do with the treatment and disposal of  the residual brine from the desalination process. As we’ll see, the outcome was hardly the resolution that cautious parties had hoped for, and indeed to many people the next phase was a very mixed blessing. The idea of  a water exchange has long been a keystone of  EcoPeace’s thinking, and its wisdom is self-evident. With most of  Israel’s potable water now coming from the Mediterranean, Israel might finally release fair quantities to the Palestinians. It would even be possible for Israel to open wider the sluices from the Sea of  Galilee and release large quan­

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tities of  water to the Jordan River. It’s a relief  to find lines drawn not according to political borders but to interpretation and conviction re­ garding environmental matters. There are still pipeline proponents in all three national sectors who assert that EcoPeace’s idea of  returning large quantities of  water to the lower Jordan River and on to the Dead Sea is wishful thinking. A few years ago the Sea of  Galilee was itself  in a crisis stage and could spare no water; the danger line had been exposed, and though the level has since risen, the image of  that crisis marker remains vivid. Yet that was before Israel’s desalination plants were in full opera­ tion, and at this point, they provide Israel with half  to three quarters of  its potable water, an unimaginable shift in dependence from just a decade ago. Even in the dry winter of  2013–14, the Sea of  Galilee’s level was stable. With Israel’s reliance on it vastly diminished, new thinking about use of  the lake might emerge. The widespread optimism of  expectant observers was at least partially realized in February 2015 when the Memorandum of  Understanding re­ garding water sharing was signed by Jordan and Israel, clearing the way for a project unparalleled in its implications. Indeed, some feel it even outdoes the Jordan–Israel Peace Accord itself, in that finally the physical groundbreaking for a joint, mutually beneficial project will be assigned a date. The agreement stipulates that Jordan and Israel will share water produced by the desalination plant at Aqaba and Israel will double the amount it supplies to Jordan from the Sea of  Galilee. In compensation Israel will need to desalinate more seawater for itself, meaning that the comparative costs will need to be worked out, but such details seem to be little impediment. Indeed it’s impossible to overstate the change such a project represents, as it binds the signatories in a way that may replace the Gordian knot of  their previous relationship. The disappointment to those who remain unwavering in their com­ mitment to trilateral programs is that the water exchange is in the end bilateral, with negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Author­ ity proceeding independently. This in itself  d iminishes the political and social impact of  what was to have been the concretization of  a vision that was truly transcendent in its practical and symbolic ramifications. In addition, environmentalists lost the decision regarding the most conten­ tious item, that being the very pipeline they had so vociferously opposed,

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which it seems for now at least will be constructed after all to channel residual brine, the byproduct of  desalination, to the Dead Sea. Although the amount of  water “replenishing” the Dead Sea will hardly amount to even a measurable fraction of  what the lake requires to stabi­ lize, the enterprise has been hyperbolically touted as a way to save the lake as well as alleviate water shortages in Jordan’s north and Israel’s south, the cost of  800–900 million dollars divided almost equally by the desalination plant and the pipeline. The hope among some, and the fear among others, is that the pilot project will inch its way toward the ambi­ tious goal of  more desalination, generating more brine and increased pumping into the Dead Sea. With no one truly able to forecast the effects on the lake, EcoPeace and others remain opposed, strongly preferring instead that the Dead Sea be left out of  the equation. •

The regional situation is so fluid that it’s impossible to predict how shifting conditions, particularly availability of  water, may contribute to change. Israel is in a commanding position, and if  its own self-suffi­ ciency results in greater sensitivity and sharing, the consequences for the Palestinians and Jordanians could be transformative. On the other side of  t he valley, the Kingdom of  Jordan relies on the Yarmuk River (the Lower Jordan’s major tributary) and the King Abdullah Canal to sustain the agricultural band that stretches between the Sea of  Galilee and the Dead Sea. The produce from the fields and greenhouses repre­ sents a huge industry for the Kingdom, not merely because of  its own taste for fresh fruit and vegetables but because of  t he relatively short distance—under a thousand miles—to the Persian Gulf  states. Toma­ toes harvested in Jordan today may tomorrow be in the kitchens of  t he luxury hotels of  Dubai and elsewhere in the Emirates. If  Israel allowed the water of  t he Sea of  Galilee to be more available, it would make an enormous difference in the Kingdom’s goal of  overcoming water scar­ city. From a geopolitical perspective, the stability of  Jordan also aug­ ments Israel’s security. Along the western side of  t he Jordan River, the situation is not as sanguine for Palestinian farmers who share, if  not proportionately, the arable land of  t he Jordan Valley. Israeli settler farmers have had a great advantage when it comes to exporting fruits and vegetables, though

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a European boycott of  settlement produce has had an effect on them. Palestinian crops still have to be transferred to Israeli hands before shipment abroad, reducing farmers’ profit. If  g iven full opportunity to develop their farms and greenhouses, Palestinian farmers would have a serious economic investment to benefit from and protect. One can even imagine that the fruit of  their labor could be shipped in two directions, joining Jordan’s trucks to the Gulf, and Israel’s ships to the West. Such a scenario seems chimerical under present circumstances, but social and political climate change may only be as unthinkable as actual climate change was not so long ago. At the moment the only substantial Palestinian industry at the Dead Sea is a family run plant that produces high quality table salt. In 1964, Ut­ man Hallak, a chemical engineer, was given permission by the Jordanian government to extract salt at the northwestern corner of  the Dead Sea, very close to where the original Palestine Potash company under Moshe Novomeysky thrived until the 1948 war. West Bank Salt probably sits on the site of  Beit Ha’Aravah, the pre-1948 kibbutz, and isn’t far from the well-known Lido, a resort and night club started by Jewish entrepreneurs in the 1930s and frequented by an international crowd—and it was a crowd—from Jerusalem, Amman, and Jericho, as well as by British and French military personnel. Hallak’s Jordanian contract survived only three years because in 1967 Israel gained control of  the West Bank. Since then the family business, in the last years run by his son Hussam, also a chemical engineer, reports earnings to Israel. In partnership with an Israeli company, Salt 424, as the product is known (the 424 representing the depth in meters of  the Dead Sea depression, roughly minus 1400 feet), has been packaged and marketed with such success that one can now buy it, with herbal mix­ tures and infusions, in Israeli supermarkets and in the West. The salt is also supplied to the West Bank and Gaza through the United Nations. Hussam Hallak calls the Dead Sea a national treasure shared by Pales­ tinians, Israelis, and Jordanians. Even with the lake’s recession, he’s opposed to the pipeline because of  unforeseen effects, and in general he hopes instead to see greater sensitivity to the environment. The process of  table salt extraction remains basic; the water is not evaporated but returned to the Dead Sea when the sodium chloride has

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been flushed and spun out. I walked around the plant not long ago and was impressed by its physical tenacity in the barren landscape, with the Dead Sea now so remote. The plant is simply constructed, appealingly so because it recalls layers of  Dead Sea history. Expansion to a new pack­ inghouse in Jericho is underway, but the current facility exists as an im­ portant artifact of  the mid-twentieth century and as a model for future development. If  an image of  the stark truth of  the decline of  the Dead Sea is needed, one has only to look at an odd, unidentifiable assemblage of  wooden stakes hanging together near the Hallak plant about half  a mile from the water’s edge. One stares, trying to figure it out. It makes no visual sense but looks like a primitive clothesline or the start of  a chicken coop. And yet, one learns, it was a pier, the pier that used to serve the northern shore of  the lake and now dangles as though in mid-air, the skeletal remains of  a bright past that didn’t survive. •

Not surprisingly, it seems all discussion comes back to water, avail­ ability of  f resh water. But frustration and hostility need not dominate. As so many people have put it, water has long been a contributor to con­ flict; could it not also be a catalyst for peace? There are acknowledged complications in establishing water-sharing treaties given that most such agreements concern natural bodies of  water; a non-traditional agree­ ment concerning “manufactured” (that is, desalinated) water represents uncharted territory. But combining water and energy into a single pact isn’t totally without precedent given the model of  regional integration introduced after the Second World War by the European Coal and Steel Community. The original Memorandum of  Understanding concerning water ex­ changes that was signed by Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority showed recognition of  intertwining interests. It was far from perfect in that it didn’t stipulate mutual benefit between Israel and the Palestin­ ians, as it did between Israel and Jordan. Furthermore, the agreement would have increased Palestinian dependency on water from Israel and would have enabled Israel to avoid a more equitable distribution of  the water that they by rights share with, or that in fact belongs to, the West Bank. Water negotiations proceed between the two parties, and one can

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Early twentieth century pier at northern end of  t he Dead Sea. Photo by Barbara Kreiger.

only hope that water and energy may generate mutually beneficial activ­ ity in a way that outruns sluggish diplomatic measures. Israel’s success in advancing the technology for desalination and the subsequent construction of  several desalination plants roughly coin­ cided with the discovery of  natural gas fields off  its coast several years ago. Once an energy importer, Israel now finds itself  exporting energy as well as water. Such a recipe for sustenance would seem to guarantee autonomy. Yet in this part of  the world, self-sufficiency does not mean security, as Israel evidently realizes, making the story more complex and perhaps more hopeful. In early 2013, Israel began pumping offshore natural gas from the Tamar deposit, off  t he coast of  Haifa. The following year a much larger deposit, named Leviathan, was discovered farther out to sea and is ex­ pected to be operational by 2017. Natural gas emissions are not as caustic as other fossil fuels’, and at least the desalination plants will soon be powered in a less damaging way than they currently are. The industry,

