Salt preservation defines civilizations. The need to preserve flesh first emerged where the desert met the fertile strip along the Nile River. Earliest Egyptian burial sites date to about 3000 B.C..
Corpses were surprisingly well preserved by the dry, salty desert sand. Egyptians regarded the body as the vessel connecting earthly life to the afterlife. The ideal was permanent preservation.
The Egyptians discovered a naturally occurring salt forty miles northwest of Cairo, in a dry riverbed called a wadi. They named this location Natrun, and the salt itself netjry, or natron. Ancient Egyptians referred to natron as “the divine salt”. Natron is a mixture primarily composed of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate, containing only a small amount of sodium chloride (NaCl). It comes in “white” (usually gray) and “red” (pink) forms.
Herodotus, the Greek historian, documented the most thorough mummification process. After removing the brain and abdominal contents, the cavity required cleaning with palm wine and spices. The body was then filled with spices, excluding frankincense. The corpse rested, covered entirely in natron, for exactly 70 days.
After washing and wrapping, the body was placed in a wooden case. For the poor, the least expensive method involved washing the intestines and placing the body in natron for 70 days. The final funeral ritual was “the opening of the mouth,” symbolically freeing the corpse to eat. The tomb of the child pharaoh Tutankhamen (died 1352 B.C.) held bronze knives for this ritual, alongside cups filled with natron and resin. Later, in the nineteenth century, mummies transported to Cairo faced taxes as if they were salted fish.
Ancient Africans distinguished between different salts. In ancient Egypt, the poor used sodium chloride for mummification, while the rich used natron, suggesting higher value for natron. In contrast, wealthy Africans often preferred salt with higher sodium chloride content, reserving natron for the poor. Natron (trona) was preferred for bean dishes because its carbonate content countered gas. It also served as stomach medicine and was considered a male aphrodisiac. In Timbuktu, a trade center for salt and tobacco, chewing a mixture of natron and tobacco was common. African merchants, healers, and cooks possessed detailed knowledge of many impure salts, reserving salt consisting mainly of sodium chloride exclusively for eating. Europeans, in the age of colonialism, introduced pure sodium chloride. Africans then mixed the pure salt with other salts to achieve their preferred compound blends.
The Phoenicians, operating from major ports like Tyre, traded across the Mediterranean. They exported wood (cedars of Lebanon) and craftsmen to help Solomon build his temple in Jerusalem. Jerusalem fish markets received supplies from Tyre; this fish was likely salted to prevent spoilage on the journey. Around 800 B.C., the Phoenicians founded Sfax (modern Tunisia), which remains a source of salt and salted fish.
They also established Cadiz in southern Spain, sailing from there through the Strait of Gibraltar to the West African coast. They set up tuna fisheries near bluefin migration routes in the Mediterranean. To cure tuna caught off Sicily’s western coast, the Phoenicians established saltworks near modern Trapani.
Act II: The Salt People and the Celtic Tide
The Celts, or their ancestors known as the Urnfield people, developed the first organized agriculture in northern Europe. They introduced crop rotation and fertilizer use. They relied on waterways like the Rhine, Main, and Ruhr to transport goods. The Celts inhabited Austria, Hungary, and Bavaria. The name Celts came from the Greek Keltoi, meaning “one who lives in hiding”. Romans called them Galli or Gauls, names derived from the Greek hal, meaning “salt”. They were known as “the salt people”. Many towns built on salt beds share this root, including Hallein, Hallstatt, and Swäbisch Hall in Austria, and Halle in East Germany.
The Celtic economy was based on salt and iron. Their metallurgical skills brought inventions—the 3-foot-long Celtic sword, the seamless iron rim for wagon wheels, and possibly the horseshoe—to much of Western Europe. From their mines, such as the one at Dürnberg, they extracted rock salt. Miners’ bodies, trapped in their ancient work sites, date back to 400 B.C., preserved by the salt. Objects found nearby date to 1300 B.C..
In 390 B.C., the Celts sacked Rome.
They traveled 80 miles in 4 days on horseback, terrifying townspeople with loud war cries.
Western Europeans had never encountered mounted cavalry before. The Celts controlled Rome for 40 years.
