Salt has been with humankind almost since the beginning of time. Its usefulness as a seasoning and preservative extends to other historical applications, both therapeutic and ritual, so it is not surprising that in many parts of the world where it was scarce—such as inland Africa—it also served as currency. However, among all the additional uses it has had, perhaps the most curious was the one in which it was scattered on the ground of cursed places to purify or condemn them forever—what was called salting the earth.
Salt has been obtained since prehistoric times, either through the excavation of deposits or by evaporating seawater in salt pans, so the practice of salting the ground dates back many millennia. It was already found in the ancient Near East, where it was commonly…
Salt has been with humankind almost since the beginning of time. Its usefulness as a seasoning and preservative extends to other historical applications, both therapeutic and ritual, so it is not surprising that in many parts of the world where it was scarce—such as inland Africa—it also served as currency. However, among all the additional uses it has had, perhaps the most curious was the one in which it was scattered on the ground of cursed places to purify or condemn them forever—what was called salting the earth.
Salt has been obtained since prehistoric times, either through the excavation of deposits or by evaporating seawater in salt pans, so the practice of salting the ground dates back many millennia. It was already found in the ancient Near East, where it was commonly associated with desolation and the purification of ill-fated sites. There are Hittite and Assyrian documentary references that speak of salt as a purifying element for destroyed cities, although the precise reason for that association is unclear.
In fact, it was often not salt itself—that is, crystals of sodium chloride—that was used, but rather other minerals or even plants associated with it. Such is the case of the kudimmu, with which the pre-Hittite king Anitta covered Hattusa, or the sahlu, used by Ashurbanipal in Elam. Both are terms for indeterminate plants—what we now generically call weeds—that usually grow in abandoned or devastated places. Because, as seems obvious, it would have been practically impossible to cover an entire surface with salt, not only due to the difficulty of gathering such a quantity but also because it was far too valuable a commodity to be wasted in that way. We will see more about this later.
Salt spring in the Salado Valley of Añana (Spain). Credit: Fundación Valle Salado / Wikimedia Commons
In any case, we do not know exactly what salting the earth consisted of; beyond the phrase itself, the actual process remains uncertain, although historians and archaeologists believe it was likely more symbolic than real. Salt can be toxic to crops, which explains its selection in those cases, but there has never been evidence that its application was carried out literally over large tracts of land. It is possible, as some scholars suggest, that it was part of the Herem, the sacred extermination practiced by the Hebrews following the model of other Mesopotamian cultures (such as the assakum of Mari or the ritual Moabite war).
The Herem was cloaked in religiosity but was essentially a means to dominate and control surrounding peoples—numerically superior and idolatrous (believed to be descendants of Ham, Noah’s rebellious son)—so that cyclical punitive expeditions kept them in check and spiritually isolated. The massacres recounted in Deuteronomy attest to this, but in reality, it was not exclusive to Israel; the Spartan krypteia (raids carried out by young warriors against the helots whenever new ephors were appointed) and the Aztec flower wars (conflicts arranged to capture prisoners for sacrifice) probably had a similar function, according to experts.
In this context of tension, salt appears mentioned in various ancient sources, including The Bible, where the salting of fields and cities is frequently cited. One of the books of the Old Testament, the Book of Judges—which is also part of the Hebrew Tanakh and recounts sacred history between the death of Joshua and the birth of Samuel (that is, when the Jewish people abandoned their nomadic life)—tells how the judge Abimelech, son of Gideon, killed all his brothers to proclaim himself king. This led the Canaanite city of Shechem to rebel; the monarch crushed the insurrection, razed the city, and ordered it to be covered with salt.
Panoramic view of the Dead Sea with salt on its shores. Credit: Konrad Summers / Wikimedia Commons
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The importance of salt in that historical period and geographic area is no coincidence. There lies the Dead Sea, a vast salt lake 76 kilometers long and 16 wide, with a salinity level of 30%. From a long line of cliffs—the Jebel Usdum range—the Hebrews extracted salt by evaporation, and the product became so important that the Second Book of Chronicles states: “Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?” A covenant of salt was a way of saying inviolable, which is why it was used to seal agreements symbolically, much like a handshake.
It should also be remembered that newborns were rubbed with salt on their skin, and that in Genesis, God punishes Lot’s disobedient wife by turning her into a pillar of salt. But it is in Leviticus and Ezekiel where sodium chloride is directly associated with religious ceremonies: “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.”
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However, like coins, salt had two sides: one for the positive, the other for the negative. Books such as Psalms, Job, Jeremiah, and Judges refer to the practice of salting the earth of conquered cities to mark their cursed nature, condemn their population, and purify them before God. If a city broke the bond of friendship sealed with salt, it was fitting that this very substance should cleanse its infamy. And references are not found only in the Old Testament; in the New Testament, the evangelist Mark mentions the use of salt for convicts, for instance.
Ashurbanipal on a hunt (drawing based on a relief). Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
Beyond these biblical episodes, many cities in the Near East suffered this fate when they fell into the hands of their enemies. For example, Susa, which became the capital of the Persian Empire after being conquered by Cyrus the Great, was later salted when the Assyrian Ashurbanipal captured it in 647 BCE. He recorded on a tablet: “I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to nothing; its gods and goddesses I scattered to the wind. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, exposed to the sun, and carried their bones to the land of Assur. I laid waste to the provinces of Elam and sowed salt in their lands.”