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though new, already figures prominently in a regional scheme. Jordan lost access to Egyptian natural gas when the pipeline through Sinai was sabotaged, and the influx of  refugees from the Syrian civil war has magnified the energy deficit just as it has the deficit for water. In 2014, Israel and Jordan signed an agreement by which Israel would supply natural gas to Jordan. Construction of  a pipeline will be shared by the two countries, each of  which will build to the border. There was also an agreement to sell a large quantity of  gas to a projected power plant in the West Bank, but it fell through, at least temporarily, because of  an anti-trust suit involving the two controlling interests, the Israeli Delek Group and Noble Energy, from Texas. Given the geography of  the region, it’s obvious that the Palestinians have the same potential as Israel for developing desalination plants on their Mediterranean coast. Likewise, Gaza has offshore gas reserves that could power those plants, and one can only hope that in the near future this potential will be realized. Egypt, too, enters the picture because it already runs liquefaction plants for refining the natural gas. By 2016, Israel will probably have started shipping large quantities there via a pipeline, meaning Israel will be able to avoid the cost of  building its own plant. The signatures on the natural gas contract are as significant as they are on the water sharing agreement and represent momentous evidence of  the shifting relations between the two nations, a shift not needing the motivation of  blossoming friendship but based on a joint realization that stability is a shared need. While it’s true that the development of  the technology for desalina­ tion has created a brighter water picture, there is also a shadow cast by the proliferation of  the plants, since the process carries with it negative environmental implications. Energy intensive desalination contributes, as I mentioned, to greenhouse gases at precisely the time when the dan­ ger they pose has been nearly universally acknowledged; additionally, there are fears of  the yet unknown effects that the brine, dumped back into the ocean, may have on marine life. Pumping water for desalination uses about ten percent of  Israel’s elec­ tricity supply, and the natural gas reserves, though vast, are finite. Once the gas fields are exhausted, the situation could revert to what we see today: competition for limited resources, stress, and potential hostility.

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Maybe the visionary idea of  a region powered by the sun is the solution in this complex and ever-changing human and environmental drama. In August 2014, EcoPeace published a paper, very preliminary to be sure, but not casually conceived, exploring an idea that to pragmatists may sound farfetched but that one day could be viewed as a practical rather than quixotic approach to the three nations’ water and energy issues. In a sense, it starts with what Jordan does not have: a significant coastline providing unlimited ability to produce fresh water. But unlike Israel and Palestine, Jordan has an expansive eastern desert, an enormous tract of  barren land where the sun shines all but a handful of  days a year. The potential for solar energy is hard to ignore, and it doesn’t seem so unrea­ sonable to imagine that one day Jordan could exchange energy for water. In short, the paper proposed a water and renewable energy community in which desalinated water produced on the Mediterranean coast by Israelis and Palestinians would eventually be provided to Jordan in ex­ change for solar energy created in Jordan’s desert, a huge potential solar energy field. Of  course the magnitude of  the concept may elicit skepti­ cism or disdain. But with the stakes so high, derision isn’t sufficient to consign the idea to the wastebasket. Indeed it often seems that a hard line is drawn between those who regard the current situation as intractable, who see the political status quo as the only and perhaps even the best long term scenario, and those who maintain that the conventional way of  v iewing the situation is hope­ lessly inadequate and can only result in a crisis more severe than what the region now faces. The factors driving the deterioration are obvious: growing populations, dangerous water shortages in some sectors, cli­ mate change, and unrest in the Middle East that could engulf  everyone. The concept of  environmental peace-building rests on the assertion that mutual self-interest can be a catalyst for cooperation. Because environ­ mental problems are by definition also long term, their solution requires a persistent effort that might maintain dialogue and continue to lead to further cooperation. Goodwill has never been an effective instrument in bringing hostile parties together, but inescapable interdependence may be. In fact inter­ dependence is the key word and assumption that underlies EcoPeace’s thinking. To them, interdependence is not a synonym for altruism; rather

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they equate it with self-interest, an association that redefines coopera­ tion as a necessary condition for self-realization. Ironically, water short­ age, calamitous as it is, might one day foster gratitude if  it finally brings all sides to an admission that mutuality is their only route to fulfillment. If  this is so, these current circumstances may portend a more humane future. •

I think again about ancient days as I look out across the water. Walk the southeastern rim of  the Dead Sea, and then the northwestern, and you are privileged to wander among the remains of  t wo of  the world’s most provocative archaeological sites. At opposite corners, Bab edhDhra and Qumran draw you away from consciousness of  the present and stimulate an imaginative connection to the Dead Sea’s past. What was it like to live on these shores two, or three, millennia ago? Was life ever peaceful? Or has it always been a succession of  armies and con­ quests, earthquakes, droughts, and anxieties about survival? By the middle of  the third millennium bce, the Early Bronze Age site of  Bab edh-Dhra saw prosperity, as indicated by well-constructed houses and a temple. Fortifications were substantial, and the town gates opened out onto fields near the Dead Sea. A large cemetery attests to the population growth that led to the settlement of  nearby Numeira. Life was tranquil for a few centuries, but that changed around 2350 bce, with a period of  intense turmoil. Some buildings collapsed, others were burned. What was the agent of  destruction? Was the ravaging fire human or earth­ quake-induced? Archaeologists pointed out that in the case of  Numeira, destruction was evidently unexpected and swift. Parts of  the city were left eerily intact—one thinks of  Pompeii more than two thousand years later—with tools, fabrics, ovens, and even fruit the helpless witnesses of  r uin. Qumran, too, saw its share of  social disruption, more than two mil­ lennia after Bab edh-Dhra—that time discrepancy in itself  reminding us what little claim we moderns have to a place of  prominence in hu­ man chronicles. Despite the far greater antiquity of  Bab edh-Dhra, the story of  Qumran is more tangled and unresolved. The site was occupied from the middle or the end of  the second century bce until its destruc­ tion in 68 ce by the army of  Vespasian. Its function has been subject

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to debate almost since it was first excavated in the 1950s, but there is unanimity on one score, that the settlers of  Qumran met a violent end at the hands of  the Romans. Roman arrowheads were collected, and evidence of  armed struggle showed that the residents resisted their fate. Like earthquakes and fires, the Romans were not to be thwarted. •

Silence grazes you almost palpably, brushed aside only by the crunch of  feet on stone and sand. The Jordan River was never far off, and the Dead Sea must have been much less odd to those who were its accus­ tomed neighbors, who didn’t measure the world in terms of  uniqueness, whose travel was limited to perhaps one other sea that didn’t happen to be as salty. It is helpful to be removed for a moment from the present, to wander among ancient homes and cemeteries and be recalled to a simpler time, when human activity was so much more innocent—not less brutal, but with fewer implications. Those implications continue to occupy people and nations, often hindering constructive action. And yet the opportunity is golden, for it still seems that passersby along the Dead Sea shore might witness a moment in history when nations cross the lake’s crusty ridge in greeting, in sympathy, and with the tools of  re­ construction in hand.

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SOURCES AND NOTES

There is an enormous body of work concerning both historical and scientific aspects of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. I hope this book will serve as an introduction for anyone interested in further exploration. If possible, the first thing one might want to do is visit the area and experience for oneself the valley’s beauty. I would also recommend becoming acquainted with the texts of the explorers. Frequently illustrated with beauti­ ful drawings and paintings and large maps folded into cover pockets, these narratives offer far more in their original editions than I can convey in mere excerpts. The following is an arrangement of the many books and articles without which I could not have written this book. 1. Som e E a r ly History, Tr av eler s, a nd M y ths The ancient world’s encounter with the Dead Sea is chronicled in detail by Diodorus Siculus in his History (esp. vol. X, book 19; trans. Russel M. Geer, Cambridge, Mass., Lon­don, 1954); Strabo in his Geography (vol. 3, book 16; trans. H. C. Hamilton and W. Fal­ coner, London, 1881); Pliny in his Natural History (vol. I, book 5; trans. John Bostook and H. T. Riley, London, 1893); Josephus in The Jewish War (trans. G. A. Williamson, Middle­ sex, 1959) and Antiquities of the Jews (based on trans. by William Whiston, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1960); and Cornelius Tacitus in The History (vol. 2, book V; trans. Albert W. Quill, London, 1896). A useful overview of geography in the Middle Ages is provided by George H. T. Kim­ ble’s Geography in the Middle Ages (London, 1938). Robert Steele’s Medieval Lore from Bar­thol­omaus Anglicus (London, 1907) and H. F. M. Prescott’s Friar Felix at Large (New Haven, 1950) are also instructive. Thomas Wright, editor of Early Travels in Palestine (London, 1848), made available an excellent selection from the works of medieval travel­ ers; and Guy Le Strange, in translating and editing selections from medieval Arab geog­ raphers, provided an invaluable resource for the non–Arabic reading: Palestine under the Moslems, A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from CE 650 to 1500 (London, 1890). Thirteen volumes of travelers’ accounts were published by the Committee for the Pal­ estine Exploration Fund in 1897. In this Library of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, the reader interested in medieval encounters with the Dead Sea might want to read “The Pilgrimage of the Russian Abbot Daniel” (vol. 4), who traveled in the first decade of the