The Celts valued pigs and considered the leg of wild boar the choicest cut, reserved for warriors. They likely contributed the first salt-cured hams to Western culture. A 1930 recipe for salted haunch suggested placing venison in a wooden tub with salt and spices for 10 days. Pressing the meat could keep it for months. Salting for about 3 weeks allowed it to be dried like a ham.
In the 1990s, mummies were found near the Silk Road in China’s Uyghur Autonomous Region. These people, who lived around 2000 B.C., were preserved by salty soil. Their conical felt hats and twill jackets closely resembled the clothing of the salt miners found in Hallein and Hallstatt.
Act III: Salt’s Salad Days and the Pungent Garum
Roman history documents the constant struggle between privileged patricians and disenfranchised plebeians. Patricians insisted on extending the right to salt to plebeians, establishing the Roman concept of “common salt”.
The Roman state first interfered with salt prices in 506 B.C..
The state seized control of the private saltworks in Ostia, Rome’s main salt source, because the prices were judged too high. The Salt Road, the Via Salaria, carried salt from Ostia up the Tiber River to Rome. The treasury official responsible for salt price decisions derived his title from this road. To avoid dependence on Etruscan salt (controlled along the Tiber’s northern bank), Romans founded their own saltworks in Ostia in 640 B.C..
They built a single, shallow pond to evaporate seawater into salt crystals.
Romans salted their greens to counteract natural bitterness, giving rise to the word salad (salted). Cato’s second-century B.C. guide, De agricultura, recommended eating cabbage chopped, washed, dried, and sprinkled with salt or vinegar. Salt symbolized the binding of an agreement. Omitting a saltcellar on a banquet table was an unfriendly act. Salt was served in simple seashells for plebeians or ornate silver saltcellars for patricians.
Most salt consumed by Romans was already incorporated into their market-bought food. Cato listed his workers’ provisions as bread, olives, wine, and salt. The Romans imported hams, especially dry-salted and smoked Westphalian hams, from Celtic regions. Cato’s mothproof ham recipe used oil and vinegar to simulate the “savage taste” of the north.
Fish formed the centerpiece of Roman cuisine. Salted fish was central to Roman commerce. Sicily produced the most famous salted bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. Sicilians boiled trapped seawater from marshes to produce salt. Archestratus, the 4th-century B.C. Sicilian gourmet, praised the island’s tuna. He suggested baking the tail of a large female tuna, lightly salting and oiling it, and eating it hot dipped in a sharp brine.
The pungent fish sauce garum was indispensable to Roman cooking. A first-century A.D. recipe described mixing fish entrails and smaller fish (anchovies, sprats) with brine. This vessel sat under the sun for 2 to 3 months to ferment. The liquid strained off was liquamen, and the refuse was allec. The brine needed sufficient salinity to float an egg or an anchovy. Pliny called garum “that liquid of putrefying matter”. Seneca, the philosopher, described it as “expensive liquid of bad fish”. When properly made, salt prevented putrefaction until fermentation took hold.
The only other ancient region to use garum was Asia, possibly originating in Vietnam (nuóc mam). The French, upon encountering nuóc mam, were horrified, forgetting their own Latin heritage. The celebrated Institut Pasteur studied nuóc mam for 16 years, from 1914 to 1930.
The oldest surviving complete cookbook, De re coquinaria, credited to Apicius (1st century A.D.), features far more recipes with garum than with salt. A simple recipe for braised cutlets required meat in a pan, 1 pound of garum, an equal quantity of oil, and a trifle of honey.
After the Roman Empire’s fall in the 5th century, garum faded from the Mediterranean. Anthimus, writing in 6th-century Gaul, emphatically rejected it: “We ban the use of fish sauce from every culinary role”.
The murex snail yielded the precious purple dye. Pliny described heating the raw juice in lead pots (about 7 gallons of water for every 50 pounds of fish).
In 1826, Antoine Jérôme Balard, studying salt marshes, found a blackish-purplish, foul-smelling liquid residue. Since the liquid was chemically identical to the purple murex secretion, he named it muride. The Académie Française renamed it bromine, meaning “stench”. Between the stench of the dyeworks and the smell of fish curing, the Roman Empire’s coast must have been “redolent”.
