A father and son traded with their boat out of Arabia along the Incense Route. Having picked up their cargo in Tyre or Sidon… They packed the lined boxes of aromatic gums, incense and myrrh deep into the hold of their wide-beamed vessel. From Alexandretta they sailed up the  Cilician coast and were heading past Cyprus for Rhodes when  a storm blew them off course towards the Patara sands.

With difficulty rounding the seven capes of Symbola they decided  to seek anchorage within the inner bay until the storm subsided. The son notice a narrow passage behind an outcrop of rock  and turned the tiller to stear the boat towards a sand-bank behind the rocks. Thinking of his precious cargo the father, who had not seen the inlet, struck his son a lethal blow and turned the boat out to sea again. At that moment  the undercurrent drew the boat through the inlet into the calm waters of the lagoon.

The distraught and heartbroken father embalms his son and lighting incense, buries him within the arm of the lagoon… This is how this most peaceful of waters became known the ‘dead’ sea…Oludeniz.  People say that at times a scent of incense still wafts up through the pines.  ​