259

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twelfth century, a few years after the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land; and also the account of the pilgrim Burchard (vol. 12), who spent ten years at Mt. Zion from roughly 1275, and the fifteenth-century Felix Fabri (vol. 7). Ludolph von Suchem’s A Description of the Holy Land, and of the Way Thither (1350) includes a detailed description of his en­ counter with the lake, and John Maundeville’s Travels is a curious and singular work. Pre–nineteenth century accounts of journeys to the Dead Sea may be found in Thomas Fuller’s A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine, and the Confines Thereof (1650), Henry Maun­ drell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem (1697), and Richard Pococke’s A Description of the East, and Some Other Countries (1740). The reader interested in literary responses to the Dead Sea may want to read Sir Walter Scott’s The Talisman: A Tale of the Crusaders (1825); Herman Melville’s Redburn (1849), Clarel (1876), and Journal of a Visit to Europe and the Levant, Oct. 11, 1856 to May 6, 1857; Benjamin Disraeli’s Tancred; or, the New Crusade (1853); and Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad or the New Pilgrim’s Progress (1869). 2. Thr ee Sa ilor s a nd a R i v er The notable narratives of the early part of the nineteenth century include Ulrich Jasper Seetzen’s A Brief Account of the Countries Adjoining the Lake of Tiberias, the Jordan and the Dead Sea (Palestine Association of London, 1810); John Lewis Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (London, 1822); and Charles Irby and James Mangles’ Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land During the Years 1817 & 1818 (London, 1823). Other noteworthy accounts are François de Chateaubriand’s Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt and Barbary during the Years 1806 and 1807 (London, 1811); William Mac­ Michael’s Journey from Moscow to Constantinople in the Years 1817, 1818 (London, 1819); Thomas Jolliffe’s Letters from Palestine (London, 1819); and L. E. de Laborde’s Journey through Arabia Petræa to Mount Sinai (London, 1836). I recommend John Lloyd Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa and the Holy Land (New York, 1837). Stephens never resumed a sedentary life after his journey to the Middle East. He went on to Mexico and Central and South America, and is credited with the discovery of the ancient Mayan civilization. The interested reader will want to read Stephens’ excellent books (he was described by the critic Van Wyck Brooks as “one of the few great writers of travel”). I also recommend Victor W. Von Hagen’s biography: Maya Explorer, John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Cities of Central America and Yucatan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947). Also, Count Jules de Bertou’s “Notes on a Journey from Jerusalem by Hebron, the Dead Sea, El Ghór, and Wadi ’Arabah to ’Akabah, and back by Petra, in April, 1838,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, vol. IX, 1839; Edward Robinson and Eli Smith’s Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petræa, esp. vol. 2 (Boston, 1841); Rob­ inson and Smith’s “Extracts from a Journal of Travel in Palestine, and c., in 1838,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, vol. IX, 1839; and Eliot Warburton’s The Crescent and the Cross (London, 1844), written with the encouragement of his friend Alexander Kinglake, whose own book, Eothen (London, 1844), is an especially readable and lively book. One who wishes to follow the whole of the fascinating story of the discovery and defini­ tion of the depression of the level of the Dead Sea would go to several nearly consecutive issues of the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society. The first mention of the Dead Sea oc­

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curs six years after the Journal’s founding; in vol. 7, 1837, we find the editorial note on the trip made by G. H. Moore and W. G. Beke. In volumes 9, 10, and 12 (1839, 1841, and 1842 re­ spectively), the reader would take note of the anniversary addresses given to the Society’s members by William R. Hamilton. In vol. 13 (1843–44), we read of the gold medal award presented to Lt. Sykes. Mr. Roderick Murchison delivered a noteworthy address in vol. 15 (1845). Finally, vol. 17–18 (1847–48) offers us Edward Robinson’s “Depression of the Dead Sea and of the Jordan Valley,” Augustus Petermann’s “On the Fall of the Jordan, and of the Principal Rivers in the United Kingdom,” and Thomas Molyneux’s posthumous account of his journey, “Expedition to the Jordan and the Dead Sea.” One might also want to con­ sult the following, also in the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society: “On the Use of Common Thermometers to Determine Heights,” by Lt. Col. W. H. Sykes, vol. 8, 1838. “Remarks on the Use of the Aneroid Barometer,” by Col. Philip Yorke, vol. 21, 1851. “An Attempt to Account for Numerous Appearances of Sudden and Violent Drainage on the Sides of the Basin of the Dead Sea,” and “On the Watershed of Wadi el Araba,” both by Capt. William Allen, in vol. 23, 1853. Finally, see William Hamilton’s address in vol. 19, 1849; and Roderick Murchison’s talk in vol. 23, 1853. Edward Masterman’s lengthy piece, “Three Early Explorers to the Dead Sea Valley: Costigan, Molyneux, Lynch,” may be found in the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Quarterly Statement for 1911. William Lynch’s Narrative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia, 1849) is a lively and often impassioned account of his journey. His Official Report of the United States Expedition to Explore the Dead Sea and the River Jordan (Baltimore, 1852) is not intended as popular reading. It contains a condensed travel narrative, essays and notes on geological formations, analyses of Jordan River and Dead Sea water, ornithological and botanical reports, and comments pertaining to scientific questions of his day. Finally, the reader who becomes taken with Lynch might want to read his anecdotal, autobiographical Naval Life, or Observations Afloat and on Shore (1851). Pioneers East: The Early American Experience in the Middle East, by David H. Finnie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), chronicles the experiences of American missionaries and travelers in the Middle East through roughly the mid-nine­ teenth century. Though few of those visited the Dead Sea, the book is a most informative account of a little known chapter in American history—arranged, interestingly enough, according to the routes followed by John Lloyd Stephens. The interested scientific reader might consult “Geophysical Investigations in the Dead Sea,” by David Neev and John K. Hall in Sedimentary Geology, 23 (1979), 209–238, © Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam. 3. A long th e Br in y Str a nd The centerpiece of the second half century is the work of Henry Baker Tristram: The Land of Israel, A Journal of Travels in Palestine (London, 1865); The Land of Moab, Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan (London, 1873); and The Fauna and Flora of Palestine (London, 1884).

262

Sources and Notes

Other notable accounts of the second half century include Louis Fèlicien de Saulcy’s Narrative of a Journey Round the Dead Sea and in the Bible Lands, in 1850 and 1851, including an account of the discovery of the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah (London, 1854); C. W. M. Van de Velde’s Narrative of a Journey through Syria and Palestine in 1851 and 1852 (London, 1854); Captain William Allen’s The Dead Sea, A New Route to India: with Other Fragments and Gleanings in the East (London, 1855); Reverend Albert Augustus Isaacs’ The Dead Sea: Or Notes and Observations Made during a Journey to Palestine in 1856–1857 (London, 1857); Thomas Lewin’s The Siege of Jerusalem by Titus (London, 1863); and Edward Hull’s Mt. Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine (London, 1885). One might also want to look at Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, by John L. Porter, first published in 1858, or Bædeker’s Palestine and Syria (1876). In addition, the Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund offers a run­ ning commentary on the state of Dead Sea exploration from 1865 onwards. Numerous references to the Dead Sea may be found in Yehoshua Ben-Arieh’s The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1979), a very useful resource for the reader about to plunge into the lit­ erature of the nineteenth century. Len Aronson devoted himself to studying the wildlife in the Ein Gedi region, and he is an authority particularly on the Nubian ibex. One may want to refer to his article, “The Ein Gedi Field Study Center of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel,” which appeared in Israel: Land and Nature (vol. 2, no. 4, Summer 1977). The reader interested in the subject of life in the Dead Sea itself might be curi­ ous to see the very first mention of it. Fifty years ago, the microbiologist Benyamin Elazari-Volcani (then Wilkanski) published a two-paragraph announcement: “Life in the Dead Sea,” Nature (no. 138, 1936), 467. In 1970, I. R. Kaplan and A. Friedman pub­ lished their paper, “Biological Productivity in the Dead Sea. Part 1: Microorganisms in the Water Column,” Israel Journal of Chemistry 8: 513–528. In 1980, microbiologists Aharon Oren and Moshe Shilo began their extensive research. One might consult: “Population Dynamics of Dunaliella parva in the Dead Sea,” by Aharon Oren and Moshe Shilo, Limnology and Oceanography 27 (2), 1982, 201–211; also, “Population Dynamics of Halobacteria in the Dead Sea Water Column,” by Aharon Oren, Limnology and Oceanography 28 (6), 1983, 1094–1103. Dr. Oren’s summary of his work at the Dead Sea—“The Microbial Ecology of the Dead Sea”—appears in the 1987 annual publication (vol. 10) Advances in Microbial Ecology, ed. K. C. Marshall (Plenum Press). Also of interest is a paper published by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humani­ ties: “Life in the Dead Sea,” by Margaret Ginzburg (Jerusalem, 1982, section of sci­ ences, no. 20). A most informative article on the adaptation of plant life to the desert is “Structure and Ecology of the Vegetation in the Dead Sea Region of Palestine,” by Michael Zohary and G. Orshansky, Palestine Journal of Botany (vol. 4, no. 4, Jerusalem series, March 1949). In addition, Zohary’s Plants of the Bible (Cambridge, 1982) was a key to unlocking the mystery of the balsam, and H. F. M. Prescott’s Once to Sinai (London, 1957) was also an interesting aid. The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavation in the Holy Land, edited by Michael AviYonah (Jerusalem, 1976) provides an excellent history of settlement at Jericho, Qumran,

Sources and Notes

263

Ein Gedi, and Masada, and of course numerous longer works are available on the par­ ticular excavations, as well as on the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are several journals, ranging from technical to popular, that can be counted on to keep up with archaeological developments in the Dead Sea region. In the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the interested reader would find: “Another Settlement of the Judean Desert Sect at En el-Ghuweir on the Shores of the Dead Sea,” by Pessah Bar-Adon (No. 227, Oct. 1977, 1–25) (first published in Hebrew in 1971 in Eretz-Israel 10:72–89). Also, “The Winter Palaces of the Judean Kings at Jericho at the End of the Second Temple Period,” by Ehud Netzer (No. 228, Dec. 1977, 1–13). In reconstructing twentieth century thought concerning the location and fate of the Cities of the Plain, I used the following sources: Abright, William F., “The Archaeological Results of an Expedition to Moab and the Dead Sea,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 14, 1924, 2–12. ———, “The Jordan Valley in the Bronze Age,” The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. VI, 1924–25, 13–74. Glueck, Nelson, “Explorations in Eastern Palestine, II,” The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. XV, 1934–35, 1–202. ———, “Explorations in Eastern Palestine, III,” The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. XVIII–XIX, 1937–39, 1–288. ———, “An Aerial Reconnaissance in Southern Transjordan,” The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, nos. 66 and 67, April 1937, 27–28, and Oct. 1937, 19–26. The reader hoping for less technical but highly informed views might go to “The Site of Sodom and Gomorrah,” by Frederick G. Clapp, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 40, 1936, 323–44; also two articles by J. Penrose Harland: “Sodom and Gomorrah, The Location of the Cities of the Plain,” Biblical Archaeologist, vol. V, no. 2, May 1942, 17–32, and “Sodom and Gomorrah, The Destruction of the Cities of the Plain,” Biblical Archaeologist, vol. VI, no. 3, Sept. 1943, 41–54. For information about contemporary excavations at Bab edh-Dhra and vicinity, the reader should consult the reports of the participating archaeologists themselves: Rast, Walter E., and R. Thomas Schaub, “Survey of the Southeastern Plain of the Dead Sea, 1973,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, vol. 19, 1974, 5–54, 175–85. ———, “Preliminary Report of the 1979 Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 240, Fall 1980, 21–61. ———, “Preliminary Report of the 1981 Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan,” BASOR, No. 254, Spring 1984, 35–61. As we saw, Rast and Schaub did not mention the Cities of the Plain themselves but opened the door to conjecture for others. The Biblical Archaeology Review published an article entitled “Have Sodom and Gomorrah Been Found?” (vol. VI, no. 5, Sept./Oct. 1980, 27–36); and the Biblical Archaeologist followed with “Once Again: Sodom and Go­ morrah,” by William C. van Hattem (vol. 44, no. 2, Spring 1981, 87–92). Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man (New York: Little Brown, 1974) offers an inter­ esting picture of the early settlement of Jericho, and Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, by Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn (1867) offers a glimpse into monastic life in the region until the Arab conquest.

