Drinking horn

[3] To be distinguished from the drinking-horn proper is the rhyton (plural rhyta), a drinking-vessel made very loosely in the shape of a horn, sometimes with an outlet at the pointed end.

[5] During Classical Antiquity, the Thracians and Scythians in particular were known for their custom of drinking from horns (archaeologically, the Iron Age "Thraco-Cimmerian" horizon).

Diodorus gives an account of a feast prepared by the Getic chief Dromichaites for Lysimachus and selected captives, and the Getians' use of drinking vessels made from horn and wood is explicitly stated.

A notable example is the 5th century BC gold-and-silver rhython in the shape of a Pegasus which was found in 1982 in Ulyap, Adygea, now at the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.

The 5th-century BC practice of depositing drinking horns with precious metal fittings as grave goods for deceased warriors appears to originate in the Kuban region.

In the influential interpretation due to M. I. Rostovtzeff (1913), the Scythian ruler received the drinking horn from a deity as a symbol of his investiture.

[15] The drinking horn reached Central Europe with the Iron Age, in the wider context of "Thraco-Cimmerian" cultural transmission.

A number of early Celtic (Hallstatt culture) specimens are known, notably the remains of a huge gold-banded horn found at the Hochdorf burial.

Krauße (1996) examines the spread of the "fashion" of drinking horns (Trinkhornmode) in prehistoric Europe, assuming it reached the eastern Balkans from Scythia around 500 BC.

One fine 5th century Merovingian example found at Bingerbrück, Rhineland-Palatinate made from olive green glass is kept at the British Museum.

[17] Some of the skills of the Roman glass-makers survived in Lombardic Italy, exemplified by a blue glass drinking-horn from Sutri, also in the British Museum.

In the Prose Edda, Thor drank from a horn that unbeknown to him contained all the seas, and in the process he scared Útgarða-Loki and his kin by managing to drink a conspicuous part of its content.

[27] The "Oldenburg horn" was made in 1474/75 by German artisans for Christian I of Denmark when he visited Cologne to reconcile Charles the Bold of Burgundy.

In the context of Romanticism, a ceremonial drinking horn with decorations depicting the story of the Mead of Poetry was given to Swedish poet Erik Gustaf Geijer by his students in 1817, now in the Private Collection of Johan Paues, Stockholm.

[30] Ram or goat drinking horns, known as kantsi, remain an important accessory in the culture of ritual toasting in Georgia.

[2] In Swiss culture, a large drinking horn together with a wreath of oak leaves is the traditional prize for the winning team of a Hornussen tournament.

The Roordahuizum drinking horn, made in the mid-16th century by silversmith Albert Jacobs Canter, kept in the Frisian Museum at Leeuwarden [ 1 ]
Drinking Horn with Silver-gilt Mounts (detail), Northern German or Scandinavian, Late 15th century, The Hunt Museum
A drinking horn in the coat of arms of Hämeenkyrö
Collection of drawings of Scythian stelae of the 6th to 5th centuries BC. [ 4 ] Many of them depict warriors holding a drinking horn in their right hand.
The Hochdorf drinking horn (iron with sheet gold ornaments, capacity 5.5 litres)
Vendel era bronze horn fittings and 3rd Century glass drinking horn on display at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities .
A drinking scene on an image stone from Gotland , Swedish Museum of National Antiquities , Stockholm .
The Bullion Stone , a Pictish image stone depicting a warrior drinking from a large horn while on horseback (discovered in 1933, Museum of Scotland , Edinburgh) [ 21 ]
Drinking horn of Sigismund of Luxemburg, before 1408
An 1893 depiction of the Norse goddess Sif holding a drinking horn.