KAMEL – Reales Tier / Denktradition

Camels are mentioned frequently in Latin accounts of the Crusades. Most references are fleeting and incidental, as for example in Fulker of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana (PL 155, cols 837, 846, 856f., 875, 880, 887, 911, 916, 926, 933) and William of Tyre‘s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum (pp. 316, 392, 499, 465, 555, 730, 823, 827, 884, 919, 983, 991, 994). In 9, 12 (p. 435), however, William interestingly corroborates the ancients’ assessment of the value of camels in counteracting cavalry, and in 3, 15 (p. 235), he records that the crusaders saw camels for the first time at the siege of Nicea. Moreover Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos fascinatingly chronicles the extent to which those besieged in Antioch depended on camels for food – »wealthy men ate the flesh of → horses, camels, → cows, and → deer« (tr. Levine, p. 103); »[the Count of Flanders’] quartermaster paid a remarkable amount of money for a camel’s foot, since he was unable to find anything better for him to eat at that point« (p. 109). The occasional presence of camels in the medieval West is meanwhile recorded in accounts of menageries, such as that of Emperor Frederick II (see Godfrey of Viterbo, Gesta Frederici, p. 348; also Loisel, 2, 154, 169, 179).

The occasional presence of camels in the medieval West is recorded in accounts of menageries, such as that of Emperor Frederick II (see Godfrey of Viterbo, Gesta Frederici, p. 348; also Loisel, 2, 154, 169, 179).

Lit.: G. LOISEL: Histoire des ménageries de l’antiquité à nos jours, 1912; A. DIERKENS: Chameaux et dromadaires en Gaule mérovingienne. Quelques remarques critiques. In: Hommages à Carl Deroux, ed. P. DÉFOSSE, 2003, 114-137; A. DIERKENS: Chameaux et dromadaires dans la Gaule du très haut Moyen-Âge. Note complémentaire: La méditerrannée et le monde mérovingien. Bulletin Archéologique de Provence, Supplément 3 (2005), 241-245.

Nigel Harris

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There is evidence of camels being known to the Egyptians as early as 4,000 BC, to the Assyrians from 860 BC, and to Archilochus in the seventh century BC (Keller 1, 275). Moreover Herodotus (Histories, 3, 103) regards the camel as sufficiently familiar to his audience to render a physical description of it unnecessary. Nevertheless the major ancient natural historians offer numerous details about the camel, a good proportion of which would still be regarded as broadly accurate (see Gauthier-Pilters/Dagg, passim). For example, Aristotle (especially Historia animalium 2, 1; 5, 14; 8, 1, 9), Pliny (especially Naturalis historia 8, 26, 67f.), and their followers agree that the camel is a cloven-hooved, retromingent ruminant; that it can live for four days without water (Aelian – 17, 7 – erroneously inflates this figure to eight); that it gives birth to one foal at a time following a gestation period of twelve months; and that it instils fear in → horses – a phenomenon also recorded by historians such as Herodotus (7, 87) and Xenophon (Cyropaedia, 6, 2, 14; 7, 1, 27; 7, 1, 48), and confirmed by some modern zoologists (see Gauthier-Pilters/Dagg, p. 128). Moreover Aristotle (2, 1) and Pliny (8, 26, 67) distinguish correctly between the two-humped Bactrian camel (camelus bactrianus) and the one-humped Arabian (camelus dromedarius), though Solinus (49, 9) and Isidore of Seville (12, 1, 35) confuse the two, and the latter regards the dromedary as a separate species, characterized by its exceptional running speed; the dromedary is faster, indeed, than a → horse, with whose speed that of a normal camel is often equated (e.g. by Pliny, 8, 26, 68, and Herodotus, 7, 86). There is also confusion as to the camel’s life-span (nowadays regarded as about 40 years – Gauthier-Peters/Dagg, p. 77): Aristotle (8, 9) states that it normally lives to 30, whereas Pliny (10, 68) cites 50 to 100 years, and Solinus (49, 11) and Aelian (4, 55) 100 at least.

Ancient military historians say little that contradicts these details – though Herodotus’s apparently independent description of the camel’s back legs (3, 103) is inaccurate (see Pauly 6, 222). They do refer, however, to various functions performed by camels in warfare. They were above all beasts of burden (e.g. Herodotus 1, 80), but were also used as mounts (Xenophon indeed attests – 6, 2, 8 – to two archers riding on the same camel) and as scarers of → horses; and they were often taken as booty (e.g. Xenophon 6, 1, 30).

Elsewhere there is considerable evidence of caravans of camels being used to transport goods along the major Eastern trade routes (Pauly 6, 222), of the animals’ presence at Roman games (Pauly 6, 223, Keller 1, 277), of their employment on imperial postal duties (Keller 1, 276), and indeed of their being eaten by Persians as a delicacy at birthday celebrations (Herodotus 1, 133).

Lit.: O. KELLER: Antike Tierwelt 1, 1909, 275–7; Der neue Pauly, 6, 221–3; H. GAUTHIER-PILTERS/ A. I. DAGG: The Camel. Its Evolution, Ecology, Behavior, and Relationship to Man, 1981.

Nigel Harris

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There are over 60 references to the camel in the Bible. Most of these are incidental mentions which merely reflect the fact that it was and is a domesticated animal in the Bible lands. Spiritual significance was seldom ascribed by patristic and later commentators to more than a few references: the classification of the camel as unclean in Lv 11, 4 and Dt 14, 7; the story of Rebekah watering Eliezar’s camels in Gn 24; the allusion to the young camels of Midian and Ephah in Is 60, 6; and, above all, Jesus’s two camel parables, in Mt 23, 24 and Mc 10, 25 (the latter also Mt 19, 24 and Lc 18, 25). In the former, Christ denounces the scribes and Pharisees as blind guides (to the Jews), who strain out a → gnat but swallow a camel. The Fathers established a strong tradition of interpreting the camel here as Christ, and the gnat as Barabbas (see Jerome PL 30, 695; Gregory PL 75, 536); though Augustine (PL 35, 1329f.) and Jerome (PL 26, 171) also associate the camel with »the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith« which Jesus accuses the Pharisees of having neglected. Meanwhile, his statement in Mc 10, 25 and its cognates that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven also gave rise to widespread comparisons between the camel and Christ (with the needle interpreted as his passion – see Jerome, PL 30, 555; Gregory, PL 76, 770 and 79, 319; Augustine PL, 35, 1329 and 36, 610). Whilst this reading predominated, the Fathers on occasion also identified the camel with the rich man (see Jerome PL 22, 982 and 25, 1324, Ambrose PL 17,681 and 20,973), with Zacchaeus (Jerome PL 22, 726) – or indeed with the Gentiles, perceived as likely to find it easier than the Jews to progress through the needle’s eye (Augustine PL 37, 1465, Jerome PL 30, 555, Ambrose PL 15, 1787). Further associations between the camel and Gentiles are made in interpretations of Gn 24 (see Gregory PL 76, 770 and 83, 252) and of Is 60, 6 (see Jerome PL 25, 259), whilst Gregory compares the unclean camel to the Samaritans (PL 75, 581).

Nigel Harris

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