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Camahutum, Cameo

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CAMAHUTUM.
engraved stone passed. This latter word has puzzled philo­logists, but the true connexion of ideas appears to me to be this. M. Ben Mansur has (Div. ii. No. 2), " The Camahem, called by some the Ass-stone ; it is very hard, can only be pierced by the Diamond ; if broken, it separates into fine splinters. Eubbed down on a hard stone, it gives out a red colour. The finest sort is the Black Bed dug up in the district of Karak." Meaning unmistakeably our compact Haematite ; giving its distinctive cha­racters, the iron-grey colour (that of an Ass-hide), its hardness, splintery fracture, and red streak. Now this stone being fre­quently a Magnet is the substance chosen, before all others, and from the very earliest times, to engrave talismans upon. Its use begins with the Babylonian Cylinders (most abundant in this), and ends through the Gnostic series with the Cufic stamps of the 8th and 9th centuries. Thus we can perceive how Camahem the common material for a talisman, came to be iden­tified with the talisman itself. Camillo Leonardo, writing at the end of the Middle Ages (his ' Speculum Lapidum ' is dated 1502), has the Camahem in view when talking of the stone Kaman, and Kakaman, a name he absurdly enough derives from Κ.ανμα, from its volcanic origin, adding, " it is like the Onyx :" by which he doubtless refers to the engraved Cameo. These latter works he actually talks of (in his dedicatory preface to Cesare Borgia) as Gemma Chamainae.
I am tempted to think that Camaut came to be applied to gems in relief, as being talismans par eminence, seeing how the Arabs have ever looked upon all ancient bas-reliefs as magical ; and therefore the word came into Europe in the vo­cabulary of the Crusaders in this restricted sense. Intagli, on the other hand, they continued to use whenever they could procure them for personal seals, secreta, and distinguished such by the Dame Sigilla, the diminutive of Signum, in its sense of signet.
Important Camei are not unfrequent which have been con­verted into Gnostic amulets by the engraving of their customary types and formulae upon the reverse. I have noticed examples in the Royal and in the Marlborough Collections. The latter example is a fine Cameo bust of Commodus : on the reverse
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