Mediterranean–Dead Sea Canal in 1855 in a work called 'The Dead Sea – A new route to India'. At that time it was not yet known that the Dead Sea lies below sea level, and Allen proposed this canal as an alternative to the Suez Canal. Later, many engineers and politicians picked up on the idea, including Theodor Herzl in his 1902 novel "Altneuland". Most of the early proposals used the East bank of the Jordan River, but a modified form, using the West bank, was proposed after the separation of Transjordan from the Palestine Mandate. The idea was discussed at some length
Dead Sea Bible uses this term alongside two others: the Sea of the Arabah (' ), and the Eastern Sea ("" ). The designation "Dead Sea" never appears in the Bible. In prose sometimes the term ' (, "sea of death") is used, due to the scarcity of aquatic life there. In Arabic the Dead Sea is called ("the Dead Sea"), or less commonly ' (, "the Sea of Lot"). Another historic name in Arabic was the "Sea of Zoʼar", after a nearby town in biblical times. The Greeks called it "Lake Asphaltites" (Attic Greek , "", "the Asphaltite sea"). The Dead