Great Bitter Lake
salt water lake that is part of the Suez Canal in Egypt
The Great Bitter Lake (Arabic: البحيرة المرة الكبرى; transliterated: al-Buḥayrah al-Murra al-Kubrā) is a large saltwater lake in Egypt which is part of the Suez Canal. Before the canal was built in 1869, the Great Bitter Lake was a dry salt valley or basin. References are made to the Great Bitter Lake in the ancient Pyramid Texts.
The canal connects the Great Bitter Lake to the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The canal also connects it to the Small Bitter Lake (Arabic: البحيرة المرة الصغرى; transliterated: al-Buhayrah al-Murra as-Sughra).
Ships traveling through the Suez Canal use the Great Bitter Lake as a "passing lane", where they can pass other ships or turn around.
Etymology
The Modern English and Arabic names are translations of the Greek name (Ancient Greek: Πικραὶ Λίμναι, lit. 'bitter lakes'). It was also known in Latin as "dead lake" (Latin: Lacus mori). The ancient Egyptian name for the Bitter Lakes region was km-wr, lit. "great black one".
“Great Bitter Lake” enters the record as salt water lake that is part of the Suez Canal in Egypt. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Great, Bitter and Lake can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Great Bitter Lake” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Great, Bitter and Lake provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q526440. VIAF identifies the subject as 170413256. Authority coordinates are 30.323, 32.383. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Great Bitter Lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.