Kamos

Kamos is a barley drink that Priscus records in the villages of Attila’s realm.^[1] In 449 Priscus travelled north with the Roman embassy of Maximinus. On the way they crossed navigable rivers on dugouts and rafts.^[1] The villages on the way supplied the envoys with millet instead of wheat. Instead of wine, they supplied a drink that the natives called medos.^[1] The servants who travelled with the envoys received millet as well. They also received a drink made from barley, which the barbarians called kamos.^[1] Priscus does not say who the villagers were.^[1]

The word

The name has two explanations. The first takes kamos for a Turkic word, the name of fermented mare’s milk, qımız, which is kumys.^[2] The second rejects this on three grounds. -os is the Greek ending, kam- is not qımız, and qımız is made of milk, not of barley.^[2] According to the second, the word is Indo-European, and the Pannonians drank kamos long before Attila.^[2] The evidence for the earlier drink is a passage in the Kestoi of Julius Africanus and an entry in Diocletian’s edict on prices.^[2]

Mahmud al-Kashgari, in his dictionary of the eleventh century, defines the Turkic word, which he writes qimiz. It is mare’s milk poured into skins, fermented and drunk.^[3] Priscus calls kamos a drink of barley.^[1] Therefore the two drinks were made of different things.

Medos, the drink given to the envoys, is taken for an Indo-European word as well. Some scholars make it Germanic, others Illyrian.^[2]

What remains is a barley beer of the villages, given to the servants of an embassy, under a name whose origin is disputed. Its tie to kumys rests on the likeness of the two words. The word can be placed in Pannonia before the Huns arrived.

References

^ a b c d e f Priscus; Müller 1851, fr. 8, p. 83
^ a b c d e Maenchen-Helfen 1973, p. 425
^ Dīvān Lughāt al-Turk; al-Kāshgharī 1072–1074, p. 282

Sources

Literature

Karl Müller (ed.), Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Bd. IV (darin: Menandri Protectoris fragmenta, griechisch mit lateinischer Übersetzung) (1851)
Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
Maḥmūd al-Kāshgharī, Dīwān Lughat al-Turk (1072–1074)