264

Sources and Notes

To suggest the range of topics in the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Quarterly Statement, I include here a list of some of those articles that pertain to subjects discussed in this chapter: Captain R. E. Warren was one of the first contributors to the new PEF Quarterly Statement, with his “Remarks on a Visit to ’Ain Jidy and the Southern Shore of the Dead Sea in Mid-Summer of 1867,” Quarterly Statement, vol. 1 of that year. Lt. Claude R. Conder, looking for the cave in which David hid from Saul, submitted “The Survey of the Dead Sea Desert and a Visit to Masada,” Quarterly Statement, 1875. The naturalist H. Chichester Hart submitted a book chapter about the flora and fauna of the Dead Sea region: “South End of the Dead Sea,” Quarterly Statement, 1885. Beginning in 1874 with Tyrwhitt Drake’s “Report,” numerous travelers conveyed their observations about the level of the Dead Sea. Between 1900 and 1901, Gray Hill, Charles Wilson, and R. A. Stewart MacAlister all submitted reports, and Edward Masterman’s findings were published annually. Masterman’s brief but important summary of more than a decade of observations appeared in the Quarterly Statement of 1913: “Summary of the Observations on the Rise and Fall of the Level of the Dead Sea, 1900–1913.” (Master­ man’s interest was not confined to the lake’s level; in 1908 he contributed “Notes on a Visit to Engedy, Masada, and Jebel Usdum.”) After Masterman, the next important article on the Dead Sea’s level to appear in the Quarterly Statement was in 1936: “The Level and Cartography of the Dead Sea,” by T. J. Salmon and G. T. McCaw. In 1961, Cippora Klein published her important paper, “On the Fluctuations of the Level of the Dead Sea Since the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century,” Jerusalem, Min­ istry of Agriculture/Hydrological Service, (Hydrological Paper no. 7). By the late 1960s, the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Quarterly Statement had turned into the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, and in 1967 we find H. W. Underhill’s “Dead Sea Levels and the P.E.F. Mark.” 4. Th e Life of a L a k e My reliance on the work that others have carried out in writing this chapter may be best expressed by a simple bibliography: Ackroyd, W., “On a Principal Cause of Saltiness in the Dead Sea,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1906, 64–66. Arad, V., M. Beyth, and Y. Bartov, The Dead Sea and its Surroundings, Bibliography of Geo­logical Research, Geological Survey of Israel, special publication no. 3 ( Jerusa­ lem, 1984). Assaf, Gad, and Arie Nissenbaum, “The Evolution of the Upper Water Mass of the Dead Sea, 1819–1976,” Desertic Terminal Lakes, ed. D. C. Greer (Utah Water Research Labo­ ratory, University of Utah, 1977), 61–72. Begin, Z. B., A. Ehrlich, and Y. Nathan, “Lake Lisan: The Pleistocene Precursor of the Dead Sea,” Ministry of Commerce and Industry/Geological Survey Bulletin no. 63, Jerusalem, November, 1974. Ben-Arieh, Yehoshua, “The Geographical Exploration of the Holy Land,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly, July–Dec., 1972, 81–92.

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265

Bentor, Y. K., “Some Geochemical Aspects of the Dead Sea and the Question of Its Age,” Geochimica and Cosmochimica Acta, 25 (1961), 239–260. Bloch, M. R., “Dead Sea Whiteness and its Origin,” published by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Jerusalem, 1980, section of sciences, no. 19). Bloch, M. R., and Leo Picard, “The Dead Sea—a Sinkhole?” Z. deutsch. geol. Ges. sondern Hydrogeol. Hydrogeochem, Hannover (1970), 119–128. Cady, Reverend Putnam, “Exploration of the Wady Mojib from the Dead Sea,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1901, 44–45. Freund, R., Z. Garfunkel, I. Zak, M. Goldberg, T. Weissbrod, B. Derin, F. Bender, F. E. Wellings, and R. W. Girdler. “The Shear along the Dead Sea Rift,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, series A, vol. 267 (1970), 107–130. Hammond, Philip C., “The Nabataean Bitumen Industry at the Dead Sea,” The Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 22 (1959), 2, 40–48. Hull, Edward, The Geology of Palestine and Arabia Petræa, London, 1886. Neev, David, and K. O. Emery, “The Dead Sea,” Science Journal, Dec. 1966 (published monthly by Associated Iliffe Press Ltd., London). Neev, David, and K. O. Emery, The Dead Sea: Depositional Processes and Environments of Evaporites, State of Israel, Ministry of Development, Geological Survey Bulletin no. 41, Jerusalem, 1967. Neev, David, and John K. Hall, “Climatic Fluctuations during the Holocene as Reflected by the Dead Sea Levels,” paper presented at the International Conference on Termi­ nal Lakes, Weber State College, Ogden, Utah, May 2–5, 1977. Neumann, J., “Tentative Energy and Water Balances of the Dead Sea,” Bulletin, Research Council of Israel, 7 (1958), 137–163. Nir, Y., “Some Observations on the Morphology of the Dead Sea Wadis,” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 16 (1967), 97–103. Nissenbaum, Arie, Studies in the Geochemistry of the Jordan River-Dead Sea System, Dis­ sertation, UCLA, 1969. Orni, Efraim, and Elisha Efrat, Geography of Israel, Israel Program for Scientific Transla­ tion, Jerusalem, 1964. Picard, Leo, “Structure and Evolution of Palestine,” Geology Department of the Hebrew University, publication no. 84, 1943. Poole, Henry, “Report of a Journey in Palestine,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, 26 (1856), 55–70. Quennel, A., “The Structure and Geomorphic Evolution of the Dead Sea Rift,” Quarterly Journal of the Geographic Society of London, 115 (1958), 1–24. Raz, Eli, “The World’s Lowest Sea-Coast,” Israel—Land and Nature, Quarterly Journal of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, vol. 5, no. 2, Winter 1979–80. Steinhorn, Ilana, and Joel R. Gat, “The Dead Sea,” Scientific American, vol. 249, no. 4 (Oct. 1983), 102–109. Vroman, A. J., “Is a Compromise Between the Theories of Tension and of Shear for the Jordan–Dead Sea Trench Possible?” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 22 (1973), 141–156. Zak, I., and R. Freund, “Recent Strike Slip Movements along the Dead Sea Rift,” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 16 (1966), 33–37.

266

Sources and Notes 5. A Gentlem a n from Siber i a

Like the man himself, Moshe Novomeysky’s books deserve a wider audience. They are: My Siberian Life (1956), and Given to Salt: The Struggle for the Dead Sea Concession (1958). One might also find of interest the pamphlet, “The Truth about the Dead Sea Concession” (1950). A brief insight into Novomeysky’s political life in Palestine may be had from Susan Lee Hattis’ The Bi-National Idea in Palestine during Mandate Times (Haifa, 1970). The reader wishing to consult the British record would refer to the pertinent years of the Index to the General Correspondence of the Great Britain Foreign Office. 6. A L a k e Di v ided Jordan: A Country Study, edited by Richard F. Nyrop (Washington, D.C., 1980), and Rami Khouri’s The Jordan Valley: Life and Society below Sea Level, published in associa­ tion with the Jordan Valley Authority by Longman (London & N.Y., 1981), provided me with views from the eastern side of the lake. I would also recommend Walter C. Low­ dermilk’s Palestine, Land of Promise (New York, 1944), a very interesting book about land reclamation and water resources in Palestine in the 1930s and ‘40s. David Neev and K.O. Emery’s publication, The Dead Sea: Depositional Processes and Environments of Evaporites (Jerusalem, 1967) remains valuable, as does David Anati’s paper, “The Top 50 Meters of the Dead Sea, 1980–1984: A Descriptive Account of Four Years of Mea­ surements for Solmat Systems Ltd.” (Jerusalem, 1984). Cippora Klein made available to me her important studies on water level fluctuations in the Dead Sea: Klein, Cippora, “The Influence of Rainfall over the Catchment Area on the Fluctuations of the Dead Sea since the 12th Century” (Meteorological Service, Bet Dagan, Israel Meteorological Research papers, vol. 3, 1981). ———, “Morphological Evidence of Lake Level Changes, Western Shore of the Dead Sea,” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 31, (1982), 67–94. ———, “Fluctuations of the Level of the Dead Sea and Climatic Fluctuations in the Country during Historical Times,” International Association of Hydrological Sci­ ences; International Symposium on Scientific Basis for Water Resources Manage­ ment, Jerusalem, Sept. 1985. A paper by Harry Tabor entitled “Solar Ponds (Non-Convecting)” and delivered at a UNITAR conference on long-term energy sources in Montreal in 1979 (published by the Scientific Research Foundation), gave me an overview of the solar pond. An article enti­ tled “The Leopards of the Judean Desert,” by Giora Ilani, published in Israel—Land and Nature (vol. VI, no. 2, Winter 1980–81), discusses the conservation efforts made in Israel on behalf of the threatened leopard, and a brief update may be found in vol. X, no. 4 (Summer 1985). Other twentieth century works of general interest are Sir George Adam Smith’s The Historical Geography of the Holy Land (1902); Jacob E. Spafford’s “Around the Dead Sea by Motor Boat,” The Geographic Journal 39, 1912; Down the Jordan in a Canoe, by R. J. E. Boggis (London, 1939); and “Canoeing Down the River Jordan,” by John D. Whiting, The National Geographic Magazine (vol. lxxviii, December, 1940). Also, The Dead Sea

