Why Is the Dead Sea Called the Sea of Death?

The Dead Sea sits below the cliffs of Qumran, where an Essene community once lived at the edge of the water. Like most people, I had mainly heard one fact about this place: the water is so salty that almost nothing lives in it. That is the modern answer, and it is what most search results repeat. In my research I kept meeting an older name for the same body of water, the Sea of Death. In Jesus and the Essenes, that name does more than describe salt. It carries memory of destruction on these shores, and of pitch and tar still noted along the coast.

I was asking him questions about the Dead Sea, or the “Sea of Death” as he called it. The Qumran community was located on the cliffs at the edge of this body of water. All I had ever heard about it was that it was very salty and would not sustain life. This peculiarity has never really been satisfactorily explained. With this in mind, I asked if the sea had any peculiarities about it. I was taken off guard by his answer.

S: It has sometimes the smell of tar, or resin, or pitch, yes. They say that toward the South that there are pits of pitch and that this is part of it. Also nothing grows in the Sea of Death. There are a few plants along the edges.

D : Is this why you call it the Sea of Death? The Sea of Death

S: It is called this because it is upon these shores that Gomorrah and Sodom on were brought to destruction. And it is to remind us of this.

Jesus and the Essenes

Published: 17 Dec 2025 · Source attribution retained.

About the source: Jesus and the Essenes

For this page I drew on Dolores Cannon’s Jesus and the Essenes (1992). Cannon worked with hypnotic past-life regression. In that book she records sessions with a subject who described life in the Qumran Essene community in the years around Jesus, including daily detail, landscape, and how that community spoke about places like the Sea of Death.

That is why this source matters in my research. Mainstream Dead Sea writing usually stops at salt and tourism. Jesus and the Essenes is one of the books I use when I follow Akashic / regression memory instead: naming, memorial meaning, and shore detail (pitch, tar, Sodom and Gomorrah) as they were held in that account. I keep the long quote on this page verbatim from that source. I do not paraphrase it away.

You can find the book in my library: Jesus and the Essenes (also listed under Books about Atlantis).

What “Sea of Death” means in this account

When I read this dialogue closely, the name is not offered first as a chemistry lesson. When asked why the water is called the Sea of Death, the speaker points to Sodom and Gomorrah: the shores themselves are remembered as the place of that destruction, and the name is kept so the event is not forgotten. Salt and lifeless water are mentioned, but the naming is framed as memorial, a reminder written into the landscape.

The same answer also notes something visitors still remark on: the smell of tar, resin, or pitch, and reports of pits of pitch toward the south. So the account holds three strands together: a lifeless sea, bitumen on the shore, and a sacred memory of cities brought down. That is the spine I follow for the phrase why is the Dead Sea called the Sea of Death.

Salt water vs sacred memory

Search results usually stop at salinity. No fish. Extreme mineral load. That is true as far as it goes, and it matches most travel writing.

In the dialogue above, that modern answer is almost interrupted. Dolores asks about peculiarities; the reply goes to pitch and then to Sodom and Gomorrah. In my reading, the Essene-linked voice treats the Sea of Death as a memorial name first, and only then as a strange body of water. Science can describe why life struggles in the brine. It does not answer why a community living on these cliffs would keep a name that points to judgment and remembrance. For that, I stay with the history as it was held in that tradition, and I check what older texts say about the same shore.

Older texts on pitch, slime pits, and Sodom

When I set the Cannon/Suddi lines next to older sources, the pitch and Sodom geography keep showing up, even when the exact name “Sea of Death” does not.

In Genesis, the Vale of Siddim is tied to the salt sea and described as full of slime pits (Genesis 14:3, 14:10, KJV). The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is told with brimstone and fire from heaven (Genesis 19:24), and the land afterward is pictured with smoke like a furnace (Genesis 19:28). That is not the same wording as Suddi’s answer, but it is the same map: salt sea, slime or pitch pits, and cities destroyed on that ground.

Josephus writes of Lake Asphaltitis casting up bitumen, of Sodom on its borders, and of a region burnt as by lightning, with remainders of Divine fire (Jewish War 4.8, Whiston). In Antiquities he also links the slime pits to what later became that asphalt lake after Sodom’s destruction (Antiquities 1.9). Pliny names the lake Asphaltites for its bitumen and places Essenes on the west shore (Natural History 5.71–73). Strabo describes pitch from the rocks, asphalt and sulphur, and a native tradition that Sodom was destroyed by earthquake and flames (Geography 16.2.44).

I read those lines as a classical stack under the memorial answer: salt sea and asphalt on one side, Sodom’s destruction on the other. Pliny’s naming is about the asphalt product. Suddi’s naming is about remembrance. Both can sit on the same shore without turning this page into a tourism or salinity article.

Qumran, the Essenes, and the shore

The Qumran community sat on the cliffs at the edge of this water. In the same source tradition, that community is linked to the Essenes, groups whose memory of the land included places of power, destruction, and covenant. Pliny’s west-shore Essenes are another thin bridge to that setting. For them, the Dead Sea was not only a geographic backdrop. It was a shore with a story: cities destroyed, a name that reminds, and a landscape that still smells of pitch.

I write more about that lineage on the Essenes page.

Pitch, tar, and bitumen

“Pits of pitch” are not a throwaway detail. Bitumen (natural tar) has been known around the southern Dead Sea for ages, used in antiquity for sealing and building. Genesis’ slime pits, Josephus’ asphalt lake, Pliny’s Asphaltites, and Strabo’s pitch all point at the same physical strangeness Suddi names when he speaks of tar, resin, or pitch toward the south. In Jesus and the Essenes, that smell is part of what makes the place peculiar, next to the memorial of Sodom and Gomorrah. When I put those lines side by side, the physical and the sacred sit together: a shore that remembers destruction, and a shore that still seeps pitch.

FAQ

Why is the Dead Sea called the Sea of Death?
In the Essene-linked account in Jesus and the Essenes, it is called the Sea of Death because Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed on these shores, and the name is kept to remind us of that. The same account also notes lifeless water and the smell of pitch or tar. Older texts (Genesis, Josephus, Pliny, Strabo) also tie this shore to slime pits, bitumen, and Sodom’s destruction.

Is Sea of Death the same as Dead Sea?
Yes, same body of water. “Dead Sea” is the common modern name; “Sea of Death” is the name used in this account, carrying the memorial meaning above. Classical writers often used names like Salt Sea or Asphaltites.

What does Sodom and Gomorrah have to do with the Dead Sea?
In Jesus and the Essenes, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is located on these shores and given as the reason for the name Sea of Death. Genesis and Josephus also place that destruction in this landscape, next to slime pits and the asphalt lake.

Did the Essenes live by the Dead Sea?
Yes. The Qumran community is described as living on the cliffs at the edge of this water. Pliny also places Essenes on the west shore of the asphalt lake. On this site I discuss that community further on the Essenes page.

If you want the wider human timeline that places Essene memory, lost civilizations, and later ages on one map, see the Drums of Atlantis timelines.