In ancient Egypt, natron – a naturally occurring salt found in the soda lakes of the Wadi El Natrun or Natron Valley – was used in mummification and added to castor oil to make Egyptian Blue paint, which adorned tombs, aiding the dead’s safe passage to the afterlife.Ībove all, salt was the earth’s natural healer.
The chemical and political potency of salt also imbued it with connotations of spiritual power. With handfuls of these white crystals, agreements were made in the Middle East, temple sacrifices consecrated by ancient Hebrews, evil spirits warded off by Buddhists, and sumo rings ritually purified in front of the Emperors of Japan. For the sake of salt, wars were fought, cities and empires destroyed. On the back of salt, whether mined or evaporated from sea or brine waters, cities were founded, religious rituals devised, roads built, gold amassed, old wounds healed in ancient baths, and new lands discovered (after all, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas was funded by Spanish salt fortunes).īut just as sodium chloride bestowed life and wealth, it also took it away. But it was this ionic compound’s power to purify and preserve food that was a key catalyst for the progression of Neolithic societies. Salt is essential for human life, with sodium playing a vital role in the regulation of many bodily functions, maintaining our fluid balance and enabling the transmission of nerve impulses around the body.
From Africa to Europe, the Middle East and China, those cubic crystals of sodium chloride were the building blocks of ancient civilizations. But then, salt runs deep in the veins of all humanity.
Until the mid-20th century, sodium chloride was the most sought-after currency in the Saharan interior, the salt route extending from Mauritania to Ethiopia – where salt slabs were used as coins and the mineral is still traded in bricks – and on to Djibouti. Those caravans were once 10,000 camels strong, and such was its value, the salt they carried was traded weight-for-weight for gold. Since the sixth century, the Tuareg have walked the 500-mile Azalai caravan route from Timbuktu through Taoudenni to the salt mines of Taghaza, packing their beasts with “white gold” to return to the Malian market city. “The source of all life,” he says, “is t-èsm-en… salt. In one hand he carries a femur-like stick, with the other he leads a roped line of 15 laden dromedaries stretching back across the sand dune. Under a high, fierce sun, the Tuareg trader’s face is in shadow beneath his black turban.
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