Sources and Notes

267

Region, by Ben-Zion Eshel (Jerusalem, 1958); The Dead Sea, by Menachem Talmi (Tel Aviv, 1966); and Ze’ev Vilnay’s Legends of Judea and Samaria (Philadelphia, 1975). Nelson Glueck’s books are immensely readable and make accessible to a non-schol­ arly audience his work on both sides of the Jordan River and in the Negev Desert: The Other Side of the Jordan (1940), The River Jordan (1946), and Rivers in the Desert (1959). A marvelous and engaging book that offers an indispensable overview is Lester I. Vogel’s To See a Promised Land: Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). A beautiful book of photo­ graphs and the history of the Palestine Potash Company/Dead Sea Works is Salt of the Earth, by Dov Gavish (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, in cooperation with the Dead Sea Works, 1995). There has been a great deal of archaeological activity in recent decades. A good place to begin is The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. Ephraim Stern (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, and Carta; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993). For those who wish to stay abreast, I also recommend back and current issues of the Biblical Archaeologist, Biblical Archaeology Review, and Archaeology. The subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls is complex and at times bitter. Many hundreds of articles and books have been published about the scrolls. I highly recommend the work of Jodi Magness: The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2002) and her other work on the region. I also recom­ mend the following: Golb, Norman. Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? (New York: Scribner, 1995). Schiffman, Lawrence H. Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1994). Silberman, Neil Asher. The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994). The other major area of archaeological investigation at the Dead Sea is the Bab edhDhra/Numeira connection to the Cities of the Plain. A comprehensive scholarly work is by Thomas R. Schaub and Walter E. Rast: Reports of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan, vol. 1, Bab edh-Dhra: Excavations in the Cemetery Directed by Paul W. Lapp (1965–67), published for the American Schools of Oriental Research (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1989). In addition, Professor Rast wrote two articles that are important for the lay reader: “Bronze Age Cities along the Dead Sea,” Archaeology, vol. 40, Jan.—Feb. 1987 (42–49). And “Bab edh-Dhra and the Origin of the Sodom Saga,” in Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Leo G. Perdue, Lawrence Toombs, and Gary L. Johnson (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), 185–201. David Neev and K. O. Emery published a most compelling addition to the literature on the subject of the Cities of the Plain: The Destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Jericho: Geological, Climatological, and Archaeological Background (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). What is perhaps most fascinating is that the period which saw the destruction of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira was a time not merely of local dislocation but of widespread dis­ ruption of a magnitude with few parallels in the long history of the region. Environmental and climatic factors, and the invasions they perhaps engendered, resulted in a collapse that propelled whole cultures onto migratory paths. Neev and Emery suggest that the same fac­

268

Sources and Notes

tors that caused the ruin of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira were responsible for the destruc­ tion of Jericho. The three cities all lie along the same earthquake-prone fault, and Jericho suffered a violent earthquake followed by an invasion at the same time that Bab edh-Dhra was destroyed. The significance of the Jericho story was such that it could have been em­ bellished with the details of an earlier cataclysm, and recreated in the Book of Joshua. 7. Th e R i v er a nd L a k e in Distr ess Much of this chapter is my own narrative, but the following literary sources did in­ spire my thinking: Brown, Adna. From Vermont to Damascus. Boston. 1895. Johnson, J. Augustus. The Life of a Citizen at Home and in Foreign Service. New York. 1915. Johnson, Sarah Barclay. Hadji In Syria, Or Three Years in Jerusalem. Philadelphia. 1858. Kinglake, Alexander. Eothen. London. 1844. Miller, Ellen Clare. Eastern Sketches: Notes of Scenery, Schools, and Tent Life in Syria and Palestine. Edinburgh. 1871. 8. R ecl a m ation a nd a V ision of th e Fu tu r e Since the 1990s there has been an enormous number of articles and postings about water issues pertaining specifically to Israel-Jordan-Palestine, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea. This bibliography represents a small portion of the studies that have been con­ ducted, the reports that have been filed, and the valuable opinions that have been offered in books and journals and from various wire and internet services. With the support of the World Bank, participating scientists devoted years to the Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance Study and the feasibility report that emerged from their research. The importance of the study can’t be overestimated. Several papers cited here were researched by EcoPeace Middle East (formerly Friends of the Earth Middle East), which enlists the cooperation of concerned scholars repre­ senting a variety of fields, thus ensuring the thorough and impartial nature of the inves­ tigations. Furthermore, they always call on Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian experts to conduct the research and arrive at conclusions with a unified vision. This commitment to trilateral participation is one of their unique features. EcoPeace papers going back to the 1990s can be found online. Those included here represent a small portion of what is available and date back only to 2010. Books and Scholarly Papers Amery, Hussein A. and Aaron T. Wolf ed. “Introduction.” Water in the Middle East: A Geography of Peace. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2000. Brooks, David B., and Julie Trottier. “An Agreement to Share Water between Israelis and Palestinians.” EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East, March 2012. http://www .hidropolitikakademi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Water_Agreement_FINAL -ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS.pdf. Brooks, David B., Julie Trottier, and Laura Doliner. “Changing the Nature of Trans­ boundary Water agreements: The Israeli-Palestinian case.” Water International 38, no. 6 (2013): 671–86.

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Eran, Oded, Gidon Bromberg, and Michal Milner. “The Water, Sanitation and Energy Crises in Gaza: Humanitarian, Environmental and Geopolitical Implications.” The Institute for National Security Studies and EcoPeace/Middle East, August 11, 2014. http://foeme.org/uploads/EcoPeace-INSS_Gaza_Report_Final.pdf. Friends of the Earth/Middle East. “Take Me Over the Jordan: Concept Document to Rehabilitate, Promote Prosperity, and Help Bring Peace to the Lower Jordan River Valley.” Friends of the Earth/Middle East, September 2012. http://foeme.org/uploads /13480625611~%5E$%5E~Take_Me_Over_the_ Jordan_2012_WEB.pdf. Gafny, Sarig, Samer Talozi, Banan Al Sheikh, and Elizabeth Ya’Ari. “Towards a Living Jordan River: An Environmental Flows Report on the Rehabilitation of the Lower Jor­ dan River.” EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East, May 2010. https://www.global nature.org/bausteine.net/file/showfile.aspx?downdaid=7273&domid=1011&fd=0. Gavrieli, Ittai, Amos Bein, and Aharon Oren. “The Expected Impact of the Peace Con­ duit Project (The Red Sea–Dead Sea Pipeline) on the Dead Sea.” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10 (2005): 3–22. Global Nature Fund. “All across the Jordan: Transboundary Master Planning of the Lower Jordan River Basin.” http://www.globalnature.org/swim-jordan. Haddadin, Munther J., ed. Water Resources in Jordan: Evolving Policies for Development, the Environment, and Conflict Resolution. Washington, D.C: Resources for the Future, 2006. Kliot, Nurit N. “A Cooperative Framework for Sharing Scarce Water Resources: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.” In Water in the Middle East: A Geography of Peace, edited by Hussein A. Amery and Aaron T. Wolf. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2000. ———. Water Resources and Conflict in the Middle East. London: Routledge, 1994. Lipchin, Clive. “A Future for the Dead Sea Basin: Water Culture among Israelis, Pales­ tinians and Jordanians.” Nota di Lavoro 115, September 2006. Lonergan, Stephen. “Forces of Change and the Conflict over Water in the Jordan River Basin.” In Water in the Middle East, A Geography of Peace, edited by Hussein A. Amery and Aaron T. Wolf. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2000. ———. Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Ottawa: In­ ternational Development Research Center, 1994. Markel, Doron, Jitzchak Alster, and Michael Beyth. “The Red Sea–Dead Sea Convey­ ance Feasibility Study, 2008–2012.” In Water Policy in Israel: Context, Issues and Options, edited by N. Becker. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media, 2013. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5911-4 12. Mehyar, M., N. Al Khateeb, G. Bromberg, and E. Koch-Ya’ ari. “Transboundary Coop­ eration in the Lower Jordan River Basin.” In Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, edited by E. Weinthal, J. Troell, and M. Nakayama. London: Earthscan, 2014. http://environmentalpeacebuilding.org/assets/Documents/LibraryItem_000 _Doc_934.pdf. Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. World Bank. “Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance Study Program: Dead Sea Study, Final Report.” Tahal Group in association with Geological Survey of Israel and

