Again, the mode of making a covenant of salt in some portions of the East coincides with this suggested identification of salt with blood in the primitive mind. In the Lebanon region, where the blood covenant, as a bond of union, is still recognized and practised,[58] the covenant of salt is also well known, not only as between new comers who are to enter into a mutual alliance, but as bringing into union friends who would be as one. In such cases a sword is taken, and salt is laid on its blade. The two friends in turn lick of the salt that is to unite them, as if they were tasting of common blood after the fashion of the "blood-lickers" in Mecca.[59]
Another illustration of this mode is given by Sir Frederick Henniker, in his notes of a journey in the East in 1819-20.[60] It was a shaykh of the Arabs who escorted him from Mt. Sinai northward, who cut this covenant with Sir Frederick. On the request being made for such an assurance of fidelity from the shaykh, "he immediately drew his sword," says Sir Frederick, "placed some salt upon the blade, and then put a portion of it into his mouth, and desired me to do the same; and 'Now, cousin,' said he, 'your life is as sacred as my own;' or, as he expressed himself, 'Son of my uncle, your head is upon my shoulders.'" Before this act the two were as cousins; now they were as one, the head of one being upon the shoulders of the other. The similarity of this rite with that of the blood covenant, in both its form and meaning, is obvious.
This correspondence of salt and blood in primitive thought, and in fact, will perhaps throw light on a disputed reference in a fragment of Ennius[61] to "salsus sanguis" (salted blood, or briny blood). It would seem that as the Jews held that the blood is the life, and the life is in the blood, similarly Greeks and Romans recognized the truth that salt is in the blood, and the blood is salt.
In the second century there were Christian ascetics who refused to take wine in the eucharist. Among these the Elkesaites and the Ebionites employed bread and salt instead of bread and wine. This seems to have been a recognition of the fact that salt, like wine, represented blood.[62]
Professor Hermann Collitz, of Bryn Mawr, has suggested, in this connection, that the very words, in Latin, for salt and blood, sal and sanguis, are from the same root.[63]
Certainly salt is sometimes used as a substitute for blood in primitive covenanting; on the other hand, blood is used for salt among some primitive peoples as an essential accompaniment of food. These facts being noticed by the author of this volume first suggested to him the real meaning of the covenant of salt.