Historical lie: Mount Sapo, or the myth of the discovery of soap in Roman times
Tuesday, 2 January 2007Several sources maintain that soap was first discovered at a place called Mount Sapo (or Mount Sappo), located in or nearby Rome. Most contemporary (Internet) soapmakers believe this Roman legend explains the origins of soap. But they are wrong - or rather, they have been wronged by misinformed marketing media.
According to the Roman legend myth (where “myth” is the correct name for the historical lie it covers), soap was first discovered at a place called Mount Sapo (or Mount Sappo), located in or nearby Rome. Here goes the popular “Roman legend”: While pouring out into the river the dirty ash-laden water where they had washed their laundry, a group of Roman washerwomen noticed a lathery scum develop where their discarded waters met the fat-laden waters coming from the cleaning of a sacrificial altar.
In some versions, the washerwomen were kneeling at the river’s edge, rubbing their laundry with fireplace ashes, while a High Priestess at the nearby temple was wiping down the grease that had stuck to the altar after one of the animal sacrifices, which were so popular back in those times. So when the grease met the ash-laden waters, a rich lather developed, and everybody immediately recognised soap - with the Latin word for soap, sapo, being chosen as a toponimical from the name of the place all this was going on: Mount Sapo (or Mount Sappo according to some “experts”).
This story is pictoresque, romantic, and completely fantastic. And yet, it sounds so perfectly “true” in our media-numbed society, that even the American Soap And Detergent Association has been (incredibly) reporting it as “The Origins of Soap”!
There are several details that give away the Mount Sapo story as not being historically reliable. In particular,
- There is no Mount Sapo or Mount Sappo in or around Rome, nor there has ever been.
- It is not enough for fats and fireplace ashes to occasionally and surreptitiously meet in the waters of a river, for them to produce soap.
- According to Roman historians, “sapo” (the Latin word for soap) was a product used by the Germans as a hair dye. It is not clear whether “sapo” was the Latin translation of the Celtic term, “saipo”, or vice-versa.
An honest history of soap, with documented reference sources and the acknowledgement that the annals of history do not seem to satisfy all possible questions, is included in the book Soap Naturally - Ingredients, methods and recipes for natural handmade soap (Patrizia Garzena, Marina Tadiello), which is recommended reading for anybody who is serious about making good soap.