Other examples include Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire; Irridu, a Mesopotamian settlement that fell under Mitanni rule until the Assyrians retook, destroyed, and salted it; Arinna, another Hittite city of uncertain location; and Taite, capital of the Mitanni kingdom, which also remains unlocated. As can be seen, the Assyrians had a particular fondness for salting the lands of cities that refused to surrender to their armies—not to mention the atrocities inflicted on captured defenders.
The Romans, ever pragmatic in matters of war and destruction, supposedly adopted this habit, just as they did with crucifixion. However, caution is needed with these accounts, as they are often later and based more on legend than fact. For instance, the story that Titus ordered Jerusalem to be covered with salt after his successful siege comes from an English epic poem dated to the 14th century, and notably, Flavius Josephus—the main source for that period—makes no mention of it.
The most famous case, however, is perhaps that of Scipio Africanus and Carthage. After the Second Punic War, in which Hannibal Barca was defeated, there was still a third war half a century later, triggered by Carthage’s failure to pay reparations to Rome and its declaration of war on Numidia, whose king, Masinissa, repeatedly raided Carthaginian territory, ruining its economy. The Romans imposed deliberately impossible conditions on Carthage so that rejection was inevitable, thus giving them an excuse to utterly destroy the city, enslave its inhabitants, and declare the site _sacer_—that is, cursed or accursed—proceeding to salt it.
The tradition of salting the earth endured because of its undeniably powerful metaphorical value. Considering its biblical associations and appearances in other historical moments, it persisted into the Middle Ages. Particularly in the Italian republics: although unproven, it is said that cities such as Padua were salted by Attila (whose alleged brutality was compared to that of the Assyrians), Milan by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa during the wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, and Semifonte by the Florentines for supporting Siena. Even Pope Boniface VIII ordered the salting of Palestrina in 1299 for his feud with the Colonna family, echoing what had been done to Carthage.
From the Middle Ages it passed into the Modern Era. Throughout history and around the world, sentences for treason and crimes against the crown were atrocious, often involving dismemberment before execution and the public display of the remains at city gates. But in Spain and Portugal, it was also common to demolish the traitor’s house and sprinkle salt over the plot. A well-known case is that of José Mascarenhas, Duke of Aveiro, whose role in the 1759 attempt on King José I’s life led to his execution along with his family (known as the Távora Affair, although women and children were pardoned). A stone monument still commemorates these events.
Another famous case, also Portuguese, took place in colonial Brazil in 1789, when Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, led a revolt against the Crown that was mercilessly crushed, culminating in the execution of those involved. He, being of humble origin, was sentenced to hanging and quartering, and his house was ordered to be “razed and salted” according to a sentence literally signed in blood.
Jump now to 1986. An Australian historian named Ronald Thomas Ridley published a groundbreaking article in the academic journal Classical Philology refuting the actual existence of the custom of salting the earth in antiquity—at least as it had been traditionally understood. Two years later, three other researchers supported his thesis (curiously, one of them had previously been criticized by Ridley for insufficient analysis of the topic) and traced the origin of the myth back to as late as 1905.
Essentially, they argued that salting the earth was merely an extension of an ancient symbolic act in which a plow was passed over the site of a city either being founded or destroyed—a practice for which we do have reliable evidence. Pope Boniface VIII himself, mentioned earlier, wrote that before ordering salt to be scattered over the ruins of Palestrina, he had the site plowed “following the example of ancient Carthage in Africa.” In other words, it may have been a 13th-century pontiff who created a myth that endured over time—perhaps by confusing or conflating the Punic capital with Shechem.
However, it was in the mid-19th century that the idea truly took root and spread, once again using the destruction of Shechem as a reference. In The New American Cyclopaedia, the fourth volume, published in 1858, described Scipio Aemilianus’s conquest of Carthage as follows: “He took the city by assault and destroyed it, leveling it to the ground, passing the plow over the site, and sowing salt in the furrows, the emblem of barrenness and annihilation.”
There has been no shortage of calculations about how much salt that would have required. Journalist Cecil Adams tackled the question in 2007 in his science column The Straight Dope, published in the Chicago Reader. His result: 31 million tons of salt per acre would be needed to make the land infertile—that’s about 7 kilograms per square meter. If, according to some estimates, Carthage had a perimeter of 37 kilometers, its area would have been 109 square kilometers, requiring 763,210 tons of salt. Given that Roman ships of the time carried between 70 and 150 tons, 5,000 to 10,000 vessels would have been needed for the task. Obviously, other archaeologists consider those figures exaggerated for Carthage, but even halving them still yields an implausibly large fleet.
Curiously, Ridley’s thesis suggests that salt may not have had a negative meaning at all. The image of the lifeless Dead Sea may have been overly influential. Written sources often speak of sowing it rather than spreading it in a layer, and Boniface VIII’s own record follows this pattern: Ac salem in ea etiam fecimus & mandavimus seminari (“And we also cast salt upon it, and ordered it to be sown”). Why? Because, in proper doses, salt not only fails to kill the land but can actually fertilize it, depending on the soil’s natural salinity.
This was already known in the classical world, as the Greek philosopher Theophrastus noted in several works, explaining that some date farmers, for example, added salt to their fields to improve palm growth, and that the Babylonians used salt instead of manure to fertilize their fields. Pliny the Elder also mentions something similar in his Natural History, adding that domestic animals shared humans’ fondness for salt. And we must not forget the undeniably positive expression the salt of the earth, coined in the Gospel of Matthew.
In sum, perhaps salting a devastated site did not so much mean eradicating all possibility of life there as, on the contrary, regenerating it once duly purified. Another mystery of history that will probably remain up in the air—or in the ground.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 17, 2018: Salar la tierra, la antigua condena a las ciudades malditas que podría ser un mito