270

Sources and Notes

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INDEX

An italicized page number indicates an illustration. Abdullah, 171–72, 173, 176, 178, 181, 205 Abdul-Medjid I, 59–60 Abraham, 131, 212 Acre, 36, 53, 60–61 agriculture: Arabs and, 10, 34, 65, 75, 154, 168–69; beginnings, 12; Beit Ha-Aravah Kibbutz and, 173; Dead Sea levels and, 125; Ein Gedi and, 96–98; Herzl and, 195; Israel and, 237, 250–51; Jericho and, 82; Jordan and, 119, 250; Jordan River and, 219, 220, 224–25; Novomeysky and, 163, 169; Palestinians and, 250–51; Qumran and, 99; sinkholes and, 119; wastewater and, 237. See also irrigation; kibbutzim Akabah (Eilat), Gulf of, 48, 49, 198, 205, 240, 249 Albright, William F., 25, 34, 105–106 Alexander Jannaeus, 102 Allen, William, 49, 98, 121–22, 129, 195–96 Almog, Yehuda, 173 Amman, 248 Anderson, Henry, 60, 63 Antony, Marc, 82–83, 102 Apple of Sodom (Calotropis procera) (osher), 94–95 aquifer, coastal, 236 Arab League, 186 Arab Legion, 176–77 Arab Potash Company, 183, 184–85, 188, 197–98, 203, 242

Arabia, 5, 33, 75, 83 Arabs: agriculture and, 10, 34, 65, 75, 154, 168–69; asphalt and, 147; canals and, 195; Dead Sea and, 73; Jordan River and, 66; kibbutzim and, 174; Langotzki and, 170–71; Lynch and, 64; Molyneux and, 54–55; names of Dead Sea and, 6; Novomeysky and, 171–72, 179; potash plants and, 175–77; salt harvesting and, 114, 159; Stephens on, 55; travelers from the West and, 70; Tristram and, 86; Zughar and, 33 Aravah Valley (Wadi Aravah) (Wadi Arabah), 32, 49, 50–51, 133–34, 241–42 Aristotle, 17, 20 Arnon River, 75. See also Wadi Mojib asphalt, 111, 146–48, 159, 190 Auja Environmental Center, 225 Bab edh-Dhra, 107–108, 256 Babylonia, 5, 96 bakshish, 79–81 balsam (Commiphora gileadensis), 84–85, 97 Banias springs, 212 Bar Kokhba, 100 barometers, 42–43, 44, 52 Bartholomew, 17, 21 Barzugin, 160 Bedouin, 79–81, 124, 226 Beersheba, 180, 182

273

274 Beirut, 36, 42, 53, 57, 60 Beit Shean basin, 137 Beke (Beek), W. G., and G. H. Moore, 42–44 Ben Gurion, David, 177, 180–81, 190 Bertou, Jules de, 44, 50 Bethlehem, 10, 159, 243 bilateral activity, 204, 221, 269 birds, 7, 33, 64, 66, 72, 79, 81–82, 86, 91, 92–93, 213 Blanckenhorn, Max, 161 Bloch, Rudolph, 190–93 Bourcart, Max, 196 British Colonial Office, 165–66 British Group, 166–67, 168 British Mandate, 164, 168, 171, 172, 176, 192, 197 British Parliament debates, 167–68 Brodie, Israel, 168 Bromberg, Gidon, 243–44 bromine, 165, 172, 188–89 Bronitzki, Yehuda, 193–94 Bronze Age, 12, 95, 107–108, 256 Brown, Adna, 216–17, 227 Burchard (pilgrim), 17, 97, 126, 148, 260 Burckhardt, John Lewis, 32, 48–49, 49–50, 124 Busching (“the learned”), 49 Byzantine period, 8, 82, 97, 131–32, 154, 188 Cady, Putnam, 146 Callirhoe, 141, 143, 145. See also Wadi Zerka Ma’in Camp Washington, 70, 71 Canaan, 5 canals, 195–96, 198, 204, 240–41 Casa Nuova, 41–42 caves, 65, 81, 91, 95, 98–100, 104. See also Qumran Chateaubriand, François de, 20, 35, 36, 38, 49, 94–95 Cities of the Plain (Sodom and Gomorrah): Arab texts and, 6; Burchard on, 17; Costigan and, 37, 70–71; Dead Sea formation and, 48–49; destruction

Index of, 48–49, 51; geologic explanations, 105–106; location of, 107–108; Lot and, 212; Lynch and, 76; maps, 24; osher and, 94; Rast and Schaub and, 108; Scott on, 15; travelers and, 8, 23–26; volcanic eruption and, 36–37 Cleopatra, 82–84, 102 cliffs: Ein Gedi and, 89–90, 98, 100; explorers and, 78–79; geology and, 134, 136; images, 222–23; Lynch and, 141; recession and, 136, 230, 232; wadis and, 140 climate change, 91–92, 136–37, 154, 173, 187, 238 Conder, Josiah, 26, 95 coney (hyrax), 92 Constantinople, 9, 59–60, 63 Costigan, Christopher, 35–42, 57, 58, 59, 144 Cretaceous period, 132–33 Crusaders, 75, 97, 175 Dale, John, 63, 75–76 Damascus, Pasha of, 60 dams, 220–21, 225 Daniel (Abbot) (Russian pilgrim), 14, 46 date palms, 96, 97 David, 98 Dead Sea: age of, 131, 137, 151; age of upper layer, 154–55; air pressure, 201; basins, 124, 137, 151–52, 187–88, 202–203, 233, 242; buoyancy, 20–22, 69, 147, 238; chemical composition, 241; climate, 33, 35; color, 3, 4, 5, 7, 69, 88, 100, 152, 202, 227; currents, 151, 195; decline of, 226–34, 238, 239, 242; density, 38; depression, 251; depth, 36–37, 52, 140, 151–52, 170, 198–99, 238; desalination plant and, 240; dimensions of, 8, 42; elevation, x, 7, 8; fish, 20, 27, 87; floor, 37, 136, 137; foam (slicks), 3, 152; formation of, 48–50, 132–37; future, 229; images, 39, 109, 118, 153, 227; maps, ii, xi, xx, 20; microorganisms, 87–89; names, 5–6, 46, 146; navigation, 27; odor, 18, 22, 38, 56; overturning, 155; reduction of inflow,

Index 187; shores, 76, 89–90, 113, 120, 140, 173, 227; slicks (foam), 3, 152; source of, 8, 48–49; stabilization, 229–32; stratification, 152–55, 170; surface area, 229, 238; temperatures, 72; therapeutic qualities, 143, 145, 146, 148, 200–202, 232, 233; vapors and smells, 19; waves, 3, 5, 37–38, 202. See also Dead Sea levels; evaporation; Lisan (Lashon); salts and salinity; sinkholes and recession Dead Sea Canal (Conveyance) (Pipeline) (Waterway), 197, 240 Dead Sea levels: canal and, 197; climate change and, 238; dikes and, 188, 198–99; floods and, 42, 126, 136; geological history and, 135; Jordan River and, 58, 137, 185, 218; nineteenth century explorers and, 42–45, 46, 121–26, 146, 187; precipitation and, 204; pre-nineteenth century views on, 18–19; present day, 229, 230, 232; relative equilibrium of, 137, 185; salt-encrusted trees and, 146; springs and, 145; twentieth century, 202–204 Dead Sea Scrolls, 8, 99–100 Dead Sea sect, 99 Dead Sea Works, 181–82, 185, 187–88, 193, 197–99, 242 Delek Group, 254 desalination: Israel and, 236, 247, 249; Memorandum of Understanding and, 248–49; natural gas and, 253–54; Palestinians and, 254; peace and, 252; potash and, 184; Red Sea–Dead Sea conveyance and, 240, 243, 250 desert fathers, 100 Dimashki, 19 Dimona, 182 Diodorus Siculus, 18–19, 21, 56, 146 Disraeli, Benjamin, 16, 260 Du Pont Company, 165 Dunaliella, 87–88 East Ghor Canal (King Abdullah Canal), 186, 187, 219–21, 248, 250 ecoparks, 225, 234

275 EcoPeace, 225, 237, 242–49, 255–56 ecotourism, 225, 233, 234, 236, 244 Edom and Edomites, 5 education, 175, 225, 244, 245 Egypt, 9, 146, 171, 254 Eilat, 96, 205, 232, 248. See also Akabah (Eilat), Gulf of Ein Bokek, 84, 145, 197 Ein es-Sultan, 82 Ein Fashkhah, 69, 86–87, 230–32, 231 Ein Gedi: agriculture and, 96–98; botany, 93–94; described, 89–91; history of, 95–97; images, 90; Kibbutz, 140; leopards and, 200; nineteenth century explorers and, 56, 70, 75, 159; route to, 89; settlers and, 95–96; sinkholes and, 232; as supply port, 27; therapeutic waters and, 201 El Ghór, 34, 50, 66 Elazari-Volcani, Benyamin, 87 electricity: canals and, 196–97, 240; desalination and, 254; Israel and, 199; Mediterranean Sea and, 195–200; Red Sea–Dead Sea conveyance and, 198, 243; solar energy and, 190, 192, 193–95. See also Rutenberg electric plant Elisha, 212 Elisha’s spring, 82, 83 Emery, K. O., and David Neev, 149–50, 151–52, 154 energy, 189, 190, 194, 197–99, 252–54, 253–55. See also electricity; solar energy Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (US), 188 es-Safieh (Safi), 173, 178, 184 Essenes, 99 European Coal and Steel Community, 252 European Union, 237, 246 Eusebius, 97 evaporation: basins and, 151–52, 203; canals and, 197; equilibrium and, 238; lake depth and, 198–99; lake levels and, 19, 134–37; light and, 190–91; Novomeysky and, 162, 191; potash and, 183,

