The table on p. goo gives (in long tons) the world's production of salt for the years 1923-25. (J. J. F.; A. G. F.) Ancient History and Religious Symbolism.—Salt must have been quite unattainable to primitive man in many parts of the world. Thus the Odyssey (xi. 122 seq.) speaks of inlanders who did not know the sea and used no salt with their food. In some parts of America, and even of India (among the Todas), salt was first introduced by Europeans; and there are still parts of central Africa where its use is a luxury confined to the rich. Indeed, where men live mainly on milk and flesh, consuming the latter raw or roasted, so that its salts are not lost, it is not neces sary to add sodium chloride, and thus we understand how the Numidian nomads in the time of Sallust and the Bedouins of Hadramut at the present day never eat salt with their food. On the other hand, cereal or vegetable diet calls for a supplement of salt, and so does boiled meat.
The habitual use of salt is intimately connected with the ad vance from nomadic to agricultural life, i.e., with precisely that step in civilization which had most influence on the cults of almost all ancient nations. The gods were worshipped as the givers of the kindly fruits of the earth, and, as all over the world "bread and salt" go together in common use and common phrase, salt was habitually associated with offerings, at least with all offerings which consisted in whole or in part of cereal elements. This prac tice obtained among the Greeks and Romans and among the Semitic peoples (Lev. ii. 13). As covenants were ordinarily made over a sacrificial meal, in which salt was a necessary element, the expression "a covenant of salt" (Numb. xviii. 19) is easily under stood; it is probable, moreover, that the preservative qualities of salt made it a peculiarly fitting symbol of an enduring compact, and influenced the choice of this particular element of the cov enant meal as that which sealed an obligation to fidelity. Hence the Greek phrase &Xas rcaL rapagalvEtv, the Arab phrase "there is salt between us," the expression "to eat the salt of the palace" (Ezra iv. 14, R.V.) and the modern Persian phrase namak karam, "untrue to salt," i.e., disloyal or ungrateful and many others.
Salt and incense, the chief economic and religious necessaries of the ancient world, play a great part in all that we know of the ancient highways of commerce. Thus one of the oldest roads in Italy is the Via Salaria, by which the produce of the salt pans of Ostia was carried into the Sabine country. Herodotus's account of the caravan route uniting the salt-oases of the Libyan desert (iv. 181 seq.) makes it plain that this was mainly a salt-road, and to the present day the caravan trade of the Sahara is largely in salt. The salt of Palmyra was an important element in the vast trade between the Syrian ports and the Persian Gulf (see PALMYRA), and long after the glory of the great merchant city was past "the salt of Tadmor" retained its reputation (Mastudi viii. 398). In like manner the ancient trade between the Aegean and the coasts of southern Russia was largely dependent on the salt pans at the mouth of the Dnieper and on the salt fish brought from this dis trict (Herod. iv. 53; Dio Chrys. p. 437). The vast salt mines of northern India were worked before the time of Alexander (Strabo v. 2, 6, xv. 1, 3o). The economic importance of salt is further indicated by the preyalence down to the present day of salt taxes or of government monopolies. In Oriental systems of taxation high imposts on salt are seldom lacking and are often carried out oppressively with the result that the article is apt to reach the consumer in an impure state largely mixed with earth. "The salt which has lost its savour" (Matt. v. 13) is simply the earthy residuum of such an impure salt after the sodium chloride has been washed out.
Cakes of salt have been used as money—for example, in Abys sinia and elsewhere in Africa, and in Tibet and adjoining parts.
In the Roman army an allowance of salt was made to officers and men, from which in imperial times this salarium was converted into an allowance of money for salt.