The Dead Sea, a place of immense historic, environmental and spiritual significance to the world, is dying. Simply put, the 80km-long, 18km-wide inland sea is dying of thirst.
Within the last century this magnificent, strangely silent silver sea set in the middle of desert has shrunk in size by a third. And each succeeding year, it loses another metre. In some places, the Dead Sea is now so shallow, it's possible to walk from the Jordanian side to the Israeli shore.
Known in the bible as 'Lot's Sea', the Dead Sea is actually part of the Jordan Valley, which itself lies at the northern end of the Great Rift Valley, a huge geological cleft in the Earth which runs from Syria in the north to Kenya in the south.
In ancient times, the Jordan Valley was renowned as perhaps one of the Middle East's most fertile oases. It became home to one of the world's oldest civilisations, and was a pulsating crossroads for three of the world's great religious - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
In modern times, the pressure of conflicting cultures has made the Middle East a cauldron of political trouble. So for decades, developers left the Dead Sea alone and untouched.
Indeed, until the mid 1990s the rocky, salt-encrusted shores of the Dead Sea appeared virtually unchanged since biblical times. In 1994, however, the much heralded peace agreement signed by Jordan and Israel ended this splendid isolation.