by DP Crisp » 7:38 am
We mentioned sal ammoniac as one sort of salt known in Egypt, but I've been thinking...
Recent references are confident about what it was and where it was found:
"Sal Ammoniac was named after it was observed in the Temple of Zeus-Ammon in Egypt; its name means "salt of Ammon". It was the white crystalline substance that remained on the ceiling and walls after camel dung was burned."
"Sal ammoniac forms on volcanic rocks near fume releasing vents. There is no liquid phase as the mineral crystallizes from these fumes in a process called sublimation. The crystallization occurs as the gases are escaping and crystals tend to be short-lived. Sal ammoniac is very soluble in water and crystals will be removed during the first rain of their existence, so to speak, if they are not removed by collectors first.
"Other possible natural occurrences exist from underground burning coal seams. Alexander the Great is said to have found sal ammoniac crystals in a cave in a region that is now Tadzhikistan. The region was plagued by underground burning coal seams."
"Natural crystals of sal ammoniac have an unreal or unnatural character to them. They are so small, delicate, intricate and at times quite beautiful that they just do not seem to be like other minerals."
but older references are more equivocal. This is the 1911 Encyclopaedia, I think:
"SAL AMMONIAC, or AMMONIUM CHLORIDE, NH4Cl, the earliest known salt of ammonia, was formerly much used in dyeing {cf. alum} and metallurgic {cf. alchemy} operations.
"The name Hammoniacus sal occurs in Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxi. 39), who relates that it was applied to a kind of fossil salt found below the sand, in a district of Cyrenaica. The general opinion is, that the sal ammoniac of the ancients was the same as that of the moderns; but the imperfect description of Pliny is far from being conclusive. The native sal ammoniac of Bucharia, described by Model and Karsten, and analysed by M. H. Klaproth, has no resemblance to the salt described by Pliny. The same remark applies to the sal ammoniac of volcanoes. Dioscorides (v. 126), in mentioning sal ammoniac, makes use of a phrase quite irreconcilable with the description of Pliny, and rather applicable to rock-salt than to our sal ammoniac. Sal ammoniac, he says, is peculiarly prized if it can be easily split into rectangular fragments. Finally, we have no proof whatever that sal ammoniac occurs at present, either near the temple of Jupiter Ammon, or in any part of Cyrenaica. Hence we conclude that the term sal ammoniac was applied as indefinitely by the ancients as most of their other chemical terms. It may have been given to the same salt which is known to the moderns by that appellation, but was not confined to it.
"In any case there can be no doubt that it was well known to the alchemists..."
Ammonia just means "of Amun", who is himself The Hidden One. He was concealed in a lotus flower before emerging to create the world, but it's also taken to refer to the unseen but powerful wind and to his omnipresence.
Since Amun creating the world "by himself" means "by masturbation" -- single-handed creation -- it's no surprise that air and rain were his first offspring (who in turn created sky and earth). This airy, meteorological association seems important.
As if sal ammoniac isn't mysterious enough by itself, delicate and ephemeral, being deposited out of the air (particularly in temples or not) is surely a dead give-away for it being a gift from the gods...
(This ties in with SAL = SAR = ZAR = helped (by gods). Lazarus, of course, was given very overt aid... and I dare say all those other "helped by god" names denote 'initiates to the Mysteries'.)
Of course, salts are used in mummification -- which is really about rebirth.
But then there's that suggestion that sal ammoniac was rock salt: a gift from god concealed under ground {Remember how ambrosia means both concealed and immortal?}.