276 188, 190–92; present day, 229; Qalya plant and, 172, 173; salts and, 149; solar ponds and, 195; water issues and, 242 Fabri, Felix, 47, 84–85 Farkas, Laszlo, 191–92 Finn, James, 57 First Zionist Congress, 161 Flaubert, Gustav, 16 Flavius Silva, 103 floods: Dead Sea floor evidence of, 137; Dead Sea levels and, 42, 126, 136; deltas and, 140; geologic past and, 132; hotels and, 233, 242; Jordan River and, 187, 245–46; Judean Mountains and, 138, 139; potash works and, 198, 199; salt and, 135; slicks and, 152; Wadi Qumran and, 99; wadis and, 4, 91, 137, 139; wildlife and, 20, 87, 138, 226, 246 Fuller, Thomas, 18, 19, 20, 38, 84, 143 Gavrieli, Ittai, 241 Gaza, 197, 236, 254 Gedera, 163, 169 General Motors, 165 Ghor (El Ghor), 34, 50, 66. See also Jordan Valley Global Nature Fund, 246 Glubb, John, 176 Glueck, Nelson, 108 glycerol, 88 Golan Heights, 186, 212, 213 Gomorrah, 6, 8, 23. See also Cities of the Plain (Sodom and Gomor­rah) Good Water Neighbors project, 245 Gordon, Charles, 196 Great Ice Age. See Pleistocene Great Salt Lake (Utah), 22, 171, 183 Greece and Greeks, 5–6, 14, 17, 146, 147 gypsum, 241 Hadrian, 100 Haganah, 177, 178 Hallak, Hussam, 251 Hallak, Utman, 251–52

Index halobacteria, 87–88 Hamilton, William, 44, 45 Hasbani River, 212 Hasmoneans, 96, 102 Hassá, Sheríf, 61, 62 Hassan, Crown Prince, 185 Hasseé, ’Akĭl, 61, 74, 75 Hatseva, 136 Hebron, 89 Herod, 81, 82, 83–84, 96, 102, 143 Herzl, Theodore, 161, 195, 196 Homer, Annie. See British Group hot springs, 141–42, 143, 145, 201 hotels and spas, 201–202, 232–33, 242 Huleh Valley, 132 Hull, Edward, 133 hyrax (coney), 92 ibex, 40, 92, 200, 232 Ice Ages, 134 Idrisi, 27 Idumea, 5 Irby, Charles, and James Mangles, 32–35, 37, 52, 124, 141, 146, 187 irrigation, 221, 224 Isaacs, Albert A., 25 Isakevitch, Moshe, 173 Islington, Lord, 168 Israel Jordan Peace Accords, xi, xiii, 236, 249 Israeli Water Authority, 236, 237, 240–41, 247 Israelites, 67, 216 Jaffa, 35, 42, 44 Jeremiah, 33 Jericho: age of, 131; balsam and, 84; Bible and, 212; conquest of, 13; described, 11–12; ecopark, 225; fertility and, 85–86; images, 85; Novomeysky and, 169; potash negotiations and, 177; table salt industry and, 252; Tristram and, 81, 82; water and, 205, 237 Jerusalem, 11, 16, 138, 182, 205, 217–18 Jesus, 46, 67, 212, 216, 217 Jewish Revolts, 27, 84, 97, 100, 103 John the Baptist, 103, 212

Index Johnson, J. Augustus, 217 Johnson, Sara Barclay, 217–18 Johnston Plan, 185–86, 187 Joint Water Committee, 235, 236 Jolliffe, Thomas, 38, 104 Jordan River: course of, 48–54, 58, 66; Dead Sea basins and, 203; Dead Sea levels and, 137, 185, 218; demise of, 202, 213, 215, 219–21, 236–39; depth of, 53, 221, 234; described, 63–67, 224–25; diversion of, 186, 236, 242, 247; elevation of, 224; fish and, 87; images, 109, 110, 117, 214, 222–23; length of, 58, 66, 213; levels, 36, 219, 237–38; pilgrims and, 47–48; rate of fall of, 45–47, 52, 58; reduced flow, 187, 233; rehabilitation of, 221, 224, 225, 234, 236–37, 244–47; salts and, 149, 150–51, 154; sources and tributaries of, 63, 212–13; tributaries, 66, 81, 126, 186, 213, 220, 221, 250; volume, 238; water and, 186, 213, 248–49; width, 53, 234 Jordan River Model Basin Commission, 247 Jordan Valley, 50, 51, 61, 132, 134, 135–36, 195 Josephus: on asphalt, 148; on balsam, 85; on buoyancy, 21; on Cleopatra, 82–83; on Dead Sea sect, 99; description of Red Sea, 4; on Herod, 102; on Jericho’s fertility, 85–86; on Lot’s wife, 104; on Masada, 101–102; Old Jericho and, 12; on Sodom and Gomorrah, 23, 94 Joshua, 12, 212 Joshua, Book of, 5, 95 Judah, kingdom and tribe of, 5, 95–96, 212 Judea, 83, 96, 102, 172 Judean Desert, 81–82, 89, 100, 138–39 Judean Mountains, 138, 139 Justinian, 82 Kasr el-Yahud, 215–16 Kerak, 73–74 Kfar Etzion, 177 Khateb, Nader, 243–44 Kibbutz Beit Ha-Aravah, 173, 176, 177, 178, 251

277 Kibbutz Ein Gedi, 140 Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, 175 kibbutzim, 4, 173–74, 180 Kidron Valley, 39. See also Wadi Kidron Kimble, George H. T., 21–22 Kinglake, Alexander, 219, 225–26 Klein, Cippora, 203 Lake Baikal, 160 Lake Kinneret. See Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) Lake Tiberias, 57. See also Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) Langotzki, Moshe, 169–71, 180, 182 Lapp, Paul, 108 Lashon. See Lisan (Lashon) Latin Convent, 41–42 League of Nations. See British Mandate Lebanon, 220, 244 levels. See Dead Sea levels Leviathan deposit, 252–53 Lido, 251 Likud government, 197 Linnaeus, 95 Lisan (Lashon): formation, 136, 224; Irby and Mangles and, 34–35; Lake, 136–37, 139, 150; Peninsula, 37, 70, 135, 151, 184, 188 Littman, Zvi, 191–92 Lot, 212 Lot’s wife, 71, 104–107 Lowdermilk, Walter C., 185–86, 197 Lynch, Francis, 63 Lynch, William Francis: background of, 58–59; on basin levels, 203; currents and, 151; on Dead Sea, 49; Dead Sea levels and, 123; expedition of, 31, 59–76, 62; geology and, 133; image of, 112; soundings of, 121; vineyards and, 97; on volcanic activity, 51; Wadi Mojib and, 141 Lynch Straits, 124 Machaerus, 103 Madaba, 27 Madaba map, 20, 27, 124 Maganit ha-Melah (Rujm el-Bahr), 123, 125

278 magnesium, 150, 183, 188, 202 Makleff, Mordechai, 182 Malichus, 83–84 Mallon, Père, 107 Mangles, James, and Charles Irby, 32–35, 37, 52, 124, 141, 146, 187 Mar Saba, 14, 15, 39, 56, 69, 75 Markel, Doron, 240–41 Masada, 8, 100–103, 101, 189, 200 Masterman, Edward G., 39, 41, 57, 122, 123, 125–26, 127, 152 Maundeville, John, 21, 48 Maundrell, Henry, 18, 23, 94 Mediterranean Sea, 45, 134, 149, 150, 195– 96, 235–36, 248. See also canals Mehyar, Munqeth, 243–44 Meir, Golda, 176 Melville, Herman, 16, 36 Memorandum of Understanding, 248, 249, 252–53 Michaelis (professor), 49 Middle Ages, 6, 12, 17, 21, 25, 37–38, 86, 94 Miller, Ellen Clare, 218 Milton, John, 94 mineral extraction, 159–60, 183, 205, 242 Moab and Moabites, 5, 121, 212 Moab Mountains, 3, 5, 89, 90, 134 Mohammad Ali, 9 Mohammed, 212 Molyneux, Thomas, 53–58, 59, 72, 81, 144 Moore, G. H., and W. G. Beke (Beek), 42–44 Moorehead, Alan, 32 Moses, 212 Moslem Conquest, 82, 154 Mt. Carmel, 60 Mt. Hermon, 89, 126, 185, 203, 213, 217 Mt. Nebo, 212 Mt. Sedom: age of pollen, 149–50; Dead Sea levels and, 124–25; geology and, 135; image, 115; Irby and Mangles and, 34; Lynch and, 51, 70–71; oil and, 189; salt and, 159; Tristram and, 103–104; volcanic action and, 51 Mt. Sinai, 6

Index Mt. Zion, 41 Mukaddasi, 33, 200–201 Murchison, Roderick M., 43 Naaman, 212 Nabateans, 5, 32, 83–84, 146 Nahal Arugot (Wadi Areyeh), 91 Nahal David (Wadi Sudeir), 89–90, 91 Nahal Hemar, 190 Nahal Hever, 100 nahals. See wadis (nahals); names of indi­ vidual wadis or nahals Naharai’im. See Rutenberg electric plant National Water Carrier, 186, 196, 203, 219–20 nature reserves, 230, 236 Nebi Musa, 189 Nebuchadnezzar, 96 Neev, David, and K. O. Emery, 149–50, 151–52, 154 Negev Desert, 88, 96, 186, 200, 212 Neolithic period, 190 Nicolaisen, Reverend, 41 Nile River, 8, 26, 45, 201 Noble Energy, 254 Novomeysky, Moshe; on Abdullah, 205; background of, 160–62; Bloch and, 190–91; energy and, 189; mining project of, 162–79; process invented by, 183–84; war and, 177–78, 180–82 Numeira, 108, 256 oil, 147, 189–90 OPEC, 189 osher (Apple of Sodom) (Calotropis proc­ era), 94–95 Oslo Agreement, 235 Ottoman Turks, 9, 10, 75, 113, 121, 159, 161, 171–72 Palestine Association, 32 Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF): Dead Sea levels and, 122, 123–24, 125; explorers’ fate, 127; founding of, 31, 76, 79, 121; geology and, 133; logo, 80; on oil-

