Salting the earth, orsowing with salt, is the ritual of spreadingsalt on the sites of cities razed by conquerors.[1][2] It originated as a curse on re-inhabitation in theancient Near East and became a well-establishedfolkloric motif in theMiddle Ages.[3] The best-known example is the salting ofShechem as narrated in theBiblicalBook of Judges 9:45. The supposed salting ofCarthage is not supported by historical evidence.
The custom of purifying or consecrating a destroyed city with salt and cursing anyone who dared to rebuild it was widespread in theancient Near East, but historical accounts are unclear as to what the sowing of salt meant in that process.[2] In the case of Shechem, various commentaries explain it as:
VariousHittite andAssyrian texts speak of ceremonially strewing salt, minerals, or plants (weeds, "cress", orkudimmu, which are associated with salt and desolation[4]) over destroyed cities, includingHattusa,Taidu,Arinna,Hunusa,[2]Irridu,[5] andSusa.[6] TheBook of Judges (9:45) says thatAbimelech, thejudge of theIsraelites, sowed his own capital,Shechem, with salt,c. 1050 BC, after quelling a revolt against him. This may have been part of aḥērem ritual[2] (seeSalt in the Bible).
At least as early as 1863,[7] various texts have claimed that theRoman generalScipio Aemilianus plowed over and sowed the city ofCarthage with salt after defeating it in theThird Punic War (146 BC), sacking it, andenslaving the survivors. The salting was probably modeled on the story ofShechem. Though ancient sources mention symbolically drawing a plow over various cities and salting them, none mention Carthage in particular.[3] The salting story entered the academic literature inBertrand Hallward's chapter in the first edition of theCambridge Ancient History (1930), and was widely accepted as factual.[8] However, there are no ancient sources for it and it is now considered apocryphal.[1][9][8]
WhenPope Boniface VIII destroyedPalestrina in 1299, he ordered that it be plowed "following the old example of Carthage in Africa", and salted.[8] "I have run the plough over it, like the ancient Carthage of Africa, and I have had salt sown upon it ..."[10] The text is not clear as to whether he thought Carthage was salted. Later accounts of other saltings in the destructions of medieval Italian cities are now rejected as unhistorical:Padua byAttila (452), perhaps in a parallel between Attila and the ancient Assyrians;Milan byFrederick Barbarossa (1162); andSemifonte by theFlorentines (1202).[11]
The English epic poemSiege of Jerusalem (c. 1370) recounts thatTitus commanded the sowing of salt on theTemple,[12] but this episode is not found inJosephus's account.
InSpain and theSpanish Empire, salt was poured onto the land owned by a convicted traitor (often one who was executed and his head placed on apicota, or pike, afterwards) after his house was demolished.[13][14]
This was done inPortugal as well. The last known event of this sort was the destruction of theDuke of Aveiro's palace inLisbon in 1759, due to his participation in theTávora affair (a conspiracy against KingJoseph I of Portugal). His palace was demolished and his land was salted.[15] A stone memorial now perpetuates the memory of the shame of the Duke, where it is written:
In this place were put to the ground and salted the houses of José Mascarenhas, stripped of the honours of Duque de Aveiro and others ... Put to Justice as one of the leaders of the most barbarous and execrable upheaval that ... was committed against the most royal and sacred person of the Lord Joseph I. In this infamous land nothing may be built for all time.[16]
In the Portuguesecolony of Brazil, the leader of theInconfidência Mineira,Tiradentes, was sentenced to death and his house was "razed and salted, so that never again be built up on the floor, ... and even the floor will rise up a standard by which the memory is preserved (preserving) the infamy of this heinous offender ..."[17] He suffered further indignities, beinghanged and quartered, his body parts carried to various parts of the country where his fellow revolutionaries had met, and his children deprived of their property and honor.[17][18][19][20]
An ancient legend recounts thatOdysseusfeigned madness by yoking a horse and an ox to his plow and sowing salt.[21]
