Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is a landlocked salt lake on the border of present-day Jordan and Israel, into which the River Jordan flows. It is often depicted on the Sfera maps at the foot of Mount Sinai, although the two are nearly 200 miles apart. While variants of the modern toponym Dead Sea do occur in the Middle Ages (mare mortuum, lago morto), it was more commonly known as the Lake of Sodom (lago di sodoma) because medieval Christians believed it was formed by God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Some Sfera manuscripts even show the ruins of Sodom under the waters of the Dead Sea.