The Ancient Rush for Black Gold: When Black Lumps More Precious than Gold Floated in the Dead Sea
- Nir Topper
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
When you think of the Dead Sea, what comes to mind? Mineral mud? White salt crystals? Medical tourism? It turns out that in ancient times, the lowest lake on earth was famous for a completely different resource—rare and precious—that turned it into a battleground between empires. The Romans called it Lacus Asphaltites—the Asphalt Lake. Meet "Bitumen" (or in Hebrew: Chemar), the petroleum of the ancient world and the economic engine of our region.
Unlike modern asphalt produced in refineries, Dead Sea asphalt is a dramatic geological phenomenon. As a result of tectonic activity and earthquakes, massive blocks of solidified oil would detach from the lakebed and float to the surface. The historian Josephus Flavius describes the Dead Sea as Lake Asphaltitis, noting that the sea periodically spews up black clumps of asphalt that float on the water, with locals setting out in boats to collect them. Josephus highlights the sea’s unusual properties—buoyancy, the smell, and the black substance—as part of the region's "miraculous" nature (The Jewish War IV, 8, 4). These lumps, rich in sulfur and possessing a unique chemical composition ("Judean Bitumen"), constituted a floating treasure of inestimable value.
The immense economic value of the asphalt led to wars for control as early as 2,300 years ago. In 312 BCE, the Greek general Antigonus attempted to seize these asphalt treasures. He was met by the Nabataeans, who proved they were not only shrewd traders but also creative warriors. The Nabataeans, sailing toward the floating blocks on simple reed rafts, managed to defeat the heavy Hellenistic army and defend their monopoly. This was, perhaps, the first war in history over fossil fuel resources.
Asphalt was so coveted that it became a pawn in the highest politics of Rome and Egypt. The famous Cleopatra was not satisfied with beauty and power alone; she desired Dead Sea asphalt for mummification and medicinal needs. Her lover, Mark Antony, granted her King Herod’s estates in the Jericho and Dead Sea region. The result was a historic "lease-back" deal: Herod was forced to lease his own lands back from Cleopatra, while she leased the asphalt collection rights to the Nabataean king for a fortune.
So, what did they do with all this asphalt? The list is endless. The ancient Egyptians were the largest consumers for their mummification industry (it provided biological protection for the bodies). But it didn’t end there: Asphalt was considered a Panacea—a cure-all for everything from arthritis to snake bites. It was used for caulking ships, protecting grapevines from pests, and was even recently found to have been used in the construction of a Byzantine church roof in Ashdod-Yam—evidence that the trade flourished centuries after the days of Herod.
The history of asphalt also provided us with one of the most bizarre mistakes of the Middle Ages. The word "Mummia," which originally meant asphalt/bitumen, was mistakenly identified with the embalmed bodies from Egypt. Europeans, seeking the black wonder drug, began consuming powder ground from actual mummies, believing the black substance inside them would cure them. Thus, the asphalt intended to preserve the dead caused them to be "consumed" anew as medicine centuries after their death.
Today, as we drive on roads paved with industrial asphalt, it is hard to imagine that this black material was once collected by hand from the sea and was worth its weight in gold. The story of Dead Sea asphalt is a reminder that the history of the Land of Israel holds much more than meets the eye, and that beneath the surface (literally and figuratively) lie stories of nature, politics, war, and medicine that shaped the ancient world.
Image: A block of asphalt floating in the Dead Sea in 1969 (Gideon Hadas). From Oron et al. 2015. Image Source: The Israeli Institute of Archaeology website: https://www.israeliarchaeology.org
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