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Camahutum, Cameo

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CAMAHUTUM.
141
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 Gamahuia, 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.
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 camei, of which fifty-five are particu­larised as "large." (This list is to be found in the Patent Bolls of his 51st year.) The word is spelt at length camahutum, and abbreviated camali. His contemporary Matthew Paris Latinises it into quite the modern form (Vita Leofrici), " lapidibus nobi-libus insculptis quos cameos vulgariter appellamus." Later, in the year 1341, we find the great French Cameo entered in the inventory of the Tresor de S. Denys as " unum pulcherrimum camaut." Now, the term is evidently of foreign origin, and in these early lists it seems to designate rather the species of the stone than the nature of the work upon it, which the writer in each case particularly describes. Hence Camaut may be safely put down as the original form of the word. Now Camea is said to be Arabic for a talisman, for which with that nation every
Callais, Turquois Page of 453 Camahutum, Cameo
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