Salting the earth
Salting the earth, or sowing with salt, is the ritual of spreading
Cities
The custom of purifying or consecrating a destroyed city with salt and cursing anyone who dared to rebuild it was widespread in the ancient 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:
- ...a covenantal curse, a means of ensuring desolation, a ritual to avert the vengeance of the shades of the slaughtered, a purification of the site preparatory to rebuilding, or a preparation for final destruction under the herem ritual.[2]
Ancient Near East
Various
Carthage
At least as early as 1863,[7] various texts claimed that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus plowed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War (146 BC), sacking it, and enslaving the survivors. The salting was probably modeled on the story of Shechem. Though ancient sources do mention symbolically drawing a plow over various cities and salting them, none mention Carthage in particular.[3] The salting story entered the academic literature in Bertrand Hallward's article in the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History (1930), and was widely accepted as factual.[8] However, there are no ancient sources for it and it is now considered legendary.[1][9][8]
Palestrina
When
Jerusalem
The English epic poem Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370) recounts that Titus commanded the sowing of salt on the Temple,[12] but this episode is not found in Josephus's account.
Spanish Empire
In Spain and the Spanish Empire, salt was poured onto the land owned by a convicted traitor (often one who was executed and his head placed on a picota, or pike, afterwards) after his house was demolished.[citation needed]
Portugal
This was done in Portugal as well. The last known event of this sort was the destruction of the Duke of Aveiro's palace in Lisbon in 1759, due to his participation in the Távora affair (a conspiracy against King Joseph I of Portugal). His palace was demolished and his land was salted.[13] 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.[14]
Brazil
In the Portuguese
Legends
An ancient legend recounts that Odysseus feigned madness by yoking a horse and an ox to his plow and sowing salt.[19]
See also
Footnotes and references
- ^ S2CID 161696751.
- ^ JSTOR 1516752.
- ^ S2CID 161764925.
- ISBN 0-931464-40-4, p. 110
- ^ Chavalas, Mark. The ancient Near East: historical sources in translation pp. 144–145.
- ISBN 0-8094-9104-4pp. 7–8.
- OCLC 1173144180. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
- ^ S2CID 162850949.
- S2CID 162289604.
- ISBN 978-1-4179-6638-7. Archivedfrom the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2016-10-16.
- S2CID 225088949.
- ^ Hanna, Ralph and David Lawton, eds., The Siege of Jerusalem, 2003, line 1295 Archived 2020-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Joseph Hughes, An authentick letter from Mr. Hughes, a Gentleman residing at Lisbon ..., London 1759, p. 25 Archived 2020-03-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ González, Modesto Fernández y (1874). Portugal contemporáneo: De Madrid à Oporto, pasando por Lisboa; diario de un caminante (in Spanish). Impr. y fundicion de M. Tello. p. 177.
- ^ a b Wikisource. (in Portuguese). Brazil. 1789 – via
- ^ Southey, Robert (1819). History of Brazil. Vol. 3. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. p. 684.
- ISBN 0-684-13386-5.
- ^ Bishop, Elizabeth (1962). "Brazil". Time. New York. p. 31.
- mentions the mismatched animals but not the salt.
Bibliography
- Gevirtz, Stanley (1963). "Jericho and Shechem: A Religio-Literary Aspect of City Destruction". JSTOR 1516752.
- Ridley, R. T. (1986). "To Be Taken with a Pinch of Salt: The Destruction of Carthage". Classical Philology. 81 (2): 140–146. S2CID 161696751.
- Stevens, Susan T. (1988). "A Legend of the Destruction of Carthage". Classical Philology. 83 (1): 39–41. S2CID 161764925.
- Visona, Paolo (1988). "On the Destruction of Carthage Again". Classical Philology. 83 (1): 41–42. S2CID 162289604.
- Warmington, B. H. (1988). "The Destruction of Carthage: A Retractatio". Classical Philology. 83 (4): 308–310. S2CID 162850949.