Salinity Management in Arid Regions - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 418

FIGURE 21.1 ( Continued ) Irrigation practices in the United Arab Emirates (old farm well
head, restored channels in an ancient oasis, drip apparatus sustaining a tree, and a small farm
growing fodder for camels) and Syria (diesel pumps and metal and plastic piping sustaining
large-scale grain fields).
The dark pastureland was bleached/ The broad countryside filled with alkali.
(Lugalbanda and the Thunderbird)
Its central plain…/ grew reeds of lament…/ the water flowing sweet/ flowed now as
saline waters. (The Cursing of Akkade)
Indeed, soil salinization was so severe that tablets from many thousands of
years ago now in Harvard's Semitic Museum (see photos in France 2007) often
show overt whitening as salts emerge from the baked clay and fill in the depres-
sions left by ancient scribes' styluses (J. Greene, personal communication). Even