Dead Sea Trivia
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100 free Dead Sea trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Dead Sea is not a sea at all but a landlocked lake, and almost everything about it is extreme. Its shores are the lowest dry land on Earth, its water is nearly ten times saltier than the ocean, nothing bigger than a microbe lives in it, and it is dropping by more than a metre a year. This quiz covers the numbers (depth, salinity, density, elevation, shrinkage), the science (why you float, why it turned red in 1980, why the two water layers suddenly mixed in 1979, where the sinkholes come from) and the geology of the Sedom Lagoon, Lake Lisan and Mount Sodom. It also covers the human story: Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife, David hiding at Ein Gedi, the Nabatean asphalt trade that supplied Egyptian mummies, Herod's fortress at Masada and the siege of 73 CE, the Essenes of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Vespasian's buoyancy test, the potash industry, the modern resorts and the abandoned plan to refill the lake from the Red Sea. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Dead Sea and its surroundings, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Israel, Jordan and Bible quizzes next.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Despite its name, what kind of body of water is the Dead Sea?
A landlocked salt lake
The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake: it fills an endorheic basin with no outlet, so water leaves only by evaporation, which concentrates its salts.
Q 02Which country borders the Dead Sea on its eastern shore?
Jordan
Jordan lines the whole eastern shore of the Dead Sea, while Israel and the West Bank lie along the western side.
Q 03What is the Dead Sea's main tributary?
Jordan River
The Jordan River, flowing south from the Sea of Galilee, enters the Dead Sea at its northern end and is by far its largest inflow.
Q 04As of 2025, roughly how far below sea level is the surface of the Dead Sea?
440 metres
The surface stood about 440 metres below sea level in 2025, making its shores the lowest land on Earth; the level has been dropping by roughly a metre a year.
Q 05Compared with ordinary seawater, the Dead Sea is roughly how much saltier?
About tenfold
About tenfold: the Dead Sea's salinity measured 34.2% in 2011, nearly ten times the roughly 35 grams of salt per litre found in ordinary seawater.
Q 06Why can anyone float effortlessly in the Dead Sea?
The water's high density
The water's high density, about 1.24 kg per litre, buoys a human body far more strongly than ordinary seawater does.
Q 07How deep is the Dead Sea at its deepest point?
304 metres
The Dead Sea reaches about 304 metres at its deepest point, which makes it the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.
Q 08Why is the lake called 'dead'?
Its salinity prevents fish and plants living in it
Its salinity prevents fish and plants living in it; only tiny quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi survive in the brine.
Q 09The Dead Sea's surface area shrank from 1,050 sq km in 1930 to about how much by the 2020s?
605 sq km
By the 2020s the lake covered about 605 sq km, down from 1,050 sq km in 1930, as its level fell by more than a metre a year.
Q 10The oldest and most common Hebrew name for the lake translates as what?
Sea of Salt
Yam HaMelah, 'Sea of Salt', is the lake's name in Genesis 14:3 and remains its everyday name in modern Hebrew.
Q 11Ancient Greek and Roman geographers usually named the lake after which substance that floated on it?
Asphalt
Lacus Asphaltites reflected a large trade in the free-floating bitumen the lake still spits up from deep seeps.
Q 12The Arabic name 'Sea of Lot' refers to whose nephew?
Abraham
Lot was the nephew of Abraham; Genesis has him part from his uncle and settle in the well-watered plain beside the lake.
Q 13Which UNESCO site just north of the lake is venerated as the place of Jesus's baptism?
Al-Maghtas
Al-Maghtas, on the river's east bank about 9 km north of the lake, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as the traditional baptism site of Jesus.
Q 21The Dead Sea has the highest concentration of which ion of any water on Earth?
Bromide
Bromide: Dead Sea brine holds around 5 grams of bromide per litre, far above any ocean or other lake, which is why a bromine industry grew up on its shores.
Q 22What happened to the Dead Sea's water column in the winter of 1978-79?
Its two layers mixed into one
The upper layer had become saltier than the lower one; once it cooled and grew denser, the lake overturned into a single homogeneous body.
Q 23After a rainy winter in 1980, the Dead Sea briefly turned which colour?
Red
Red: a rainy winter diluted the surface brine, letting algae bloom and feed red-pigmented halobacteria that tinted the whole lake.
Q 14The Dead Sea lies on the boundary between which two tectonic plates?
African and Arabian
The African and Arabian plates meet along the Dead Sea Transform, which runs from Turkey's East Anatolian Fault south to the Gulf of Aqaba.
Q 15Which ridge of halite rises along the lake's south-western shore?
Mount Sodom
Mount Sodom is a ridge of rock salt: overlying sediment squeezed ancient salt beds upward, leaving the halite standing as cliffs above the shore.
Q 16Geologists call the ancient Mediterranean inlet that once flooded the Dead Sea valley what?
Sedom Lagoon
The Sedom Lagoon reached inland from the Mediterranean through the present-day Jezreel Valley, and its repeated evaporation left thick beds of rock salt beneath the valley floor.
Q 17The Dead Sea is the last remnant of a much larger prehistoric body of water known by what name?
Lake Lisan
Lake Lisan filled the valley during the last ice age, standing up to about 250 metres higher than the present lake before it shrank to the Dead Sea.
Q 18What Köppen climate type does the Dead Sea have?
Hot desert
Hot desert (Köppen BWh): the shores receive only a few centimetres of rain a year and average 192 days above 30 °C.
Q 19Compared with sea level, the air at the Dead Sea has a slightly higher content of what?
Oxygen
Oxygen: the denser air more than 400 metres below sea level delivers about 5 percent more oxygen per breath, which eases breathing for people with reduced lung function.
Q 20Which metal's chloride makes up about half of the Dead Sea's dissolved salt, unlike the ocean's sodium salt?
Magnesium
Early-1980s analysis put magnesium chloride at 50.8% and sodium chloride at just 30.4%; the ocean's salt is about 85% sodium chloride.
Q 24At its widest, roughly how many kilometres across is the Dead Sea?
15 km
The Dead Sea is only about 15 km across at its widest point, a narrow ribbon of water hemmed in by the steep walls of the rift valley.
Q 25The Dead Sea's reduced ultraviolet light is used in photoclimatherapy for which skin condition?
Psoriasis
Psoriasis: the extra 400 metres of atmosphere filter out much of the burning UVB, so psoriasis patients can sunbathe for long stretches with less risk.
Q 26According to Genesis, which two cities destroyed by fire from heaven stood near the Dead Sea?
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by brimstone and fire in Genesis 19; Zoar, where Lot fled, was spared, and Admah and Zeboiim also counted among the Cities of the Plain.
Q 27Where near the Dead Sea was King David said to have hidden from Saul?
Ein Gedi
Ein Gedi: 1 Samuel 24 places David in the oasis's caves while Saul pursued him; the spring-fed site later grew famous for its balsam perfume.
Q 28Which people monopolised the Dead Sea's trade in the Hellenistic period?
Nabateans
The Nabateans, the Arab traders based at Petra, dominated commerce on the lake in the Hellenistic period; anchorages survive on both shores, including a Hasmonean-era dry dock at Khirbet Mazin.
Q 29Which king built the famous fortress of Masada on the Dead Sea's western shore?
Herod the Great
Herod the Great built Masada's palaces and walls between about 37 and 31 BCE; the fortress later sheltered the Sicarii during the revolt against Rome.
Q 30Per Josephus, how many Masada defenders died by suicide when the Roman siege ended in 73/74 CE?
960
Josephus puts the dead at 960 men, women and children; the Sicarii had seized the fortress early in the revolt and held out after the Temple fell in 70 CE.