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Camahutum, Cameo

Callais, Turquois Page of 384 Camahutum, Cameo Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
70
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
CAMAHUTUM: Camaut : Cameo.
Of this word innumerable etymologies have been proposed, all equally unsatisfactory, as Menage -long ago observed. The list begins with De Boot's simple and obvious derivation from Pliny's Cyamea, and goes on to the most far-fetched of all, Lessing's, who makes it the corruption of Gemma onychina, taking for his starting-point the Gothic form Gamahua, to be found in Agricola, and explained by him as " gammen-hu," bacon-stone* a popular name expressive of the fatty streakiness of its composition.f
But the only safe mode for tracing out the true source of the word, so diversely written at various times, is to examine in what form it makes its first appearance in any European language. Of such, the very earliest example known to me occurs in the list of gems collected by our Henry III. for the embellishment of his projected shrine of Edward the Confessor, amongst which are described above eighty caruei, of which fifty-five are particularised as "large." (This list is to be found in the Patent Polls of his 51st year.) The word is spelt at length chamahutam, camahutum, and abbreviated chamali, and camah'. His con-
* A notion arising from the use of speclcstein, steatite, for their smaller works, by the German carvers of the fifteenth century.
t The list of etymologies winds up with tho novel and ingenious one (the latest propounded) of Von Hammer's, from the Arabic of the same sound, meaning either a "flower," or the "top of the camel's hump."
Callais, Turquois Page of 384 Camahutum, Cameo
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