Salt also intertwined with Roman concepts of sex and fertility. The Romans called a man in love salax (in a salted state), the origin of the word salacious. In the Pyrenees, brides carried salt in their left pockets to guard against impotence.
Act IV: The Adriatic Empire and the White Gold of the Po
The fall of Rome left the Mediterranean highly competitive. Venice, settled in the Adriatic lagoons, quickly rose to prominence. Cassiodorus wrote in 523 A.D. that early Venetians focused all their emulation on the saltworks, asserting that everyone desired salt.
Between the 6th and 9th centuries, the last great technical advance in salt manufacturing before the 20th century was invented. Instead of using a single artificial pond, salt makers built a series of successive evaporation ponds. Seawater moved from one pond to the next after reaching heightened salinity. This process created an increasingly dense brine that eventually precipitated out salt crystals. This systematic approach required minimal investment and manpower, limited only by surface area and dry weather. Coarse salt produced by this slow evaporation was highly valued in the Mediterranean for salting fish and curing hams. North African Muslims may have introduced this system to Ibiza in the 9th century. By the 11th century, Venetians adopted this pond system.
Venice secured a monopoly on salt sales and transportation. From 850 A.D., Venice prohibited importing salt from rivals and forced controlled cities, including Crete and Cyprus (by 1300), to buy salt exclusively from Venetian merchants. Venice bought salt cheaply from remote operations, like those in Crimea, and sold it at a fixed, high profit margin. The city government enforced a minimum price.
The agricultural wealth of the Po Valley depended on a port and a source of salt. The Via Emilia, built by Romans (now the 8-lane A-1 superhighway), connected major centers like Parma and Bologna to the Adriatic coast. Venice (Adriatic) and Genoa (Mediterranean) competed fiercely for this vital commercial business.
Most Italian cities, including Rome, were founded near saltworks. Veleia, in the Po Valley, sat over underground brine springs and became known as Salsomaggiore (“the big salt place”). Charlemagne restarted Veleia’s saltworks after Rome’s collapse to provision his army. The earliest records date to the 2nd century B.C.. Ancient brine wells used massive wooden wheels turned by chained men to hoist buckets of brine. Boiling the brine required controlling surrounding forests for fuel. In 1318, the city of Parma seized control of 31 Pallovicino wells, marking the transfer of power from feudal lord to city government.
Parma became famous for its salt-cured product, prosciutto di Parma. Parma was ideal for ham production because nearby mountain peaks trapped sea air, producing rain and drying the wind necessary for aging the salted leg. Hams were dried on racks arranged east to west to optimize wind exposure.
The Po Valley is Italy’s only important dairy region. The difference between fresh and aged cheese is salt. Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, known since the 13th century, is cured in brine. The whey from Parmesan cheese was fed to pigs, a requirement for prosciutto di Parma. The Latin word for a wooden cheese mold, forma, is the root of the Italian word for cheese, formaggio. It takes two years for the salt to reach the center of a 90-pound wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Genoa, an independent city-state by the 12th century, focused on commerce. It bought salt from Hyères (Provence) and developed systems of solar evaporation ponds there. Genoa then developed the saltworks of Cagliari in Sardinia, making Sardinia a major Mediterranean salt producer. Genoese merchants were pioneers in banking and maritime insurance. They used huge Atlantic-sized ships, often leased from the Basques, for trade.
In Spanish Catalonia, the Dukedom of Cardona controlled a large salt mountain. This salmon-pink, white, and bloodred mountain of rock salt was harvested as early as 3500 B.C.. Prehistoric stone tools have been found at the site. Romans, who usually favored sea salt, considered Cardona’s rock salt high quality. Salt workers were permitted to take salt for themselves every Thursday and carved religious figurines from the soft, soluble rock salt.
Ultimately, Venice defeated Genoa in the War of Chioggia (1378–1380), securing commercial dominance in the Mediterranean through cohesive political organization and salt subsidies. The enduring Roman idea that establishing saltworks equaled building empires was thus carried forward into the maritime republics.