Mediterranean Sea million years ago (mya) in less than two years by the Zanclean flood. Water poured in from the Atlantic Ocean through a newly breached gateway now called the Strait of Gibraltar at an estimated rate of about three orders of magnitude (one thousand times) larger than the current flow of the Amazon River. The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of and the deepest recorded point is in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. The coastline extends for . A shallow submarine ridge (the Strait of Sicily) between the island of Sicily and the coast of Tunisia divides the
Mediterranean Sea Middle Sea'. In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was "Baḥr al-Rūm(ī)" ( or }) 'the Sea of the Romans' or 'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was later extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were "Baḥr al-šām(ī)" () 'the Sea of Syria' and "Baḥr al-Maghrib" () 'the Sea of the West'. In Turkish, it is the "Akdeniz" 'the White Sea'; in Ottoman, ﺁق دكيز, which sometimes means only the Aegean Sea. The origin of the name is not clear, as it is not known in earlier Greek, Byzantine