279

Index prospecting, 189; photographs and, 146; rock, 122, 126, 227; therapeutic waters and, 201. See also Masterman, Edward G.; Tristram, Henry Baker Palestine Liberation Organization, 186 Palestine Potash Company, 168, 173–76, 198–99, 203, 238–39 Palestinians and Palestinian Authority: agriculture and, 250–51; desalination and, 254; Jordan River and, 215, 220, 224, 237; Memorandum of Understanding and, 248 peace, x–xii, 204–205, 237, 243–44, 252–57. See also bilateral activity; Memorandum of Understanding Peace Accord, xi, xiii, 236, 249 PEF. See Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) Persians, 82, 96 Petermann, Augustus, 52–53, 58 Petra, 32, 35 phosphate, 185 Picard, Leo, 189 pilgrims, 12–14, 67–68, 68, 216, 218 Pleistocene, 134 Pliny, 17, 21, 46, 51, 99, 141, 200 Pococke, Richard, 18, 19, 20, 51, 56, 159 Poe, Edgar Allan, 36 Point Costigan, 72 Point Molyneux, 72 pollen, age of, 150 Port Said, 171 Porter, John, 10–11 Posidonius, 147 potash: evaporation and, 183, 188, 190–92; kibbutzim and, 173, 174, 180; plants and, 163–64; processing of, 183–84; production figures, 182–83; stratification and, 170. See also Dead Sea Works; Novomeysky, Moshe; Palestine Potash Company; Qalya potassium, 185 Qalya, 172, 175, 176, 177–78, 180 Quakers, 218 Queen of Sheba, 84

Qumran, 8, 98, 256–57 Qumran sect, 99 Rast, Walter, and Thomas Schaub, xvi, 108 recession. See sinkholes and recession Red Sea, 19, 32, 50–51, 96, 132, 195, 240–41 Red Sea­–­Dead Sea waterway (conveyance), 198, 240–43, 247–51 Reuben, tribe of, 5 Rift Valley, 133, 134, 144, 147, 190, 213, 224. See also Syrian-African rift Roberts, David, 216, 218 Robinson, Edward, 45, 49, 50, 51–53, 76, 95, 101 Romans, 6, 26–27, 66, 96–97, 100, 102–103, 147, 257 Royal Geographic Society, 42, 43–44, 45, 50, 52, 65, 121 Rujm el-Bahr, 123, 125 Russegger, Joseph, 44 Russia, 196 Rutenberg, Pinhas, 178 Rutenberg electric plant, 177, 238–39 Safieh (Safi), 173, 178, 184 salts and salinity: age of, 149–50, 151, 154– 55; Americans and, 165; canals and, 198; ceilings on, 236–37, 245; chemical makeup, 22–23; currents and, 151–52; deposits, 108; depth and, 170; evaporation and, 149; formations, 116; geology and, 134–36; harvesting, 114; Jordan River and, 220, 221; kibbutzim and, 173–74; microorganisms and, 87–88; mounds, 202; Mt. Sedom and, 34, 103–104; Novomeysky and, 160; Novomeysky on, 163; origin of, 148–51; potash mining and, 183, 242; recession of Dead Sea and, 227; Red Sea–Dead Sea conveyance and, 241; sinkholes and, 232; solar ponds and, 192–94; stratification and, 152–54; table salt extraction, 251–52; thickness of beds, 135; trade and, 27, 159, 161, 201. See also Mt. Sedom; potash Samra, 135–36

280 Samuel, Herbert, 164 Saulcy, Louis Félicien de, 25, 79, 102, 104–105, 123 Schaub, Thomas, and Walter Rast, xvi, 108 Schubert, Gotthilf von, 44, 87 Scott, Walter, 14–15 Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret): after 1837 earthquake, 63; canals and, 195, 196; Costigan and, 36; elevation, 58, 63; geologic past and, 132; geology and, 137; Jordan and, 249, 250; Jordan River and, 215, 237, 247, 248–49; levels, 44–45, 52, 58, 246, 249; as reservoir, 186; satellite view, 109; solar ponds and, 195; Twain on, 48; wastewater treatment plant and, 247; water and, 219–20, 249 Seetzen, Ulrich Jasper, 31–32, 37, 51, 76, 95, 123, 124, 149 seismic activity and earthquakes, 7–8, 63, 107, 123–24, 147, 190, 196 sewage, 215, 220, 221, 236, 237, 247 Sharhabil Bin Hassneh Ecopark, 225 Sheba, Queen of, 84 Siberia, 160, 162, 163, 167, 169, 179 Sinai, 88, 189, 200 sinkholes and recession, 126, 139, 187–88, 203, 227–30, 232, 239: images, 118–20, 228; pier, 252, 253 Smith, Eli, 60, 101 Smith, George Adam, 45, 46, 91 Sodom and Gomorrah. See Cities of the Plain (Sodom and Gomorrah) solar energy, 190, 192–95, 255 solar ponds, 192–95, 197, 199 Solomon, 84, 96 springs, 141–45, 149, 200, 201, 212, 215, 230 St. George Monastery, 82 Standard Oil Company, 165, 189 Stephens, John Lloyd: cave of David and, 98; Costigan and, 57; drive of, 157; expedition of, 35–39; geology and, 133; on mummies, 146; on Nicolaisen, 41; Sodom and Gomorrah and, 26; therapeutic waters and, 201

Index Stockholm International Water Institute (SIW I), 246 Strabo, 17, 20, 26, 34, 147–48 Suchem, Ludolph von, 97 Suez Canal, 195–96 sulphur, 6, 13, 19, 25, 56, 104, 143, 201 Suweimeh, 201 Sykes, Lt. Col., 43 Symonds, J. F. A., 44–45, 52, 57, 58, 63 Syrian-African Rift, 7–8. See also Rift Valley Tabor, Harry (Zvi), 192–93 Tacitus, 6, 21, 37–38, 85, 94, 148 Tamar deposit, 252–53 Taurus Mountains, 133 temperatures (water), 72, 143, 144, 153 Templars, 97 Tennessee Valley Authority, 185 theodolite, 45 Thoreau, Henry David, 209 Tiberias, 62–64, 63, 196, 247 Titus, 103 tourism: development and, 201–202; ecotourism, 225, 233, 236, 244; environmental protection and, 200; Jordan River and, xii, 111, 237, 246; late nineteenth century, 121; nineteenth-century, 10–11; Peace Accords and, xii, xii–xiii; therapeutic, 233. See also hotels and spas Transjordan, 167, 169, 181, 197 Tristram, Henry Baker: botany and, 93–94; cliffs and, 141; Dead Sea levels and, 123, 124; on Ein Fashkhah, 86–87; on Ein Gedi, 97, 201; expeditions of, 79–82, 121; geology and, 138; impressions of Dead Sea, 29; on Jericho, 86; on Masada, 100–101, 102, 103; Mt. Sedom and, 103; Nahal David and, 91; shore route of, 89–90; on therapeutic waters, 201; on Wadi Mojib, 141; wadis and, 144; on wildlife, 86, 92, 93–94; on Zerka Ma’in, 143–44 Tristram’s grackle, 79

281

Index Tulloch, Thomas, 164 Turks, 9, 10, 75, 113, 121, 159, 161, 171–72 Twain, Mark, 11, 12, 13–14, 22, 48, 54 United Nations, 251 United States and Americans: Dead Sea Works and, 182; Jordan River rehabilitation and, 237; Novomeysky and, 165–66, 171, 177; oil and, 189; potash and, 182–83, 184; solar ponds and, 194; water-sharing agreement and, 185–86; Yarmuk River dam and, 186–87. See also Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (US); Noble Energy; Twain, Mark; and other individ­ ual Americans and American companies Unity Dam, 220–21 USA ID, 237 Usdum. See Mt. Sedom Van de Velde, C. W. M., 25, 102 Vespasian, 21, 26–27, 256 Vilnay, Ze’ev, 41–42, 57, 122 volcanic action, 50, 51, 105–106 Wadi Arabah (Aravah Valley), 32, 49, 50–51, 133–34, 241–42 Wadi Areyeh (Nahal Argugot), 91 Wadi Daraja, 139 Wadi Kelt, 81–82 Wadi Kidron, 14, 75 Wadi Mojib, 75, 140, 141, 142, 146, 187, 190, 200 Wadi Muraba’at, 100 Wadi Qumran, 99 Wadi Sudeir (Nahal David), 89–90, 91 Wadi Zerka Ma’in, 141, 143–44, 172, 201–202

wadis (nahals), 4–5, 138–40, 144. See also Nahal Arugot (Wadi Areyeh); and names of individual wadis or nahals Warburg, Otto, 161–62 Warburton, Eliot, 47 waterfalls, 91, 139 West Bank, 215–16, 235, 237, 251, 252, 254. See also Ein Fashkhah West Bank Salt, 251–52 Wey, William, 23, 24 Whiston, William, 104 White Paper, 173 wildlife: Cady and, 146; development and, 199–200; Ein Fashkhah and, 229; Ein Gedi and, 93–94; floods and, 20, 87, 138, 226, 246; Ice Age and, 134; Jericho and, 86, 217; Jordan River and, 66, 213, 221, 234; Kinglake on, 226; Masterman and, 127; potash and, 163; Tristram on, 86, 92, 93–94; Wadi Mojib and, 141; wadis and, 138. See also birds; ibex World Bank study, 240, 242, 243, 245, 247 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 240 Yakût, 21, 33, 56 Yale University study, 245 Yarmuk River, 186–87, 213, 220–21, 250 Zambezi Valley, 133 zealots, 8, 102, 103 Ziglag Dam Lake, 225 Zionism: Abdullah and, 172, 205; canals and, 196; energy and, 195–200; Langotzki and, 169; non-Jewish, 57; Novomeysky and, 161, 167–68, 181 Zoar (Zughar), 25, 27, 33, 73

BA R BA R A K R EIGER lives in New Hampshire and teaches at

Dartmouth College. Her publications include Divine Expectations: An American Woman in Nineteenth-Century Palestine, articles in Smithsonian magazine and the New York Times, and introductions to travel classics. She received a Fulbright grant to Rome, where she taught for a year. In 2014 she was invited by CNN to participate in their film about the Dead Sea and Jordan River.