{
 "name": "Paid in Salt",
 "tagline": "The firsts of money, with the receipts.",
 "premise": "Cinematic documentaries about the firsts of money — the first coins, contracts, debts and paychecks — told from the artifacts that prove them.",
 "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/@paidinsalt",
 "email": "info@paidinsalt.com",
 "signoff": "Everything started somewhere.",
 "posts": [
  {
   "title": "The World's Oldest Word for Freedom Meant \"Cancel the Debt\"",
   "slug": "amargi-oldest-word-for-freedom-debt-cancellation",
   "url": "https://paidinsalt.com/posts/amargi-oldest-word-for-freedom-debt-cancellation/",
   "date": "2026-08-31",
   "description": "Sumer's word for freedom wasn't a philosophy — it was a receipt for a cancelled debt. The ruler who usually gets credit for inventing it wasn't even first.",
   "sources": [
    {
     "note": "Yale Avalon Project — Code of Hammurabi (L.W. King translation), Laws 117 and 88 on debt bondage and interest caps",
     "url": "https://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamcode.asp"
    },
    {
     "note": "Wikipedia, \"Ama-gi\" — etymology, the Enmetena/Urukagina attribution, and Samuel Noah Kramer's \"first word for freedom\" claim",
     "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama-gi"
    },
    {
     "note": "Wikipedia, \"Urukagina\" — reign dates, and the scholarly caution that no single unified reform text survives under his name",
     "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina"
    },
    {
     "note": "Encyclopedia.com, \"Ammi-saduqa\" — the misharum edict, the only Old Babylonian debt-cancellation edict to survive nearly complete",
     "url": "https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/ammi-saduqa"
    },
    {
     "note": "Kellogg Community College, \"The Code of Hammurabi: An Economic Interpretation\" — Law 88 interest text and the Law 89 penalty",
     "url": "https://academic.kellogg.edu/williamsjon/Hammurabi.htm"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "title": "Your salary is salt — sort of",
   "slug": "your-salary-is-salt-sort-of",
   "url": "https://paidinsalt.com/posts/your-salary-is-salt-sort-of/",
   "date": "2026-08-31",
   "description": "\"Salary\" really does come from the Latin for salt. Whether Roman soldiers were actually paid in it is a better story — because the honest answer has a receipt.",
   "sources": [
    {
     "note": "Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 31.89 — the Latin text of the one ancient sentence the whole story rests on (LacusCurtius/Bill Thayer)",
     "url": "https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/31*.html"
    },
    {
     "note": "Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary (1879), entry \"salarius\" II.B — the standard student Latin dictionary, still stating the salt-payment claim as fact (Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University)",
     "url": "https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dsalarius"
    },
    {
     "note": "Peter Gainsford (PhD, Classics), \"Salt and salary: were Roman soldiers paid in salt?\" — traces the literal claim to Facciolati & Forcellini's 1771 Latin lexicon and its popularization in English from the 1860s",
     "url": "https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.html"
    },
    {
     "note": "Etymonline — \"salary\" (salarium)",
     "url": "https://www.etymonline.com/word/salary"
    }
   ]
  }
 ]
}